[3.5] Why won't you just die?!

[Aotrs Commander]

Since my last thread on the subject here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6699974&posted=1) is close to thread necromancy, I'll play safe and start a new thread. And I'll even put it in the homebrew forum this time (no idea why I didn't last time...)

Anyway, long story short, I am attempting to make the idea of 4E's solo template (i.e. individual monsters that can face a whole party) practical in 3.5.

(Those of you wanting to know why I consider the amount of effort doing this for my particular group (and believe me, I do) and why I don't use "simpler" solutions should refer to the previous thread, or better the longer, more detailed explanation I made on the WotC boards here (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/20058081/An_Unecessarily_Longwinded_Treatise_on_BBEG_Encoun ter_Designand_a_couple_of_templates). I won't re-iterate them here, since I really don't need to repeat all that again when I don't need to. Again, long story short, I've tried them and they don't always work and/or are not optimal for every single boss fight I want to run.)

Finally, then, after a month and a half, I had another go, taking on board Quellian-dyrae's extremely useful suggestion in the previous GitP thread. The new template is a bit less messy and has more utility, since you can use it for more than just single monsters.

So then, I present for your evalutation:

Defiant Monster Template

A Defiant creature is one that is extremely hard to kill. They cling to life (or unlife) with a tenacity unheard of by lesser creatures. The reasons are many. They may be chosen by destiny, favoured by some higher power, powered by some unspeakable ritual magic, driven by their sheer bloody-minded will to survive or they may simply be preternaturally fortunate.

The Defiant Template can be applied to any creature, hereafter referred to as the Base Creature. This template can be applied up to five times (or more if the party size is larger).

All statistics are as the base creature except:

HD: A Defiant creature always has maximum hit points. A Defiant creature's hit points are divided into blocks, with the base creature's maximum hit points forming the first block. For each time this template is taken, it gains an additional block of hit points equal to it's maximum hit points. When one block is reduced to 0, damage transfers immediately to the next one.

These are not temporary hit points and are treated as regular hit points; if the creature's Constitution is reduced (or any other stat that applies to it's hit points), the base and the blocks are all reduced accordingly. Effects that reduce a creature's hit points to 0 or 1 (e.g. Harm, suffocation) instead reduce the current block's hit points to 0 or 1. Effects which likewise function on current hit points only treat the current block's hit points. The creature's HD remain unaffected.

Defiant creature hit points are indicated with the format x+x, where x is the base creature's maximum hit points, with each block being seperated by the plus sign.

Special Qualities: As the base creature plus the following special ability.

I Got Better (Ex): Once per encounter per template application, if the Defiant creature fails a saving throw, it can reroll it's save as a free action. It cannot reroll any one save more than once. Each time it uses a reroll, it takes a cumulative -1 penalty to attack rolls, skill and ability checks, opposed checks and saves.

At the end of it's turn, as a Swift action, the Defiant creature can expend one full block of hit-points to negate any one negative condition, power, spell or other negative effect currently affecting it. This effect on the creature ends immeditatly.

Any time the Defiant is subject to a non-hit-point-damaging effect that kills it outright or leave it otherwise Confused, Cowering, Dazed, Helpless, Nauseated, Paralysed, Petrified (or similar), Polymorphed or Stunned, it may expend a full block of hit points to negate that portion of the effect.

A block of hit points expended by this power must be one that is completely undamaged.

CR +1 for each template application.



Said new template even has some other applications. Sticking a single application or two on a mid-high level boss in a regular fight makes it slightly harder to wipe out in one shot; or a 3-5ish Defiant creature should work pretty well as a solo monster (party size depending).

Better than my last attempt? Any further suggestions as to how it may be improved? Obvious flaws I've missed?



(If I may ask, not to sound mean or ungrateful to everyone trying to help me, but can we please keep the number of "just use improved monsters/lots of monsters/terrain" etc etc suggestions to a minimum as they aren't very helpful to me at this juncture. I have tried all of those over the years, with variying success; for those wishing to learn why I don't consider them the only functional or desireable solutions, refer to the aforementioned WotC thread where I went into it in great, great detail! I feel I need ask this, since I'd really like to avoid having to make the same justifications why I think this template is necessary again, for the third time, and instead to concentrate on improving the template! Thanks, folks.)

[Radiun]

I haven't seen your previous attempts, but if you want a monster to last a certain amount of turns, why not give it the, admittedly odd, ability to ignore damage beyond a certain point?
like
Max Damage : 40
Any single attack may never deal more than 40 damage to this creature.

Alternatively, a swift action to gain X temporary hit points could also be a useful buffer.

Just food for thought, not particularly thought out or balanced unfortunately.

[Aotrs Commander]

Mainly because hit points are only a part of the problem. The major issue in 3.5 especially is save-or-sucks; the trick is to lessen their one-hit-knock-out on the bosses, but without simply making them totally ineffective. Someone did suggest this before, I vaguely recall, but I think that it it is being perhaps too artifical. With the current (and previous) template, it still might be possible to knock out a a boss on sheer hit point damage in one round; but the PCs would have to be going to some! Capping the damage really doesn't help with the SoDs and degrades the direct damagers a touch.

Quellian-dyrae's rather elegant idea was translating hit points into five 'tanks' (which the boss could only loose one per round), and that it could sacrifice a tank to negate a SoD.) While I liked the basic idea, I could easily see a point where the boss was 'dead' as it has lost umpteen tanks in one or two rounds, but then didn't die; which either means the PCs can just stand back and do nothing while dodging it for three rounds, or wasting their time hammering. This, to me is a slightly less artificial solution. If more complicated.

[Radiun]

Fair enough.
I was thinking HP because my latest baddy had precious few.

[imp_fireball]

I think the best way to prove this rule's effectiveness is against a party of high level PC wizards. :smallamused:

[Godskook]

How about giving it a clarified version of IHS, and borrow some underlying mechanics from ToB to utilize it? And honestly, getting one use of IHS for the cost of 1 'block' of your HP seems excessively costly. Maybe make it cost 1 HD worth of HP to use and 1 HD worth of HP to recover?

[imp_fireball]

How about giving it a clarified version of IHS, and borrow some underlying mechanics from ToB to utilize it? And honestly, getting one use of IHS for the cost of 1 'block' of your HP seems excessively costly. Maybe make it cost 1 HD worth of HP to use and 1 HD worth of HP to recover?

I don't think the template is supposed to entirely revolve around 'it can survive death attacks' or whatever. Just that it can do so in uncommon moments to shock the PCs that try to off it quickly.

[deuxhero]

+1 CR for max + doubleing hitpoints? seems a little under CRed.

[Aotrs Commander]

+1 CR for max + doubleing hitpoints? seems a little under CRed.

I thought about it, and decided that one monster with double hit points (even double maximum), plus a free reroll was not worth the same CR boost as having two monsters. (A Defiant has half the actions and offensive potential in ratio to the PCs actions as two monsters.) Though, if the template works, it should have a longer duration.

I expect that a single Defiant 1 will not last twice as long as a normal creature.

I'll grant you, trying to CR this is quite hard; it's getting to the breaking limit of the CR system as it is. I only tend to use CR as a measure of how much XP something is worth, anyway. (I never bother with EL, since it is an inherently mechanically worthless value.) (Argueably, I could replace CR with XP, since as far as I'm concerned, it has little to do with 'challenge' as no parties I run come close to the original 4-party paradigm.

I recon in reality, it's maybe something closer to +1.5 or something CR-wise. I'm erring on the low side, because I think +2 per pass through would be too much (even +2+1 per additional attempt) would give you too much, and I really, really, can't be arsed to draw up a massive table for the CR adjustment for each application and template!



Godskook, you remind me that I need to fix IHS, for that matter! Actually, fixing it that would pretty much be something like adding a list of conditions, making it a (subconcious) purely mental standard action (a la psionic powers), meaning you could use it while in any condition other than dead, and replacing that dodgy wording with "The negative effect on you (only) is negated. If the effect is not limited to you specifcally, you are immune to it, but the effect continues to affect others normally. If the effect is continuous, you are unaffected by it for 1 minute." Or something similar.

By the by, I clarified in my own wording, but not here; I Got Better's effect ending also only applies to the creature. So a Spectre can't end the sun, only the effect on the sun on itself, for example. (A bad example, granted, since it would arguably need to be clarified as to be only a temporary immunity to a continuous effect, but...!)

Anyway, IHS surge is related to what I want to do with I Got Better, but subtly different. IHS should be used to get rid of negative status effects. I Got Better is specifcally for removing the worst status effects only, enabling the creature to continue to fight. (Hense why I Got Better doesn't stop you getting entangled, blinded or remove negative levels.)

The point of it using a whole block to remove or negate effects is that save-or-dies still have some (significant) value, even if they don't actually end the combat by themselves.

As it is, I've thus far toyed with the stats (the playtest will be Rise of the Runelords eventually) using Defiant 2 (i.e., the template applied twice), which is about as far as I can go with the monsters in that adventure for a low-level party of six. That looks a about right; what was listed as CR 1 at about CR 3 with triple the hit-points (and two rerolls) seems about right for a party of six; likewise CR 4 up to CR 6 seems about right.

[Mulletmanalive]

This screams 'One Winged Angel' to me.

Though i usually just find those situations frustrating in computer games.

Is this fellow intended solely for single character final showdowns or would he be the final foe amongst waves of minions?

Were the latter the case, you could turn the 'tanks' into 'lives' and when he loses one, have him recover all hp, negate conditions and have another surge of minions come out...

I'm mostly just throwing ideas around, i kinda long since gave up on anything less than equal numbers of critters to characters.

[Lapak]

Were the latter the case, you could turn the 'tanks' into 'lives' and when he loses one, have him recover all hp, negate conditions and have another surge of minions come out...This might be easier to keep track of and more elegant in execution. Something like:

Unkillable
When an Unkillable creature is reduced to 0 hit points or below, or when it suffers any effect that renders it Dead, Petrified, or Unconscious, it is immediately returned to life with maximum hit points and all negative conditions currently affecting it are ended. This ability functions once per day per application of the template.

(The fluff for this should somehow make clear to the players what is happening and that it's not going to continue forever; when the golem flies back together and reassembles itself or the petrified vampire screams in rage as the stone shatters and he returns to the attack, they need to know that it's not going to happen every time. Maybe some kind of visual aura shadows such a creature and is reduced or removed when it expends its auto-revive?)

[Mulletmanalive]

on the visual thing, smashing gems would be the obvious classic.

Or some kind of colour coding to the auras. I think there was a 1e monster than had something like that; went on a downward spiral to true neutral as you killed it.

[Aotrs Commander]

Is this fellow intended solely for single character final showdowns or would he be the final foe amongst waves of minions?

A bit of both and more, actually. The initial reason for the template was so that individual monster encounters weren't a laughable walkover (or I have to set up something very very carefully so the really high-level monster doesn't pulverise the PCS).

This pass at the idea will be useful to sprinkle lightly in on important creatures involved in combined arms encounters (my typical boss encounter), just adding a hair more survivability from them being picked off right off the bat by ranged attacks or spells. But this is more of a side-benefit. The mian thrust is simply to make combats verses one creature reasonably viable. I'm not talking BBEG fights, necessarily, just flat-out one creature.

For example, in several places in Rise of the Rune Lords, there are a (depressingly large) number of encounters with a single monster or character. Not necessarily boss fights (though some of them are). But put it this way; I've used the template, like four times already in the first 38 pages of the adventure! (And the reason I'm using Rise of the Rune Lords is to minimise the amount of monster generation, so while I could regen half of these encounters, it would take more time than I think is needed.)


This might be easier to keep track of and more elegant in execution. Something like:

Unkillable
When an Unkillable creature is reduced to 0 hit points or below, or when it suffers any effect that renders it Dead, Petrified, or Unconscious, it is immediately returned to life with maximum hit points and all negative conditions currently affecting it are ended. This ability functions once per day per application of the template.

(The fluff for this should somehow make clear to the players what is happening and that it's not going to continue forever; when the golem flies back together and reassembles itself or the petrified vampire screams in rage as the stone shatters and he returns to the attack, they need to know that it's not going to happen every time. Maybe some kind of visual aura shadows such a creature and is reduced or removed when it expends its auto-revive?)

That's an interesting idea, I'll grant you, and one worthy of some further thought; though it's applications are rather too limited for what I want. You can't so easily justify it when the creature you're dealing with is a, say humanoid melee class for example. And certainly not in the numbers I'm going to be using this template!

[Lapak]

That's an interesting idea, I'll grant you, and one worthy of some further thought; though it's applications are rather too limited for what I want. You can't so easily justify it when the creature you're dealing with is a, say humanoid melee class for example. And certainly not in the numbers I'm going to be using this template!I wouldn't have any trouble applying it to a melee humanoid template if we pulled back on the supernatural feeling. For example; plenty of warriors and berzerkers and etc. from heroic fiction pull this kind of stunt all the time, just in a not-overtly-magical way. Usually handwaved as 'he's just that tough' or 'his supreme will dragged him back from the brink/overthrew the enchantment.' Probably the fluff I mentioned to make the resurrection-point clear to the PCs isn't strictly necessary - just fluff it as the creature shaking off the effects against it and ignoring its wounds (however gruesome or mortal they may have seemed.)

[Mulletmanalive]

The video-game classic is for a chunk of their armour to break off. They start the fight in what looks like Mountain Plate [RoS] and end the battle in what looks like Wizards' idea of a Chain Shirt [typed Sh*t originally, shows what i think of their exampl art].

Having given it a little though, in my Le Cirque Funeste idea, if i wanted to represent Sasori of the Red Sands [one of the Naruto villains with all that entails], i'd have to give him 4 lives, each one refilling his finite resources.

I normally play around 3rd-10th level so SoD effects aren't really an issue for me :smallwink:

[waterpenguin43]

I've found that mass hold person and other movement hampering spell-like abilities make individual magic oriented monsters actually challenging and live longer than happy tree friends featured in a final destiantion movie.

[Aotrs Commander]

I've found that mass hold person and other movement hampering spell-like abilities make individual magic oriented monsters actually challenging and live longer than happy tree friends featured in a final destiantion movie.

Again, though, you're relying on a small number of spell effects; which are only applicable to spellcasters. You can't use them for everything, nor can you use them on a repeated basis, since that wears very thin for the players after a while. I'm trying to build a general solution that can be applied to anything, from animals to dragons to fully-prepared Batman wizards...


The video-game classic is for a chunk of their armour to break off. They start the fight in what looks like Mountain Plate [RoS] and end the battle in what looks like Wizards' idea of a Chain Shirt [typed Sh*t originally, shows what i think of their exampl art].

Too video-gamey for me. I'm very much a simulationist, which is why I'm trying to make these effects as behind-the-screen as possible.


Having given it a little though, in my [thread=123587]Le Cirque Funeste[/post] idea, if i wanted to represent Sasori of the Red Sands [one of the Naruto villains with all that entails], i'd have to give him 4 lives, each one refilling his finite resources.

I normally play around 3rd-10th level so SoD effects aren't really an issue for me :smallwink:

I play over the full level range though, where that really isn't practical. It would allow the BBEG to spam their top-level abilities. Now, while for a melee type, that might not matter; it would for anything that has SLAs or Spells/Powers. The other problem being, save-or-notquitedie effects that impair the boss are pretty much negated if we follow the Unkillable template, and I don't really want to shaft them either.

Also, I'm not following the logic of why making PCs fight the same boss ressurrected several times is better than making them fight the boss with more hitpoints and some resistance to being knocked out. For me, changing the rules to reflect the reality is far easier and intuitive than changing reality to fit the rules. This change in the rules is utterly negligable to me it's actually more effort for me to justify the ressurrection everytime than managing the rules.