GnomeWorks
2010-12-13, 07:06 AM
One of the good things - one of the only good things - 4e did was make encounters more engaging than "walk up, full attack until somebody dies." Monsters with interesting abilities, with triggers on various conditions, various thematic things to make them stand out and be fun fights.
However, in my mind, 4e didn't go far enough. For one thing, their critters have way too much hit points... but anyway, the point here isn't to talk about why 4e fails, but to explore its ideas and see if we can do more interesting things.
I have long since stopped using 3.5-style monster design for my encounters, and instead - when I even bother to stat things out - gone to a 4e-style approach to monster design, despite my usage of 3.5. It actually works out pretty well.
The idea I've got here is the idea of incorporating weakpoints into monsters: the idea that there is one specific aspect of a creature that is not as tough or resilient as the rest of the creature. This obviously isn't a new idea; but this is more a question of execution than anything else.
The monster presented here is modeled after the giant crab at the end of River Belle Path from Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.
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RIVER CRAB Level 3 Solo
Huge Natural Animal (Lightning, Water)
Init +3
Spd: 20 ft.
Absorb: None
Immune: None
Resist: Damage (10), Lightning (5), Water (5)
Vuln: None
AC: 21
Touch: 13
Flat: 18
Flat Touch: 10
Fort: +7
Ref : +5
Will: +6
HP: 68 (Bloodied - 34)
Claw HP: 15
Shell HP: 40
ATTACKS
Claw: +6 v AC (1d8+4 dmg)
"The giant crab snaps at you with its enormous claw."
Bolt: +5 v Ref (1d6+2 lightning dmg)
"The creature spews a bolt of lightning from its mouth."
LIMITED POWERS (AP: 1)
Claw Hammer (Rng 2): Burst 2; +8 v Ref; 2d8+6 dmg AND Weakpoint. Rchg 4.
Weakpoint: Loses claw attack and cannot move until this attack recharges. Until this attack recharges,
the claw can be attacked, using the crab's statistics. If the claw is destroyed, this Weakpoint is
canceled, but the crab loses its claw attack permanently.
Boltaga: Burst 4; +8 v Ref; 2d6+4 lightning dmg. Rchg 5.
Bubbles: Immed @ bloodied; burst 5; +10 v Ref; slowed (Fort save ends) AND Followup.
Followup: +8 v Fort; ongoing water 3 (Fort save ends).
WEAKPOINTS
Claw: The crab's claw can only be attacked after it uses its Claw Hammer ability. The claw only has Resist:
Damage (3).
Benefit: The crab loses its Claw and Claw Hammer attacks.
Shell: The crab's shell can be attacked at any time. The shell has Resist: Slashing/Piercing (3), and Vulnerable: Bludgeoning (5).
Benefit: The crab loses its resistance to Damage, and its AC is lowered by 2 points.
ABILITIES
Multipart Monster: The river crab is a multipart monster.
The concept here, then, is that the crab has three parts - its body, its claw, and its shell.
PCs will want to blow up the claw when they can, because the claw's damage output (both base attack and power) is significantly higher than anything else it can do.
When they're not doing that, they'll want to pound on the shell, because that's what will largely prevent them from killing the thing (unless DR 10/- isn't that big a deal to them).
One of the things, I think, with weaknesses and multipart monsters is that you have to convey this information to the players. If you're using a combat grid of any kind, you'd want to differentiate these things - this here is where the claw landed, and where it stays; this here is the crab, and this part is its shell. You treat the different parts as different entities on the grid, while treating them mechanically as parts of the same creature. I'd even go so far as to say that the claw only shows up on the grid when its in the ground - that's the only time it really becomes a valid target.
Alternatively, if you want it to be more knowledge-based, you could present the creature as a single entity on the combat grid until they figure out the trick. For the claw, that doesn't really work, because they may need to figure that one out the hard way, and they only have so big of a window to deal with it... but for the shell, you could easily simply not add that to the grid. You'd have to ensure that your descriptions were adequately fair ("Your sword strikes true, but bounces harmlessly off the creature's tough carapace..."), though players unaccustomed to this kind of monster construction will take that merely as a high DR with no way around it (rather than attempting to find the weakpoint). You could put smaller versions of such a boss creature throughout the area around it, so that they have the opportunity to find out the tricks against creatures not nearly as dangerous (though doing so reduces the impact of the "boss," IMO - makes it less interesting/unique if you've been fighting mini-river crabs all afternoon).
At the end of the day - I find the idea of monsters being designed with weakpoints such as "vulnerable to X energy type" to be very bland and boring. It works for mooks and less-important enemies, but if you want a boss fight to be memorable, you've got to make it interesting. Heck, even normal encounters can be spiced up if you include relatively simple multipart enemies with one part being an obvious weakpoint.
Let me know what you think of this critter, and - more importantly - the potential execution of this concept.
However, in my mind, 4e didn't go far enough. For one thing, their critters have way too much hit points... but anyway, the point here isn't to talk about why 4e fails, but to explore its ideas and see if we can do more interesting things.
I have long since stopped using 3.5-style monster design for my encounters, and instead - when I even bother to stat things out - gone to a 4e-style approach to monster design, despite my usage of 3.5. It actually works out pretty well.
The idea I've got here is the idea of incorporating weakpoints into monsters: the idea that there is one specific aspect of a creature that is not as tough or resilient as the rest of the creature. This obviously isn't a new idea; but this is more a question of execution than anything else.
The monster presented here is modeled after the giant crab at the end of River Belle Path from Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.
-----
RIVER CRAB Level 3 Solo
Huge Natural Animal (Lightning, Water)
Init +3
Spd: 20 ft.
Absorb: None
Immune: None
Resist: Damage (10), Lightning (5), Water (5)
Vuln: None
AC: 21
Touch: 13
Flat: 18
Flat Touch: 10
Fort: +7
Ref : +5
Will: +6
HP: 68 (Bloodied - 34)
Claw HP: 15
Shell HP: 40
ATTACKS
Claw: +6 v AC (1d8+4 dmg)
"The giant crab snaps at you with its enormous claw."
Bolt: +5 v Ref (1d6+2 lightning dmg)
"The creature spews a bolt of lightning from its mouth."
LIMITED POWERS (AP: 1)
Claw Hammer (Rng 2): Burst 2; +8 v Ref; 2d8+6 dmg AND Weakpoint. Rchg 4.
Weakpoint: Loses claw attack and cannot move until this attack recharges. Until this attack recharges,
the claw can be attacked, using the crab's statistics. If the claw is destroyed, this Weakpoint is
canceled, but the crab loses its claw attack permanently.
Boltaga: Burst 4; +8 v Ref; 2d6+4 lightning dmg. Rchg 5.
Bubbles: Immed @ bloodied; burst 5; +10 v Ref; slowed (Fort save ends) AND Followup.
Followup: +8 v Fort; ongoing water 3 (Fort save ends).
WEAKPOINTS
Claw: The crab's claw can only be attacked after it uses its Claw Hammer ability. The claw only has Resist:
Damage (3).
Benefit: The crab loses its Claw and Claw Hammer attacks.
Shell: The crab's shell can be attacked at any time. The shell has Resist: Slashing/Piercing (3), and Vulnerable: Bludgeoning (5).
Benefit: The crab loses its resistance to Damage, and its AC is lowered by 2 points.
ABILITIES
Multipart Monster: The river crab is a multipart monster.
The concept here, then, is that the crab has three parts - its body, its claw, and its shell.
PCs will want to blow up the claw when they can, because the claw's damage output (both base attack and power) is significantly higher than anything else it can do.
When they're not doing that, they'll want to pound on the shell, because that's what will largely prevent them from killing the thing (unless DR 10/- isn't that big a deal to them).
One of the things, I think, with weaknesses and multipart monsters is that you have to convey this information to the players. If you're using a combat grid of any kind, you'd want to differentiate these things - this here is where the claw landed, and where it stays; this here is the crab, and this part is its shell. You treat the different parts as different entities on the grid, while treating them mechanically as parts of the same creature. I'd even go so far as to say that the claw only shows up on the grid when its in the ground - that's the only time it really becomes a valid target.
Alternatively, if you want it to be more knowledge-based, you could present the creature as a single entity on the combat grid until they figure out the trick. For the claw, that doesn't really work, because they may need to figure that one out the hard way, and they only have so big of a window to deal with it... but for the shell, you could easily simply not add that to the grid. You'd have to ensure that your descriptions were adequately fair ("Your sword strikes true, but bounces harmlessly off the creature's tough carapace..."), though players unaccustomed to this kind of monster construction will take that merely as a high DR with no way around it (rather than attempting to find the weakpoint). You could put smaller versions of such a boss creature throughout the area around it, so that they have the opportunity to find out the tricks against creatures not nearly as dangerous (though doing so reduces the impact of the "boss," IMO - makes it less interesting/unique if you've been fighting mini-river crabs all afternoon).
At the end of the day - I find the idea of monsters being designed with weakpoints such as "vulnerable to X energy type" to be very bland and boring. It works for mooks and less-important enemies, but if you want a boss fight to be memorable, you've got to make it interesting. Heck, even normal encounters can be spiced up if you include relatively simple multipart enemies with one part being an obvious weakpoint.
Let me know what you think of this critter, and - more importantly - the potential execution of this concept.