4e Monster Design

[Powerfamiliar]

It's been a while since I played 4e, and my groups main reason for not playing anymore was the length of combat. Monsters just seemed to have too much HP. I've heard the the most recent Monster Manual fixes this somewhat, and hopefully the Essentials MM continues the trend. I was wondering what the playground's opinion was on the matter?

We are unlikely to switch full time to 4e, I like pathfinder's Adventure Paths too much and don;t really have the time to convert them, but i would love to add some 4e to our gaming.

[Chrono22]

{scrubbed}

[Starsinger]

Yeah monsters can have a lot of HP, especially at lower levels when PCs have less encounter (and thus strong) powers to throw out.

[NecroRebel]

Fights in 4e are generally believed to be decided early once encounter powers are used, then tend to simply drag out a while once everyone is using at-will powers only. This is an acknowledged issue in the fanbase with 4e's monsters, particularly with elite and solo monsters. Monsters aren't terribly threatening for the most part unless they all focus fire, but take a lot of hits to down regardless. Elites and solos are even less of a threat than 2 or 5 normal monsters, but take even more hits to drop, which is why many people dislike such creatures.

A fairly common fix seems to be to simply double the damage all monsters deal while halving their hit points. This drastically increases their threat rate, but makes battles much faster. This change, it is claimed, makes battles much riskier and more exciting, shorter, less prone to being completely decided by the time encounter attacks are expended, and just generally better. The problem is that the higher damage means that a group focusing on one PC can often reliably drop them in one round, which is not fun for those players.

I've considered, though haven't tested, allowing all monsters to become "enraged" once they become bloodied, doubling the damage they deal and take. It would make battles shorter, again, since the monsters are taking more damage, and increase the threat of combat, too, but without the problem of allowing monsters to gank a player since there's not likely to be lots of bloodied creatures at once.

[Hzurr]

There were a few issues with Monster Design that have been corrected:

1) Monster HP, particularly Solos, Elites & Brutes
- corrected in MM2. The idea is that now big boss fights won't last for hours with everyone just plinking away with at-wills, especially at higher levels

2) Monster Damage
- corrected in MM3. Once you got to high heroic and up, Monsters didn't deal enough damage to make things really threatening to the PCs, particularly Solos. For kicks, look at how much damage Orcus does, and now pick up a MM3 solo that's only level...25 or so. Go ahead, i'll wait...

3) Solos & elites were prone to getting locked down, and being really boring
- corrected in MM3. MM1 monsters, solos in particular, were really, really easy to lock down via stun/dazed/save-penalties, and they became really boring. Doesn't really happen anymore.

4) Monster to-hits & defenses
- corrected in MM3? I heard something about this, but I don't know the details. The math was supposedly fixed, but I'm fuzzy on the details.


So...yeah, if you had issues with Monsters when 4E first came out, most of those issues should be taken care of. The rules have been updated in the Monster builder, so if you're using that to create your own monsters, they'll be in line with what you'd expect in the more recent books.

[Powerfamiliar]

Thanks Hzurr, that's pretty much what I was looking for. I had heard that the problems had been fixed, but not really how. I'll have to check out the MM3.

Is the essentials MM pretty much the MM1 with MM3 design?

[Kaervaslol]

{scrubbed}

Dude what the ****?

[KillianHawkeye]

{scrubbed}

Dude what the ****?

I, too, am puzzled why he felt it necessary to post in this thread.

[Hzurr]

Thanks Hzurr, that's pretty much what I was looking for. I had heard that the problems had been fixed, but not really how. I'll have to check out the MM3.

Is the essentials MM pretty much the MM1 with MM3 design?

That's my understanding of it. I think I remember hearing something like 20% was going to be repeat, the rest would be new, but classic monsters. My interpretation of this is that they'll have a lot of completely new goblins, kobalds, zombies etc. (aka things that you can easily justify there being a lot of different types of); but will have updated versions of things like the Beholders, colored Dragons, classic demons/devils, and so on. (i.e. There's really only one type of classic beholder, one type of Pit Fiend, and so on.)

But again, don't take that to the bank; this is based off of hearsay and reading between the lines.

[mobdrazhar]

I, too, am puzzled why he felt it necessary to post in this thread.

That makes 3 of us!

[ocato]

In my experience, keeping a 4e battle quick and exciting involves lowering HP totals, using minions, and adding traps and special terrain instead of more monsters to make things more difficult.

The players would, in my experience, rather dodge pendulums or vie for control of an arcane crystal that shoots lighting than fight a second troll.

[Mando Knight]

I've considered, though haven't tested, allowing all monsters to become "enraged" once they become bloodied, doubling the damage they deal and take. It would make battles shorter, again, since the monsters are taking more damage, and increase the threat of combat, too, but without the problem of allowing monsters to gank a player since there's not likely to be lots of bloodied creatures at once.

Definitely don't do it at low levels, especially with Elites or Solos. They might seem to be blobs of HP even then, but remember that one good roll from the more damage-focused types means that it sends the barely-injured Defender to the medic, clutching his inner organs while he crawls on the floor. Doubling the damage means a blood splatter instead of a meat shield.

Also, WotC apparently peeked at Squenix's book of tips when cooking up the early stats: the health-damage asymmetry is fully expected in most jRPGs.

[Chrono22]

Dude what the ****?

I, too, am puzzled why he felt it necessary to post in this thread.

That makes 3 of us!

I was wondering what the playground's opinion was on the matter?

I'm always happy to share my opinion when it's asked for.

[The Glyphstone]

On the other hand, posting a deliberately unhelpful comment isn't contributing anything to the thread, and could be construed as an attempt to stir up problems. Not liking 4E is fine, but going into a 4E discussion thread specifically to say you don't like 4E and nothing else is wandering uncomfortably close to trolling.

[Colmarr]

That's my understanding of it. I think I remember hearing something like 20% was going to be repeat, the rest would be new, but classic monsters.

This is what Bill Slavicek had to say about Monster Vault in his latest Ampersand column:

The last piece of the collection that we need to show off is the Monster Vault. This is a hefty 320 pages (in digest size, like the other books) of the game's most iconic and useful monsters, from Angel and Archon to Yuan-ti and Zombie with loads more in between. Many of these have been seen before in previous Monster Manuals, but everything in the Vault has been reexamined, its statistics rebalanced, and its powers polished up to make these creatures state of the art and in line with the most current Dungeons & Dragons design philosophy. We're not talking about anything earth-shattering; rather, numbers have been tweaked here and there to make creatures more challenging, or powers have been given more interesting and dynamic effects.

Now, he might just be referring to the Monster Vault incorporating the erratad versions of MM1 and MM2 monsters, but it certainly sounds like a lot more than that.

I find myself much more interested in the Monster Vault than I ever thought I would be...

[Nu]

I'm not 100% sure if it's all right to post this or not (more like 99% sure), but from what I understand it was given as a freebie at a con that has now ended, so it's kosher to share it with the class.

One thing I noticed about the MM3 was the (nearly) complete lack of heroic-tier solos, and they seem to be returning in the Monster Vault--and they're stronger than ever before. But the HP and defensive values are lower than before too, which is definitely a step in the right direction in my book. The new young black dragon definitely makes for a more interesting encounter than the original.