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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 2:33AM
#21
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Date Joined:
May 11, 2005
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Give controller monsters powers like:
Before people go wild: LFR authors can not change monsters willy-nilly.
There are some limiting rules. We can 'reflavor', level up, level down, apply templates, and apply themes.
But we can't simply addor change powers.
The challenge will ultimately have to come with the means at our disposal.
As Matt says, terrain is very big. It does not necessarily need to limit (only) the PCs, but it makes combat intersting and adds options.
My experience is that many authors have difficulty adding interesting terrain effects. SOme fjust don't get past 'this square is difficult terrain' - which isn't very interesting (esp not if the combat turns out to be 3D... :P).
I try, and I am sure I do not always get it right.
But we should - and can! - be creative with terrain and terrain powers.
SCs during a combat can be interesting when applied correctly. I think they should be used with some care though.
Gome
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 3:50AM
#22
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Date Joined:
Nov 10, 2003
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To be honest, I think the answer is MOAR DAMAGE.
Seriously, MM1 monsters are pitiful in the damage stakes. Even Orcus. If you take away his save-or-die, it's quite possible to put together a defender who can take him solo by attrition, because he just can't do enough damage to worry anyone, especially if you have necrotic resistance (not uncommon).
Later monsters from MM2 and Open Grave and the suchlike deliver a much better punch, as a rule.
My cleric has only once been tapped out of healing in the last three or so levels of play. Now admittedly he has a fair bit, but very few fights tax healing resources much at all. Because for all the dazing, stunning, dominating, awkward terrain and other annoyances, there are very few encounters where the monsters dish out enough. Elites that do 2d8 +8 or something are never going to worry that con-fighter.
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 5:46AM
#23
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- Senior Volunteer Community Lead
Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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My warlord changed out two of his powers that healed because I was never needing them... the only time I missed them was the round enders of SPEC1-2. And even there it wasn't really _necessary_.
Keith Richmond
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 7:12AM
#24
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Date Joined:
Nov 23, 2003
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Give controller monsters powers like:
Before people go wild: LFR authors can not change monsters willy-nilly.
There are some limiting rules. We can 'reflavor', level up, level down, apply templates, and apply themes.
But we can't simply addor change powers.
I think you can. You just have to pretend they are caused by something outside the monster. "The protection circle the monster is standing in gives Resist-all 10 as an immediate-interrupt encounter power, and prevents effects with the teleportation keyword"
"The controller is weaing the Ironskin belt, and uses it the first time it looks like he's going to be hit" (Ok, can't overuse that one, because otherwise mods will be overflowing with that one item as a treasure option)
etc. Technically these are changes to the monsters, but as far as effective play balance goes, they are.
"Nice assumptions. Completely wrong assumptions, but by jove if being incorrect stopped people from making idiotic statements, we wouldn't have modern internet subculture." Kerrus
Practical gameplay runs by neither RAW or RAI, but rather "A Compromise Between The Gist Of The Rule As I Recall Getting The Impression Of It That One Time I Read It And What Jerry Says He Remembers, Whatever, We'll Look It Up Later If Any Of Us Still Give A Damn." Erachima
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 8:28AM
#25
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Reading this thread really depresses me, because it makes it seem like those rascally players are ruining all the DMs' / adventure writers' plans and need to be stopped. Except that those rascally players are the whole reason LFR exists. If players have fun building hyper-optimized strikers and mowing down the monsters in an LFR fight... great. Never forget that some people derive their enjoyment of the game by effortlessly breezing through combat. (This is why cheat codes in computer games exist and are popular, I think.) Also, if a fight is over quickly, it's not like the DM or adventure writer somehow "failed" to do his job. = = = Now, some suggestions. These are more geared towards Heroic tier as I haven't played nor DM'd Paragon yet. * Terrain, terrain, terrain. And I don't just mean a few boulders and trees, although I know the enforced use of Dungeon Tiles is a limitation. Use interesting terrain features that encourage movement and that cause the PCs to want to approach or avoid certain areas. Even something as simple as Blood Rock (crit on a 19-20) can become attractive. See also the solitaire adventure Dark Awakenings for other examples. * Reinforcements. I _love_ having monsters arrive in the middle of the fight, both as a DM and as a player. It prevents the fight from becoming static, and it gives the players a chance to think on their feet about how to react to the new circumstances. The arrival of reinforcements does slightly punish players who blow their wad early, but I'm OK with that, as long as not _every_ fight has reinforcements. Reinforcements also helps address another issues, which is... * Avoid chokepoints. How many times have you seen this scenario: the PCs enter the encounter through a narrow corridor or doorway. Either the monsters win initiative, or the PCs don't wish to move up to engage, so the entire fight takes place within 2 squares of the chokepoint. Borrrring. When possible, PCs should enter the battle area in the middle of the map, so that monsters can come at them from all directions. If the PCs want to hold a chokepoint, they should have to move to one and seize it, not start out in such a strong defensive position. * Focus fire. The PCs do it to the monsters, so I think it's fair for the monsters to do it to the PCs. Lots of predator animals in nature single out one target, so the monsters needn't even be all that smart to figure this out. Naturally, you don't want the Tactics section of the LFR adventure to suggest that DMs ruthlessly exterminate on PC at a time, and I'd personally (when DM'ing) steer clear of coup de grace against downed PCs. But I have no problem with the Tactics saying something like, "The skirmisher monsters target the PC who appears least armored and focus their attacks on him, while the soldier monsters try to engage the other PCs." Focused fire actually makes things like marking and various control powers _more_ useful than if the monsters split up evenly across the PCs. In the previous example, presumably the soldier monster would've attacked the fighter PC anyway, so the fighter marking the soldier doesn't really do anything... but if the fighter marks one of the skirmisher monsters, it makes the fighter's mark actually meaningful. = = = This is already a Wall o' Text (tm), so I'll stop.
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 8:32AM
#26
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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Reading this thread really depresses me, because it makes it seem like those rascally players are ruining all the DMs' / adventure writers' plans and need to be stopped.
Except that those rascally players are the whole reason LFR exists.
If players have fun building hyper-optimized strikers and mowing down the monsters in an LFR fight... great. Never forget that some people derive their enjoyment of the game by effortlessly breezing through combat. (This is why cheat codes in computer games exist and are popular, I think.)
Well, quite true, but don't forget that a table is rarely homogenous. Some people want the challenge and will become sad and dejected if they feel useless next to the hyper-optimized striker. This does not make the hyper-optimized striker a bad person, of course; it's just something to keep in mind.
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 8:51AM
#27
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Date Joined:
Aug 10, 2007
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Also of note, we're not suggesting giving EVERY monster in EVERY encounter ways to slow down damage-optimizers. I've sat through more than one mod where the party walks into the final encounter, focus-fire-novas the BBEG in round one, and the fight is either called or "climaxes" with a 15-minute mop-up of the mooks. Many of the suggestions in the thread are intended to keep the big baddie alive long enough to at leasat get a turn or two!  (Feel free to "mow down" the mooks all you want!) Also, one of the limiting factors is the XP budget writers have. This results in Skill Challenges being compressed to Complexity 1 (to save XP), and makes it difficult to "send in reinforcements."
Dan Anderson
@EpicUthrac
Living Forgotten Realms Calimshan Writing Director
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
Meet me at TotalConfusion:
http://www.totalcon.com/RolePlaying.html
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 9:18AM
#28
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2008
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Reading this thread really depresses me, because it makes it seem like those rascally players are ruining all the DMs' / adventure writers' plans and need to be stopped.
Except that those rascally players are the whole reason LFR exists.
If players have fun building hyper-optimized strikers and mowing down the monsters in an LFR fight... great. Never forget that some people derive their enjoyment of the game by effortlessly breezing through combat. (This is why cheat codes in computer games exist and are popular, I think.)
Also, if a fight is over quickly, it's not like the DM or adventure writer somehow "failed" to do his job.
Well, as a player, what depresses me is when the hyper-optimized characters in the party go to town, destroy the encounter and leave little to no fun for me. That's as a -player-. Let me repeat. It sucks big fat furry ones. I want to play D&D, not who-wins-initiative. Is that wrong of me? Maybe. That's not to say that I don't appreciate a good striker or orbizard, I do. I just want to have something to do as well. It might even be one of the reasons that my most played PC of late is in fact the striker. Things that make you go, "Hmmmm ..."
As for that last bit about the DMs/writers. Sometimes you wouldn't know it to hear/read players talking about the mods. The fights are too short, we killed them too easily (AKAN1-1), or the fights are too long, the creature had too high defenses (EAST1-4). Players don't want to be stuck in 2x3 starting positions (lots), but they would love it for monsters to be in the 5x5 AOE (every?). Players hate environment affects (CORM 1-5, DALE1-4?) but love using their own. Players hate fighting Solos with 600 hp (ADCP1-1, anything with a dragon higher than 6?), but love it if they can kill one in 1 round by crit'ing. Players hate it when creatures daze or stunlock (me), but love it when they can do it (every wizard with enlarged Grasp of the Grave). There's so many different contradictory complaints, sometimes even from the same player, that I marvel (MARVEL) that there are still writers willing to do the job.
So, no, personally I'm not making suggestions in this thread because I want to make things less fun or ruin any particular type of players' characters, quite the opposite, I'd like there to be a large diversity of encounters, and I'd like to be able to help the writers address the myriad complaints and requests out there.
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 11:56AM
#29
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Date Joined:
Dec 16, 2005
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Also of note, we're not suggesting giving EVERY monster in EVERY encounter ways to slow down damage-optimizers. I've sat through more than one mod where the party walks into the final encounter, focus-fire-novas the BBEG in round one, and the fight is either called or "climaxes" with a 15-minute mop-up of the mooks.
Many of the suggestions in the thread are intended to keep the big baddie alive long enough to at leasat get a turn or two! (Feel free to "mow down" the mooks all you want!)
Also, one of the limiting factors is the XP budget writers have. This results in Skill Challenges being compressed to Complexity 1 (to save XP), and makes it difficult to "send in reinforcements."
Except that it's not BBEGs going down quickly that was spawning these complaints. A number of posters here seem to have an issue with any non-minion monster being killed by one character in one round unless he has leader support, spends two dailies and crits--and even then, according to at least one poster here, if the character was not a striker from level 1 (never mind if he multiclassed into a striker class and started out in a class with a very strong secondary striker role (such as ardent vow paladin)), the best they should be able to do is bloody a standard monster (with two dailies, leader support, and a crit).
If we are to take the complaints at face value then the proposed solutions really do need to apply to every monster--otherwise they don't solve the perceived problem.
If this were just an issue of keeping BBEG monsters alive, I would suggest bodyguards. A lot of monsters have abilities that can redirect an attack to an ally and for those that do not have such abilities, at least for monsters with humanoid allies, it would be pretty trivial to use the DMG NPC creation rules to stat up (for instance) a gnoll paladin of Yeenoghu to use divine bodyguard or another take the hit power and keep the BBEG alive. (Heck, even the xp wouldn't be an issue because a 5th to 9th level NPC paladin isn't going to eat up much of the xp budget at paragon). But the initial complaints were not about the big bad guy going down too quickly but rather about his ordinary soldiers and brute peons going down too quickly. And it would be a little unreasonable to have an NPC take the hit for one of the BBEG's guards. (Now, on the other hand, you could have an organized unit of soldiers--hobgoblins, for instance--who all have a take the hit power or two and who use it to keep each other alive. You wouldn't want that to be a regular encounter, but it would work in one or two mods).
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4 years ago ::
Dec 18, 2009 - 12:00PM
#30
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I still firmly believe that authors can write encounters that create a dynamic, exciting experience for all players (optimized or not) without frustrating them too much and without making it too easy.
I will continue to write until I no longer feel this way.
Dave Kay
LFR Writing Director Retiree
dkay807 [at] yahoo [dot] com
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