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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 9:25AM
#1
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Sometimes, a solo really justifiably for story reasons, is just a solo. Not backed up with minions, not an elite with henchmen, just a solo.
In cases like that, it's pretty easy for the party to throw down -6 to attack rolls EONT (unless the rogue misses, which he can pretty much guarantee only happens on a 1), divine challenge by the Hospitaler Paladin (Half-Elf with group defense), and weakened until EONT if it makes even a single attack that does not target the swordmage (and at a -9 to hit, who really wants to target the swordmage anyway?).
Those are encounter-long effects on top of whatever current-turn ailment the wizard slaps down.
As a DM, what sorts of clever ideas can we use to get out of the problem we're in? We can write its accuracy 6 above level and give it double damage, but that seems like cheating.
One idea is that since solo fights slog on far too long normally anyway, we do something like
Free action:
The solo takes damage equal to half its bloodied value. Remove any number of conditions affecting it. Until the end of encounter, when a new condition would affect it, the solo may make one saving throw as a free action--if it saves, the condition ends immediately; if it fails, the condition expires at [either start or end, balance to be determined] of the solo's next turn.
Even blind for a single turn effectively means another huge chunk of the solo's HP are coming off without any real threat/retaliation, unless the solo happens to have a burst attack, which is why I think "start" would work better, but then in a lot of cases, the condition never had any benefit at all, and the players may feel cheated.
Using terrain-based attacks that bypass these things is a good idea, and I intend to make use of it when I can, but I still need ideas for more traditional 5v1 fights, if you have any.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 9:34AM
#2
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Don't let the name fool you - solo's should never be solo. Perhaps it was intended to be different, but in practice, there's not much you can do. Whatever time you spend trying to offset the PCs' abilities with augmentations of the solo, up its level, give it ways to shrug effects, etc. etc., you'll find when you sit down to fight, it still sucks against a party of paragon and epic level characters. Even heroic level characters more often than not. You'll wish you had spent that prep time on more interesting things.
As far as the story demanding a solo opponent, you've got a couple options. First, change your story. This is what I would do. In D&D, the fiction is the most mutable part of the game, period. For however many plausible reasons you can think of that your solo must be alone, I can think of just as many plausible reasons they shouldn't be. And in the end, your players really won't notice or care. Most of that kind of angst exists solely in the DM's mind. At the very least, if your story is so narrow that you can't imagine another single creature being with your solo, then throw in traps or hazards.
Alternatively, you could create your solo encounters such that the goal is not necessarily to kill the big bag of hit points. Killing it will take a while (as you say) and during that time, the clock is ticking on some other goal, one that the PCs are trying to complete or trying to stop the solo from completing.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 9:37AM
#3
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Date Joined:
Feb 20, 2011
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By the time I submit this someone will likely have already said it. But solos should rarely (if ever) be solos. They need support for the fight to be interesting. Otherwise the solo monster becomes a punching bag and your players are just waiting for it to die. I like using on-level solos plus a couple of elites or 2 regs & one elite for an L+4 encounter that has some meaning. More importantly, make the fight about a goal beyond just kill the BBEG. Another consideration is at-will.omnivangelist.net/features/world.... I've yet to employ worldbreaker rules, but most of the feedback I've heard in the community is quite positive. EDIT: Ninja'd! I knew it.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 9:50AM
#4
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By the time I submit this someone will likely have already said it....
EDIT: Ninja'd! I knew it.
I guess you could say I caught you FlatFooted?
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 9:51AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Feb 20, 2011
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[rim shot]
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 9:54AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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Sometimes solos have to be solos but what they DON'T always have to be are monsters.
Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, the truly massive badguy at the end of the adventure should not be something they can effectively fight with their powers but something more like a massive set piece whose actions they must deal with, or a puzzle that must be solved.
I suppose this is what is known, much to my rising bile, as a "worldbreaker," but it's not really anything outside the rules. 4th Edition in particular shows, I think, how not everything that moves has stats that you can whittle away with a sword. So, give them a boss that's really something to be feared, something they can only bring down by ramming their ship into its belly-equivalent.
You can still use the solos in the books of course, just not as part of a battle that must be epic, because it might not be. However, my standard advice is to look for ways for the monsters to win the battle without having to kill the PCs, and this applies double for solos.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 10:07AM
#7
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Sometimes solos have to be solos but what they DON'T always have to be are monsters.
Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, the truly massive badguy at the end of the adventure should not be something they can effectively fight with their powers but something more like a massive set piece whose actions they must deal with, or a puzzle that must be solved.
I suppose this is what is known, much to my rising bile, as a "worldbreaker," but it's not really anything outside the rules. 4th Edition in particular shows, I think, how not everything that moves has stats that you can whittle away with a sword. So, give them a boss that's really something to be feared, something they can only bring down by ramming their ship into its belly-equivalent.
Good advice. "Worldbreaker" is really more of a way of thinking about and setting about the design of an encounter rather than of a specific creature. It adds moving parts and threats at predetermined times. Some of those moving parts will often be minions... which may not be what the OP is looking for. But having used Worldbreaker design before in prep and in play, I give it a thumbs up. (In fact, I'm working on such an encounter now.)
The other alternative Centauri mentions is a solo that's not really defeatable by traditional means. Wizards put up an article about this (back in 2009?) that talked about skill challenges being used as an alternative means to defeating a creature. My encounters are certainly no strangers to skill challenges to represent other goals as it adds some nice layering. I have run encounters where the skill challenge was specifically a puzzle to be solved in order to defeat the solo BBEG. It worked fine as well once the players figured out that their swords and spells weren't doing much. But this is something you can't pull out too often.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 10:14AM
#8
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The solos I've been happiest with have generally been the result of, essentially, stapling several elite monsters together into one body and giving it a shared HP pool. The weakening's a lot less problematic if it only applies to one of the monster's three turns, after all.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 10:25AM
#9
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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It adds moving parts and threats at predetermined times.
Oh. I guess that's not what I mean, then.
But this is something you can't pull out too often.
For every catastrophic boss fight you can.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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1 year ago ::
Feb 22, 2012 - 10:41AM
#10
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Oh. I guess that's not what I mean, then.
It's not a great leap to arrive at the conclusion you did. Worldbreakers can have elements of a puzzle in them if you design it that way. The base assumption doesn't necessarily mean that's the case though. It's more about changing terrain and piling on danger at certain points in the scene - the titan creating earthquakes or the red dragon a volcano. That sort of thing. How you interact with those added threats plus the original creature could very well be a puzzle. At first glance, Worldbreakers seem to be a way to alter a solo, but really it's a design process to develop a scene.
I don't think there's a name per se on what you suggest. Maybe you should give it one!
For every catastrophic boss fight you can.
True, though I'd probably do the skill-challenge-as-combat thing once or twice in a whole campaign just to keep things varied and somewhat fresh.
I'll also add that I know some people use Piecework Monsters (q.v.) which I believe was either created by wrecan or Pluisjen. (Speaking of which, where has that guy been lately?) I haven't learned any of those design elements yet as I don't have any room in my brain at the moment, but people seem to like them. I'd recommend looking into it.
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