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May 10, 2012 -- 8:03AM, Garthanos wrote:

May 10, 2012 -- 6:09AM, autolycus wrote:

A solo creature faces some unique conditions. So it helps to give it unique rules.

• First, the party will get 5(ish) actions per round. The solo needs to be given some way to accomplish more than one thing per round or he will be actioned to death. 

This can be handled by giving the solo multiple initiative points, acting in each. It can also be done by giving the solo an array of triggered actions so that each character might "give" an action to the solo when they attack.

 

Stormbringer had a rule that was very interesting it was a  Riposte rule. In D&D terms you might translate it to.. a failed enemy attack triggering an extra attack or retaliatory damage (if you wanted to avoid extra rolls).

If it was a broadly used rule but required high skill so I guess not so generic) but skilled enemies being ganged up on get in some extra licks this kind of rule could avoid needing special rules for solos.

Well, there are certainly lots of solos (and elites too, even a few standards) that have this kind of thing in 4e. It is not a bad mechanic, but its main purpose is to force the PCs to use different tactics (IE if the solo hits back on a failed melee attack you might want to avoid melee attacking it unless you have a really high bonus and use ranged attacks etc preferentially, or use reach weapons, etc).

You DO still need 'condition shedding/avoidance' mechanics though. Stun locked solos are after all worthless and can't use reactions. Of course the exact timing of those mechanics can allow you to create openings for your melee guys (solo is stunned until at least the start of its next initiative gives you a window, etc).

I have to admit, making really good solos is kind of a black art and usually means you have to tune them to the party they're going to face. I've made some really good ones, but it isn't hard to end up with a bad one either. It is kind of an 'advanced' skill. Hopefully 5e solos (whatever that means) will be better tested right off so DMs aren't stuck trying to figure out which ones are usable.

May 9, 2012 -- 7:34PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

May 9, 2012 -- 5:26PM, sleypy wrote:

May 9, 2012 -- 4:47PM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

*remembers one DM I had who's idea of "challenge" was "Have the party fight 2 Level+5 Solos, then 4 Level 5+Solos, then a Level+6 Solo with no breaks in between*


*shudders* Worst part about that is we still won, and the DM RFED'd us.  

Depending on what level you are that doesn't sound to unreasonable. You pretty much had your daily affects for all those encounters. Depending on the group make up that could go from challenging to cake walk.

Spoilered for length and lack of topicality to the topic itself. 

Spoiler: Show

It was actually split up into two encounters. The first one had the 2 Level+5 solos and assorted Level+5 Standards, though hilarity ensued when the DM realized half the party had hilarious resistance against fire attacks(this was a level 21 one-shot, one Tiefling, two of us had Exalted Angel), so he throws in a random Elite that has an aura 10 that sets all of the party's fire resistance to 0. That fight wasn't too bad. The second was waaay worse.

6 man party, split us into 2 teams of three with an impassable barrier seperating us(we even made multiple checks and determined literally nothing aside from divine intervention could possibly get anythign through it, keep this in mind for later). He then set the same elite into the field, except it couldn't target or be targeted by anything and it's aura 10 expanded to aura infinite. Each team had to fight 2 Level+5 Solos(one dragon per side) and about 5 Level+4-5 Standards that immediatly self-destructed(damaging us) and respawning as soon as we dealt any damage to them and did heavy enough famage to bloody most of our party and take one guy down to negative HP. This guy was on the other side of the barrier than I was.

Then a Solo from our side was up on turn, ran over and threw about a gallon of lava at the guy on the other side of the barrier....yeah. The way he worded it, he pretty much said it only worked because the solo lobbed the lava OVER the barrier, but then told us it was impossible to fly over it because it stretched to the cieling, and only attacks with the Hurl keyword can pass it......yeah.

Once we finally won that fight, he throws an Evil Level+6 Phoenix at us with defenses high enough our Bard couldn't hit his Will on a roll of 19(which almost caused ur Bard to ragequit) and had our DMPC run out on us, leaving us with 4 characters left. This was still considered the same encounter of the last bit though. We scored about 5 crits on it at which point he has a Solo we killed earlier come back and instantly kill us with no save. 

To say our party was annoyed was an understatement

lol I had a DM make a monster we could only hit on 17s or so once. I faked extreme hunger, called for a food break once the fight was done, and had a good chat with him about the difference between real challenge and fake challenge.

He hasn't done it again. Instead, damage increases, defenses go up, but not astronomically, cool effects are added, etc.

Anyway, what was your DM's problem? Why did he do that?