I'm going to use this post as a dump for some of the ideas I've got floating around in my head in an attempt to organize them and expand on them in a meaningful fashion. So my players will be hitting level 20 soon, which means the end of paragon tier is only 1 level away. So far the players have a small idea of what's going to be coming up for that climactic battle, but I'm planning on blowing them away with the crazy battles and conquests that will occur, hence why I must be organized.
Showing posts with label Monster Vault. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monster Vault. Show all posts
Friday, July 8, 2011
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Making Solo Encounters Solo
Hark, the first post! Here I shall cover a topic that is probably the most intriguing to me; monster design. Speicifically, solo monster design. I've spent a good deal of time learning how encounters work in 4th edition. One of the only challenges that remains is making a good solo encounter. Once the players reach paragon tier (maybe even upper heroic if they're min-maxers and tacticians) solo encounters shift from being deadly to being boring.
I play D&D through Maptools, and I keep monsters' HP and defenses out in the open. The characters, being hardened adventurers and combatants, would be able to pick up on, at least in a general sense, what a monster's strengths and weaknesses are. This does have the drawback of leading to metagaming on the players' part. As soon as they see the monster with 600+ hit points they immediately switch to "solo" mode, and unload absolutely everything they have on the baddie. As a DM, there's nothing I like less than seeing what should have been a scary monster become trivialized, and even if I'm always rooting for the PCs, there should be a definite fear for their characters' mortality. This has prompted me to design better solo encounters, and so I first looked to Enworld for some ideas, and came up with a few simple points that will make any Solo encounter a challenge again, without having to add a slew of other monsters (which, in my mind, reduces the sheer bad-ass-ness from the solo monster). Here are the points I have used on solo monsters to make them more challenging.
I play D&D through Maptools, and I keep monsters' HP and defenses out in the open. The characters, being hardened adventurers and combatants, would be able to pick up on, at least in a general sense, what a monster's strengths and weaknesses are. This does have the drawback of leading to metagaming on the players' part. As soon as they see the monster with 600+ hit points they immediately switch to "solo" mode, and unload absolutely everything they have on the baddie. As a DM, there's nothing I like less than seeing what should have been a scary monster become trivialized, and even if I'm always rooting for the PCs, there should be a definite fear for their characters' mortality. This has prompted me to design better solo encounters, and so I first looked to Enworld for some ideas, and came up with a few simple points that will make any Solo encounter a challenge again, without having to add a slew of other monsters (which, in my mind, reduces the sheer bad-ass-ness from the solo monster). Here are the points I have used on solo monsters to make them more challenging.
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