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.

Introductions

Saluton Mondo! This first post marks the beginning of what will become a series of posts that discuss different aspects of being a Dungeon Master (or Game Master). While I will attempt to keep discussions as system-agnostic as I can, I have been focusing on my 4th edition D&D group for the last 3 years, and so that will be where the bulk of my inspiration will come from.

Note that while I have enjoyed 4th edition for several years now, and hope to enjoy it for several more, I understand that not everyone likes the system. I would respectfully request that any comments be left in good taste. It's good to discuss merits and shortcomings of a system, but its not good to get into edition wars; those were so 2009.

My plan for this blog is to post three times a week, most likely on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Likely my posts will fluctuate, however, depending on my work-load during the week. Also, being new to the blogging scene, I will happily trade followers and comments, so go nuts. :)