New Edition: Monsters

[virgil]

I'm fine with time-themed magic, so long as it's done well. Of course, you can do many things which are perfectly fine in game mechanic effect, and then you dress it up with flavour text that says "with the power of time"; and I don't know if that actually counts as time magic at that point.

Obviously round do-overs don't work, but crossing eras for the sake of plot works (level 20+ range). There needs to be a satisfactory ruleset concerning time travel, especially in the face of the annoying paradox. Branching timelines created from travel is technically one way to do it, which makes it close to plane-hopping, only the map's easier to get. Flat-out banning travel into the past (in a changing fashion) also works, and I can live with that arrangement.

As long as you avoid the "scry and die" problem, I'm generally alright with teleportation. Personally, I think portals would work best. If you want to open them with any kind of rapidity, then it would have to be further limited (such as the beacon method). It would be interesting if all forms of long-range teleportation required portals.

[PhoneLobster]

I prefer a truly dynamic time option. Its more out there and psychedelic.

I travelled back in time and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt

The idea is that time as the character perceives it is an illusion, and that while their memories of the past (and a potential future) may remain the same the past is actually still "alive" and endlessly changing even as the present rolls onward blind to the shifting sands of earlier times.

So if you want to travel in time and change the past you have to contend with the fact that the past is ALREADY changed, because the past just does that while you aren't actually looking at it.

If you go back to tell everyone that the butler did it before he can kill you all you may be wrong. Because maybe this time round he didn't actually do it, and maybe that's the least of the changes to how you remember things.

So sure you get do overs because at least the butler hasn't killed everybody. But maybe you are no longer in the adventure of "what the butler did" and maybe other things are not entirely as you remember them like the party fairy turned into a cat girl and instead of gold your travelling case is suddenly full of those stupid tie dyed T-Shirts some guy tried to sell you three adventures prior.

[Username17]

To get this back on the subject of Monsters: do people have a problem with specifically Boss Monsters having completley arbitrary puzzles to defeat?

Certainly having horde monsters who can only be affected by one player or attacks which are Yellow or something has been bad in the past. I wouldn't want to go that direction. But if you take the named villain boss and you genuinely need quest items to take him down, that seems a lot less insulting.

And once you have the fixed concept of the Boss Monster at level 7 (rather than simply throwing in a Level 9 monster against them), it becomes a lot more manageable.

-Username17

[virgil]

I have at least one player that hates boss monsters like that. I myself am alright with them, as long as the fact that they're boss monsters means that you have some preparation and get clues as to what the puzzles are before fighting them (barring stupidity when they charge in with nary a care in the world); or if the puzzle ability isn't too obtuse and the entire party is able to do something...like the wizard distracting the enemy while the fighter goes through the martial sword katas to prepare himself for the only disarm maneuver that works against the boss monster.

[RandomCasualty]

1199201520[/unixtime]]To get this back on the subject of Monsters: do people have a problem with specifically Boss Monsters having completley arbitrary puzzles to defeat?

I've felt that for the most part, boss monsters with one glaring weakness are okay, so long as they're one of a kind creations, or have undergone some crazy ritual or whatever.

It's generally a bad idea to have your world ecology contain lots of invincible creatures, because it basically means that either the world adapts and figures out how to kill them (in which case the arbitrary puzzle is already solved) or they take over the world.

If you want a true puzzle monster it has to be something relatively one of a kind, so PCs don't immediately know what will kill it.

[MagnaSecuris]

I've felt that for the most part, boss monsters with one glaring weakness are okay, so long as they're one of a kind creations, or have undergone some crazy ritual or whatever.

It's generally a bad idea to have your world ecology contain lots of invincible creatures, because it basically means that either the world adapts and figures out how to kill them (in which case the arbitrary puzzle is already solved) or they take over the world.

If you want a true puzzle monster it has to be something relatively one of a kind, so PCs don't immediately know what will kill it.

So you would want a list of recommended special abilities that could be handed out to boss monsters (one or two or it goes up a "CR"').
So there would be a list of four things that would be appropriate immunities for a level 8 boss.
Like
"Cannot be killed by man"
"Only physically injured by silver"
"Can only be harmed magically by its own reflected spells"
"Skin cannot be pierced"

And the Demon-Dragon Korgon the Foul might get one of those. Or something the DM makes up of a similar power level.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I'm generally against it, but I think it could be okay if it was tied to the power sites. So a person makes a link with a power site, while they are at that site they have to be quest-item'd to be beaten, but while they aren't at the site, they're not special. So you get Strahd in Barovia or the Warlock on Firetop Mountain, and they send their minions out to cause trouble, and they don't leave their happy place so reprisals are difficult. Which is why you send in adventurers, natch.

I think there was already talk of power sites having a level, so that could also be the max level of a character who can be made awesome by that place or something. So bosses are either looking for ways to make their power sites bigger, or to claim a bigger one held by a bigger boss, or to grow into their current lair. Some people could be trying to fulfill the requirements to become a boss themselves, which could be arbitrary enough to be total fairy-tale-quest fodder.

[MrWaeseL]

1199201520[/unixtime]]To get this back on the subject of Monsters: do people have a problem with specifically Boss Monsters having completley arbitrary puzzles to defeat?

Certainly having horde monsters who can only be affected by one player or attacks which are Yellow or something has been bad in the past. I wouldn't want to go that direction. But if you take the named villain boss and you genuinely need quest items to take him down, that seems a lot less insulting.

And once you have the fixed concept of the Boss Monster at level 7 (rather than simply throwing in a Level 9 monster against them), it becomes a lot more manageable.

-Username17

I like the 'throw a level 9 monster against them' option better than the final fantasy inspired alternative

[Voss]

Any situation where you need the red key to get throw the door of arbitrarium is flat out bad. The Spear of Destiny (or whatever) is just another red key.

Its bad enough in a CRPG when the designers are feeling lazy (like the lazy fuckers at Bioware and their damn railroad plots), but you have to accept a certain amount of garbage due to technological limitations. In PnP, its totally grounds for shoving a rulebook up someone's ass. Sideways.

[Crissa]

What, Voss, you don't like needing a wooden stake to kill a vampire?

-Crissa

[Koumei]

Why do you need a stake to kill a vampire? In many sources of fiction, any sharp object in the heart will do the job, and you can also kill them via decapitation, fire (protip: fire kills everything. If it doesn't, you need to use more) or just keeping them from escaping until sunrise.

In every stupid game that goes by the name of Rifts, just using water pistols and throwing bark chips at them will do the trick.

Silver also kills them in some, come to think of it.

You don't specifically need to stake a vampire.

That's as far as I'd be comfortable with, puzzle-wise. There are several ways of doing it, and this will rule out a few tactics, but in the end, even if you sit there keeping them disabled but not dead until something happens and they die, that's fine. You know. It's harder if they don't do what they're supposed to, but it's not impossible.

[PhoneLobster]

I don't know if I want to have puzzle bosses, maybe, maybe not.

But I think you do want to have Level 7 bosses in preference to a level 9 creature.

Because I severely doubt that just taking a level 9 creature is really sufficient as the abilities required from a level now+2 critter are not the same as the abilities you want on a boss.

Now a Boss needs several traits.

1) Tough enough to survive long enough to perform his maniacal monologue.
2)Tough enough to survive against the party as a whole in combat.
3) Dangerous enough to scare the party in combat.

A level now+2 creature might meet those requirements. But there are more.

4) Must be compatible with and defeatable by a level now party.
5) Must have mechanical ways to prevent ganging up and to encourage at least some players to beat up his minions in a mixed Boss + Minions brawl instead of going all in on him every time.
6) Must have only level now appropriate loot.

5 explains itself and 6 is obvious. But four is the big deal.

Even if you scale your system REALLY nicely you have issues with various turning points and tipping points when "just" bringing in a higher level character.

Take flight for instance. If you do what a lot of people will like you to and have flight and all its counters kick in at a certain level then you have some level now+2 situation where the Boss flies and no one interacts with that.

You could give out all such counters at level -2 to the ability itself but, well, that seems likely to just make everyone feel that things like flight are a bit of a bum deal when they do come around.

I mean we have already been asking questions like "at what level should you be able to breath underwater".

If the answer is "at a specific level" then at that level -2 your Boss monster is laughing at you while you drown in his backyard.

[Cielingcat]

You also have to make sure that the boss doesn't have an offense good enough to slaughter the PCs while they fight him. Winning after losing half your party isn't actually winning.

[Orion]

Indeed, Bosses should have awesome defenses that mke them hard to kill -- either they need a puzzle, or justthe party pulling out all thier flanking, buffs, etc -- while having offense that's nothing special. Preferable debuffs and terain control rather than direct damage, to draw things out.

[Voss]

ooo. No. Not the console game model. The boss has 4x as many hp as normal to make him speshul, because we can't design a decent encounter. Boo. Just like the unbreakable Macguffin of Dark Lord slayage or unkillable allied NPCs, this is lazy-ass shit.

He should have a good choice of defensive terrain (assuming he's clever) and minions to make the encounter interesting, but he shouldn't break the game rules to artificially inflate the encounter or its importance.

He should be quite capable of dropping party members, particularly if they're idiots. (Though dropping doesn't necessarily have to mean dead) Now, if they do well, it should be a hard fight without a lot of friendly corpses, but there definitely needs to a be a credible threat from the boss and room for the heroes to dramatically save a companion from almost certain doom.

[PhoneLobster]

What the hell Voss?

Inflating HP or defensive abilities isn't "artificially" inflating his life span. It is just plain old directly inflating his lifespan.

And that is a good thing, pretty much one of the definitive must haves for a major villain of any kind.

If you ask the question "what do we need from the named villain with the monologue" it ISN'T a one round encounter without time for monologues and snappy come backs, it ISN'T the guy who only ever attacked from behind an arrow slit through ten feet of adamantium wall, and it isn't the guy who went down before the entire room full of nameless minions because the players yelled out "Concentrate all fire on that super star destroyer!"

At that rate people end up remembering skeleton 59 more than they remember Dark Lord Gigantus because skeleton 59 lucked out and survived 2 rounds on its own at the end of the fight, or happened to be behind that arrow slit.

Having a set of mechanical tools for delivering what we want from a Boss is not "stupid" or "lazy" its good game design.

And I want a boss who at the very least dominates his encounter and possibly the adventure, or even better could potentially be an encounter or even adventure ON HIS OWN.

I do not want a Boss and then to have his encounter be dominated by use of hard cover from cement garden gnomes that any mook could and possibly should be doing. (well... you know what I mean)

[Voss]

You can do a memorable combat, even a long combat without declaring that Bosses are Tougher just because they're Bosses. It is piss poor game design. Instead of making the game interesting at the encounter level, you're just handwaving and making the boss special to hit some arbitrary number of rounds of combat. Its exactly the same as running around the endgame of some computer game destroying the 'force field generator' while the boss zaps you before you can really fight him.

Interesting terrain isn't adamantium walls and shit. Its about not being able to do uber-damage-charge on turn one.

Really, you would get more of what you want with just a level+2 monster. Players get cranky when something 'theoretically' equal to them can somehow shrug off 4x the damage and otherwise break the rules they have to play by. Ask almost anyone about villains who repeatedly makes saves they shouldn't, somehow, magically, 'behind the screen'. You're advocating the same kind of shit. If somethings *actually stronger* in a way that makes sense to them, they can accept it better.

[Orion]

Look, I don't have to do it the lazy way. I have enough D&D rules-fu to cook up a beastie with enough Ac DR, mirror images, etc. to live for a long time. And, honestly, bossess *shuld* have memorable mini-puzzle defenses like that. But sometimes it's best to just give them a bucketfull of HP. There are plenty of types of bosses for which this makes perfect sense.

Incidentally, I love how you object to my recommendation of terrain control and status effects, suggesting instead using defensive terrain and dropping people without killing them.

Do you not understand that you just rephrased my original suggestion?

IN any event, I have no objection to using a monster 2 levels up. But it had btter not be a hammer-eggshell. That can only lead to tears.

One of the monster "classes" neds to be "boss" or "mastermind," and it needs powerful and interesting defenses with comparatively less lethality. Ideally, a level nine "mastermind" would play equally well as a boss monster for a level 7 party or as a pack of minions tripping up a level 11 party (field control abilities hold up pretty well over several levels) but you can't always achieve that.

[Koumei]

I can live with a boss arbitrarily having extra HP or whatever. But if it has extra HP, hits more often, is hit less often, deals more damage, and at the end of the day is two levels higher, I'm less likely to accept it. Especially seeing as, in 3Ed, a monster with +2 CR has a pretty good chance of killing you outright.

Give me bullshit amounts of extra HP any day. For that matter, isn't one of the goals of this "make every combat last longer than before"? So why not have HP go up a lot faster than damage? So, when you fight something of level now, it takes a few rounds. If you fight something of level now + 2, it takes several rounds, and when you fight 10 things of level now - 5, it might take more or less time based on whether you have decent area effect powers. But you'll likely be cleaving through more of them rapidly, with the overall combat taking a little while.

[PhoneLobster]

You can do a memorable combat, even a long combat without declaring that Bosses are Tougher just because they're Bosses.

Outright unceremoniously WRONG.

You yourself are declaring them tougher by declaring that Boss monsters (and by extension ONLY Boss monsters), play smart and actually use circumstantial bonuses and their own abilities in a non stupid manner.

And you advocate giving them two extra levels, which is actually also declaring them tougher just because they are bosses, just in a stupid non targeted way.

It is piss poor game design. Instead of making the game interesting at the encounter level, you're just handwaving and making the boss special to hit some arbitrary number of rounds of combat.

Trying to decode your thought pattern here is easily very much like trying to figure a Boss monster based on poorly thought out and worded amateur riddles.

You suggest designing rules for a specific intended purpose like prolonged and interesting combat is poor game design and hand waving while somehow your alternatives of just taking monsters designed as mooks for higher levels, or even better, "Just playing smart" is NOT hand waving or poor game design.

I mean you are actually advocating NOT designing with ideas of intended combat length, NPC life span, and NPC damage output and calling it "Good Game Design".

WTF?

Interesting terrain isn't adamantium walls and shit. Its about not being able to do uber-damage-charge on turn one.

If as has been discussed hazardous terrain and circumstantial tactics DO change over level then at some point it literally IS adamantium walls and shit.

Before that its even stupider because by your model at some point the difference between the grand villain and some evil peasant is that the grand villain just uses thatched huts more effectively. Because he hides behind them and evil peasants just... don't.

Really, you would get more of what you want with just a level+2 monster. Players get cranky when something 'theoretically' equal to them can somehow shrug off 4x the damage and otherwise break the rules they have to play by.

Oddly in my experience players get cranky when the adventure ends in a stupid anticlimax where they drop the villain in one round.

You HAVE to give him extra defences. In this bit of quote you want to do it with a level shotgun rather than with some actual thought and design.

And level shotgun is just too broad. You get too much of some things, like offence, and not enough of others, like defence. Certain abilities, even entire archetypes become bad ideas and various increments in character power become massive stumbling blocks of untouchable enemies.

Ask almost anyone about villains who repeatedly makes saves they shouldn't, somehow, magically, 'behind the screen'. You're advocating the same kind of shit. If somethings *actually stronger* in a way that makes sense to them, they can accept it better.

No I'm advocating actual rules for big villains. YOU are advocating an ad hoc system that promotes exactly that behaviour as GMs desperately try to fix your fundamentally broken concept on the fly in game.

[Username17]

I think that the designation of Boss Monsters, Brutes, Swarms, NPCs and Monsters from the first pag is actually quite interesting and important. Non-playable monsters are not defined linearly by what kind of character they are equivalent to, they aren't equivalent to any player character. They are and should be defined by the level at which you fight them as part of your day.

Summoning up monsters who are four levels down (or whatever) is bullshit. You should be summoning up imps that matter in the combats you're fighting, not Imps who would be fair challenges for enemies you don't care about. The imps you call should have attack bonuses and armor classes big enough to exist on the battlefield you're fighting on. What they shouldn't have is piles of hit points or damage output that can compete with characters of your level. These summonable imps are "your level" but they aren't equivalent to a character of your level, they are equivalent to a summonable imp of your level. That's an important concept which we are embracing.

---

A Boss Monster has attack bonuses and armor classes in line with what player characters are doing at his level. He also dishes out damage that is only slightly high for people of the PC's level. And he's tough. He's tough enough to personally take on the entire party and have a long and dramtic battle.

The question thus is whether he is tough simply by dint of having enough hit points, or whether he is tough enough because he is resistant and immune to a crazy list of things. That is the question. The thing where we trot out higher level opponents and use them for Boss opposition is full of Fail.

As to being "inspired by CRPGs" no it fucking isn't. Asura who got arbitrary powers that made them unkillable except by weird stuff goes back in the Vedas three thousand five hundred years at least. It's not just classical, it's preclassical.

-Username17

[ckafrica]

Well, I don't see why some bosses might be tough from immunities and others from just be tough as all. I do like the idea that you need to prepare in some special way to stand against a boss, especially at higher levels. It makes it more interesting, assuming the DM lives up to the potential.

Would also be good to have them be able to continue through more than one encounter. "Next time Gadget" style exits and whatnot

[Koumei]

1199269408[/unixtime]]
As to being "inspired by CRPGs" no it fucking isn't. Asura who got arbitrary powers that made them unkillable except by weird stuff goes back in the Vedas three thousand five hundred years at least. It's not just classical, it's preclassical.

Technically it is inspired by CRPGs, because the real world is based on FF7 (as is every religion). I read it on the Internet somewhere so it must be true.

[Voss]

1199265601[/unixtime]]

You yourself are declaring them tougher by declaring that Boss monsters (and by extension ONLY Boss monsters), play smart and actually use circumstantial bonuses and their own abilities in a non stupid manner.

I snipped the rest, because I don't care enough, but this is wrong. I can vaguely see why you pulled it out of what I wrote, but it isn't what I meant.
Everything with a brain should be using tactics. But if want the overly dramatic boss battle, you need to do something to make it be more than 'everyone closes in and starts stabbing or blasting'. In my experience, most people at the table will just kill the boss. Giving him a chance to give a dramatic speech is exactly the same as giving him a chance to TPK the party. If the person running the encounter actually wants the drama, he's going to have to work for it in encounter design. Not punish the players by making the villain magicallly uber.

Short version- the villain should be playing the same game as the PCs. Period. He shouldn't be uber or speshul or waving stupid deus ex machina bonuses around. (I don't give a rats ass that the Vedas did it, age isn't a barrier to 'we couldn't think of a way to make this story more interesting beyond storyerteller fiat). If one shots are something you want to avoid, design the fucking game not to have them. But trying to avoid them after the fact by giving the villains ablative shielding is poor fucking design.

[Orion]

Frank --

I don't understand why you want to decouple level from power in that way. Why not make a monster as powerful as a PC of that level, with different monster "classes" to designate the role.

So level 7 PCs can fight a level 9 monster as the "boss," but it's highly recommended that said level 9 monster be taken from the "Commander," "Juggler," or "Puzzle" classes NOT from the "closet troll" or "as a character" piles.

Similarly, level 7 parties summon level 5 imps, but those imps are specially marked as summonable, which MEANS high ac and hit, low hp and damage.