New Edition: Monsters

[SunTzuWarmaster]

# How many turns should combats last?
Any combat should be able to be over in 1 round. If you surprise+assassin-target+coup de grace the enemy leader with a blowdart while balancing on his tent, he should DIE, despite the fact that he is 1 CR above you. I freaking hate it when you sneak up on the giant spider, climb it's web with Slipper of Spiderclimb, and then coup-de-grace it in the face only to have it knock you out with a poison-bite, wrap you up and eat you. If the party brings the situation up to their maximum advantage, they should be able to dish out enough damage to outright slay anyone of their CR.

That being said, when the opposition has the high ground, is set for a charge, and has Defense Mode "don't get hit" on, with Buff Mode "we are ready for your spells, tricksy wizard" it should be a different story. Probably more on the realm of 6-7 rounds.

Average combat should last around 5 rounds, 1 round of "holy crap, giant spiders!", 1 round of "use your arrows boys!"/"to arms, men!", 1 round of "haha, the suckers are blinded!", 1 round of "they aren't dead yet, Jimmy just took a nasty bite that will take weeks to heal naturally", and 1 round of cleanup.

Boss fights should be around 10 rounds. 10 rounds of "Party Vs. Balor" or 3 rounds of "Down the Necro!" and 7 rounds of "his army is useless without his leadership". Note, at higher levels, the "Party vs. Balor" fight could easily be "Down the Balor!" and "his demon army won't stand a chance now!".

# How many Skeletons or Imps on the board is enough/too many?
This is extremely level-dependent. 100 1st level fighters is not enough to a level 12 party. That being said, the plot "army of skeletons" that approaches the maximum to be controlled feels right when it is about 10-30 3rd level opponents to a 5th level party. Insta-summons that take 1 round should cap out at 4 (a possible 20 at the end of a normal-length combat). 5 summons every round is too many, in my experience (even if they are the killable grunt guys, it's just annoying).

# How many Hit Points is enough to be satisfying?
Don't care. To the player, functionally, if it only have 20 hp at level 5 but has crazy-dodging or high AC, it can be just as satisfying as the giant that keeps taking a sword to the face. That being said, HP should be enough to actually last 4-5 rounds without dying (which is dependent on how much defense the monster has).

# How many Hit Points is a pain in the ass to calculate?
I gave up calculating HP as a DM (as a player it is never a pain ), I just started using the suggested hp +/-X where X was how quickly I felt the monster should go down. Any non-plot related fight (leopards jump out of the bushes!) should be over quick, and plot-related fight should go a bit longer. 30-60 hp is my preferred number to calculate, triple-digits are annoying. Anything over 470 hp is stupid.



Other things:
Puzzle-monsters are stupid and have the feeling that:
Lycanthrope: "Those adventurers have silver! Run away, your DR is useless here!"
I agree with the suggestion that puzzle-monster are normal monsters that keep coming back until you can puzzle-kill them, at which point they are normal monsters.

[Koumei]

I don't want 1-shots to be available. Seriously. You can stand on top of his tend and use a nuclear warhead for all I care, but because you're of roughly equal level, you can't do enough to kill him - and vice versa.

Also, I think "Haha, you can't hit me!" builds are annoying. We're trying to keep everyone on the RNG here, remember? And also, there's the whole "You will always contribute *something*" thing, so if people do need a 20 to hit you, they just ping you for the "even on a miss" effects/damage until you go down.

[JonSetanta]

1199603364[/unixtime]]

1199599067[/unixtime]]
This is called 'real life.'

That game sucks.

Yeah, I was playing that all weekend and today too.
The good parts were when I rolled high in the bedroom, but took CON damage from going hungry during the evening Eberron session on Sunday.
Working a new temp job, multiclassing isn't working out so well, still haven't leveled up again...

[Koumei]

Yeah, in the Real Life game I started going to job seeker training this week. I'm considering stabbing myself in one of my kidneys, just so that I can sign up for a disability pension instead of needing to attend this thing for the next three weeks.

[Draco_Argentum]

1199633774[/unixtime]]Any combat should be able to be over in 1 round. If you surprise+assassin-target+coup de grace the enemy leader with a blowdart while balancing on his tent, he should DIE, despite the fact that he is 1 CR above you.

I don't think thats really appropriate for sword and sorcery games. If this was the Thief series that would be good. Since its not we don't want to present one round takedowns as an option.

[Username17]

How much of your damage should be random and how much should be fixed?

A d6 + 7 and 3d6 have the same average, but they have very different curves (3d6 falls outside the range of d6+7 32.4% of the time). So how much randomness do people want in their damage?

-Username17

[SphereOfFeetMan]

At least as much so you care what you roll. Not so much that you feel insulted when you roll minimum damage.

[Username17]

At least as much so you care what you roll. Not so much that you feel insulted when you roll minimum damage.

That's contradictory. Consider a situation where the enemy has 20 hit points, and you do either d6+7 or 3d6. The most likely event is that you will down your opponent in 2 hits. More than half the time this is what will happen. The die roll only matters because there is a chance that if you blow the damage rolls it may take you 3 hits to drop them. This will happen 5/18 times on d6 + 7 and only slightly more often on 3d6.

But such as the damage roll matters, it matters because you have a chance to be dissappointed. Now, it can also be set such that rolling well on the damage pushes you over the effect threshold. It could even be set such that a modestly good roll (say 70th percentile) and a very good roll (like 95th percentile) would net a wound. But that's hard to arrange, because even on 3d6 those numbers are only 3 points away from each other.

And yet, I could see that as a baseline. You roll 3d6 and add level bonuses. They have 20 hit points plus level bonuses which are twice as large (or so). And it's set so that if you roll a 13 on damage you get your effect. And if you roll a 16 you get your wound.

At very low levels, a series of very bad rolls could make an opponent struggle on through like 4 hits. And at high levels they are going down on the thirs basically no matter what you do.

Or you could have the numeric element of level rise slower than hit points and periodically give out additional dice, to keep the randomness from falling off.

-Username17

[virgil]

I don't like "buckets-o-dice" in my gaming, so I don't want any attack to do more than 3 or 4 dice of damage. If the bonuses get larger than the dice rolling, then that 13+ effect and 16+ wound thing you mentioned applies.

[Username17]

So what would you think of an attack which had a crappy effect, but which rolled a d20 instead of 3d6? It hands out its (crappy) effect 40% of the time and a full wound 1/4th.

The question really is whether you'd even care if you can fairly reliably drop people of your level in two hits.

Maybe you need more hit points? Fuck. That gets unmanageable fast.

-Username17

[virgil]

Whether you can take out people of your level in two hits depends on the encounter design, I would think. Are fights supposed to be on the one-for-one basis like 4E is mentioning, or are they closer to 3E's set-up where the party generally fights one thing at a time (or the extreme opposite)?

Most stories that I know where two people of nearly equal ability (level & power) fight, their fights last the longest out of any other match-up. Of course, a 'mob' monster works differently even of equal level because of the reduced damage and hit points, but it doesn't take too many for a real fight if they're equal level (I think three or four).

As long as each round doesn't take too long, I think combat should last about 3 or 4 rounds in a white room scenario. Modify by a round or two should one side have the advantage.

[RandomCasualty]

1199811967[/unixtime]]I don't like "buckets-o-dice" in my gaming, so I don't want any attack to do more than 3 or 4 dice of damage. If the bonuses get larger than the dice rolling, then that 13+ effect and 16+ wound thing you mentioned applies.

Yeah, buckets of dice are bad, because the more dice you add, the more bell curve rolling you get. I figure it'd probably be easier if there was a set number of dice you roll (offhand, I'd say 2 dice are pretty optimal, you have slight bell curve, but still a decent possibility of extreme values.)

[Falgund]

1199801476[/unixtime]]At least as much so you care what you roll. Not so much that you feel insulted when you roll minimum damage.

So something like half-automatic/half random, like d6+4 (5 damage automatic, 5 random) or 2d8+12 (14 automatic, 14 random).

Thus, you care for the roll, thats 50% of your damage potential, but even if you roll ultra low, you still have 50% of your damage potential.

Of course it may vary depending on some factors, but i think it should not go more than 66%/34% or 34%/66%. So by example from 2d6+3 (5/10) to 2d6+18 (20/10).

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Yeah, buckets of dice are bad, because the more dice you add, the more bell curve rolling you get. I figure it'd probably be easier if there was a set number of dice you roll (offhand, I'd say 2 dice are pretty optimal, you have slight bell curve, but still a decent possibility of extreme values.)

Yeah. Two dice sounds about right. So maybe your character level bumps the die size of your weapon? So at first level your greatsword does 2d6, 2d8 at 3rd, 2d10 at 6th, etc. And then you'd also have a static character level damage bonus. So characters specializing in bigger weapons always do more damage, but the static damage bonus ensures they are always playing the same game as those with smaller weapons.

You'd have to probably use more than two dice on the d12 to d20 jump though. At least this system solves the issue of your weapons base damage becoming irrelevant at higher levels.

So something like half-automatic/half random, like d6+4 (5 damage automatic, 5 random) or 2d8+12 (14 automatic, 14 random).

Thus, you care for the roll, thats 50% of your damage potential, but even if you roll ultra low, you still have 50% of your damage potential.

Of course it may vary depending on some factors, but i think it should not go more than 66%/34% or 34%/66%. So by example from 2d6+3 (5/10) to 2d6+18 (20/10).

Right.

[Koumei]

So, there's a monster I thought of that needs including. See, I was walking to SatanCorp. yesterday, and I crossed a black cat's path. Yes, cat, in Sovjet Australia, my path cross YOU!

Anyway, I dwelled on the stupidity of the superstition for a second or two, and my mind conjured up this large black cat, possibly with the ability to take on a bipedal form similar in appearance to Jackal Lords (MM3, I think), speaking like Mao from Shadow Hearts 3, and with a potion bottle attached to its waist, with variou pipes and tubes.

It steals luck. As an attack ability, it can deal damage, with the effect of "Stealing Luck" (gives a penalty, or whatever). It can then drink this luck for a short-term bonus.

I was thinking "Only three doses fit into the bottle. It can't drain luck if the bottle is full, so it has to spend at least one turn granting itself a bonus. This way, it's okay if it enters combat full or empty - it either gets to drain you or boost itself straight away. Additionally, such a luck boost lasts for only a few rounds, so it never enters combat buffed up."

[Username17]

Having random elements keep up with non-random elements is hard.

2d6+8 (10/10)
That's your base line, and it seems pretty easy to do. It's 2d6 (very easy to roll), plus a stat bonus, plus 1. I think I can imagine a circumstance where a character might roll that at first level.

But beyond that, adding randomisity to the system 29 times or even 9 times is difficult. You cold pass through a number of stages:

• 2d6 +8
  
• 2d8 + 12 (14/14)
  
• 2d10 + 16 (18/18)
  
• 2d12 + 20 (22/22)
  
• 2d20 + 36 (38/38)

But all other damage amounts require more or less dice. In fact, rolling 2d20 is a pain in the ass, and personally I'd rather roll 6d6 for an equivalent pile of damage.

Rolling more dice steepens the curve, rolling bigger dice flattens the curve. The only way to keep the curve static is to roll the same dice again and again, which means either that the numeric bonuses overshadow the dice, or that DR is keeping up with the numeric bonuses.

In other news:

[Jacob_Orlove]

I really like the idea of DR and numeric bonuses rising at the same rate, especially if HP is constant or near-constant. It lets you tear through lower-level opposition, makes higher level boss monsters intrinsically tougher (but not harder to hit), and increasing DR rather than AC means we can have a lot of smaller, successful attacks, instead of the occasional crazy damage attack that breaks through AC 50.

[RandomCasualty]

If Hp are static, and you instead raise DR and damage bonus, you don't have to worry about raising the damage dice, because then it becomes similar to a d20 roll, where the DR and damage bonus just serve to set the DC (where the DC happens to be the DR).

It's only when hp increase that you have to constantly be bumping the die type.

[virgil]

Well, if we had to choose between "buckets-o-dice" and "static" in our damage dealing, I'd rather the game move closer to the 'static' side as levels go higher. Randomness is already present with the attack roll, so having the bonus exceed the die rolls in damage eventually is something I'd prefer over having a fistful of dice.

Of course, I know people that enjoy the fistful of dice for damage, but it gets cumbersome past 6-10 dice for damage simply because you have to scrounge to get enough dice; this goes doubly so for dice that aren't d6s.

[RandomCasualty]

1199633774[/unixtime]]
# How many Skeletons or Imps on the board is enough/too many?
This is extremely level-dependent. 100 1st level fighters is not enough to a level 12 party. That being said, the plot "army of skeletons" that approaches the maximum to be controlled feels right when it is about 10-30 3rd level opponents to a 5th level party. Insta-summons that take 1 round should cap out at 4 (a possible 20 at the end of a normal-length combat). 5 summons every round is too many, in my experience (even if they are the killable grunt guys, it's just annoying).

Well, I feel like you probably shouldn't be adding more minis at the point that it takes more time to add the minis to the board them take them off. I mean the majority of mooks just get fireballed anyway, so I'd get away from doing player versus army battles in the standard way.

Instead I'd just make a horde of mooks like a swarm and have them count as one enemy.

That way you can have stories where you take on armies, without literally putting a real army on the battlemap after 10 minutes of set up time, only to have half of them get mowed down in the first round of combat.

[Falgund]

1199908431[/unixtime]]Well, if we had to choose between "buckets-o-dice" and "static" in our damage dealing, I'd rather the game move closer to the 'static' side as levels go higher. Randomness is already present with the attack roll, so having the bonus exceed the die rolls in damage eventually is something I'd prefer over having a fistful of dice.

So, if the hitpoints don't change much, you can start from ~3d6+8, gain 1 damage every level and end with ~3d6+27 at level 20. (Damage varying from -/+3 depending on stats and other factors)

1199908431[/unixtime]]Of course, I know people that enjoy the fistful of dice for damage, but it gets cumbersome past 6-10 dice for damage simply because you have to scrounge to get enough dice; this goes doubly so for dice that aren't d6s.

Or you can have a progression like this where you don't go above 6 dices:
Level 01: 2d4
Level 02: 2d4+2
Level 03: 2d4+4
Level 04: 2d6+4
Level 05: 2d6+6
Level 06: 2d6+8
Level 07: 2d6+10
Level 08: 3d6+10
Level 09: 3d6+12
Level 10: 3d6+14
Level 11: 3d6+16
Level 12: 4d6+16
Level 13: 4d6+18
Level 14: 4d6+20
Level 15: 4d6+22
Level 16: 5d6+22
Level 17: 5d6+24
Level 18: 5d6+26
Level 19: 5d6+28
Level 20: 6d6+28


Of course, this is more painful to adjust the effect/wound thresold than the 3d6+stat+level+bonus(0-2) or just 3d6+stat+bonus ones, and you also have to compute far higher hitpoints (if you are expected to reach 0 in 4 hits, that's ~200hp at level 20).

[Captain_Bleach]

1199612438[/unixtime]]

1199603364[/unixtime]]

1199599067[/unixtime]]
This is called 'real life.'

That game sucks.

I agree. It's too expensive and the rules seem deliberately unclear.

Whatever you do, don't fight a SWAT team; their snipers will fuck you.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I like the "you don't ever get more than 6 dice", and the 50/50 ratio for damage. I'm fine with getting out-voted about how long a combat should last, but I would just like to add that it is very frustrating to land a coup de grace that doesn't kill, and I think that every character should be able to coup de grace equal level opposition given the correct circumstances.

It happened once in 2nd edition that the mage (myself) put everyone to sleep. After the warrior stabbed one of the opposition in the face, he woke up and slapped another monster (inflicting 1 point of damage and waking him up, effectively resuming the fight). I think the above situation should not be likely.

[JonSetanta]

I for one hate the sheer unpredictability of a fistful of d6s, such as a high level Fireball.
I'd sooner have 1d6 + (3.5 x caster level) any day. In fact, I'll beg the new DM in an Eberron campaign we began recently to let me do that.
So far he maxxed all HP, but insisted on 5d6/drop lowest 2 for stats (after a long debate with me over whether "Elite array +2 to everything" would be better; I was in favor of the non-randomness....)

[Jacob_Orlove]

I don't think the combat rules should cover killing helpless targets. If someone is out of combat, whether they should die to a dagger in the vitals (or across the neck) is a story issue, not a balance issue. Whether it's possible is independent of how we want normal combats to proceed.