Making monsters can be hard. 3rd edition made them roughly as difficult as making a regular character (which was pretty time intensive), and then 4th edition threw it out the window but replaced it all with a bunch of different roles and a table for each. This week I'm looking not at the fluff of conceptualizing a monster, I'm looking at the crunch. We're gonna run the numbers on attacks, hit points, AC, and other defenses. These are going to be some guiding principles that I take to heart; these aren't "be all end all" hard line rules, and they're not just a bunch of tables. Oh, and all of this is going to depend on you having your group's character sheets in front of you, FYI.
---
Gathering Your Data
---
Take a look at your group's character sheets, and look at their at-will powers. I would say their basic attacks, but that doesn't give you a very clear picture for the wizards and whatnot in your group. Write down the attack bonus for each, and the average damage for each (so if an at-will deals 1[W]+Str which comes out to 1d8+3, write down a 7.5 for it). Write down their HP, AC, and other defenses as well. This gives us a picture of what your whole party is capable of once they've run out of encounter and daily powers, which is a good baseline to start from. You can obviously expect the characters to be a fair bit more powerful than the numbers suggest, but since you know that going in, you can expect it.
---
AC and Attack Bonuses
---
Armor Class. What you gotta meet or beat to hit the guy. What we're going to do with this stat is we're going to look at how players interact with monster AC. They make their attack, roll a d20, add their attack bonus, and see if they meet or beat it. Obvious, right? Let's look at an example of how this works.
A level 1 goblin has an AC of 17. Let's say a level 1 fighter with 16 strength and a longsword attacks him with Tide of Iron. That fighter has a +6 attack modifier, which means when he rolls the d20 he hits on an 11 or higher.
Conversely, that same level 1 goblin has a couple of different attacks, but they all have an attack bonus of +6 vs. AC. Seeing a connection? If that same fighter has an AC of 17 (which is honestly pretty likely) then when you roll a d20 you'll hit the fighter on an 11 or higher.
---
The Balancing Act
---
What does this mean? It means that on any given day, with this setup you've got a 50/50 shot of hitting. If you take into account that a 20 sided die has a 5% chance of hitting any single side, you'll realize pretty quickly that increasing that goblin's AC by as little as 2 drops the group's chance of hitting by 10%. This is really important, and it can be a bit of a mistake to jack up the AC too high. I fought a black dragon in a game (okay, I understand, it's a dragon) that I would've needed a 14 or higher to hit on my roll. That's a 35% chance. It's difficult, but it should be difficult to fight a dragon, right? Well. Said black dragon also had an aura of darkness, and I was a melee character. I had to attack blindly if I wanted to hit him, which incurs a -5 penalty. That 35% chance suddenly shot down to 10%. See how quickly that can escalate?
Now, it can also escalate in the other direction, too. Take the same goblin, and pit him against a level 1 barbarian who stacked their strength so they have 20 strength and a greatsword they got Weapon Expertise (Heavy Blades) for, and smacks him with Howling Strike. That barbarian has a +9 attack modifier, which means when he rolls the d20 he hits on an 8 or higher. Now let's also say he was in Skull-Taker's rage, and with the Thaneborn Triumph build you get Roar of Triumph as an encounter power, so he killed a minion last turn, howled, and then charged with Howling Strike for a +12 bonus. Now when he rolls the d20 he hits on a 5 or higher.
The difference here though, is if the barbarian stacks all these bonuses up and grins at you, proudly announcing that he hit after rolling a 5, all that happens is the goblin takes some damage, and possibly dies. High fives all around the table. If the fighter rolls a 5 and misses then that's fine, because he didn't kit himself out to be such a crazy killing machine. The fact that you have a min-maxer in your group doesn't mean that he's trying to wreck your game, he's just trying to have a good time like everyone else. If your way to keeping the min-maxing striker from ruining your game is to distance the AC so it's realistic for him, then it'll just be unrealistic for everyone else.
---
HP
---
The way to keep your min-maxing striker from ruining your fun is to just make sure he doesn't one shot everything you throw at him. The easiest way to do that, of course, is to give things more HP. Not everything, mind, but some things. In terms of the 4th edition "monster roles" I only ever really pay attention to two types: artillery and brutes. You have the dudes that would prefer to sit in the back that die in maybe 2-3 hits, then you have the dudes who are basically just fat sacks of hit points who should take several more attacks, maybe 5 or 6.
Note that I haven't really talked about any real numbers in this section; the reason why is because I have a few different methods for tracking hit points. In future weeks we can get into the method I use for tracking HP, but for these purposes we'll stick with WotC standard. This is where the "average damage" thing I asked you to track comes into play. If you notice a pretty large variance between say, your defenders and your strikers as far as damage output in the at-wills, just use your strikers. With AC you may want everyone to have a good shot at hitting them, but with HP you want to make sure your monsters stick around as long as possible. Remember, these baselines you took don't take into account encounter or daily powers, and your players will use them, and often. Don't be afraid to throw big fat sacks of hit points at them, and adjust things down the road in future encounters.
To put things in real world terms, there are level 1 artillery monsters in the monster manual with 22-28 HP, and there are level 1 brutes with around 35-40 HP. Personally, I've seen how quickly a group can make short work of level 1 monsters, and I'd put the brutes at closer to 50 HP.
---
Other Defenses
---
With Fort/Ref/Will defenses, you basically want to take whatever AC you have and ask yourself a few questions about the monster you're making. Essentially, you want to give yourself an internal ranking system for the monster, best to worst. The best defense should be about equal to the AC, or maybe one higher. The middle one should be one lower, and the worst you'll probably want to put two or three lower. This can all be adjusted to taste of course.
The main reason for all this is because the "other" defenses are used most widely by spellcasters, who don't get proficiency bonuses like the classes that use weapons for their powers (and usually target AC). An eladrin wizard with 20 int still only has +5 to hit, but most of their at-wills target reflex or will, great for hitting slow, lumbering targets.
---
Conclusion
---
Monster Creation can be a chore, and I haven't even gotten into the nitty gritty of how to pick their special abilities (my suggestion: cannibalize abilities of monsters from similar levels that have the idea you're looking for). Hopefully these suggestions will keep you on the right track for monsters to keep your players going, though. If not, let me know what you do in the comments section below!
Edit: It came to my attention that the average damage of 1d8+3 (for the "Gathering Data" section) is 7.5, not 7. This is what happens when you make a blog entry involving math late on a saturday night. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment