I mostly play D&D 4e in the heroic tier, the character feel like they have just enough powers by level 6 to be suitably iconic heroes to the general population, and fights don’t drag on for hours and hours and hours. But still, over 4e’s lifespan, I’ve found myself wanting to make monsters more of a threat while keeping combats quick and fluid. I’m going to examine how I tweak the maths behind the monsters I use to do this.
First of all, lets consider a level 3 pc. I’m going to choose a level 3 half-orc scout, with a theme. The reason for this is its one of my favourite combos, it’s got decent armour and nad, hp, attack and damage, and should basically be making and hitting with 2 attacks per round every round. I’ve chosen a theme granting extra damage, an expertise feat, and a weapon damage feat, and level appropriate magic items.
Put Simply: 32 HP, 20 AC, 14 Fort, 18 Ref, 14 Will, +10 Attack, damage is 1d10+9/1d6+9 plus 3 encounter powers granting +1W damage. If we hit with both attacks, and use one of the encounter powers, we’re talking 2d10+1d6+18, min 21, max 44
We’re going to use this to compare against the various monster roles as we go along.
A common house rule you’ll hear online is “half hp, double damage”, but to me that just feels wrong, Even with the double damage, they don’t survive long enough to fire off enough hits to make it a threat. Others have examined the maths and proved that level 1 is the most dangerous, and tweaked the maths according: http://dmg42.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/boot-on-face-of-level-1-damage-forever.html. I’ve tried this method, and if anything, it makes monsters too dangerous, especially if you wield them against new players, who then go home crying…
So my theory sits somewhere between the two, “reduce monster hp by 25%, add +2 to hit, increase damage die a step, increase static damage by +3″, but goes deeper than that.
I’m going to base this article on the mm3 maths fixes, which are neatly summed up here: http://blogofholding.com/?p=512. These maths fixes made a massive difference to paragon and epic level monsters, but didn’t tweak the heroic tier monsters much.
Skirmisher
4e defines the skirmisher monster role as:
Skirmisher monsters use mobility to threaten the player characters. Their combat statistics define the baseline for monsters, but their mobility is their defining feature. Use skirmishers as the mobile strikers in an encounter, the creatures that move to attack vulnerable PCs from the sides and rear. They often have powers that let them dart in, attack, and retreat in one action. Skirmishers like to fight alongside soldiers and brutes because those monsters tend to stay in one place and draw a lot of the party’s attention, giving the skirmishers room to maneuver around this front line.
To me, its the equivalent of the players striker role, it should be fast, agile, and deadly, moving quicker to engage the players, and hitting hard.
The clever folks who’ve done the MM3 maths say for a level 3 skirmisher, you should have: 17 ac, 15 nad, 48 hp, +8 attack and do an average of 11 damage, so 1d8+6 ish.
When you compare that to our level 3 scout, its clear the maths is still broken, a level 1 scout has better stats than that, but for the sake of argument we’ll stick with the mm3 maths as our base, and now apply my rule: 17 ac, 15 nad, 36 hp, +10 attack and do 2d4+9 or 1d10+9 damage.
Yeah, now its dangerous, but not exactly deadly. Lets give it +2 reflex to represent its agility, give it +2 speed and ideally some kind of power to move across the battlefield by shifting or teleporting. And we’ll give it another +2 damage boost.
Now: 17 ac, 17 ref, 15 nad, 36 hp, +10 attack and do 2d4+11 or 1d10+11 damage (avg 17 damage).
It’ll die in one good hit from the scout, but more likely 2 hits, but it’ll hit half the time and down the scout in 2 hits.
Soldier
4e defines the soldier monster role as:
Soldier monsters specialize in drawing the characters’ attacks and defending other monsters. They have high defenses and average hit points. Their attacks are accurate, but they don’t do exceptional damage. They tend not to move around, and they often have powers that hinder other creatures from moving around them. Use soldiers in an encounter to keep the party in place, preventing its members from attacking the artillery or controller monsters behind the soldiers or chasing after the skirmishers. Soldiers often have abilities that allow them to work well together, so a group of identical soldiers works well in an encounter with other monsters.
Soldiers should represent the meat and two veg of the monsters. They are the hordes of orcs that sack cities, they are the core of the raiding parties etc. They should be armed and armoured, equally efficient with bow or blade, and capable of hitting every time they strike and ideally multiple times per round.
By mm3 maths: 19 ac, 15 nad, 48 hp, +8 attack, 1d8+6 damage.
Boring… +2 ac does not a soldier make, even with my rule: 19 ac, 15 nad, 36 hp, +10 attack and 1d10+9 damage.
So lets tweak the defences and add another +1 to them all, and give him some of his hp back, say +1 hp per level. Lets make him more likely to hit and give him another +2, and lets make sure he has a multiple attack.
Now: 20 ac, 16 nad, 39 hp, +12 attack and 1d10+9 damage.
Against the scouts the odds are it’ll get hit in in ever 2 attacks and go down in 2 attacks. Striking back, it’ll hit more oftne, but will probably take 3 hits to kill the scout
Artillery
4e defines the artillery monster role as:
Artillery monsters excel at ranged combat. These creatures rain arrows, explosive fireballs, and similar attacks on the party from a distance. They’re well protected against ranged attacks, but more vulnerable in melee. They often spread damage out over multiple
characters in an area. Use artillery monsters in an encounter to hang behind soldiers and brutes and rain damage down
on the characters from protected positions. Because they’re more fragile than average monsters, they count on being protected by a line of brutes or soldiers, or skirmishers that help them to draw off attacks.
Well, artillery kinda speaks for itself doesn’t it, it sits at the back, firing arrows or the like at our heroes. The messed up thing with 4e monster maths though, was that artillery creatures were as good with their backup melee attack as they were with their ranged weapon.
With mm3 maths: 15 ac, 15 nad, 39 hp, +8 attack, 1d8+6 damage.
Well, at least its not a carbon copy of the last two… With my rule: 15 ac, 15 nad, 29 hp, +10 attack and 1d10+9 damage.
Well, if you’re going to use a bow, you generally need to have good dex, so lets increase that by +2, and lets give it a bonus to ranged attacks and damage, and ideally an area attack and/or a double shot attack.
Now: 15 ac, 17 reflex, 15 nad, 29 hp, Melee: +8 attack and 1d8+6 damage, Ranged: +12 attack, 1d10+11 attack.
Against the scout it’s vulnerable… the scout will hit it 3 times out of 4, and more than likely down it in 1 hit
Lurker
4e defines the lurker monster role as:
Lurker monsters have some ability that lets them avoid attacks, whether by striking from hiding or by turning into an invulnerable statue while regaining strength. They usually deliver one devastating attack every few rounds, while concentrating on defense in between. Use lurkers as surprise additions to encounters with other monsters or as sneaky assassins that circle around the main action of a fight, darting in from time to time with a well-timed strike. Lurkers study the party while the player characters are busy handling brutes and soldiers, gauging the PCs’ weaknesses.
I’ve never been too sure about the lurker role, feeling it stepped on the toes of the skirmisher role. Ideally, the lurker should be the one who hides, sticking to the edges of combat, attacking from the shadows, and getting close to a target before pulling some insanely nasty attack to wipe a character out.
So with the mm3 maths: 17 ac, 15 nad, 39 hp, +8 attack, 1d8+6 damage.
Oh, so its a artillery with better armour then? With my rule: 17 ac, 15 nad, 29 hp, +10 attack and 1d10+9 damage.
That really doesn’t scream out lurker to me. We can give it a bonus to stealth of +5, maybe +1 speed and the ability to move while hidden. It certainly needs a bonus to damage when attacking from hidden and thus has combat advantage. How about we decrease its armour slightly and increase its nad, and make it slightly more vulnerable reducing it by a 1 hp per level, basically, we want to give the feel that you want to take this thing out before it gets the chance to attack…
How about: 16 ac, 16 nad, 26 hp, +12 attack, 1d10+9 attack (1d10+14 damage with combat advantage), and make sure it has a limited use encounter power that does something like 3d10+19 damage.
This make is pretty vulnerable like the artillery monster, but with the potential to down the scout in a single hit from its limited use power.
Brute
4e defines the brute monster role as:
Brute monsters specialize in dealing damage in melee. Brutes have relatively low defenses but high hit points. They don’t hit as often as other monsters, but they deal a lot of damage when they hit. They don’t move around a lot, and they’re often big. Use brutes in an encounter to threaten the party while shielding other monsters with their great size and imminent threat. Brutes are easy to run, so put
multiple brutes of the same kind in an encounter to provide the baseline muscle for the monsters.
If there was one monster role that WotC got totally and utterly wrong in the early days of 4e, it was the brute. They had crap armour, lots of hp, and slightly more damage, but worse attack bonuses. In other words, they stood there flailing their arms ineffectively while quickly getting their chunky flesh ripped from their bones… The brute should be the big scary thing that when it lumbers onto the battle field, you think, oh shit… You should know that it’s going to be a bitch to take down, and you should know that when it hits you, its going to knock the stuffing out of you… I also don’t agree with using lots of them in an encounter. If you want to limit the pc’s effectiveness, keep throwing minions at them…
With the mm3 maths: 15 ac, 15 nad, 56 hp, +8 attack, 1d10+10 damage.
Well, it might survive 1 more hit than a normal mm3 monster, and it does a little bit more damage… With my maths: 15 ac, 15 nad, 42 hp, +10 attack, 1d12+13 damage.
Thats really no better is it? Its going to go down quickly and maybe get off 1 or 2 of those half decent hits. Lets not adjust the hp with my rule, in fact, i’m happy to give it another 1 hp per level. I’ve never quite figured out the reasoning behind the rubbish armour on a brute, but lets presume its something like they haven’t got enough armour to cover all their body, and lets downgrade that -2 penalty to a -1 (or add +1 back on). A brute isn’t the fastest critter there is, so the reflex is fine at 15, but its a big lump of muscle, so lets treat that fortitude to a nice bump of +4.
But what about will? Brute probably aren’t the cleverest or prettiest things, they are simply directed at a target and told to smash it, which would suggest a poor will defence. But lets think about it another way… It’s too stupid to know that you’re hurting it, it’s too stupid to know that you’re digging around inside its mind and telling it to hurt its friends… All it knows is to plod forward and grind you into a pulp… I think theres a big case for giving it a +2 to will to reflect the fact that you can’t get inside its head and mess with its simple mindedness.
And finally, damage… 1d12+13 is not bad, thats an average of around 20 per hit. But I don’t think its enough… another +2 bonus makes a difference, but we should consider what brutes can do if they gang up… Pesky goblins drag 2 ogres out of their cave and tell them to go smash the shiny thing… They flank the fighter and bash it… hard… until red stuff squirts out of the shiny thing…
So, what do we look like now: 16 ac, 15 reflex, 19 fort, 17 will, 59 hp, +10 attack, 1d12+15 damage (1d12+20 with combat advantage).
It’s got lower defences than most of the other roles, but nearly double their hp, and can lay the hurt on the scout, hitting half the time, and almost downing him in one blow.
Controller
4e defines the controller monster role as:
Controller monsters manipulate their enemies or the battlefield to their advantage. They restrict enemy options or inflict lasting conditions, alter terrain or weather, or bend the minds of their adversaries. Position controller monsters just behind a front line
of melee-focused monsters, and use them to attack the PCs at short range with their control powers. Most controllers can stand their ground in melee, so they often wade right in beside the brutes and soldiers. Controller monsters can be complex to run in numbers,
so limiting an encounter to one or two controllers of the same type is usually a good idea.
The player controller role is often thought of as the minion killer, area of effect spells wiping them out on the first turn, and then it uses its single target stuff to impose a few basic conditions. A monster can’t wipe out multiple pc’s in a turn, but it should certainly take its key skills from the area of effect and status attacks of the pcs.
With mm3 maths: 17 ac, 15 nad, 48 hp, +8 attack, 1d6+5 damage.
Oh look, its a skirmisher with crap damage against multiple targets… With my rule: 17 ac, 15 nad, 36 hp, +10 attack, 1d8+7 damage.
I’m surprised that the mm3 maths didn’t impose an AC penalty on controllers, as I would. On the flipside, they should have better int, cons, wis or cha in order to handle the presumably arcane or divine forces they are wielding against the pc’s. I’m happy to give a -1 ac, +3 nad. HP is a tricky one, pc controllers are often fragile, but we’d quite like the monster to stick around and impose a few effects, so lets give it back +1 hp per level, it’s not much, but it might make the difference between life and death.
We can presume that the controller will be making attacks against the pc’s nad, and they should only be 2 or more below their ac, so +10 should be ok… Except that thinking has always been wrong wit 4e, and NAD attacks have always suffered against defences that were meant to be weaker than AC but often weren’t. I’m more than happy to address this, and give it a +2 bonus with its nad attacks, but not totally nerf its melee attacks, and we’ll bump the damage slightly, and make sure that it’s attacks only target enemies and impose a status.
Now we have: 16 AC, 18 nad, 39 hp, Melee: +10 attack, 1d6+5 damage, NAD Attack: +12 attack, 1d8+9 damage.
Against our scout, the controller survives better than some of the others, and against ranged attacks from a wizard or warlock, its nicely shielded and it’ll take 2 hits to down it from the scout, who will have had to get through a few soldiers by now, and ends up blasted by the controller, ideally hitting the scouts will, and hitting on 2′s. Yeah, that’ll do nicely…
Minion
4e defines the minion monster role as:
Sometimes you want monsters to come in droves and go down just as fast. A fight against thirty orcs is a grand cinematic battle. The players get to enjoy carving through the mob like a knife through butter, feeling confident and powerful. Unfortunately, the mechanics of standard monsters make that difficult. If you use a large number of monsters of a level similar to the PCs, you overwhelm them. If you use a large number of monsters of much lower level, you bore them with creatures that have little chance of hurting the PCs but take a lot of time to take down. On top of that, keeping track of the actions of so many monsters is a headache. Minions are designed to serve as shock troops and cannon fodder for other monsters (standard, elite, or solo). Four minions are considered to be about the same as a standard monster of their level. Minions are designed to help fill out an encounter, but they go down quickly. A minion is destroyed when it takes any amount of damage. Damage from an attack or from a source that doesn’t require an attack roll (such as the paladin’s divine challenge or the fighter’s cleave) destroys a minion. If a minion is missed by an attack that normally deals damage on a miss, however, it takes no damage. Use minions as melee combatants placed between the PCs and back-rank artillery or controller monsters.
Minions are the massed mooks that or heroes can wade through with ease before they fight the really nasty critters, and 4e represents this well with the 1 hit kill rule. My issue with minions though has always been that to make them survive long enough to be ay risk, they need to be 3 or 4 levels above the encounter level to have the defences and damage needed. MM3 maths says they should have 1 hp and do half the average damage. My rule wouldn’t change this, it’d just apply the half damage to my new amounts… And then i’d add +2… If you want your minions to survive and hit, it’s probably best to go with the soldier role rather than the brute role, though the look on players faces when a minion brute hits them for 13 points of damage at level 3 is awesome.
Elite
4e defines the elite monster role as:
Elite monsters are tougher than standard monsters and constitute more of a threat than standard monsters of their main role and level. An elite monster counts as two monsters of its level. Elite monsters are worth twice as many XP and are twice as dangerous.
Elite monsters make great “mini-bosses,” allowing you to add a tougher opponent to a mix of monsters without creating an entirely new monster. A group of ogres led by an elite ogre reduces the number of ogre figures on the table without diminishing the encounter’s level.
While minions are one hit kills, elites are meant to have the sticking power to remain a threat for longer, with MM3 maths giving them double hit points, an action point and a +2 bonus to saving throws. If anything, my rule lessens their threat, so i’d not do the -25% hp reduction of my rule before doubling their hp. I’d also give them an additional +1 to all defences, +1 to hit and +2 to damage. As for the advice in the DMG about taking 2 monsters out and replacing them with an elite, ignore it, by removing 2 monsters and replacing them with a single monster with 2x the hp, all you’ve managed to do is keep the same hp but reduce your damage output.
Solo
4e defines the solo monster role as:
Solo monsters are specifically designed to appear as single opponents against a group of PCs of the same level. They function, in effect, as a group of monsters. They have more hit points in order to absorb the damage output of multiple PCs, and they deal more
damage in order to approximate the damage output of a group of monsters. A solo monster is worth the same amount of XP as
five monsters of its level. It provides the same level of challenge as five monsters. A solo monster might have tendencies that flavour it toward the brute, soldier, skirmisher, lurker, artillery, or controller role. Each type of chromatic dragon, for example, leans toward a different role. Red dragons have soldier tendencies, while blue dragons behave much like artillery monsters. However, a solo monster can never completely take on a different role, because the roles are largely defined by how monsters interact
with other monsters in an encounter. Every solo monster has to be able to stand and fight on its own.
If elites were meant to represent the big bad guys of an army, solo were, as their name suggest, meant to be creatures that could survive a long time in a fight on their own and threaten the player. MM3 maths giving them 4 times the normal hit points, 2 action points (and no restriction on using only 1 per round) and a +5 bonus to saving throws. As with elites, my rule lessens their threat, so i’d not do the -25% hp reduction of my rule before increasing their hp by 4 times. I’d also give them an additional +2 to all defences, +2 to hit and +5 to damage, but most importantly, a power or trait that lets them throw off status effects like dazed.
Leader
4e defines the leader monster role as:
“Leader” is not a stand-alone role. It is an additional quality or subrole of some brutes, soldiers, skirmishers, lurkers, artillery, and controllers. Leaders are defined by their relationship to the monsters under their command. A leader monster, like a leader PC, grants bonuses and special abilities to its followers, improving their attacks or defenses, providing some healing, or enhancing their normal abilities. Aside from one special ability to enhance its allies, a leader functions as its primary role indicates. Add a leader to an encounter with monsters that gain the greatest benefit from the leader’s abilities. For example, a leader that gives a defense bonus to nearby creatures is a great leader for brutes, who have weak defenses otherwise.
While the controller monster role shares most of the same principles as the player role, the leader monster role is very different to the player role. whereas a player leader can expect to heal and buff their allies, the monster leader is basically just a badge, and doesn’t really confer any benefits. For me, i’ve always tried to ensure that my leader monsters are inspired by the 4e warlord class, with powers that enable their allies to move and/or attack out of turn, and I also give them a +2 bonus to their will defence to reflect their knowledge/tactics.
At the end of the day, these are just my guidelines for tweaking monsters to speed up combat and make it slightly more dangerous for the characters. They don’t reflect racial abilities, or modifiers, for example, goblins should be quick and gain a +2 ref, while hobgoblins are well armoured and should gain +2 ac, and orcs are vicious warriors who fight to the death, and can gain +2 ac, +2 fort, +2 will, +2 to attack rolls, and +2 damage.
One thing that does annoy me is the way 4e handles damage, and this is somewhat obvious with the tweaks presented here. If a goblin soldier is armed with a short sword, a weapon that in the pc’s hand does 1d6 damage, it shouldn’t really be dealing 1d10 damage… You can of course scale the damage die back and just up the static damage, so 1d10+9 become 1dd6+11.