To Be Continued?

I'm already a little behind on my final post for this month, so I'm just quickly writing to say that it'll be a while before the next update. Life's been busy as of late, the rules for Solo monsters aren't quite ready yet, and I was planning on taking a break from the blog in July anyway.

I've done a little bit more playtesting, and it's clear that some classes still need some work, or possibly that the damage math as a whole needs to be retooled. Hopefully it is something that can be solved, but it may mean a major overhaul (and a redraft of the rules is probably overdue, anyway.)

I will be aiming to have another post ready sometime in August, but if things go better than expected, I may be able to squeeze one out before the end of July.


Take care!

Monster Math -- Part 3: Standards & Elites

Standard Monsters

When building an encounter, your standard monster should have about the same HP as a PC would; this gives us a range between 24 and 32. However, in terms of budgeting, we should use two standard monsters per one PC; as such, we can adjust the HP of standard monsters up or down. For example, you could have one monster with 20 HP and another with 36 HP to account for the encounter budget value of one PC.

Standard monsters will use the "monster roll" of 1d6+1d10 for damage, but this damage can be split across two "attacks" i.e. triggering two separate Defense rolls from the PC target. Standard monsters also use 1d6+1d10 for all of their rolls.

As touched on in a previous post, we can customize different monsters by applying bonuses or penalties to different rolls (skill checks, initiative checks, damage, and opportunity attacks.) This is how our monsters will primarily set themselves apart from one another.


Elite Monsters

An elite monster should have double the HP of one PC. Elites gain Advantage on damage rolls; this functions similarly to the "double roll and stack" rule, except that both dice can be treated as maximum value. While it shouldn't be necessary, the DM can choose to "pull punches" and only maximize one (or neither) of the dice.

Elite monsters cannot be Intimidated unless they are Bloodied. In addition, they do not take extra damage from attacks that are critical successes; these types of successes against Elites can still be "banked" for Advantage later in the same encounter.

Generally, DMs should use more than one elite monster in an encounter (if they are going to use them at all); PCs will often focus on the biggest, baddest enemy, so sometimes it's a good idea to make it harder to prioritize a single target. An elite monster uses the encounter budget value of one PC.

I wanted to give elite monsters a few more perks, so as a special rule, they do not roll for initiative. Instead, they simply act on the highest initiative rolled for the monsters, by the DM. This also serves to set a limit on elites in terms of encounter budgeting; there must be at least one non-elite monster in every encounter group (to roll initiative for any elites in the encounter.)


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Next post should be up on June 25th, where I hope to touch on Solo encounters, as well as polish up some of the monster rules a bit more.

Monster Math -- Part 2: Minions & Swarms

In a previous post (where I touched on encounter-building) I had figured out that the budget/ratio for minions would be about 10 HD per 1 PC.

We want to give the DM some tools with which to construct their encounters, so both minions and swarms will be built off of this same budget, but with distinct mechanics, to help differentiate them from one another.


Minions
One of the things that was touched on in the last Monster Math post was that we don't want "cheap" enemies (such as minions) to be able to overwhelm the PCs with skill checks. With this is mind, we're going to bend the core mechanics a little: instead of needing to roll a 10 or higher to succeed at a skill check, minions need to roll a number equal to or lower than their current HD. Their skill checks will still use the universal "monster roll" of 1d6 and 1d10.

When a minion takes the "Use a Skill" action, the DM makes a monster roll, and can then decide which skill to use. Minions will have their skills rated as follows:

• Poor: use the d10 result
• Fair: use the d6 result
• Good: use either die result for the check

With this setup in mind, we'll want to cap the number of HD that a minion can have. For example, a 6 HD minion would succeed at a "Fair" check without needing to roll. As such, minions should have less than 5 HD; minions with 5 or more HD will be treated as swarms.

In terms of damage, minions do not roll, but instead simply deal damage equal to their current HD (meaning they deal less damage as they take damage themselves.) Further, when minions target a PC, it does not provoke a Defense roll; the damage is simply automatic, to facilitate faster DM turns. Notably, minions will only deal damage to a single target, and they will be treated as one enemy for the purposes of PC attacks.

Swarms

So while they will essentially be minions of 5 HD or more, swarms will operate a little differently than their minion counterparts. Firstly, they will use the same skill mechanism as Standard or Elite monsters; roll 1d6+1d10, and succeed on a 10 or higher. Also, swarms will be limited to using only melee attacks.

Where swarms really set themselves apart from minions is in targeting:

For the purpose of PCs using attacks:

• unengaged swarms count as multiple enemies
• swarms that are part of a maelstrom count as one enemy

For the purpose of dealing damage:

• unengaged swarms may deal their damage to a single target
• swarms that are part of a maelstrom must split their damage amongst PCs in that maelstrom

What this does is that it makes loose swarms more dangerous in terms of their ability to "focus fire" but also makes them easier to deal damage to; swarms that are part of a maelstrom are harder to damage, but are less deadly to a single target if the party chooses to gang up on the swarm. We also need to cap the maximum number of HD that swarms can have; I think that 10-15 is a good range, if we reverse-engineer from the HP of our PCs. 

Encounter Guidelines

While we have established that 1 PC = 10 HD worth of minions or swarms, we need to further cap this number in terms of the numbers used to build an entire encounter. The reason for this, is because of the nature of minions and swarms dealing damage automatically.

Since PCs cap out at 32 HP, this means we should never have a combined number of enemies with more than this number of HD in an encounter; we don't want minions or swarms to be able to focus fire and kill one or more PCs before they can even act. The general expectation I have set for myself when building monsters, is that an "average" fight should be able to take the PCs down to half their maximum HP (around 15.)

This sets a good range for us: 15 to 30 HD. Since we know minions and swarms get weaker as the fight goes on (and they take damage) we can skew "hard" encounters towards the higher end of that range, but keep easier fights at the lower end.

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Next post should be about Standard & Elite monsters, so look for that on (or after) June 15th!