Talk:Monster Patterns and Roles: Difference between revisions

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if we wanted to get crazy, we could mix and match, any defense plus any reset/shakeup ability, making 9 total flavors of reset power.  just a thought.
if we wanted to get crazy, we could mix and match, any defense plus any reset/shakeup ability, making 9 total flavors of reset power.  just a thought.
== RFC: Skirmisher Role ==
* Counts as half a creature of the same CR for number, XP, and treasure values (i.e., 8 of them vs a party of 4 is a normal encounter)
* Has about half the hit points of a regular creature
* Hits about the same frequency as a normal monster
* Does about 1/2 the damage as a normal
* Same AC as regular monster (maybe a little less)
* Maybe add in a vulnerability or two?
* More movement than a regular creature?
This is in response to a request for a battle with more opponents that spread out damage around the the party a little more, without doing AOE against everyone at once, with the possibility to hit the high-AC party members w/o pounding the low-AC members into pudding.
[[User:Bstern|bstern]] <small>([[User talk:Bstern|talk]])</small> 03:31, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
i like this new option!  more variety in the Roles is a good thing.
now, a way to achieve a similar result is to run a -3CR encounter (which is discussed in the rules), in which it is recommended to include twice as many mobs to maintain adequate difficulty. the MMM does not allow a -3 adjustment, partly because 'pet mobs' like mohrghs and various giants get waaaay too strong if you lower their CR without also adjusting the CR of their summoned pets. (we probably need to re-look those mobs in light of the summoned monster blueprint existing now.)
another thing that discourages simply -3CR-ing existing mobs, and why the MMM is a max of -2, is that higher CR monsters are inherently tougher: they have better powers that are usable more freely. limiting GM's to a -2 keeps those 'stronger' monsters reasonably usable at -2 CR without further tweaks. just changing all the values of their base numbers by moving the CR up or down does not completely capture monster design. :)
now, to add this new Role, I'd say no to the idea of vulnerabilities or AC changes. if they are too nasty as written, lower their hitpoints to a third, or a quarter, as part of the new Role. if we are keeping these guys stateful (unlike minions, who have effectively only 'on' and 'off'), then we have full control of how much zest they bring to the table.
now, all of this is dependent on RD being able to develop new Role template changes, which might be a huge bother...or not.  he's the formatting guy, and is amazing at it. :)
lastly: if we want to make AC or 'negative power' adjustments, we COULD put in some negative CR Patterns. (i'm not a fan of this option, which is why there are none today.) of course, this would beg the question of Pattern integration into the MMM, which i'm eager to do, although it might be too much work or too complicated to make work, i do not know.
all-in-all: great idea!  love the 'skirmisher' notion. :)
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(RD) adding new roles isn't too bad, but it's not exactly simple either.  I'm currently working on the 1.0 character pass, and this would definitely distract from that. It would likely take me a day or so to add this, including a little debugging/testing to validate the changes.
(RD) It is my intention to essentially overhaul the monster template to allow the addition of up to two patterns, but that will take months, not days, and I'd prefer to do that after the 1.0 release, since it shouldn't inherently change any rules of the game (i.e. it should be transparent to players).  When I do that, I can make it a little more modular with regards to new roles or patterns being added to the game.  I was also planning, at that time, to create special fields for role-only powers, so we can clearly identify the powers we created specifically because we assumed certain monsters would always be roles.  If there are any other additions, or changes, that people would like to see the monster template do, it wouldn't hurt to start documenting those now.  (For example, we could change the way roles do extra damage from 'double' or 'triple' to some CR modifier, if we wanted, since that might scale better...)

Revision as of 18:12, 30 November 2020