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GnomeWorks
2010-12-13, 07:06 AM
One of the good things - one of the only good things - 4e did was make encounters more engaging than "walk up, full attack until somebody dies." Monsters with interesting abilities, with triggers on various conditions, various thematic things to make them stand out and be fun fights.

However, in my mind, 4e didn't go far enough. For one thing, their critters have way too much hit points... but anyway, the point here isn't to talk about why 4e fails, but to explore its ideas and see if we can do more interesting things.

I have long since stopped using 3.5-style monster design for my encounters, and instead - when I even bother to stat things out - gone to a 4e-style approach to monster design, despite my usage of 3.5. It actually works out pretty well.

The idea I've got here is the idea of incorporating weakpoints into monsters: the idea that there is one specific aspect of a creature that is not as tough or resilient as the rest of the creature. This obviously isn't a new idea; but this is more a question of execution than anything else.

The monster presented here is modeled after the giant crab at the end of River Belle Path from Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.

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RIVER CRAB Level 3 Solo
Huge Natural Animal (Lightning, Water)

Init +3
Spd: 20 ft.

Absorb: None
Immune: None
Resist: Damage (10), Lightning (5), Water (5)
Vuln: None

AC: 21
Touch: 13
Flat: 18
Flat Touch: 10

Fort: +7
Ref : +5
Will: +6

HP: 68 (Bloodied - 34)
Claw HP: 15
Shell HP: 40

ATTACKS
Claw: +6 v AC (1d8+4 dmg)
"The giant crab snaps at you with its enormous claw."

Bolt: +5 v Ref (1d6+2 lightning dmg)
"The creature spews a bolt of lightning from its mouth."

LIMITED POWERS (AP: 1)
Claw Hammer (Rng 2): Burst 2; +8 v Ref; 2d8+6 dmg AND Weakpoint. Rchg 4.
Weakpoint: Loses claw attack and cannot move until this attack recharges. Until this attack recharges,
the claw can be attacked, using the crab's statistics. If the claw is destroyed, this Weakpoint is
canceled, but the crab loses its claw attack permanently.

Boltaga: Burst 4; +8 v Ref; 2d6+4 lightning dmg. Rchg 5.

Bubbles: Immed @ bloodied; burst 5; +10 v Ref; slowed (Fort save ends) AND Followup.
Followup: +8 v Fort; ongoing water 3 (Fort save ends).

WEAKPOINTS
Claw: The crab's claw can only be attacked after it uses its Claw Hammer ability. The claw only has Resist:
Damage (3).
Benefit: The crab loses its Claw and Claw Hammer attacks.

Shell: The crab's shell can be attacked at any time. The shell has Resist: Slashing/Piercing (3), and Vulnerable: Bludgeoning (5).
Benefit: The crab loses its resistance to Damage, and its AC is lowered by 2 points.

ABILITIES
Multipart Monster: The river crab is a multipart monster.

The concept here, then, is that the crab has three parts - its body, its claw, and its shell.

PCs will want to blow up the claw when they can, because the claw's damage output (both base attack and power) is significantly higher than anything else it can do.

When they're not doing that, they'll want to pound on the shell, because that's what will largely prevent them from killing the thing (unless DR 10/- isn't that big a deal to them).

One of the things, I think, with weaknesses and multipart monsters is that you have to convey this information to the players. If you're using a combat grid of any kind, you'd want to differentiate these things - this here is where the claw landed, and where it stays; this here is the crab, and this part is its shell. You treat the different parts as different entities on the grid, while treating them mechanically as parts of the same creature. I'd even go so far as to say that the claw only shows up on the grid when its in the ground - that's the only time it really becomes a valid target.

Alternatively, if you want it to be more knowledge-based, you could present the creature as a single entity on the combat grid until they figure out the trick. For the claw, that doesn't really work, because they may need to figure that one out the hard way, and they only have so big of a window to deal with it... but for the shell, you could easily simply not add that to the grid. You'd have to ensure that your descriptions were adequately fair ("Your sword strikes true, but bounces harmlessly off the creature's tough carapace..."), though players unaccustomed to this kind of monster construction will take that merely as a high DR with no way around it (rather than attempting to find the weakpoint). You could put smaller versions of such a boss creature throughout the area around it, so that they have the opportunity to find out the tricks against creatures not nearly as dangerous (though doing so reduces the impact of the "boss," IMO - makes it less interesting/unique if you've been fighting mini-river crabs all afternoon).

At the end of the day - I find the idea of monsters being designed with weakpoints such as "vulnerable to X energy type" to be very bland and boring. It works for mooks and less-important enemies, but if you want a boss fight to be memorable, you've got to make it interesting. Heck, even normal encounters can be spiced up if you include relatively simple multipart enemies with one part being an obvious weakpoint.

Let me know what you think of this critter, and - more importantly - the potential execution of this concept.

olelia
2010-12-13, 07:14 AM
Interesting idea...reminds of a PsP game monster hunter where you could basically "break" down monsters by attacking different sections. Ie: You could repeatedly hit its legs to collapse the creature and get to the face.

Also, I LoLed at the mixture of Pokemon bubbles and claw hammer and then a dash of Final Fantasy with Boltaga :smallbiggrin:

GnomeWorks
2010-12-13, 07:18 AM
Interesting idea...reminds of a PsP game monster hunter where you could basically "break" down monsters by attacking different sections. Ie: You could repeatedly hit its legs to collapse the creature and get to the face.

Ya, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Rather than making combats all about the damage-dealing, throw in some actual for-serious tactical decisions to make.


Also, I LoLed at the mixture of Pokemon bubbles and claw hammer and then a dash of Final Fantasy with Boltaga :smallbiggrin:

Well, as mentioned, the critter is based off of the giant crab in FF:CC, which... spewed slowing bubbles? I don't know. It was weird. Any relation to Pokemon is unintentional.

I was unaware there was anything like "claw hammer" in Pokemon.

gkathellar
2010-12-13, 08:31 AM
Does this mechanic allow you to attack the weakpoint of this giant enemy crab for massive damage?

GnomeWorks
2010-12-13, 08:38 AM
Does this mechanic allow you to attack the weakpoint of this giant enemy crab for massive damage?

A good point.

I guess there are two ways of approaching weakpoints - either the weakpoint allows you to deal extra damage, or the rest of the creature is highly resistant to damage.

In this instance, the crab itself is highly resistant to damage (damage resistance 10), while the shell is not so much (and is even vulnerable to bludgeoning damage).

In the crab's case, the shell is treated somewhat as an independent creature - it has its own hit points. Damaging the shell doesn't damage the crab, but it will allow you to hurt it later on.

However, I see some problems with using weakpoints to cause more damage. For one thing, you have to have a tighter control on when it shows up - say, after tripping the creature, you can get at its underbelly until it rights itself. You may run into issues, though, with groups deciding to say "screw it" and just pounding the creature normally, rather than trying for the weakpoint, if the rewards of doing so are minimal.

gkathellar
2010-12-13, 08:41 AM
The fact that you made that reference made me laugh, but the fact that you made it by accident is going to have me chuckling all day. Apparently you haven't communed sufficiently with that mad and dreaming elder god, Internet. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Enemy_Crab)

Knaight
2010-12-13, 09:04 AM
A potential problem with this is that the crab's claws and such can only be attacked after a certain event. It scripts combat too much, removing options. Of course, the easiest way around this is a variable AC system, which shouldn't be hard to implement. As such, an example is relevant, stripped down to a reasonable size.

Giant Gun Turtle
Shell AC 10 DR 20
Under-shell: AC 20 DR 5
Gun: AC 25, DR 10 (Separate health pool)
Flippers: AC 15 DR 10
Head: AC 15 DR 5
Inner Mouth: AC 30 DR 0
Offensive Measures
Flipper Slap: +5/+5 2d6 damage
Snap: +10 3d8 damage. Provokes AoO to the Head.
Fire Breath: 2d10 Reflex half 15ft Cone. Reduces Inner Mouth AC by 20 until next round.
Gunfire: 3d10 Reflex half 2 60 ft Lines. Reduces Gun and Under Shell AC by 10 until next round.
Defensive Measures
Fast Snap: All non AoO attacks against the head provoke an AoO Snap.

GnomeWorks
2010-12-13, 09:44 AM
The fact that you made that reference made me laugh, but the fact that you made it by accident is going to have me chuckling all day. Apparently you haven't communed sufficiently with that mad and dreaming elder god, Internet. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Enemy_Crab)

Sorry, I've generally got better things to do than acquaint myself with internet esoterica.


A potential problem with this is that the crab's claws and such can only be attacked after a certain event. It scripts combat too much, removing options. Of course, the easiest way around this is a variable AC system, which shouldn't be hard to implement. As such, an example is relevant, stripped down to a reasonable size.

Eh... I don't see it as a problem.

The whole point of Weakpoints, I think, is explicitly to remove options - you're telling your players, through usage of such creatures, that their standard tactics won't work, that they have to think this fight through and figure it out. Fight it on the NPC's terms, rather than their own.

You'll note that in my example, destroying the claw is not integral to beating the critter - the shell can be attacked at any time, and is the goal. Blowing up the claw is a benefit to those in melee, or it can just as easily be ignored if you've got all ranged folk in the fight.

Zeta Kai
2010-12-13, 09:56 AM
A potential problem with this is that the crab's claws and such can only be attacked after a certain event. It scripts combat too much, removing options.

I don't see how adding conditional like this would remove options from the players. It just makes things more interesting. I suppose that it technically scripts combat, but no more than subtracting HP from an enemy after I deal them damage; it's just an "if I do this, then that happens scenario", which is a good script, if you ask me.

Lapak
2010-12-13, 02:16 PM
This is interesting!

I was just reading a series of blog posts the other day (can't recall who pointed me to them) regarding solo monster design in 4e. The author took a different approach to multi-part monsters you might find interesting: rather than have weak spots, they worked up three similar-but-distinct stat blocks, each with a third of the monster's total hit points, to represent how its tactics and abilities changed as the PCs beat it down. So a Red Dragon gets replaced with a Furious Red Dragon statblock after losing a third of its hit points, and then a Bloody Red Dragon once it's down to two-thirds. It's worth a read (http://angrydm.com/category/features/for-dungeon-masters/the-boss-fight/) if you want to mine it for ideas; the basic premise seems like it would translate just fine to 3.5.

GnomeWorks
2010-12-13, 05:55 PM
I don't see how adding conditional like this would remove options from the players. It just makes things more interesting. I suppose that it technically scripts combat, but no more than subtracting HP from an enemy after I deal them damage; it's just an "if I do this, then that happens scenario", which is a good script, if you ask me.

That's my thought. Doing something like this will generally encourage the combat to go a certain way, if the players know what's up, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. At least it's more interesting than "walk up and full-attack until dead."


The author took a different approach to multi-part monsters you might find interesting: rather than have weak spots, they worked up three similar-but-distinct stat blocks, each with a third of the monster's total hit points, to represent how its tactics and abilities changed as the PCs beat it down.

I did that pretty much day one, due to my experiences in WoW, as soon as I started implemented 4e-style combat design into my 3.5 games. I referred to them as Phased creatures, whose stat-blocks had the potential to change entirely when they hit bloodied; the first one I designed was a three-phase creature, so it changed form/abilities at half and quarter hp.

For kicks, here's the first "phased" creature I designed using that method...




MATEUS - PHASE 1 Level 12 Solo Controller
Large Immortal Construct (Lucavi)

Init +10
Spd: 40 ft. (Fly 100 ft. [Avg])

Absorb: Shadow (5)
Immune: Poison
Resist: Cold (25)
Vuln: Fire (10), Holy (10)

AC: 28
Touch: 18
Flat: 20
Flat Touch: 14

Fort: +10
Ref: +9
Will: +13

HP: 264 (Bloodied - 132)

ATTACKS
Staff: +14 v AC (2d8+5 dmg)

Frostbolt (rng 10): +13 v Ref (3d6+3 cold)

LIMITED POWERS
Winter Blast: Stan; one target w/in 30 ft; target takes 2d6+4 cold dmg (+10 v Ref)
and is pushed 3 squares (save negates). Rchg 4.

Blizzard: Stan; 15-ft burst within 30 ft, deal 3d6+5 cold dmg (+10 v Ref). Rchg 5.

Flashfreeze: Stan, one target w/in 30 ft; target takes -10 ft to move for 5 rds,
and takes 5 cold dmg on each turn (+9 v Fort). Rchg 6.

Frozen Star: Immed, @ bloodied; ground w/in 5 squares becomes difficult,
all creatures affected take 2d6+4 cold damage, (+9 v Fort) for half,
creatures affected are slowed for 1 round (save negates).
Mateus [Phase 1] => Mateus [Phase 2]

ABILITIES
Wintry Cloud: Creatures take 4 cold dmg at start of their turns if w/in 3 squares.

=====

MATEUS - PHASE 2 Level 12 Solo Controller
Medium Immortal Humanoid (Lucavi)

Init +10
Spd: 40 ft. (Fly 100 ft. [Avg])

Absorb: Shadow (5)
Immune: Poison
Vuln: Holy (10)

AC: 26
Touch: 16
Flat: 19
Flat Touch: 15

Fort: +8
Ref: +12
Will: +13

HP: 132 (Bloodied - 66)

ATTACKS
Staff: +14 v AC (2d8+5 dmg)

Corrupting Touch: +12 v TOUCH (1d8+4 shadow) AND
target gains vuln shadow 5 (+12 v Ref).

LIMITED POWERS
Strength of Corruption: Stan; +16 v AC (3d8+7 dmg). Rchg 4.

Shadow Pulse: Stan; 15-ft burst within 30 ft; deal 3d6+5 shadow dmg (+13 v Will).
Rchg 5.

True Domination: Full; one creature (+10 v Will); control the creature's next turn.
Rchg 6.

Scream of the Lucavi: Immed, first bloodied; deal 3d6+2 sonic and 3d6+2 shadow damage to
all creatures within 50 feet (+13 v Will).

ABILITIES
Evasion: No damage on successful Ref save against AoEs.

Awesome Presence [Fear]: -2 to atk this creature.

Frantic Survival: If bloodied, Mateus [Phase 2] => Mateus [Phase 3].

=====

MATEUS - PHASE 3 Level 12 Solo Controller
Medium Immortal Humanoid (Lucavi)

Init +10
Spd: 40 ft. (Fly 100 ft. [Avg])

Absorb: Shadow (5)
Immune: Poison
Vuln: Holy (10)

AC: 24
Touch: 14
Flat: 17
Flat Touch: 13

Fort: +6
Ref: +10
Will: +11

HP: 66 (Bloodied - 33)

ATTACKS
Staff: +16 v AC (2d8+5 dmg)

Corrupting Touch: +14 v TOUCH (1d8+4 shadow) AND
target gains vuln shadow 5 (+12 v Ref).

Shadow Drain: +13 v WILL, target takes ongoing shadow 5 AND
this damage heals Mateus 5.

LIMITED POWERS
Shadow Nova: Full; 20-ft burst within 50 ft; (+13 v Ref) all creatures
take 3d6+6 shadow damage, save for half. Rchg 5.

True Domination: Full; one creature (+12 v Will); control the creature's next turn.
Rchg 6.

ABILITIES
Evasion: No damage on successful Ref save against AoEs.

Dark Aura: Creatures take 5 shadow dmg at start of their turns if w/in 3 squares.

Frantic Survival: Returns to Phase 2 if HP > 66.



Multipart monsters would be something like the two-headed turtle from Turtle Rock in LoZ:LttP: the creature very clearly has segments that behave differently, and should be stat'd differently, but are still part of a single cohesive whole.

Knaight
2010-12-13, 07:27 PM
I don't see how adding conditional like this would remove options from the players. It just makes things more interesting. I suppose that it technically scripts combat, but no more than subtracting HP from an enemy after I deal them damage; it's just an "if I do this, then that happens scenario", which is a good script, if you ask me.

Removes options was, in retrospect, clumsy wording. Its more that it creates options in a very incomplete state, if the claws can be targeted after the crab attacks, then why can't they be targeted by someone ambushing the crab out of a tree, or jumping really high, or just using a nice big spear? The variable AC method is a simple solution, which allows all that while still acknowledging that some opportunities are much easier than others. Hitting a claw right after it impacts the ground at full speed has to be much easier than hitting a claw effectively when it is still fully mobile, so there is an AC drop.