The Trouble With Solo Monsters
June 14th, 2010 | 
Boomer
BoomerI ran a 4E solo encounter against my party for the first time, and it sucked. The idea was basically to have them encounter a powerful draconic guardian to strike fear into their hearts and make them think carefully about using The Ways in the future. What are the Ways? I'll save that for another column.
The whole point of a solo monster is to provide a single interesting, dynamic opponent that can challenge the entire party and keep the player's attention. For 4E, that means that the monster needs to be able to act like 5 monsters for damage, staying power (HP), and actions, and the monster needs to stay interesting.
The major problem was the dragon. I used a young Shadow Dragon for my Guardian. This is a lurker with the ability to create a zone of darkness and a necrotic breath weapon. It should have been scary. It should have been devastating. It should have had my players nervous. Instead, it was annoying to them.
Act Like Five Monsters
Solos need to be able to take more actions than a standard monster. Standard monsters get one standard action, one move action and one minor. Solo monsters get the same thing. That's a real problem. If you quintuple the solo's damage for a basic attack, he'll potentially kill a party member every other round. That doesn't work out to be a fun combat. So instead, they need a way to engage multiple times.
Ideally, the solo makes the equivalent of five standard attacks on its turn. Some of these attacks might be moved to immediate reactions, but the solo needs to get those 5 attacks in.
Even better, Chris Sims suggests that you let your solo monsters take two turns on different initiative steps. I really like this and want to try it out soon.
Be resilient
Solo fights quickly devolve into a static dogpile with a load of status effects. Solos need to be able to keep moving and shake off status effects. They need to be able to recharge powers to stay dynamic. If you give your solo two turns, then you have two chances to recharge and two chances to save vs. effects.
Keep it Moving
Solos need to fill several roles, since they don't have the same team of artillery, controllers, soldiers and skirmishers that a standard encounter group has. As I said, solo fights typically devolve into static dog piles. The best way to counter that is to keep your solo moving and create powers that are going to push the party around and open up space for movement. Also, remember that BY DESIGN, a solo cannot go toe-to-toe with the entire party and win, so solos need to isolate one or two party members and hammer them.
Stay Interesting
Fighting a solo is boring, but it doesn't have to be. A solo monster needs to change its behavior as the battle progresses. I think a solo should have at least four modes that the solo moves through as the battle progresses: An opening move, the main mode, a bloodied mode, and a dramatic ending. The players must feel like the battle is dynamic and progressing towards a conclusion.
An Opening Move
This needs to be a big, exciting sequence of actions that introduces the monster, sets the mood for the fight, establishes the flavor for the monster, and dish out some pain to the majority of the party to grab their attention. For Shadow Dragons, this needs to be something like Frightful Presence followed immediately by the Breath Weapon, followed by the Globe of Darkness.
This opening needs to scream "I AM A REAL THREAT"
The Main Mode
In this mode, the solo needs to operate like 5 monsters. It needs to dish out as much damage as a standard encounter group. Ideally, the monster should have several attacks that are engaging multiple foes. Remember, a solo is supposed to be the equivalent of 5 monsters.
Bloodied Mode
Once the solo becomes bloodied, it needs to fight differently for the rest of the fight. At this point, the monster should begin to behave as though it recognizes it's in a decisive battle. It may lose certain modes of attack and gain new ones. The monster needs to do one of the following:
Changes the battlefield environment - The solo summons minions, creates zones, dominates or charms an opponent, or moves to a better position on the battlefield every turn.
Fight Harder - The solo starts to dish out more damage to more opponents. This makes the solo much more dangerous to engage.
Prepare an escape - the solo sets up and executes an escape from the party. This could be a combination of zones and effects, or an improvement in defenses and it should take more than one round. The key is to telegraph to the party that the monster wants to run. Typically, this signals to the party that they can win decisively if they can lock down the monster and finish him.
Dramatic Ending
Finally, a monster needs to have a great ending. This should be a final dose of pain to give the party something to remember it by. This can be anything. It can be an escape action, or an explosion of energy. It might be a final flurry of attacks as it dies or summoning some new monsters. It could be a massive escape power that knocks everyone down and allows the monster to move. Whatever the choice, it should be as big and painful as the opening move was.
I agree with your assessment of what a solo monster needs 100%, but I don't think you're right about D&D solo monsters lacking that. The one you chose might've been particularly bad, but, for example, I used a Behir in my last campaign and it was a great fight. Of course, it has the ability to act on multiple initiative steps like you suggested.
Good luck getting it to work out for you in the future.
I've read this a few times, and see things I like and things I thin kI can bulid on in my next adventure, thanks for the tips.
Having been a DM for a couple of Weeks now, I have Realised somehting with Bosses that is exactly what this Topic states. The new Monsters in the Dark Sun campain (At least the one I've been running) suck horribly and an entire group of them was taken out by one person. I kid you not. He took very little damage overall (Probably because I was trying to play by the WoW style rules where the Tank is the target) but it jsut didn't feel like they were designed to put up a fight like the previous campain I was playing. I flipped ahead and saw thel ast encoutner. The strogest monster in there had 100 HP and the monstersi n the second Encounter had...100HP. I actually used it as a place holder for one of my encoutners I was testing out and....It was viciously and brutally Raped. (Im not kidding, I mean this guy might as well have taken it's pants off and bent over. it was pathetic.) I seriosuly thought there would have been more thoguth to the monsters but there all pathetic.
I will say this. I am definitly using these tactics in my Campains from now on.