Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Index

I have been working for months in an article series updating the monsters in adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens to modern (i.e. post-MM3 standards). Here is a list of the articles released so far.

Introduction

1. Trolls
2. Encounter 1
3. Encounter T2
4. Encounter W1
5. Encounter W4
6. Encounters W2, W3
7. Encounters W5, W6
8. Encounters I1, W7

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Monsters of the Trollhaung VIII: Encounters I1, W7

Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Index – Previous - Next

** SPOILER ALERT**
These articles update monsters in adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens – reading them may spoil encounters in the module!

A couple of big, bad trolls…

Skalmad the Troll King (Level 13 Elite Soldier)

The players at last get to meet the King, and it should be a scary fight. The original stat block for Skalmad is surprisingly decent, though it suffers from outdated stats (i.e. poor damage) and a real, Elite-like double attack. With a few updates, it should prove a worthy foe

1. Changes introduced

• Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race. Since Skalmad is an elite, I gave it twice the usual amount of regeneration and had Troll Healing bring it back with more HP.
• Modern Elite: Elite monsters should have roughly as many attacks as two standard monsters, so I gave Skalmad an at-will double attack in Dual Axe, and boosted the encounter and recharging powers to a more impressive level. I also added a bit of damage to Baleful Eye.
• Modern Soldier: Aside from lowering attack bonuses, I changed the basic attack to mark as an effect. Toppling Swing became a downright scary attack with the addition of a daze (on top of the existing prone effect), but I made it target only marked enemies. This prevents Skalmad from using all its most powerful attacks in the first round, and adds quite a bit of strategy to the monster.
• Removed redundancy: The claw attack was pointless, so I deleted it.

 

Warren Troll (Level 11 Brute)

See Encounter W1.

Nothic Gazer (Level 11 Artillery)

See Encounter W6.

Thurk, Troll Smith (Level 12 Soldier)

1. Changes introduced

• Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race. Since Skalmad is an elite, I gave it twice the usual amount of regeneration and had Troll Healing bring it back with more HP.
• Modern Soldier: Aside from lowering attack bonuses, I changed the basic attack to mark as an effect. Toppling Swing became a downright scary attack with the addition of a daze (on top of the existing prone effect), but I made it target only marked enemies. This prevents Skalmad from using all its most powerful attacks in the first round, and adds quite a bit of strategy to the monster.
• Removed redundancy: The claw attack was pointless, so I deleted it.

Redspawn Firebelcher (Level 12 Artillery)

1. Changes introduced

• Updated defenses, attack bonuses, and damage. This is a simple yet serviceable monster, so a couple of straightforward number tweaks should leave it ready for use. I upped the ranged attack accuracy, increased damage all around, and boosted some defenses which where excessively weak.

Grimlock Minion (Level 14 Minion)

1. Changes introduced

• Added Role (Brute). As an old minion, this one was missing a role. Brute was the most fitting, by far.
• Updated defenses, attack bonus, damage. This monster’s stats were unusually low, to the point that they wouldn’t have been out of place in a minion with several less levels. Now it’s up to par with modern minions.
• Added Trait (Grimlock Resilience). I stole this one from the Human Slaves in Dark Sun, and I think it’s an amazing design. This lets you have threatening minions even if you don’t use any special houserule for minions. With our house rules, they were pretty impressive, though not to the point of becoming unbalanced.

All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. These statistics blocks were generated using the D&D Adventure Tools, despite the tons of bugs. Except for the ones where I gave up, and used MS Word instead. Read More......

Monsters of the Trollhaunt VII: Encounter W5, W6

Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Index – Previous - Next

** SPOILER ALERT**
These articles update monsters in adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens – reading them may spoil encounters in the module!

There’s one of these in every dungeon…

Adult Black Dragon (Level 11 Solo Lurker)

The template for fun, challenging dragons has been laid out in the Monster Vault, so the following stat block won’t be much of a surprise to anyone. Still, not all levels of dragons appear in that book, so I’ve had to scale the Young version all the way to level 11. For the most part, I left the original design untouched, except for one significant exception.

If you are interested in further discussion on dragon redesign, I recommend my previous articles on black dragons (now obsoleted by more recent books) and white dragons.

1. Issues identified

• Acidic Blood is a beating. Seriously, I’m all for tough solos, but acidic blood can wreck any party moderately reliant on melee attacks, unless they are loaded with acid resistance potions. Shroud of Gloom aggravates this to ridiculous proportions.

2. Changes introduced

• Level up: I used the Young Black Dragon from Monster Vault as baseline, and increased its stats.
• Acidic Blood nerfed: I simply changed the damage to ongoing damage. This prevents multiple triggers from stacking, but is still painful enough for PCs to try and find a workaround, particularly if Shroud of Gloom is active (which it will).

3. Errata

• Breath Weapon is enemies only. I missed this from my stat block (didn’t realize it had changed!), but it was not an intended change on my part. Note that I haven’t simply fixed the stat block due to the way the Monster Builder works (it doesn’t) – once I have saved as an image, I’m pretty much done with the monster, unless I want to start again from scratch. Incidentally, this is why I have switched to Word for stat blocks of later monsters.

Option for Encounter W5: one Water Elemental (Level 11 Controller)

I felt like the dragon encounter could use some spicing up, so I decided to add a Water Elemental lying in the pool. In this case, I merely took the monster from Monster Manual 3 and used it as written – I love when I can do that!

Warren Troll (Level 11 Brute)

See Encounter W1.

Boulder Troll (Level 9 Artillery)

One of the trolls is supposed to stand back throwing stones, so I switched it for a more appropriate artillery version. The Boulder Troll is described in Encounter 1

Nothic Gazer (Level 11 Artillery)

1. Issues identified

• Lack of variety. Rotting gaze is not a bad attack, but it’s the only one. I usually like some encounter or rechargeable attack, to make a monster more interesting.

2. Changes introduced.

• New power: Rot Burst. This is a strong area attack that requires rotting gaze to be active on a target. Typically, it will take a nothic gazer several turns before rot burst can be active, since an enemy can save against the rot before the nothic’s next turn. However, when you have multiple nothics in an encounter, they can focus fire on a target so that the second nothic will be able to use rot burst if the first one hit. Then again, a significant portion of the damage from rot burst is non-stacking ongoing damage, so a third nothic might prefer to use rotting gaze against a different target. At any rate, the mechanics encourage players to keep away from rotting allies, which is a flavorful and fun effect.

All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. These statistics blocks were generated using the D&D Adventure Tools, despite the tons of bugs.

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Monsters of the Trollhaunt VI: Encounters W2, W3

Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Index – Previous - Next

** SPOILER ALERT**
These articles update monsters in adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens – reading them may spoil encounters in the module!

Something is rotten in the Trollhaunt Warrens – and it’s the monsters in today’s article!

Marrowmaw Mauler (Level 8 Soldier)

1. Issues identified

• Claw attack is redundant, serves no purpose
• Relies too much on Bite for damage.
• Lack of mark punishment

2. Changes introduced

• Attacks: reduced accuracy, increased ranged damage. Damage shifted from Bite to Greatclub. Note that this monster’s melee damage was already competitive with MM3 guidelines thanks to minor action Bite.
• Defenses: –1 Fortitude
• New power: Enduring Stench
• Removed power: Claw

Kasszt (Level 9 Elite Controller - Leader)

1. Issues identified:

• Claw attack is redundant, serves no purpose
• Cavern Curse is extremely weak, no point in casting it.
• Chant of Renewal has not enough impact for an Elite standard action power.

2. Changes introduced.

• Attacks: Increased damage and accuracy for Quarterstaff, increased damage for Poison Ray, Cavern Curse. Quarterstaff now pushes. Cavern Curse is now at-will.
• Powers: Double Ray now gives a choice of Poison Rays or Cavern Curse. Chant of renewal now costs a minor action.
• Defenses: –2 AC, –1 For.
• Removed power: Claw

Nothic Stalker (Level 11 Skirmisher)

1. Issues identified

• Dazing Gaze too annoying as an at-will. Also, triggering Dazing Gaze off a Retaliate is too frustrating
• No Skirmisher mobility

2. Changes introduced.

• Attacks: Increased damage and accuracy for Claw, increased damage for Dazing Gaze. Dazing Gaze is now recharge 3+. Claw now grants extra shift.

 

Troglodyte Mauler (Level 6 Soldier)

Using level 6 monsters against PCs of level 11 or 12 is downright silly. These should have been minions instead. I used 2 types of minions for this: Troglodyte Grunts, and Troglodyte Warriors.

Troglodyte Grunt (Level 12 Minion Skirmisher)

There is a skirmisher troglodyte minion in Monster Vault, which could be used with minimum update effort, once I had added some levels to it.

1. Issues identified

• Lack of a ranged attack. I wanted at least some of my minions to have a Javelin attack, since the encounter was designed with Maulers, which have one.

2. Changes introduced.

• Level Up:  +6 to attack and defenses, +3 to damage. +5 Initiative.
• Attacks: I added a slide effect to the Club attack, to make it a bit more interesting.
• Defenses: –3 For, +1 Ref, +1 Wil
• New Power: Javelin ranged attack.

Troglodyte Warrior (Level 12 Minion Soldier)

1. Issues identified

• Old school minion. The warrior lacked a proper role, decent damage, and compelling abilities. Basically, this called for a completely new design.

2. Changes introduced.

• Soldier Role: Since the Maulers I were replacing with minions were soldiers to begin with, I wanted these Warriors to be Soldiers, too.
• Attacks: +2 attack and damage for Club.
• Defenses: +3 AC, +1 Ref, +2 Wil
• New Trait: Defender Aura. I could have used a mark as usual, but I wanted to experiment with different mechanics.
• New Power: Ferocious Bite. I liked the Mauler’s Bite attack, but minor action attacks don’t make a lot of sense for minions. This is a vicious ability for this kind of monster
• New Power: Ferocious Reflexes. I needed a mark-enforcing power, and the threat of Bite should be an effective deterrent.

3. Gameplay Notes

To my knowledge, there is no precedent for monsters with defender’s aura. I have been playing for months in a party with a Cavalier, and I must say I loved the mechanic and wanted to see how it played out on the monster side. And it was quite a success! These minions were not particularly sticky (since they did not punish enemy shifts), but the ability to defend a zone works great when present in multiple creatures. My players took a while to get used to it, but it felt fair, fun, and quite different from traditional mark mechanics. I’ll definitely use this for future monsters, both minion and not.

 

Marrowmaw Impaler (Level 9 Artillery)

See Encounter W1

Ssark, Battle Champion (Level 11 Elite Soldier - Leader)

1. Issues identified:

• Excessive damage. The Battle Champion Tactics trait combined with two attacks from Double Attack and a third from Bite combines for impressive amounts of damage, that can be concentrated on a single PC. I found this to be too dangerous for a monster of its level.
• Redundant Claw attack.
• Inspiring Assault is very unimpressive. I had the luck of scoring a critical hit during my encounter with Ssark. Unfortunately, I can’t say this highly situational trait did much for the monsters – it needs to provide a better reward.
• Soldier without marks. Too common in older monsters.

2. Changes introduced.

• Attacks: Reduced accuracy and increased damage for regular attacks. Bite damage was reduced, because Ssark already gets a damage boost with combat advantage. Added mark to Greatclub and Bite, and leader effects to Greatclub and Javelin. Changed Double Attack to prevent using both attacks on a single target. Changed Javelin to target one or two enemies.
• Defenses: –2 AC, –1 For
• Traits: Battle Champion Tactics damage reduced to 1d10
• New Power: Champion’s Revenge – the necessary mark punishment mechanic.
• Removed Power: Claw

All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. I tried to generate the statistics blocks using the D&D Adventure Tools, but I’m fed with the endless bugs. I ended up writing them on Word instead.

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Monsters of the Trollhaunt V: Encounter W4

Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Index – Previous - Next

** SPOILER ALERT**
This is a series of articles about the monsters included in the adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens- so you may want to stop reading, if you intend to play the module anytime soon.

 

Our party keeps delving into the dungeon. Here are the updated monster stat blocks for their second encounter there.

Blackfire Flameskull (Level 10 Artillery)

Aside from its outdated stats, this flameskull isn’t as broken as you’d think by looking at my extensive list of revisions. Several of the changes I made were due to my personal preferences and expected party composition, rather than things that were inherently wrong. If you want to remain more faithful to the original monster, just changing the Fireball and updating damage would do the trick.

1. Issues identified:

- Flying Artillery. Your mileage may vary, but I find that combining flight and monsters that can attack at long range can often lead to annoying encounters unless a DM deliberately makes poor strategic choices. This is particularly true at heroic and lower paragon levels, where melee PCs can’t be expected to have a method to counter flying enemies other than ranged basic attacks. Given that 60% of the enemies in this encounter were flameskulls, and that my party was very melee-heavy, I really wanted to change the monster to prevent turn after turn of throwing javelins.
- Lack of reach. I only realized this after playing the encounter. Once the monster’s near immunity to melee was taken away (by limiting flight), we found that it could become extremely vulnerable to certain varieties of defender, on account of having reach 0 on its melee attacks. Typical artilleries get screwed enough when engaged by a defender, on account of having terrible AC and HP, and lousy melee attacks, but flameskulls are even worse off. Against a defender that punishes shifting (like fighters or cavaliers), reach 0 means that you can’t even make a bad melee attack without taking damage.
- Devastating opening attack. As bad as it is for wizard PCs, Fireball makes for a great monster power. It is not rare for a flameskull to target all PCs with its fireball on the first turn of an encounter, dishing out quite a bit of damage. This is particularly troublesome in multiples, though - put two (or three, like in this encounter) of these monsters together, and you can end up with most of the party bloodied before they even know what hit them!

2. Changes introduced.

- Added maximum altitude. Maximum altitude is a mechanic I’d like to see on more low-level flying monsters. Setting this at two stops flameskulls from sitting comfortably at the dungeon ceiling without worrying about melee attacks, though they retain an amazing level of mobility.
- New melee power: Fiery Assault. This is not particularly elegant, but after seeing three (!) skulls locked down by a cavalier, unable to do anything without taking considerable amounts of radiant damage, I am persuaded that they need a method to use their humble bites against defenders.
- Blackfire Ray blinding toned down. Blinded (save ends) is way above the power curve for an at-will attack from a non-Controller monster. I opted for gradual blindness instead.
- Fireball now has ongoing damage. After lowering Fireball damage (or, rather, not increasing it) to leave it as 100% of a normal attack instead of 125%, I was still worried about the effect of multiple instances of the spell burning down a party in a single round. By making part of its damage ongoing, we penalize this course of action, and create an interesting decision for the DM: use all fireballs at once, or try to wait to maximize damage?
- Tweaked resistances and vulnerabilities. I prefer to cap monster resistances at 5/tier unless there is a very good reason, so fire resistance took a small hit. I also dislike how radiant vulnerability can have an excessive effect on undead monsters; having radiant damage shut off regeneration instead of hitting harder is still good, but not as crippling.
- Tweaked damage and defenses. Damage was brought up to MM3 standards, ranged accuracy was increased a little, and I slightly reduced reflex because having defenses much higher than AC doesn’t feel quite right, to me.

Dire Bear (Level 11 Elite Brute)

The Dire Bear was one of the lucky monsters to get revisited in Monster Vault, so I didn’t need to change much for its stat block. Still, I was not entirely happy with how the side effects of its attacks worked.

1. Issues identified:

- Grabbing enemies is too difficult. An effect that relies on hitting with two consecutive attacks might end up not triggering at all during a whole encounter, particularly if defender PCs are involved. Since this is the only special ability of the bear (apart from Ursine Crush, which only works against grabbed targets!), there is a definite risk that the monster will end up excessively boring, in play.

2. Changes introduced.

- Make the grab trigger off a single hit. Letting the bear get a sucessful grab almost every turn doesn’t break anything, and makes for a far more compelling monster. There is even a remote chance to have multiple grabbed enemies at a given time, which led me to tweak Ursine Crush in order to affect “all grabbed creatures”. It won't come up all that often, but it should feel great when a DM gets to live the dream.

Troll Vinespeaker (Level 14 Controller)

1. Issues identified:

- Thorny Burst provides excessive control. I am usually wary of ongoing action-negating effects for at-will attacks that target a single character. On an area attack, it definitely crosses the line, particularly when attached to a permanent area of damaging difficult terrain. Something has to go, or be moved elsewhere. There is also the concern that the troll has four standard action attacks, and very little motivation to use anything but Thorny Burst.

2. Changes introduced.

- Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race.
- Added Forest Walk. This is a minor change, but I thought it would be fitting for the troll to ignore difficult terrain from his own.
- Tweaked damage and defenses. Will defense in particular was extremely low, so I raised it by a whopping 5 points to leave it at standard levels.
- Redesigned Thorny Burst. Since the bramble zone was the coolest part of the power by a mile, I left that and took away the absurd immobilization effect. I turned it into a slow, which still has huge synergies with the permanent zone. This also allowed me to turn Ray of Thorns (the ranged attack) into a tempting option, by granting it the immobilization rider, but only against slowed enemies.

All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. The formatted statistics blocks have been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. But not with the last version, which lacks a Monster Builder. The one before that, which works despite the billions of bugs. Read More......

Monsters of the Trollhaunt IV: Encounter W1

Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Index – Previous - Next

** SPOILER ALERT**
This is a series of articles about the monsters included in the adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens- so you may want to stop reading, if you intend to play the module anytime soon.

The adventurers finally get to the main dungeon. I update the opponents in the first dungeon encounter, and suggest a new monster to spice up the fight.

The most defining feature of this encounter is the gate of the Great Warren, which can create a huge bottleneck if blocked by a Warren Troll (or by the PCs). This can easily degenerate into a static fight at the gate, with half the trolls being unable to get to melee at the narrow passage. Because of this, I replaced two of the Warren Trolls with soldier trolls armed with spears, with enough reach to fight behind the Warren Troll at the gate.

Warren Troll (Level 11 Brute)

This is a big, dumb brute. It’s slightly more interesting than the baseline Troll, in that it has a respectable encounter attack, so I just added a push effect to its melee attack, and updated the stats.

1. Issues identified:
- Outdated stats.

2. Changes introduced.
- Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race.
- Added push to claw attack
- Increased damage and accuracy
- Fixed defenses. These were way too low for a monster of its level. I brought them up to be on par with the standard guidelines.



Warren Guard (Level 11 Soldier) - New Monster

1. Issues identified:
I needed some of the melee trolls to have reach, so that they could fight from the back lines in the Warren Gate encounter

2.Design goals.

A straightforward melee troll with reach. The soldier role seems fitting for this theme, and a marking melee attack and a punishing power would have great synergy with the reach, and be quite interesting to play.

3. Implementation Notes
- Take Warren Troll as baseline, changing stats to match Soldier role.
- Give it melee reach 3.
- Greatspear (melee basic attack) - A simple attack that marks for a turn, whether it hits or missses.
- Troll Revenge (immediate reaction) - A basic attack that triggers when a marked enemy ignores the troll. It can trigger from a range of up to 3 squares, and it knocks prone on a hit for added fun.

4. Gameplay notes

I half feared, half hoped that I could use these trolls in some sort of phalanx, with the brutes blocking the way and acting as a meatwall, and the soldiers hitting from behind and being all kinds of annoying. That was not to happen, though, as my paragon tier party proved to be far more mobile than I had expected. On the first round of combat, the Assassin teleported through the gate troll, while the Monk ran over the walls past it, and the Sentinel summoned a critter in the middle of the room. So it ended up as a chaotic skirmish where the troll guards’ reach didn’t matter much - but the monsters themselves performed quite well, doing soldiery things all around.

Marrowmaw Impaler (Level 9 Artillery)

The Marrowmaw Impaler is an artillery monster without artillery stats. The usual accuracy boost is nowhere to be seen, as are the reduced AC and HP. Add to that its Troglodyte Stench trait, which significantly improves its survivability in melee, and you end up with a ranged monster with a better ability to resist melee attacks than the average soldier of its level! This clearly needed a revision.

Apart from that, I found that I liked the concept of the monster’s main attack (Impaling Shot, a rechargable ranged attack with a chance to restrain the target), but not its execution. The restrain trigger is both very powerful and very random, making for a monster whose effectiveness swings wildly depending on how the dice roll. I knew I wanted to make this effect easier to control, at the cost of requiring some setup.

1. Issues identified:
- Stats don’t match artillery role.
- Impaling Shot mechanics too swingy.

2. Changes introduced.
- Lowered AC, Fortitude, HP. This brings these stats much closer to what is expected for an artillery monster. I still has slightly above average HP, and the Troglodyte Stench aura to make it sturdier than other artilleries.
- Removed Claw attack. I guess this was there for flavor reasons, but a second melee attack that is strictly worse than the alternative is a waste of space.
- Increased base damage and accuracy. To match its role, and the new damage guidelines. I left damage for its basic attack a bit below expectations, to compensate for the added effect and the great rechargable attack.
- Redesigned Impaling Shot. I removed the secondary attack roll, so that the attack now always restrains on a hit. The catch? It now can only be used against enemies granting combat advantage, which isn’t easy to pull off at range. Of course, I very conveniently changed the base Javelin attack to cause the target to grant combat advantage. Because of this, the Impaler should now present a sequence of attacks: use basic attacks until you hit, and then Impale the target. It also makes multiple Impalers focusing on a same target a deadly proposition...



All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. The formatted statistics blocks have been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. But not with the last version, which lacks a Monster Builder. The one before that, which works despite the billions of bugs. Read More......

Monsters of the Trollhaunt III - Encounter T2

** SPOILER ALERT**
This is a series of articles about the monsters included in the adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens- so you may want to stop reading, if you intend to play the module anytime soon.

The monsters in this encounter have little to do with the main antagonists of the adventure, but make for good recurrign villains in wilderness battles.

Chuul (Level 10 Soldier)

1. Issues identified:
- Soldier without mark: This comes up too frequently in earlier monsters... immobilizing with opportunity attacks or after three consecutive hits is not a reliable enough defending mechanic, so we should improve it somehow.
- False flexibility: The double attack can be focused on a single enemy or split between two - but why would you ever choose the latter? Spreading damage is rarely the strongest of tactics, and there’s additional incentive for focusing on your target in the immobilization trigger. This kind of flexibility contributes little to the monster, except the chance for a poor or distracted DM to make a suboptimal play. Also, when all is said and done, the chuul will spend all its turns doing the same thing: Double Attack a single enemy, not unlike a PHB ranger. And we know what I think about rangers...

2. Design goals:

I’d like to convey the idea that the Chuul’s attacks gradually paralyze its victim. In addition, it would be nice to make the number of targets to attack a non-trivial decision, so that the monster becomes more interesting to play.

3. Changes introduced.

- Basic stat adjustment: As an old school soldier, it required lowering the attack bonus by 2 points. Also, I reduced its Fortitude value from absurdly high to merely good (level + 14). Incidentally, its base damage was already on spot for a modern monster (meaning it was quite a bit overpowered under previous standards), thanks to the at-will multiattack. That said, the extra damage against immobilized foes is excessive even today, so I’ve toned it down.
- Gradual immobilization: The monster’s attacks got a general overhaul. I had it mark on every hit, and automatically immobilize on subsequent attacks against marked targets. This means that a Chuul can now be quite sticky against a single target, but also provide a respectable defender against groups. Spreading marks around is a good reason to consicer splitting a double attack, but the right call will usually depend on context. Finally, note that the monster’s marks only last until the start of its following turn to prevent immobilization from becoming too easy.





Will o wisp (Level 10 Lurker)

The Will-o-wisp presents a rare design, in that its mechanics have been far more influenced by flavor than most monsters in 4E. This emphasis in story elements is not a bad thing in itself, but in this case it has led to a set of powers that doesn’t entirely make sense, with redundant rules text, and game options that aren’t really worth using. Overall, I found this monster to be unusually complex, and hard to adapt.

As a side note, there are two versions of will-o-wisp printed, each with different wordings but almost equivalent functionality. The one in the Rules Compendium corresponds with the stat block from King of the Trollhaunt, and its wording is slightly more confusing than the other one (from Monster Manual 2).

1. Issues identified:

- Poor handling of insubstantial - Insubstantial is a trait that shouldn’t be thrown around without a reason. Unless it comes with some kind of vulnerability to bypass it, or a condition to turn it off, it contributes nothing of interest to a monster: damage is halved, hit points are reduced by a factor of two, and the net result is the same as when you started. The will-o-wisp falls in this trap, but it also fails to correctly reduce HP numbers, so it ends up with 50% more HP than expected for its level and role. This clearly needs to be addressed.
- Fey Light. This is the one difference between the Trollhaunt version (where this power makes little sense) and the MM2 one (where it’s slightly better). Basically, Fey Light is a free action power which has two different effects: turn on the wisp’s light, which doesn’t really have any effect, and turn it off, concealing the wisp, allowing it to hide, and preventing any attacks. In Trollhaunt this can be used as a free action power, meaning that it’s possible for the wisp to attack every turn and then turn off its light - so there’s no real point in having two states. MM2 fixed this by making it a 1/round issue, so you can expect the monster to become hidden every other turn. However, this has the side effect of breaking the Blink Out power, since Fey Light will typically be spent for the rond by the time the monster can use an immediate interrupt.
- Luring Glow isn’t worth it. As flavorful as it is, Luring Glow suffers from the lack of damage, to the point that it’s very rarely worth using.

2. Design goals:

More than any other monster reviewed so far, the will-o’-wisp is full of personality: it has great themes in its intermittent lights that let it switch from stealth mode to attack mode, and the ability to lure its victims to their doom. I’ll try to keep these ideas, while making the monster more functional and easy to use.

3. Changes introduced.
- Force damage ignores insubstantial - It won’t come up too often, but it should be more interesting than having insubstantial always on.
- Fey Light clarified - I replaced the complex 2-state power with two different game elements: a light aura, and a power to turn it off and hide.
- Increased lurking - I really like the new philosophy for lurkers of spending turns to hide, then hitting very hard, so I tried to add a bit of that to the wisp. To that order, I added a significant bonus to damage dealt from hiding, but reduced regular damage to compensate. Also, I made Extinguish Fey Light a standard action, so it now takes a significant investment... unless the monster can Blink Out.
- Stat changes - Hit points were too high, AC too low (I guess it assumed permanent concealment), and damage followed the old standards. All of this has been updated.
- Luring glow as a minor action - Dazing and pulling was cute, but hardly worth sacrificing damage for a turn - and sustaining save ends powers has always felt wrong, to me. I took the really iconic part of the power (the pull), and made it a minor so that it can actually see play.


All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. The formatted statistics blocks have been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. But not with the last version, which lacks a Monster Builder. The one before that, which works despite the billions of bugs. Read More......

Monsters of the Trollhaunt II: Encounter 1

** SPOILER ALERT**
This is a series of articles dedicated to redesigning the monsters for the adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens. As such, they will reveal which monsters you’ll encounter in that module, so you may want to stop reading, if you intend to play it anytime soon. Apart from that, there will be no plot spoilers.

This encounter gives us our first taste of Troll goodness, as well as introducing a sneaky, spell-flinging monster.

Troll (Level 9 Brute)

Even the Monster Vault version of the basic troll is a good example of a bad brute: boring, and slightly underpowered. Fortunately, it didn’t take much to turn it into a worthy foe.

1. Issues identified:

- Subpar damage - The troll’s basic (and only) attack deals about 4 points less than would be expected from a brute its level. Easy enough.

- Unexciting power selection - A single melee attack with no special effect? Come on, give me something to work with! Admittedly, trolls have a fair amount of complexity in passive abilities, but this lack of variety in actions is too much for me.

2. Design goals:

Currently, this monster is nothing more than a plain brute with the troll racial traits. A simple theme could make it more interesting. I decided to give it powerful blows capable of pushing enemies, and occasional fits of rage that let it attack everyone around it - a combination that synergizes quite well, mechanically.

3. Changes introduced.

- Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race.

- Rebalanced defenses - Like so many monsters, the Troll is too heavily skewed towards Fortitude defense. In this case, the Fortitude score was reasonable enough, but both reflex and will were hideously low. I upped Reflex by 3 points (up to level+12), and Will by 1 (up to level+10).

- Claw attack boosted - The hit damage was adjusted to match expectations for its level and role, and a push 1 was added.

- Claw Frenzy attack added - It’s a straightforward rechargeable area attack, to add some variation to the monster’s actions as well as a bit of resource management.

- Renamed to Troll Smasher

Boulder Troll (Level 9 Artillery) - New Monster

The following text can be found in the Tactics section of Encounter 1:

One of the trolls stands back, next to the old wall. It uses chunks of the wall as a missile weapon, hurling pieces of stone at the adventurers (...). Hurling a chunk of the wall is a +13 vs AC attack that deals 1d6+6 damage if the hurled stone hits.

This makes no sense! That troll is clearly trying to perform a different role (artillery), and under 4E philosophy they should have just included a new stat block for a troll specializing in ranged attacks, rather than forcing a brute to waste turns in a miserable, ad-hoc maneuver. They even left enough free space in the encounter pages for an extra monster... oh, well, we’ll have to make it ourselves.

1. Issues identified:

There should be a level 9 Artillery troll, to prevent its Brute brothers from embarrassing themselves.

2. Design goals:

I’d like this monster to feel like the Troll Smasher above, but using ranged attacks with large stones. So, pushing an area attacks it is.

3. Implementation notes:

- Take Troll Smasher as a baseline, change stats to match Artillery role.

- Boulder (ranged basic attack) - A simple attack that pushes

- Huge Boulder (area attack) - A straightforward burst 1 attack. Note that this one is at-will, since it’s ok for artillery monsters to do this kind of thing frequently. Yes, that stone has to be really big to cover so much area...

4- Gameplay notes

I find that encounters improve a lot when you add a ranged monster or two to an otherwise melee-only fight. Consider using the Boulder Troll if the adventure becomes too focused on melee combats, and adding at least one to random Troll encounters out of principle.

Oni Mage

1. Issues identified:

- Old fashioned elite: It has excessive AC and defenses, and in general is not good enough to make for 2 real creatures.

- Old fashioned lurker: It lacks a large damage boost to make it worthwhile to spend a turn going invisible.

- Tension between traits and powers. The extra damage works only with melee, but the monster really wants to be casting spells whenever possible.

2. Design goals:

What’s the monster about? I thought that its shtick should be hiding and blowing up the world with explosive spells every other turn. A lurker with a heavy dose of controller.

3. Changes introduced.

- Toned down defenses - Old school Elites tend to have excessive defenses. For this one, I lowered AC by 1 point (to level+14) and Fortitude and Reflex by 2 points. Note that this made Fortitude the second best defense (it was the first, of course) after Will, which can be justified by the fact that the Oni, though large and bulky, is a powerful spellcaster.

- Replaced “Combat Advantage” trait with “Unseen Assault” - To better fit the Lurker role, and make for a more interesting character. Bonus damage is increased, but it now triggers only while invisible.

- Improved all attacks: The melee basic attack is given the Eyebite effect (invisible vs target) on a hit, so it can trigger Unseen Assault and be generally annoying. Freezing Blast and Lightning storm got miss effects and accuracy adjustments. Damage in general was increased to MM3 standards.

4- Gameplay notes

The monster can wreak serious havoc by breaking invisibility with an area spell, then spending an action point to attack with the other one. Extra damage will only apply to the first one, but you can catch a lot of PCs this way. The recharging spells also interact nicely with the strategy of skipping turns to lurk.

Interesting fact: despite the invisibility, this monster is pretty bad at hiding, so it’s fairly easy for PCs to figure out its location.

All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. The formatted statistics blocks have been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. But not with the last version, which lacks a Monster Builder. The one before that, which works despite the billions of bugs. Read More......

Monsters of the Trollhaunt I: Trolls

** SPOILER ALERT**

This is a series of articles dedicated to redesigning the monsters for the adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens. As such, they will reveal which monsters you’ll encounter in that module, so you may want to stop reading, if you intend to play it anytime soon. Apart from that, there will be no plot spoilers.

Troll (race)

It shouldn’t come off as a surprise that King of the Trollhaunt Warrens has an abundance of troll monsters. I mean, they turn up in the title, there’s one in the cover, the frakking adventuring zone is named after them... yeah, expect to kill a lot of these fat, smelly, regenerating, flammable buggers. So we’d better get the race template right, the first time around. As could be expected, I am taking the most recent Monster Vault versions as a reference. Monster Vault brought some interesting changes to the troll race and its main traits, Troll Regeneration, and Troll Healing.

Troll regeneration has been rebalanced so that the monster doesn’t depend so heavily on it - previously, trolls had relatively low starting HP, and made up for them by regenerating an impressive 10 points per turn. This sounds good in theory, but it led to trolls swinging wildly in effectiveness depending on player optimization and coordination. For efficient groups of PC that hit hard and were good at focusing fire (or were well equipped to deal with troll vulnerabilities), they could be significantly easier than a regular monster. On the other hand, a more casual party that didn’t happen to bring enough fire or acid attacks could find encounters dragging on forever. By reducing the regeneration but increasing the troll HP to that of a normal creature of its role, their average power level remains more or less intact, but these extreme scenarios are smoothed. This is a good design philosophy, and I believe it makes the monsters far more enjoyable.

In addition, Troll Healing got a minor boost by bringing back the dead monster with 15 HP rather than 10, making it slightly more difficult to knock the monster down again with a single blow - particularly if it is left one or two turns to regenerate. This brings me to the most significant revision I introduced in our campaign, for trolls as a race. Interestingly, it came up by an error on my part: I misread the new rules text for Troll Healing in Monster Vault, interpreting that any kind of damage (not just fire or acid) on an unconscious troll would kill it for good... and thought it was an awesome idea. No, it doesn’t really work like that, but bear with me for a moment.

As originally written, Troll Healing meant that these creatures would always keep rising again, unless you put them to fire (or acid). Which, once again, wasn’t that much of a problem for a well prepared group, but could randomly screw you the first time a troll came up in the campaign! There was still some room for improvisation to save the day (did the PCs carry flint and steel? Were they familiar with the Coup de Grace rule, and how it applied to this scenario?), but it was a messy deal in general.

I decided to use the following rule text, instead:

Troll Healing: Whenever an attack that doesn't deal acid or fire damage reduces the troll to 0 hit points, the troll does not die and instead falls unconscious until the start of its next turn, when it returns to life with 15 hit points. If an attack hits the troll and deals any damage while the troll is unconscious, it does not return to life in this way.

This is basically the same text as the Monster Vault version, with one crucial difference: any kind of damage to the unconscious troll will kill it for good. With this, fire and acid are no longer mandatory to defeat a troll, just extremely helpful. I’d say that spending an additional attack to make sure the monster is dead (and most of the times that will imply using a standard action, since auras and other sources of damage that don’t involve a hit, like Flurry of Blows, won’t work here) is a harsh enough penalty to unprepared adventurers, particularly when you have a limited timeframe for it. Having encounters that become more challenging when you lack the right tools is fine - making them unwinnable is just mean, and while it may have been fashionable for older versions of the game, in 4E it feels completely out of place.

As we are on it, I’ll give some DM advice on the use of Troll Healing: whether you use my version or the original, read the trait carefully. Twice. And use some kind of reminder to remember triggering it in-game. I am a rather meticulous player, and even more as a DM, and still I managed to forget about this rule the first time my group dropped a troll. Sure, I realized the following turn, but at that point bringing it back would have felt unfair. Not only that, but I also misread how it interacted with stuff like Flurry of Blows (basically I allowed FoB to kill unconscious trolls, which isn’t really allowed by the rules and mostly trivializes the trait), up until the point I started to write this article.

Finally, you should have a clear information policy between DM and PCs. Stuff like Troll Healing is fairly complex, and having your players not understand exactly how it works can lead to frustrating battles. Sure, take them by surprise the first time a troll gets back on its feet, and maybe let them experiment once or twice with ways to slay the creatures. I am highly in favor of letting players know the exact rule text of this kind of monster traits after one try or two - if you think it breaks immersion, offer the information through some ancient tome, or a sage, or knowledge checks.

Next: Encounters 1 and T2 Read More......

Monsters of the Trollhaunt: Introduction

After enjoying my brave human fighter for a whopping 7 levels, I’ve found myself once again at the DM seat, in time to introduce our group to the wonders of Paragon Tier. The module of choice is the King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, the fourth one in the official adventure path, and easily one of the best I’ve read so far. It still boils down to a huge collection of combat encounters, of course, but the simple backstory is interesting enough, the use of the main enemy makes a lot more sense than in previous adventures, and there is a good variety of environments. It also helps that the transition to Paragon is well portrayed through the abundance of large enemies (i.e. trolls), but also with the way that the fate of an entire city is put in your hands (which, in theory, also happened in Keep on the Shadowfell, except that now it feels more real, rather than a mere excuse to enter a dungeon and slay a baddie) and the use of exotic settings.

Anyway. Trollhaunt is great, but it suffers from the fact that it was written two years ago. In that time, the game has evolved quite a bit, particularly regarding monster design, which has benefited from a change in general philosophy, followed by amazing books such as Monster Manual 3, Dark Sun Creature Catalog, and Monster Vault. I knew from the beginning that, in order to enjoy the module, I’d need to take a long, hard look at every monster stat block, updating them to the new standards. This would take a good deal of effort, but I thought that I could find it enjoyable (I did), and maybe turn it into an interesting article series. Of which you are reading the first entry.

It goes as follows: in the following weeks, I will be sharing with you the redesigned monsters I use in the campaign, along with the reasoning behind the changes, and comments on how they play out. I will present them in chronological order, as they come up in the adventure encounters. Inevitably, I will spoil the composition of all encounters in the module, so non-DMs may prefer to keep away from the series, if they expect to play in the Trollhaunt anytime soon.

Before I start with the monsters, here’s a summary of my design goals:

- Use Monster Manual 3 guidelines. I’ve talked about these at length; they include significant revisions for Solos and Elites, rebalancing of Brutes and Soldiers, and an overhaul in damage progressions.

- Use ideas from Monster Vault, such as redesigned classic monsters (most notably, trolls and dragons), a more creative approach to resistances and vulnerabilities, and lurkers that hit hard, but only every other turn.

- Redeem Fortitude. Too many monsters have absurdly high fortitude defenses, particularly in earlier books, making powers that target fortitude a poor proposition. I’ll try to mitigate this effect, by making sure no monster has a fortitude higher than its level + 14 (or Reflex and Will lower than level+10, for that matter), and by making each monster’s best defense depend on role - controllers will tend towards high will, skirmishers and lurkers will have high reflex, and artillery will go for either will (for magic-based monsters) or reflex (for the rest). Soldiers and brutes would still favour fortitude.

- Keep it fair. Some monsters end up with abusive abilities or, more rarely, with pathetically weak ones. I’ll try to address both cases.

- Make them fun. As the DM, I like monsters that are interesting to play, with some variety of tactical options and reasons to move around the battlefield.

Next: Trolls

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