The frequent use of multiattack ensures monsters have a good damage output, but it doesn’t do much else. Most monsters are designed to stand on their own against the party, but they have the 3E problem: the fights are static, monsters are easily surrounded, and they don’t have enough actions. This whole website is built on being overcritical.ĥE seems have combined the worst of both worlds. Now, I don’t want to be too overly critical…īwahahahaha. Solos changed numerous times and relied more and more heavily on off-turn actions that were too f$&%ing easy to overlook and slowed fights to a crawl. 4E struggled through its entire lifespan to find a good solution to that problem. The action economy just worked against the monsters. Fights were too static, too focused on dogpile strategies where the party would surround the enemy, keep it pinned down, and hammer away until it was dead. The thing is, even with the 3E “one monster per party” assumption, lone monsters never really worked great. Sure, the challenge/XP system is based around lone monsters, but the numbers actually seem to line up best with about two or three baddies against a party of four or five. It seems like the 5E combat system works best for pairs of monsters or small groups. Hence the CR system in 3E and solo monsters in 4E.Īs near as I can tell, 5E is attempting to split the difference. Where 3E needed a complicated and confusing system to equate groups of monsters to single monsters, 4E needed a system of equating single monsters to groups. If you want to get totally technical, and I know you do, solo monsters were a construct specific to 4E. Unlike 3E’s “one monster per group” assumption, 4E combat design was based around the idea that each PC needed a dance partner. So, let’s celebrate my Fifth Anniversary by doing the same thing all over again. And now all of the problems that solo monsters had in 4E (and every other freaking edition of D&D) are completely gone forever because of 5E.
Five years ago this month, I launched this f$&%ing website with a series of articles about building awesomely climactic boss fights in Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition that made up for the shortfalls in 4E’s solo monster system. You can also grab a revised copy of Kurn and Targ.
So, if you check The Angry GM’s Pile of S$&%, you can find a document containing a summary of all the current Raragon Rules. I’m always tweaking and revising things based on feedback.