Pretty vague question. Any solo creature that is not grossly overpowered has the potential to be one shotted. Whether by a lucky critical hit, or more likely a spell designed to kill or neutralise a single opponent.
Given that at least 1 roll in 20 is a critical hit or automatic failure you will need a creature that can mitigate as many potential suck or die scenarios as possible.
To make the encounter interesting you will need a creature that has options in its actions and ideally one that can attack multiple opponents. Given there are no other opponents then you definitely need to consider the terrain, prepared traps and battlefield control in general. You should also consider what magic items and buffs the creature would have active.
At a rough guess, you would be looking at a APL+6 creature to make things tense for the campaign finale. But even then, the probability is that the encounter will be anti-climactic due to a (un)lucky roll. To compensate, you should foreshadow the encounter and build tension before the showdown.
One or two extra turns, rolled normally in initiative, can do wonders for single creature encounters.
Well of course it would, it could also be called cheating. If you want 3 sets of attacks then you need 3 creatures and then the challenge rating of each needs to be adjusted downwards to compensate for the greater number.
|
One or two extra turns, rolled normally in initiative, can do wonders for single creature encounters.Well of course it would, it could also be called cheating. If you want 3 sets of attacks then you need 3 creatures and then the challenge rating of each needs to be adjusted downwards to compensate for the greater number.
That is... an interesting perspective. Just another reminder of how many different ways people play the same game. Some GMs might run everything raw, only use published enemies, roll their dice on the table and never fudge rolls. There's other people who think the GM can't cheat, hard stop, the GM sets the rules and if they say this is how it works, then that's how it works. And of course plenty of people somewhere in between.
If you want to do it "legally" there's the agile monster template which gives a creature 2 turns per initiative (from mythic)
I was looking upthread going didn't I respond to this already, then realized yes I did, there's apparently two different copies of this thread.
One thing I did once was take a single monster (a sea drake in this case) and basically stack 3 of them together into one body. And yes, I calculated the cr of all 3 together. 3 heads, each with its own pool of hp and turn in the initiative. One a given head's turn it could only attack with what the base creature has, not the extra heads. All damage dealt goes to one head's hp pool until it hits zero (extra damage doesn't spill over). Then, that head's turn in initiative goes away and the pcs attacks start damaging the next head's hp pool.
I consider the hame rules as nouns and verbs. The nouns are things like creatures, spells, classes, equipment etc. The game mechanics are verbs. I believe that it is ansolutely fine for the GM to make up and introduce new nouns to keep the game fresh. But the verbs need to be agreed and understood between the GM and players for a harmonious table. If the GM suddenly changes an established mechanic then the players will have a right to feel cheated.
If the mythic template is being used then fine, but the CR of base creature needs to reduced to compensate. I like Daarigaaz's solution, it's immediately clear to the players that each head is sn independent entity.
Hmm. A prepared spellcaster? With summon spells as forbidden school? But who has prepared the encounter room, is invisible and flying, has cast some ground control spells like black tentacles, web etc. plus mirror image and displacement?
All tactics can be countered, the question is only: How well does the villain know the party and how well can he prepare against their usual tactics?
If the group made enemies with some powerful "behind the scene" bbegs, they will probably be targeted by "low level" assassins with some nice extra money for preparations.
Most one shot groups prepare well, then buff-scry-teleport. Why shouldn't NPCs do the same? Just put a little bit more preparation into surviving.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
...it could also be called cheating.
I consider the hame rules as nouns and verbs...I believe that it is ansolutely fine for the GM to make up and introduce new nouns to keep the game fresh. But the verbs need to be agreed and understood between the GM and players for a harmonious table. If the GM suddenly changes an established mechanic then the players will have a right to feel cheated.
That sounds like a Session 0 discussion, right there.
I always tell my players that I bring a lot of new stuff to my table, so things won't always be so cut-and-dry as the bog standard ruleset, but that I will strive to be consistent, fair and reasonable.What really helps me is breaking people out of the video game mindset; look at any given scene as something that is really, actually happening. Forget about the rules for a moment. What do you do?
I swear, it takes AGES to break people of the habit of "I roll Perception!" and into "I look around." But once they're at that point, they're not limited to "I charge and use Power Attack," and they can try "I want to slide down the bannister, cut the chandelier rope and swing up to the balcony."
And once you're in that mindset, you're not so easily thrown by a monster that's so fast it can take multiple turns, or so big that it's parts count as multiple creatures.
To answer the OP, I don't think you really can, within the rules as presented. Traps, terrain and obstacle-like spells like illusions all help, but they're really just the minion in a different incarnation. And that's sort of the point: you want encounters to be dynamic and have layers and facets.
I recently ran a game where the heroes had to confront an evil spirit that had been driving people to madness and murder. When they returned to the tribe with the relics they needed to banish the spirit, the tribe's medicine man ended up raising the village against them using their fear and paranoia. One of the people that fought for the shaman was currently possessed by the spirit. When that became apparent, the spirit manifested and started running around the village, eating people and growing in power until everyone had run off or was killed, and the PC's had to face down the cannibalistic frozen giant zombie spirit monster.
So instead of "minons plus boss," it was "minions plus mini boss with elements of social conflict", then "mini boss plus boss in all-out physical conflict" and then "suped-up boss in a potential TPK". I think it worked pretty well, even though there was really only one major threat at a time.
Melee based monsters will have a difficult time with this. Casters have the ability to harm multiple characters at once so they're better at taking on parties by themselves. They also have defenses based on miss chance, and unlike AC and DR it's not as easy to optimized against.
If you insist on using a melee based monster I'd also give it abilities that allow it to disrupt(apply negative conditions, damage, other bad things) multiple combatants in some ways. In other words it's going to have some abilities that are similar to spells, even if they're not technically spells. As an example if it can make a large part of the ground difficult terrain, or it has a powerful breath weapon.
Another option is to give it ranged attacks, that allow it to play keep-away as long as possible can also help.
I'd also make sure to not completely nerf the player's abilities, just to help the monster.