Legend4ry Reviews: The Savage Monster

Recently I came across an article written over at Frothsof4e about Solos in 4e. It's widely accepted that Solo builds can be broken (especially true for Solos prior to the Monster Vault and Monster Manual 3) or at the very least take all night to finish. It is a knock down, drag out, slug fest. That can be fun for some, but when you want a battle that is has the fear of death and is also fast, that seems more ideal. It's no secret that combat in 4e can take some time, hell, I've had single combats that took 2 hours.

Frothsof4e has a fix though, basically a boosted and powered up Elite monster that can act as a Solo without taking all night. These creatures are called Savages.

The basic template and additions for Savages can be found at the link right before the break. But pretty much it includes an all around boost for the new "solo." An example of Frothsof4e's Savage can be found here. Overall, it works, and it should be no surprise that my goals of quick and deadly combat can be achieved here, much to my own devious and evil joy! I did notice a few things though about following the guidelines linked to before, mainly that while the combat was indeed fast, the creature was far too powerful and lead to a TPK. Here is my first un-tweaked attempt at a Savage:

Click to enlarge!
Also, for the Savage Magic Missile it does 7 damage per missile, and the Minor Arcane Bolt does 1d4+1

While this bad boy above was fun to play, I had to hold back a little. Due to poor roles on their parts and good roles on mine, coupled with the creature just being too powerful, I had to make some changes. During the initial combat, we noticed a few things:

• Combat took about 25 minutes
• Combat was deadly and scary
• Monster HP was far too low, so before combat I doubled it and it worked perfectly
• The monster was too powerful, but some things worked well:
• The creature's Dominating Aura was well-liked by all
• The Minor Arcane Bolt was a nice touch
• The Initiative-roll-triggered action worked well, too

But in the end, even with a near TPK, I had to hold back a little, as mentioned before. I didn't use a single Action Point, or combat would have been over in round one. We sat around and discussed after the first combat what worked and what didn't. One such thing was the Fireball's recharge... ouch. I instead swapped that for a Savage Lightning recharge and it worked quite well. Check out the changes I made on the fly below:

Click to enlarge!

So, as you can see some things were tweaked, just a quick run down:

• Defenses were altered and HP officially adjusted
• Added a tid-bit in the Savage Resilience about Arcane attacks not provoking OAs
• Reigned in the damage on the Savage Magic Missile and made it able to target 2, instead of 3, targets
• Got rid of the recharge on the Savage Fireball and swapped the 4d6+5 for 2d12+5 damage
• Added the recharge effects to Savage Lightning and nerfed the damage to 1d6+5
• For the altered Fey Step, added a recharge upon Bloodied effect

The first play-test of the Arch-Mage was rough, but player input and my own instincts for the monster definitely helped during the second play-test. The combat remained fast and deadly, a real fear was put into the hearts of the players, but they eventually prevailed. Over-all the second tweaks were in line with how I think a good "solo" should operate. I'd love some feedback, however!

Here is a run down of the two combats:

1. Combat 1:
1. 4 rounds (and the first person acted in round 5)
2. By combat end, 3 creatures were dying (one of which was an animal companion)
3. 2 still stood, but they were bloodied
4. No Action Points used
2. Combat 2:
1. 3 rounds
2. By combat end, all creatures were bloodied
3. 1 creature was dying (the aforementioned animal companion)
4. 1 Action Point used

My players loved the second combat and appreciated it for what it was. It was a hard combat, and things could have definitely not gone in their favor with poor rolling. I should mention that the party consisted of all level 1 Essentials characters (Eladrin Mage, Dwarf Sentinel Druid, Druid's Bear Companion, Halfling Thief, Dragonborn Knight.) 

Overall the play-test was a success and I will definitely be using a tweaked Savage build in the future. 

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Next time I'll post some Strength enhancing gear I had created a few months back. I am still working on my 4e Dyson's Delve conversion as well. If anyone has suggestions for articles or monsters to update to 4e, I'd love to hear them!

Until next time,

-blob

You can follow me on Twitter @Sorcerer_Blob or via the hash-tag #legend4ry. You can also find my blog and others at the Fourthcore Hub and at the RPG Blog Alliance.