A Plant Demon Bars the Path
This is Hezutli, a plant demon who lurked in an ancient tomb protecting a guardian beast from artifact thieves and evil cultists. Hezutli was pretty horrible himself, but that explains why the good guys summoned him to protect their prophecied savior.
The Hezutli battle (the party never actually knew his name) was a solid solo encounter. I placed him on some narrow ledges in a cavern traversed by a variety of precarious routes. This allowed him to use his reach to hit enemies standing on the other side of the chasm (a 50′ drop encrusted in vines — it would hurt a lot to fall, but wouldn’t take the player totally out of the fight). It also made his Aberrant Hiss particularly dastardly.
The chasms and alternate routes around the encounter also gave the players good uses for their flying and teleportation powers, and the many vines hanging from the ceiling allowed more mundane characters to use Athletics checks to reach new areas. A platform covered in glowing runes also allowed item abilities to be used as free actions, an enticing bonus that turns out to be pretty difficult to take advantage of if your character isn’t stocked with magic ranged weapons.
I’ve tried making solo encounters more interesting by keeping the monster mobile, but that often just results in the party chasing it around the encounter. Hezutli was virtually immobile (he has decent speed, but doesn’t really need to move around much), but the terrain helped keep things from devolving into one of those “the party stands in a circle trading attacks with the monster” combats.
Here’s Hezutli’s stat block, and a link to the XML file, which you can import into the DDI Monster Builder if you want to adjust his abilities or level and use him in your campaign. I’m not sure why the recharge numbers don’t show, but most of them were 5/6, while Vine Assault was 4/5/6. There are a few extra pictures of the Hezutli mini I painted up Sunday night, too.
Hezutli XML file. Save to your desktop, then import it into the Monster Builder.
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August 3rd, 2010 12:41 PM
Holy cow. I didn’t realize how key him losing Darkspore Cloud was. I figured it was a recharge power, but an at-will!!? Yay critical fumble deck!
Sick combo would be to Darkspore cloud a group, Action Point, and Darkspore cloud again. Barring unlucky rolls, you’ll probably get a couple of Dominated characters to help thin the herd.
August 3rd, 2010 1:02 PM
Yep. Maybe we should have awarded Ed both Clutch and Hard Luck.
August 4th, 2010 12:59 AM
I’m very glad that fight didn’t go South like I thought it was going to. All that open space over a deep hole made me nervous that at least one of us would be taking a swan dive.
August 4th, 2010 7:03 AM
Solos are weird; I kind of feel like the trick is making the PCs reapproach them every time; like the map needs to be huge & the monster needs to teleport/fly from zone to zone.
August 4th, 2010 10:28 AM
I agree on large maps. I’ve started thinking of solos like video game bosses. So you use some of the tricks we’ve all been running into since the days of Kid Icarus and Metroid. I’m not not going to go into more detail here because I think I can wring a whole post out of this topic.
August 4th, 2010 1:29 PM
I haven’t run a solo actually solo in a while, but I tend to think that a dragon for instance would want to bull (or fly) past the defenders and start shredding the squishies in the back line and then finish off the defenders. Therefore it would be more of the defenders and melee strikers trying to stay in base to base contact and the squishies trying to stay out of reach.
I don’t know if that Titan was a solo or not, but him keeping me at arms length to clobber me with his reach was damn anoying, at least until myu head was ripped off.
August 5th, 2010 6:56 PM
I tend to agree with Ryk. I’ll give the boss monster some buddies even if they’re just cannon fodder, to make the PCs worry a bit. Last session the level 5 PCs were fighting one level 8 Mighty Godling, two driders, and 15 Drow. That’s a CR 8 two CR 7s and 15 CR 1/3 interestingly the Drow knock out poison was the star of that show. Knocked out the summoner and her cat for nearly the whole fight, but the PCs and their absolute fear of magic took the driders down first, ignoring the Godling’s Greatsword, giving the boss man some time to show off his moves. Also, accidental discovery, but if you’re ever using the Mighty Godling, Destruction Domain is a godsend.