Monsters! What makes them interesting and unique.

[Valorian]

Tactical combat (with good combat mechanics) is one of the things I enjoy most in an RPG. Now, when we talk about encounter design, I like it when monsters are not just a bleak bunch of attributes with different HP and damage. I want a touch, a special ability, that makes them different from a random fighter. Of course, it should feel appropriate for the creature in question.

 

I.E. games are an excellent example. They have a symmetrical combat ruleset and many creatures possess nasty passive (auras and on hit effects) and active abilities.

 

It would be neat if you had to make a save/resistance check (or however they'll call it) each time a particularly strong ogre hits you - or be stunned for a few second. Wraiths that life leech a portion of damage dealt. Hags that can paralyze with their touch. Mummies that can cast a curse upon you. A succubus that drains attributes with each hit if you fail the saving throw, a monster that is so dreaded that its touch causes you to flee in fear if you fail a will save... and so on. With a good resistance check system (we'd hopefully be able to boost it with spells/items/feats), it adds a whole new dimension to combat.

 

Imagine you're fighting two enemies with similar stats and resistances, but one has life steal and the other reduces the defense rating or damages armor? Who'd you kill first? It's simple - the one that reduces defense or damages armor, but it's still a tactical choice. Without these special abilities it wouldn't matter.

 

I want my dual-wielding rogue or warrior to have lots of tough choices in combat! :D

Edited September 25, 2012 by Valorian

[Living One]

Yeah,enemies with various abilities and good encounters should be the way to go.It's p. annoying how in modern RPGs(but other games too) you are fighting the same trash mobs for the whole game even if they look vastly different(see Witcher or Dragon Age were stuff like thugs,animales, various demons etc. all fight the same way).

 

Also,various bosses and mini-bosses.

[rjshae]

Plausible ecologies. Implausible ones should be purely magical or supernatural in origin.

[septembervirgin]

I like your notice of the issue of ability damage. It might be that damage does an effective percentage reduction of attributes and at certain extremes limits skill use, eliminates some defensive measures (a broken arm is often incapable of wielding a shield properly), and hampers communication skills. Status effects (to borrow the term) are not always so bad as brute force can be.

 

An interesting monster is more than just effect on a target. Monsters have an ecological presence and in as much as the term "monster" is accurate, their presence and life is damaging to people. Their presence can also damage the economy as it damages resources used by people and they resist communication or are unable to understand communication. A monster is something we wage war with because we cannot do anything else, in so much that it is an actual monster. How is such a thing to be interesting?

 

Monsters that I find interesting are largely non-sentient: magical insects, oozes, fungi. The monsters that appear in fairy-tales, folklore, legends, and myth are equally interesting but only from the standpoint of recognition or fascination with a unique rendition. Sometimes recognition isn't so joyful: if we become bored with repetition and see no pertinence. The best monsters we can imagine are new monsters that teach us to think and think well.

 

So let us hope that monsters are not just "damage dealers" but also interesting, unique, and thought-provoking. Monsters should seem an essential part of the world and also present a challenge to understand *how* that monster is a part of the world and the situation being presented to us. They should be pieces in a puzzle. There should be histories and philosophies that attempt to show what monsters are and why. A unifying theme shouldn't be so pat and easy that we grow bored of its permutations.

 

Back onto the subject of battle with monsters, I seem to recall Wizardry as being a game that demanded attention to monsters as combatants, at levels of the maze where these monsters were poignant opponents. At around fifth or sixth level, creeping coins were a deadly menace but damn interesting. Remember creeping coins? Little golden oysters that zip through the air and tear at flesh like piranhas. They were illustrated as treasure piles. Animated objects are fun foes. Imagination is cool stuff.

[Starglider]

I want my dual-wielding rogue or warrior to have lots of tough choices in combat! :D

 

It applies to any class / party really; for any given encounter there should be a few different strategies that could work, but there should not be any strategy that you can just keep using and beat every single encounter with.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Starglider

[Valorian]

Yeah,enemies with various abilities and good encounters should be the way to go.It's p. annoying how in modern RPGs(but other games too) you are fighting the same trash mobs for the whole game even if they look vastly different(see Witcher or Dragon Age were stuff like thugs,animales, various demons etc. all fight the same way).

 

Also,various bosses and mini-bosses.

 

That's the case with many modern rpgs, sadly. Arcanum wasn't rich in this regard either. Apart from some enemies damaging armor I don't recollect much variety so I hope that in designing this ruleset Obsidian uses more imagination and realizes how important this aspect is.

 

 

I want my dual-wielding rogue or warrior to have lots of tough choices in combat! :D

 

It applies to any class / party really; for any given encounter there should be a few different strategies that could work, but there should not be any strategy that you can just keep using and beat every single encounter with.

 

Of course it does. I was just hinting that I'd love to be able to dual-wield in this game. Cryptic messages, I know.

 

@septembervirgin

Indeed, a developed background and history make monsters more interesting, but I was talking from a combat perspective. Yeah, ability damage, injuries, disables, life leech.. so many possibilities to play with. Basically, all of this shouldn't be relegated to spells only. Many monsters should have such innate 'on hit' effects.

[Jarmo]

The interesting monster is in somehow interesting location doing something for some probable reason.

The actual combat capabilities and tactics don't interest me too much, although they will come to play.

 

If a big nasty hellspawn werewolf *poof* appears next to you, it's all about picking the right tools and whack, whack, WHACK!

 

But if you're seeking the same wolf in a misty village and you have to spread out to find it quickly!

Hurry up before it snatches another child and disappears, then there's intensity and the whole thing is suddenly interesting!

Well, to me at least.

[LadyCrimson]

I definitely enjoy enemies/combat where you may have to try to prioritize targets in order to be successful.

Ones in the back with strong defensives who summon a lot of creatures (or fairly rapidly raise/heal fallen comrades), where it's rather imperative to take out the mage first, or other enemies with strong curse abilities....something.

 

I'd also like at least some enemies to be difficult to take out with ranged attacks (very high Dodge or shields or whatever) so there are at least some fights/encounters where ranged attacks won't end up being some kind of constant be-all-end-all (because you can nibble ranged-attack from so far away that melee chrs. rarely get close enough to use melee).

[Cryticus]

Few things I would love to see are some special unique mini bosses(I just like unique things to kill )

And mainly if they come up with some of their one little critter I woudl like to see them acnoulege existence of this creature in culture of country or race if you have some wild running lizard insect thing that is stand in for wolf in one culture than I would like to see this creature have some form of impact on this culture, proverbs mentioning it, them appering on coat of arms etc.

[Living One]

Yeah,enemies with various abilities and good encounters should be the way to go.It's p. annoying how in modern RPGs(but other games too) you are fighting the same trash mobs for the whole game even if they look vastly different(see Witcher or Dragon Age were stuff like thugs,animales, various demons etc. all fight the same way).

 

Also,various bosses and mini-bosses.

 

That's the case with many modern rpgs, sadly. Arcanum wasn't rich in this regard either. Apart from some enemies damaging armor I don't recollect much variety so I hope that in designing this ruleset Obsidian uses more imagination and realizes how important this aspect is.

 

 

I want my dual-wielding rogue or warrior to have lots of tough choices in combat! :D

 

It applies to any class / party really; for any given encounter there should be a few different strategies that could work, but there should not be any strategy that you can just keep using and beat every single encounter with.

 

Of course it does. I was just hinting that I'd love to be able to dual-wield in this game. Cryptic messages, I know.

 

@septembervirgin

Indeed, a developed background and history make monsters more interesting, but I was talking from a combat perspective. Yeah, ability damage, injuries, disables, life leech.. so many possibilities to play with. Basically, all of this shouldn't be relegated to spells only. Many monsters should have such innate 'on hit' effects.

Yeah,Arcanum was just as bad as modern RPGs in this regard and so was Fallout(granted they had other qualities but the problem was still there).The only modern RPGs that are good at this are mainly on consoles only sadly(the D. Souls games and Dragon's Dogma).

 

Hopefully Obsidian'll put quite a bit of effort in this since the majority of the IE games were good at this.

[max8472]

The best "monsters", in my opinion, are... well, actually, sentient races. A battle with a rival adventuring party is the most exciting of fights. They could have, like your own party, so many powers and abilities and spells you never know what you can expect from them. Monsters are somewhat "limited".

[alphyna]

It's hard to argue with the OP's post: creatures' abilities should be unique and diverse. That almost goes withowt question.

 

However, I'm tempted to answer not the post, but the topic. What makes monsters interesting and unique? Well, they're not ogres, wraiths and succubi. They are something new, original and only partly predictable due to properties they share with well-known DnD creatures. Also you learn about their strenghs and weaknesses while talking to NPCs. Yeah.

[TimB99]

The enemies that I personally find most interesting are basically those enemies that will have you think, change or adopt a tactic for that enemy specifically. This incorporates the idea of enemies with special powers of course (melee+freeze/stun? --> kite; healer? --> focus fire; etc), but the main idea is that if an enemy makes you think 'well crap, how am I gonna beat this guy efficiently?' makes for a good enemy imo.

[FlintlockJazz]

Fellow humans. No pure evil races just individual bad people. Or monster races that are just completely alien in their mindset that you can't reason with them, like cthulhu monsters.

[Tuco Benedicto]

This is one of the most crucial aspects in a game that offers what is supposed to be tactical combat.

Enemies should be highly differentiated, yes, but also not just loaded with random abilities (i.e. "special mobs" in Diablo).

Instead they should be designed to bring specific elements to the combat, that make them very distinctive in terms of identity. Spiders with poison and webs, vampires with level drain, undead immune to fear and charme and/or resisting to non-magic weapons and so on are all valid examples of this principle in the old Infinity Engine titles.

 

 

Plausible ecologies. Implausible ones should be purely magical or supernatural in origin.

Fellow humans. No pure evil races just individual bad people. Or monster races that are just completely alien in their mindset that you can't reason with them, like cthulhu monsters.

Uh, guys, read the OP. this thread isn't about the lore. It's about the mechanics these creatures are supposed to bring into the combat system.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Tuco Benedicto

[Valorian]

Yeah,Arcanum was just as bad as modern RPGs in this regard and so was Fallout(granted they had other qualities but the problem was still there).The only modern RPGs that are good at this are mainly on consoles only sadly(the D. Souls games and Dragon's Dogma).

 

Hopefully Obsidian'll put quite a bit of effort in this since the majority of the IE games were good at this.

 

True that, Fallout's combat although fun, could have used more variety in this department. It's a completely different kind of setting though so I kind of can close one eye to this.

 

undead immune to fear and charme and/or resisting to non-magic weapons and so on are all valid examples of this principle in the old Infinity Engine titles.

 

It would be nice if they made a category of spells that are specifically mind affecting so that undead creatures have this little boon of being immune to them (or at least much more resistant). I also believe undeads should suffer less damage from critical hits and sneak attacks.

Demons could be more resistant to sneak attacks - they see and feel you wherever you are!

 

Uh, guys, read the OP. this thread isn't about the lore. It's about the mechanics these creatures are supposed to bring into the combat system.

 

The title of my topic is a bit vague, I admit. :D

[TrashMan]

Unique bosses? Unnecessary...it usually turns into a large monster with tons of HP or a human with tons of HP (even stupider)

 

 

However... What should be done to make combat interesting is to make monsters fight in a way that suits them.

Intelligent opponents should act intelligently.

Monsters that ar part of a pack shoudl exhibit a pack-like behavior.

Organized opponents should fight in a well-reheresed fashion.

Dragons should fight like dragons and make use of their flight and fire breath.

Brigands should fight like brigands and set ambushes.

 

 

What those making encounters should do is try to think like the enemy.

"Ok, so there's a band of adventurers passing trough. How do we take them?"

[Valorian]

Unique bosses? Unnecessary...it usually turns into a large monster with tons of HP or a human with tons of HP (even stupider)

 

 

This topic is not about unique bosses or about the inflation of HP.