When setting up and balancing your encounters, it is very important to consider more than just CRs and raw exp counts. You should also be thinking about a monster’s ROLE. That is, what is this monster’s purpose in combat? What is it actually intended to do? By creating an encounter with monsters filling various roles, you create an encounter far more interesting, challenging, and entertaining to run for both you and your players.
So what are these “roles” exactly? Well I’ve identified 4 big ones and I’ll get into each of them. Now there can certainly be plenty of overlap, especially the higher the CR of the monster goes, and they may fill multiple roles.
Bruisers: Bruisers are monsters that are difficult to kill, either because of high HP or AC, and they typically pack a mean punch, primarily though melee. Their weakness is their lack of options and mobility outside of this. The bruiser’s role is to contest with melee orientated PCs, tying them up to protect squishier monsters. Also, they look for opportunities to move in and beat squishy PCs to a pulp if given the opportunity. Ogres and owlbears are examples of bruisers.
Skirmishers: These monsters are characterized by evasiveness and/or ranged attacks. They may have stealth, flying, wall climbing, phasing, or lots of movement and disengagement abilities. Point is skirmishers have the means of avoiding the party’s melee and engage the squishier characters right away. They only attack the melee characters if they are ready to drop. That is their role. Archers, assassins, and phase spiders are good examples of skirmishers.
Spellcasters: this one is fairly straightforward, these monsters sling spells each turn providing magic firepower. It is important to think about the style of spellcasting; Direct damage? Buffing/debuffing? Summoning? Healing? Crowd control? Area control/denial? Something else? By categorizing your spell caster in a few ways it helps in being more decisive with them in combat.
Specialists: These monsters are not particularly tough or fast or good spell casters, but what they bring is a unique set of abilities that can really shake up a fight and provide an unusual challenge. This could be an aura of some sort, or something else the PCs need to save against. Rust monsters, gibbering mouthers, and intellect devourers are good examples of specialists. Their role is to utilize their unusual abilities in a calculated way that hurts the party as badly as possible.
So those are the big 4 roles monsters have. Again, there is plenty overlap especially with higher CRs, which is fine it just means that monsters can do different roles as needed.
The overall point is; start thinking about what monsters are filling these roles in your encounters, and have your players fight a balanced mix. It makes for so much more interesting combats.
So what do you think? Agree, disagree? I’m interested in hearing your opinion.
Welcome to 4th edition? That edition split monsters into categories based on what they do in a fight, in a way that's similar to your categories:
Artillery: ranged damage, weak in close combat (other types may have ranged attacks but do not specialize in them).
Brute: tough, get in the enemy's face and beat on them.
Controller: specializes in abilities that debuff PCs or limit their options (such as area denial).
Leader: subtype that gets stacked on another type. Specialist in boosting its own side.
Lurker: ambush attackers.
Skirmisher: high mobility, good at hit and run or attacking back-line PCs.
Soldier: well armored, get in the enemy's face and prevent them from attacking your allies.
Interesting, I never did play 4E but I gotta say, that is something that they got right and don’t see why it was removed.
When monsters are broken into clearly defined categories like this, it gives DMs (in particular new ones) direction on how to use them effectively, and enables them to design encounters not just by raw CR but also by how the encounter will FEEL… For instance, an encounter opens with a lurker ambush to cause confusion, then a couple soldiers move in to lock down the PCs while a couple artillerists pound them from afar.
That is a unique and interesting encounter with a very specific feel that would be difficult to set up in 5E but sounds trivial in 4E.
Interesting, I never did play 4E but I gotta say, that is something that they got right and don’t see why it was removed.
4e had both good and bad features, but the people who disliked it really disliked it, enough that there was a reflexive 'throw everything out' when designing 5th edition. Also, it had a tendency to go "okay, here's the soldier variant of this monster, and here's the artillery variant, and..." -- for example, there are 7 variants of orc in Monster Vault (basically the 4.5e monster manual). This lets you build a bunch of 'orc' encounters that are all different, which is nice, but it's also somewhat odd.
I still use 4e roles to design pretty much every encounter. They are great for determining behavior and tactics as well as establishing the "feel" of a battle.
Different combinations along with complementary terrain can go a long way towards keeping combats dynamic and fresh.
With some tweaking you can still use 4th edition monsters -- you have to tweak check bonuses and DCs and translate concepts that are slightly different in 5e, and you may want to adjust hit points, but nothing super complicated to implement.
When setting up and balancing your encounters, it is very important to consider more than just CRs and raw exp counts. You should also be thinking about a monster’s ROLE. That is, what is this monster’s purpose in combat? What is it actually intended to do? By creating an encounter with monsters filling various roles, you create an encounter far more interesting, challenging, and entertaining to run for both you and your players.
So what are these “roles” exactly? Well I’ve identified 4 big ones and I’ll get into each of them. Now there can certainly be plenty of overlap, especially the higher the CR of the monster goes, and they may fill multiple roles.
Bruisers: Bruisers are monsters that are difficult to kill, either because of high HP or AC, and they typically pack a mean punch, primarily though melee. Their weakness is their lack of options and mobility outside of this. The bruiser’s role is to contest with melee orientated PCs, tying them up to protect squishier monsters. Also, they look for opportunities to move in and beat squishy PCs to a pulp if given the opportunity. Ogres and owlbears are examples of bruisers.
Skirmishers: These monsters are characterized by evasiveness and/or ranged attacks. They may have stealth, flying, wall climbing, phasing, or lots of movement and disengagement abilities. Point is skirmishers have the means of avoiding the party’s melee and engage the squishier characters right away. They only attack the melee characters if they are ready to drop. That is their role. Archers, assassins, and phase spiders are good examples of skirmishers.
Spellcasters: this one is fairly straightforward, these monsters sling spells each turn providing magic firepower. It is important to think about the style of spellcasting; Direct damage? Buffing/debuffing? Summoning? Healing? Crowd control? Area control/denial? Something else? By categorizing your spell caster in a few ways it helps in being more decisive with them in combat.
Specialists: These monsters are not particularly tough or fast or good spell casters, but what they bring is a unique set of abilities that can really shake up a fight and provide an unusual challenge. This could be an aura of some sort, or something else the PCs need to save against. Rust monsters, gibbering mouthers, and intellect devourers are good examples of specialists. Their role is to utilize their unusual abilities in a calculated way that hurts the party as badly as possible.
So those are the big 4 roles monsters have. Again, there is plenty overlap especially with higher CRs, which is fine it just means that monsters can do different roles as needed.
The overall point is; start thinking about what monsters are filling these roles in your encounters, and have your players fight a balanced mix. It makes for so much more interesting combats.
So what do you think? Agree, disagree? I’m interested in hearing your opinion.
Welcome to 4th edition? That edition split monsters into categories based on what they do in a fight, in a way that's similar to your categories:
I tend to go with the Warhammer roles of Troops, Fast Attack, Heavy, Elite, and HQ units myself. Similar concept though.
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Interesting, I never did play 4E but I gotta say, that is something that they got right and don’t see why it was removed.
When monsters are broken into clearly defined categories like this, it gives DMs (in particular new ones) direction on how to use them effectively, and enables them to design encounters not just by raw CR but also by how the encounter will FEEL… For instance, an encounter opens with a lurker ambush to cause confusion, then a couple soldiers move in to lock down the PCs while a couple artillerists pound them from afar.
That is a unique and interesting encounter with a very specific feel that would be difficult to set up in 5E but sounds trivial in 4E.
4e had both good and bad features, but the people who disliked it really disliked it, enough that there was a reflexive 'throw everything out' when designing 5th edition. Also, it had a tendency to go "okay, here's the soldier variant of this monster, and here's the artillery variant, and..." -- for example, there are 7 variants of orc in Monster Vault (basically the 4.5e monster manual). This lets you build a bunch of 'orc' encounters that are all different, which is nice, but it's also somewhat odd.
I still use 4e roles to design pretty much every encounter. They are great for determining behavior and tactics as well as establishing the "feel" of a battle.
Different combinations along with complementary terrain can go a long way towards keeping combats dynamic and fresh.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
With some tweaking you can still use 4th edition monsters -- you have to tweak check bonuses and DCs and translate concepts that are slightly different in 5e, and you may want to adjust hit points, but nothing super complicated to implement.