My players recently hit level 7, and the Monk in my group has gone from average to kinda awesome recently.. He's been spamming stun-lock on solo bosses, and fights I had thought would be awesome have turned into cake walks.. Just wondered if anyone else had encountered this and your thoughts on the situation ?
A good boss battle that would counteract the Monk's Stun Lock would be anything that uses the rules to its advantage. My personal favorite is the Conjuration Wizard that gets the free Teleport and holds its action until someone attacks it. Then releases its held action to trade places with another character, so the monks Stun is either waisted because someone makes their save (Other than the wizard) or because they just stunned the Barbarian/killed the party Wizard. If it's a story boss, it makes for really difficult combats while the BBEG just casts a spell every other turn to put chumps in his way.
Yes. We're at level 15 now, and I commented last session that it feels like epic-level 4e all over again. Stun the bad guy so it can't do anything and just wail away at it till it drops. Rinse. Repeat. Yawn.
I don't think there's really been an edition of D&D where solo monsters are good at fighting the party. I highly recommend giving the party multiple enemies to fight instead. If you know the party are just going to stun lock one or more of their opponents then throw in a couple of extra guys with decent con saves. For a seventh level party I think four or five hill giants should prove a challenge.
If you must have a solo monster then it pretty much has to be something with legendary resistance (to avoid stun locks), good mobility and lots of lair / legendary actions. Basially, a dragon.
I agree that using multiple monsters rather than one helps, that way they can’t concentrate fire. And also agreed that setting the playing field against them helps a lot. Look at their weaknesses – that monk specializes in melee, I’m guessing. Put a villain with ranged attacks behind a wall of fire. Or heck, just supplement the big bad with some far off archers to pincushion that monk.
Sometimes, to challenge the PCs, the DM has to be a bit of a jerk. Not a full jerk, mind you.
Iserith also makes a good point – is the fun of this monk interfering with the fun of the rest of the group?
Remember the addition of legendary resistance. I know, not all creatures can be legendary and whatnot, but it can definitely make the boss feel tougher. But yeah, don't underestimate the power of minions.
When I have a big boss fight, my general plan is to design the boss as a solo to be threat to the party and then adding 5-10 thematically appropriate underlings. For these underlings I use the minimum amount in their hit-dice space to help the party feel tougher when defeating them, but they still do the same damage so the sheer number of attacks they make puts the party on their toes.
(It should be noted I am a bit of a softie DM, so while I may try to design the boss as a threat to the party as a whole it as a solo usually ends up around the level of a medium encounter as a solo. If you were more of a deadly DM this plan might not work as well.)
The Monk relies on ki points, which regenerate during a rest.
Put your BBEG at the end of a series of fights where the Monk will be thinking, "I should spend a few ki points on this guy." When BBEG finally appears, there aren't enough ki to go around.
BBEG should have a lieutenant (or two, if he's rich) who are "distant bodyguards" - they do not stay in the room with him, they practice due diligeance for Security Department in the rest of the building. 
Also design your dungeon so the PCs CAN'T just sit around for an hour and nobody notices; have guard patrols who check every door, or something.
(I hope my DM is not reading this because I just told him what to do to ME.) 
The Legendary Resistance rules are for precisely this kind of "save or die" ability.
Use them!
Pretty much every solo fight I make uses the "Legendary" Monster template (I wish they' just called it them "Solo" monsters instead, ala 4e). It makes such battles waaaaaay more epic.
Otherwise your "solo" needs a cast of fodder to support it.
Best of luck
When I put in boss monsters, I give them traits that give them multiple chances of saves. They get a +5 to their save when they try to inflict the status on them and after the status is inflicted on them. Basically they are stunnable but not easily stunnable on any accounts. I did this after I realized my monks stunning blows literally took a dragon out of commission.
The only sure-fire method I've found so far are creatures that have Legendary resistance.. Nah, he saved.. lol
At 15th everything should be legendary......though no d20 game fairs well at these mighty levels
Lots of opponents tends to be the answer.......dnd 5th is fast so works well lots of baddies
Sometimes the players just win
Assume the level 7 party is all default and GM hasn't been over generous
To the Monks Defense , this has only worked ONCE in the monks adventuring career... Like a perfect storm!!
Also , I dont agree with some of you guys designing a encounter just to negate one PC's major ability. 7 level have 7 Ki points, so the term SPAM litte much.
Can do it 7 times in that encounter , and that when your not doing the Best thing a Monk can do Dodge as a bonus action. ;)
Not a fan of the legendary resistance "I just get to save anyway" mechanic. Has anybody thought of a diminishing returns system like in World of Warcraft? I quite like that idea because it encourages you to make use of different abilities.
This is just off the top of my head: When the legendary creature gets stunned it gains advantage on saving throws against being stunned. If it gets stunned again it becomes immune to stuns for the next X time. Same for any other status effect.
Edit: Alternatively, the legendary creature gains +2 to its save against the status effect for everytime it was successfully affected by it for 1 minute. The bonus is gained after the creature stopped being affected by the status effect.
Problem with modifing Monsters abilities, is you should alos visit the Monsters CR.
Ie just giving a monster Resistance for example would in turn effectively Double it's HP
vamp70 wrote:
Zalbarthemad wrote:
To the topic:
I also believe - just from reading - that stunlocking a single target over and over again is huge. And the cost seems low. But when you look at hold person, it seems not too much anymore.
Maybe add following to the monks ability:
A target - whether it makes it save or not - is immune to your stunning fist until the end of your next turn.
This way, you can only stun the same monster at most every other turn. Maybe that nerf is too much: just make it:
A target that fails its save is immune to your stunning fist until the end of your next turn.
Or:
A target - whether it makes it save or not - is immune to your stunning fist until the start of your next turn.
There are several monsters that are immune to being stunned, why not use one of them as your BBEG?
xirr2000 wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote: