Action Oriented Monsters

Matt Colville put up a video this past October that presented what seems like a nifty and simple method to make certain encounters more interesting.  Specifically to make "boss" encounters and experience.

He called his idea Action Oriented Monsters and that seems like a solid name for this.  It is something that I want to dive deeper into and likely use in my games.

Before diving into his idea, I want to define the problem that I believe he is addressing:

D&D 5E's Action Economy makes scaling fights a bit wonky.

That is the fundamental problem.  With bounded accuracy and very much regulated actions per turn the side with more creatures has an enormous advantage.  This is most keenly seen in "boss fights" where a group of perhaps six adventurers, go toe to claw with a big bad.  That big bad can have 1 of each of these actions in a full combat round:

• Standard Action,
• Bonus Action,
• Move, and maybe, 
• Reaction (if the party gives it an opportunity attack), and maybe,
• Legendary Action (one at the end of each player's turn until all used), and maybe 
• Lair Action (at the 20 initiative count).

A non-legendary "boss" will have it's actions swarmed by the party to the toon of 6 to 1.  Something as nasty sounding as an Adult Dragon has three legendary actions so it is only getting out action-ed by about 3 to 1.  It's just not pretty for a single mob in a "balanced" (by CR) encounter.

Adding minions helps, as would making every boss have an identical twin, though those options don't always make any sense.  Another approach is just to keep bumping up the CR until the fight makes sense.  That higher CR typically improves the Armor Class and Hit Point pools until the "boss" has a chance to last his three rounds.  Unfortunately, it also (generally) bumps the attack damage often to the point of risking one shot kills to the players which creates encounters that leave the players untouched or dead with little in between.

That's my understanding of the problem.  I've embedded Matt's video on the subject:



Here is a link to teh scratch pad he used for the video, basically his script: Google Sheets Doc.

Basically he is adding additional actions to his AO Monsters.  They get extra reaction abilities to choose from or that are available only under certain circumstances.  Often they receive an extra generally usable Bonus Action. They also get a new thing that he called a Villian Action (VA) that behaves rather like a Legendary Action (LA) though scripted.  These VAs can be scripted such that they have to be used in a specified order. 

All of this adds up to a critter that has a bunch more actions in a round without requiring extra creatures in the combat and without increasing the magnitude of damage spikes.  This is all pretty yummy -- challenging fights can be novel and not reqiure something close to equal combatants on each side. 

The down side is that AO monsters need some home cookin to really work.  If this is restricted to bosses, we're not talking about many per session.  Also keeping it to important critters lets the players interact with a more predictable world most of the time.

I came across a Reddit thread that has a bunch of AO Monsters that people have created.  I'll likely do something so that I can start building my own stock pile of creatures and/or nifty prepared actions.

Here's another page talking about Action Oriented monsters: My Take on Matthew Colville’s 5E Action Oriented Monsters.

And a reaction video from Nerdarchy.