March 11, 2014

4E+WoW Naxxramas (Construct)

A few years ago I had this idea to write up a series of articles detailing how to integrate some of the World of Warcraft encounters into 4E. I never completed it but I figured I'd put up the one article I did finish...

Today we’ll take a look at the Construct Quarter of Naxxramas. The wing consists of four boss encounters, including the PuGKiller, Thaddius.

Patchwerk
This is a fairly straightforward fight; lots of damage fairly fast. It required having well geared tanks and good healers. The main ability of the boss was his large burst damage which targeted those with agro and with high hit points. There are no adds during the fight and as such he should be considered a solo.
His main ability is Hateful Strike. You can replace a monster’s daily or rechargeable ability with this instead.
Here I have taken a standard Ogre Warhulk and reskinned it to incorporate the concepts of the Patchwerk fight.

You will notice that the ogre warwerk is vulnerable to ranged attacks, as its attacks are all melee based. However, its higher than normal speed and reach, should allow it to reach a character and use its melee attacks.


Grobbulus

This encounter contains a few different elements, but essentially boils down to 3 unique abilities:

-Poison Cloud: This is a pool of poison that he drops at his feet. This is excellent for requiring the party to remain mobile.
-Slime Spray: This summons additional monsters (minions) into the fight as it progresses.
-Mutating Injection: This causes a player character to drop a pool of poison at their feet. Again this is useful for keeping the party mobile.

This time I reskinned a Flesh Golem.


The Fallout Slime is a basic minion with no attacks other than its aura. As such it will move to the largest group of enemies.


Gluth

This fight is really about the adds that come with the boss monster. The boss himself is relatively weak, but is still the object of the kill. To simulate the encounter the adds (Zombie Chow) have been given an aura that reduces all damage taken. Gluth himself only has two unique abilites.
This is a reskinned a Cauldron Corpse.




The encounter should consist of 1 glulthdron and 8 zombie chow.
The zombie chow focuses its attacks upon the last person to hit it. This allows for a character or set of characters to "kite" the minions until a decimate happens, whereupon they should be killed quickly. The blue aura is a visual clue of how and when a zombie chow's vulnerability changes. However, unless the characters have been given a clue to the zombie chow's focused attacks they will not know how to deal with this encounter. Thus a clue of some sort should be provided to the players.

Feugen and Stalagg
These two are technically part of the Thaddius encounter but are not required to be part of the same encounter. They could be run as a seperate encounter; in fact it is suggested they be run seperately as the encounter could drain too much from the party's resources otherwise.

The fight starts with the two on seperate platforms over a pool of caustic slime (causes ongoing 10 poison damage (save ends) if someone steps into it). Near the starting point for each monster is a Tesla Coil. Each monster must stay within 5 squares of the nearest Tesla Coil or there is a close burst 30 that does each enemy's bloodied value in damage to the enemy. Each monster will remain within the 5 squares as long as it has someone to melee.



Thaddius
In the original encounter Thaddius was on a platform, which you had to jump onto from a higher platform (where Feugen and Stalagg were positioned). This is not strictly needed for this fight as it is dynamic enough.
This is a reskinned Nightbringer.

3 comments:

Pridday said...

Hmm, WoW done as 4E. That's pretty cool. I've been thinking recently that WoW boss fights are worth studying if you're a D&D DM.

Unknown said...

WoW boss fights do tend to have unique and interesting mechanics. They try and make each boss fight different.

Obviously 4E lends itself to WoW mechanics, but I think it might also be interesting to try and apply this to some other editions as well.

Kirath said...

As a WoW player since BC this is a very cool read, in retrospect. Although I will say that at this point in time both 4e and WoW are pretty irrelevant.