Monsters and Moral

[Igognito]

Hi all,

It is so silly when you scorch down like a small army of mobs, and 1 still tries to fight you...

I often enter in an ambush like situation, chaos occurs for a little while and then everything is dead... Not everything, a small little monster escaped the blaze of the aoe spells.
The lucky monster, witnessed the painful in vein death of its fellow monsters... What should it do? Come and pick the adventurer to go meet its friends? Or simply run away?

I would introduce morale mechanics for Normal-Elite difficulties. It would make monsters behave much more realistic. Also, sometimes morale could work against the players... Maybe that little monster that survived ran to the next cluster of its friends.

So who would like more realistic monster behavior?

If you do want that, here it goes! Time to introduce Morale mechanics!


----- A suggestion for mechanics, just to saw that it can easily be implemented as counters ------
The basic concept is the following:
All intelligent creatures have a starting Moral score:

Fanatic: 20
Champion: 15
Exceptional: 10
Average: 8
Poor: 2

non intelligent creatures have no moral and are not unaffected by that. Creatures immune to fear are not immune to moral but should start at fanatic. Moral is self preservation rather than fear immunity. Thus intelligent undead might actually lose moral in very bad conditions!

Things that happen in battle affect the moral either positively or negatively.

Base morale modifiers:

Group size modifier: G (measured in the area of sight)
In bigger group: +1
In equal size group: +0
In smaller size group: -1
Alone: -2 (unless equal size group 1v1)

Leader morale modifiers: L (only best is considered)
Group has named creature: +2
Group has champion: +1
no leader: +0

Health modifier: H
Health equal or above half: 0
Health less than half: -1
Health less than 25%: -2

Battle modifier: B (apply all that are applicable, so 75% is actually a -6)
Enemy killed Named Creature: -2 (for each named)
Enemy killed Champion Creature: -1 (for each champion)
Enemy killed more than 50% of creatures: -2
Enemy killed more than 75% of creatures: -4
Monsters killed a member of the party: +1 for each

Fear spells and other debuff stuff affect morale, and more modifiers could be devised...

Now, every X seconds the morale score of the creature is recalculated.
If the total is 0 or less the creature lost its morale!

Actions to take when morale is lost:
Try to find a new monster group (and thus increase its morale)
Run as far away as possibly (if cornered then fight defensively or surrender)
Surrender (if surrender is accepted creature becomes NPC or disappears; otherwise fights defensively)

Can a fanatic creature lose its morale? Yes, if group started with several named/champions and lost those ones first!

I did not include level in the formula because it would allow high level characters to walk through low level dungeons just by being there... That is not the target there.
Of course a high level character will kill the monsters as flies so a morale would trigger much easier than from a low level character!

Other note, a monster surrendering while u fight might be annoying. So possibly the surrender should only apply when the monster is alone!

A monster with poor morale and that it is alone, would not engage a party at all. Probably would run away. Making the party harder to get that extra kills to reach conquest :-P.

Cheerios