Designing Encounters, Part 3: Individual Mook Role Design

Let's review:

A mook is one of the faceless horde of monsters that serve to get cut down with relative ease by the player. Mooks derive most of their challenge and difficulty from the fact that they can come in a large swarm and the relative make up of the mook composition.

In this post, I'm going to talk mostly about the basic mook roles and basic comparisons between roles.

Know that the principle goal of any encounter is to challenge the player not to kill the player. It is incredibly tempting to destroy the player instantly with unfair tactics but monsters should be fun and challenging to kill, not painful and frustrating.

The Tank:

(Other names include: Brutes, Tanks, Meat Shields)

The tank is meant to absorb damage from the player. The tank is meant to deflect damage from the more fragile monsters to maximize damage/disruption from the other monsters.

Good abilities for Tanks to have:

Large Size - Hindering mobility equates to hinders the player's ability to target effectively. Alternatively an effective large "size" can be created from having many smaller enemies.
High Health - Greater lasting power enables them to do their job longer.
Moderate Mobility - Too fast and they'll be too effective at their job, completely limiting his options.
Moderate to Low Damage - Low DPS, as you want them to be circumvented, not feared.
Deflection - Being able to avoid certain missile types or stop missiles soaks damage for their allies.
Aura Damage - Encourages the player to avoid prolonged combat

Dangerous abilities for Tanks to have:

Damage Reflection - Tanks generally have high hp. Damage reflection punishes the player for doing what he is supposed to be doing, killing monsters. :/
High Damage - A Tank with high damage is being both offense and defense. Perhaps your monster is doing too much?

Other forms of Tanking: Reducing player speed at range, Increasing defense of allies, Healing on Death of Tank

The Healer:

(Other names include: Doctor, Priest, Cleric, Leader)

The healer's role is to actively reverse the damage the player is doing, whether it is by negating the damage, or negating the abilities, all the way to actively replacing the monsters the player has eliminating.

Good Abilities for Healers to have:

Healing - Directly negate the damage the player is doing to nearby monsters.
Summoning low damage monsters - Reversing the death of monsters by providing weak replacements. (Note: Summoning is a HEALER role.)
Resurrection - Reversing the death of monsters by providing exact replacements.
Reducing Player Damage - Fight the player by reducing the amount of damage he can deal
Increasing Monster Defense - See above.
Proportional Size to Effect - The size of the healer should be roughly equal to how bad it would be for the player to ignore him. Highly effective healers should be large.

Bad Abilities for Healers to have:

High Health - Healers with high health are both Tanks and Healers. The troublesome part of this is that they are both tanks and healers in the same unit and thus there is no strategic way one can split the two apart by eliminating the healer or the tank part.
Small Size - Smaller means harder to hit. You want players to target healers.
Large Groups - There is nothing more annoying than a group of healers. Because the threat of their damage mitigation surpassing the players damage output is quite likely.

Other forms of Healers: Summoners

Melee DPS:

(Other Names include: Scrappers, Rogues, THOSE GOD DAMNED BATS)

Melee DPS' main goal is to damage or kill the player outright. They are NOT supposed to hinder the player. Their objective is to damage and swarm, not to hinder the player's mobility, but to destroy the player. This is different from the Tank in that the Tank is designed to defend and absorb damage, while the Melee DPS only focuses on destroying the player.

Good Abilities for Melee DPS:

Damage - Obviously.
Fast Movement - Melee DPS needs to be dangerous. Fast movement allows them to actually reach the player. It also allows the player to separate them from the other monsters that make them *more* dangerous.
Burst Movement - Melee DPS that moves in bursts tend to be more easily controllable. It gives the player breathing room at times, and surprises them at other times. For example, monsters that charge at you every so often is exciting. Monsters continually charging at you is a little more boring.
Low Health - Melee DPS' tends to be a damage race. This is fine, because the only way of stopping Melee DPS generally is to separate them from their support and kill them. Low health makes this easier for the player.

Bad Abilities for Melee DPS:

High Health - Melee DPS with high health tends to be a nightmare because they pose such a dangerous threat that fighting becomes absurd.
Large Size - Larger sizes actually hinder Melee DPS' function, which is to surround the player with as many of them as possible and damage them. A large amount of smaller foes attacking the player is better than a few larger ones surrounding the player, damage wise.

You never want to get into a situation where the player is "safe" because he is only surrounded by a few large Melee DPS'ers.

Ranged DPS:

(Other Names include: Snipers, Assassins, Hunters, Archers, Artillery, Mages)

Ranged DPS' main goal is to restrict zones that the player can enter, or keep the player constantly moving. Their secondary goal is to damage the player.

Good Abilities for Ranged DPS:

Stationary Damage Effects - Poison clouds, jets of fires, traps are all effective ways to keep the player out of certain areas.
Moderate but Scaling damage - The goal of Ranged DPS is to prevent the player from being rooted to one spot and attacking. Thus, ensuring that large groups of Ranged DPS can effectively stack their attack on the same spot is important. (For example, a large group of artillery is ignorable if they fire at different positions. But the instant they focus fire on one spot, you better damn well move. It is not the fact that individually they do lots of damage, but that they can focus their damage after a while.)
Little or No Mobility - Generally, Ranged DPS shouldn't be lured away from positions. This generally leads to very odd things happening (For example, luring them behind a wall or something where they are completely ineffective.)
Easily Destroyed at Melee Range - They should be designed to crumble or be decimated the instant the player can *reach* them. Not being able to reach/affect the ranged DPS should be the primary difficulty of players.

Bad Abilities for Ranged DPS:

High Health - This disincentives blitzkrieg attacks by the player. The player should always feel compelled to rush in and destroy the Ranged DPS by going crazy on them before the other mooks catch up to him.
High Damage - Ranged DPS should be a threat, but more of a continual threat rather than a threat that destroys you instantly.

Other forms of Ranged DPS: Increasing damage of allies, summoning suicidal minions, continual life sapping mechanism.

Spice

Spice is used to liven up a generic mook encounter. However, Spice needs to be use infrequently, because otherwise the encounter might be hard to manage, design wise.

Here is where all your cool off-beat ideas come in about how to design an encounter. However, realize that each wild element also has to be understood by the player and you on how it affects the encounter. Thus, add Spice sparingly.

Examples of Spice:

Teleporting Melee DPS
Summoning by Splitting
Player Debuffing
Obstacle Summoning
Strength buffs on death
Player debuffs on death
Multi-form enemies

Designing Encounters, Part 2: Mook

Let's review:

A mook is a simple type of enemy whose power comes from numbers. They are the faceless horde. They are the basic grunts in an army. The player is expected to effortlessly destroy a single mook. The heroes of the game masscre their way through tons and tons of mooks in the course of a game.

The single easiest pitfall when it comes to designing mooks is erring on the specialization vs. homogenization scale.

The second easiest pitfall is not considering mooks as a party.

Pitfall #1a - Having a million mooks with the same role (Homogenization)

I am being attacked by what appears to be a zombie, a giant bear and what appears to be a guy in leather armor with a dagger. I am being attacked by the same thing, three times over. If the entire game is like this, I will literally be repeating the same actions over and over again, on different colored/skinned mooks.

I offer, as a sacrifice to free thinking, how would you design an army?

Would it consist entirely of infantry? Of infantry, tanks and artillery? Of infantry, tanks, artillery and sappers? Would it be all spearman? Some spearman and some archers? Some spearman, some archers and a medic?

In any large ground force, there are roles to be played by the faceless mass. So for each individual monster, do not design them as different flavors of the same role. There is no need for 20 different types of tanks. There is no need for 200 types of infantry. Have a few unique types of each role in your design.

Pitfall #1b - Having a mook that does too much (Overspecialization)

This monster I'm facing shoots lightning, ice, fire, dances around on the walls, teleports, splits into mirror images of himself.... and there's 10 of them.

...and dies in a single hit? wait what?

...Well, whatever. Wait, now they're healing other people! Seriously? And charging at me? When could they stun attack or summon little beetles?

Oh, and he just happens to bounce all missile attacks back at me? What?

There is nothing wrong with having a character that is special or unique.

But it is absolutely criminal to give a standard guy 10 different abilities that get pulled out seemingly at random.

Why?

1) It violates expectation - Such a common monster with so many tricks?
2) Expected Value - Should a common monster have so many tricks? Should so much time be spent on designing a common monster?
3) Memory Issues - Can a player remember that a common monster has that many abilities?
4) Balance Issues - This monster interaction with other things seems difficult.
5) Rule of Cool and Poor Execution - The more complex something is, the harder it is to execute perfectly.

Pitfall #2a - Monster Role Homogenization

This is slightly different from pitfall #1a. That one talks about individual monster design. This one is about encounters as a group. You could have 10 monsters that do drastically different roles. But the makeup of the group of mooks that attacks you have drastically different effects.

This problem is the bane of monster encounters. Imagine for a second, you were fighting all monsters of the same type.

That is, what would happen if you fight 12 healers that constantly healed each other? You wouldn't be in much danger, but the fight would last forever.

Or what happens if you fight 12 high damaging enemies that charged at you? The game would turn into a damage race, where you must kill them first, or you die. Repeatedly.

What if you fight all guys who were big and massive that blocked your way? Repeatedly? It would just be a long tedious fight trying to clear a path for you to run through them.

Note, what this inevitably leads to? More damage. The solution to all problems is more damage. In fact, the only solution that works in all the above situations is more damage. So the game becomes an arms race. Can the game kill you before you kill them? You just have to take down X guys. There is no order that is important. Positioning is somewhat important, but either you die if you're in the wrong place (against the chargers) or it doesn't matter (against low damage healers.)

Instead, consider what mooks do in an army.

A large brute + a healer = A positioning fight where you must get around the brute in order to win. Damage racing is essentially inconsequential because you must kill the healer first.

Chargers + Brutes = A positioning fight where each individual brute restricts your mobility makes it very hard to get around the damaging chargers. The fight is won by either splitting off the group from one, or simply being fast enough.

Brutes + Ranged DPS = Similar to the fight above, only that the goal this time isn't to split them off, so much as neutralize the threat by slipping through the brutes to do damage to what is actually damaging you.

Pitfall #2b - Exponential Difficulty Growth Potential of Groups

I know I can kill archers individually. And I can kill those stupid brutes individually. But when you put them together, I can't seem to kill them fast enough before dying. :(

Toss in those annoying healing guys, and I quit.

The difficulty of any encounter is geometric with the amount of roles fulfilled. Balance accordingly.

If you have an encounter with 10 brutes, and you replace that with an encounter of 5 brutes and 5 healers, the encounter takes on a drastically different metric where the brutes are essentially nigh invincible until the healers are taken down.

Always consider the geometric difficulty rise when having complex encounter groups. Additionally, consider the geometric difficult decay as monsters start dying. (The Domino effect, where if one group falls, the rest of monsters fall over.) You may wish to have monsters that grow stronger when they are not being pacified or healed, etc.

All this leads to more interesting tactics and gameplay in generic mook encounters.

Designing Encounters, Part 1: Introduction to enemy types

Note: This is my personal stance on enemy encounters. I apologize if you disagree with them, but know that the 'rule of cool' is fun to watch but says very little on the actual content of fights.

In general, there are 3 types of enemies you encounter in a regular game:

1. Mooks - General run of the mill guys that serve as filler for you to grind your blades against and generally slap around with no difficulty, unless they make up a large horde.

The faceless zombies in any zombie movie make up 'the mooks.' Alone, they are not quite a threat. As an ever-present horde, however, zombies get their power. A few zombies are a pushover. A hundred zombies in unison is an encounter.

In space, these are fighters. Small tiny fleeting ships.

2. The Elite - These guys make up rarer encounters that serve as mid-points, checkpoints. They generally appear alone in the company of smaller guys. These fall under various names: mini-bosses... generals... 'Silvered Bordered Elites', etc. These guys pose a minor problem alone, but become major difficulties when found in combination.

This is generally the hardest class of enemy to design well, mostly because they must stand out, but they can't stand out too much. They also tend to fall into the syndrome where they become 'mook replacements' in that, in the beginning of the game, the guy in gold armor amongst a bunch of guys in leather armor is elite... but then at the end of the game, it's the guy in platinum armor amongst a bunch of guys in gold armor that is the elite. Generally, when this happens, it's a sign of bad design.

In any generic kung fu movie, there will be 'that one nameless guy who knows kung fu.' While Bruce Lee is taking care of an entire room full of mooks, there will be these guys. Still nameless, still generic, but they last long enough to pose a serious threat to the hero. When they come in pairs, the hero has a problem for a while. They don't go down with a single hit in the face. They distinguish themselves by getting back up and landing hits of their own.

Sometimes, the bosses' right hand man is one of these. Other times, they are a boss in their own right. Usually the bosses' personal body guards are a group of elites.

In space, these are powerful frigates, or capital ships that are surrounded by swarms of fighters.

3. Bosses - You know who they are. They are used to finish off a level or they serve as a crescendo for various points in the game. A boss should never be trivial.

The big one. That large red dragon at the end of the line. The Death Star. These are bosses.