advancing creatures CR

[Valorian]

Re: CRs in 3e

Sorry about hijacking the tread...didn't really mean to...your question just brought up some related thoughts I have been having. At least I answered you question (I'm sure its in there somewhere )

 

[Valorian]

Re: Re: CRs in 3e

I think that sounds a lot more reasonable (the brown bear instead of dire bear), do you know where I might find the reference to that errata, I already checked the official player's handbook corrections and clarifications by WOTC.

BTW: I realized the rules on summoning creatures, I was just using CRs for a guage of relative effectiveness of creatures.

In terms of calling CRs....I think WOTC should give a list of "representative" creatures for each CR. I'm kind of doing this to call CR in my campaign (have a bunch of novel creatures)...I tend to focus on "popular" monsters...giants, orges, trolls, mindflayers, etc. and use them as a guage on CR, since I expect these creatures have seen the most "action" in the playtest arena.

Fun Discussion

Nice job on hijacking the thread BTW.

Dire was a missprint
Replace the word: Dire
With the word: Polar
I.E
SM5 - Celestial Bear, Brown (6HD)
SM6 - Celestial Bear, POLAR (8HD)
SM7 - Celestial Elephant (11HD)

BTW For anyone that was wondering.
You, don't count the CR of a summoned monster.
When your fighting someone who summons a monster, you get no exp for killing it.
Called monsters you can, called monsters really die too when you kill them.
Summoned monsters are considered part of your opponent's overall CR regardless of if it's from a spell or a monster's power.
So when you fight like a balor and he summons another tuff demon to help him and you kill them both, you only get the exp for the balor.

 

[MythandLore]

Re: Re: Re: CRs in 3e

I think that sounds a lot more reasonable (the brown bear instead of dire bear), do you know where I might find the reference to that errata, I already checked the official player's handbook corrections and clarifications by WOTC.

BTW: I realized the rules on summoning creatures, I was just using CRs for a guage of relative effectiveness of creatures.

In terms of calling CRs....I think WOTC should give a list of "representative" creatures for each CR. I'm kind of doing this to call CR in my campaign (have a bunch of novel creatures)...I tend to focus on "popular" monsters...giants, orges, trolls, mindflayers, etc. and use them as a guage on CR, since I expect these creatures have seen the most "action" in the playtest arena.

Fun Discussion

The problem with errata is the "RnD" department over at WotC is all F----- up.
They have like handful of people doing the errata for like 45 products at one time.
Every time they come out with erratum, they don't have time to go back and check because 5 other products just came out.
Expect it to be official in like 2005.

BTW "It's not official Errata" unless it comes from Bill at RnD.
Even if the Sage, or other employee or former employee clarifies something, it's not official until it comes from RnD.
There lamers about that stuff.

So if some fool along the way type dire instead of polar it’s never going to get fixed.

“Hey make Summon Monster 6 a Cel polar bear okay.”
“Got it… Wait, what was that? Cel dire bear? Where'd you go? Ah well whatever, if it's wrong we’ll fix it later.”

Then pretty soon it’s in type.
This happens with everything, books, tv, editors are sapposed to catch this, but with game rules it's almost imposible, they're only good for spelling and grammer.
Then people play the blame game, everyone points fingers at each other about who’s fault is was and nothing gets fixed.

“I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“Yes you did.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Did you tell him to do that?”
“No I swear, I didn’t tell him to do that.”

BTW there is a list of monsters grouped by CR in the back of the MM on page 223.

 

[trentonjoe]

Back to MY thread-

I ran a couple of mock combats with the thread (assuming all rolls were a ten) and combatents started 60 ft away. This is what happened.

huge DireBear vs. Stone Giant CR 8- Stone Giant with its higher AC, and Iniative puts up a fight for awhile. If the distance gets changed to 100 feet the becomes closer but the bear still wins almost every time.

bear vs Frost Giant CR 9- Bear beats the crap out of a Frost giant. If it grapples the frost giant it gets real ugly real quick. Frost giant loses either way.

bear vs Fire giant CR 10- very close fight. If the bear wins in a grapple check it is all over. If it doesn't it, it becomes a very fair fight. The Bear wins most of the time though.

bear vs Cloud Giant CR 11- Cloud giant wins everytime.

I tried to adjust for power attack, expertise, and reach but I may made a mistake somewhere across the line.

Thanks for the idea.

 

[Cabral]

I realize that 3e is really 1e of pretty much a new game; therefore I expect some problems. One of those at least in my opinion is CR.

I personally think CR and ECL are problems. A minotaur with one level of fighter has a different challenge rating depending on whether he is a NPC or PC ... bleh.

Back to Valorian
One other thing, has anyone (DM) had a problem w/ monster summoning 6... it seems to me that the only really good critter to get from MS6 is the celestial dire bear (only CR 9, according to Monster Manual). Take a dire bear and add acid/cold/electricity resistance 20, damage reduction 10/+3 (this can be a serious problem for the opposition), and SR 24! (a serious problem for even an 11th level spell caster).

Compare that to other things you can get w/ MS6, Elemental Large (only a 8 hd creature), chaos best (8 hd), Kyton (+9 attacks, SR 17, 44 hp), Barbazu (SR 23, 10/+1 DR, 33 hp, etc...although it does get rage).

I know from personal experience that a chaos beast can be a challenge ... particularly for a monk ...

And now a few words from trentonjoe
I ran a couple of mock combats with the thread (assuming all rolls were a ten) and combatents started 60 ft away. This is what happened.

In theory, CR = Class level. Each time you halve the number of creatures decrease the ECL (CR) by two (extrapolation of x2 creatures = +2 ECL). A party of four members of a given level should defeat a monster of an equal challenge rating 80% of the time (extrapolation of a monter of a given CR should deplete 20% of the resouces, include hps, of a four memeber party of an equal average level). Assume CR = Class Level = CR, then, a single monster of a given challenge rating should win 80% (lose 20%) of the time against another similar monster* with CR equal to the first monster's minus four.

If my logic isn't wacked, I think you should be able get a good feel of accuracy by running 2 to 5 mock combats assuming the normal monster (the monster being used to test the experimental monster) takes ten on all rolls while assuming the experimental monster rolls 4 on all rolls in the first combat, 8 in the second, 12 in the third, 16 in the fourth, and 20 (no criticals) in the fifth (Stop when the experimental monster wins). If the experimental monster loses the first bought but wins the second, you've found the right CR for the monster (In theory). If he won the first bought, the CR is too low. If he lost the second bought, the CR is too high and progressing through the third, fourth, and fifth fights should tell you how far off.

*similar monster - testing a new ghost variation against a cleric is going to have far different results than testing it against a dire hamster. Testing against a staple monster with similar abilities should provide the most accurate results.

... of course I could be a crackpot.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I personally think CR and ECL are problems. A minotaur with one level of fighter has a different challenge rating depending on whether he is a NPC or PC ... bleh.

This is the very reason why I don't like ECL:s. Sometimes taking character levels makes creatures stronger, but one can't still make weaker version as strong as strongest ones with character levels. Then again, in some cases even one right character level makes certain monster noticably more dangerous. Another problem is, that not all PC/NPC-parties are equal when facing monsters chalenges. And sometimes it is about single thing like 'immune to critical hits' (good bye, rogue adventage).

Another problem is over-importance of spell-like abilities. Problem is that CR:s don't evolve in those as they should, so they are over-kill to lower level parties, but are doomed to fail against characters to whom monsters actually are supposed to be equal challenge. Spell DC:s in general (and SR) suffer from this lack of upper-end progress as well.

These are very common headaches in games with for characters 14 levels and up.


And sometimes CR-thing IMO just really stumbles into it's own 'cleaverness'.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/fc/fc20011124a

Now how well this monster compares to true CR 17/22 from monster manual? IMO not, because how it's dangerousness demands target is not immune to certain special effects. It's CR seems very much like character ECL to me.

 

[Numion]

The CRs for creatures shouldn't be tested against other creatures, but a group of four adventurers - the WotC standard. And maybe they've taken into account the creatures intelligence scores. Giants would win the bear with tactics.