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The Explicatae Incompositae - Being A Bestairy of the Sometime Lords of Chaos
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3344982" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Now that's what I'm talking about. Thanks. More than a few levels over 20 offend my 1st edition sensibilities, and as I get older I find it harder and harder to find games - especially long running ones - so I've little experience with 3rd edition high level play. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's perfectly fine with me. The idea is to target a CR which makes for a reasonable 'big bad' for a party at or just above 20th level. My design goal is an average of 6 rounds of combat with a CR equivalent party. Thus the high hit points, high AC, and hopefully decent saves and immunities.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You will find that if I think that the change in 3.5 is a mistake, that I'll just ignore it. Emotion is just one example of that. So, yes, not official, but not a mistake either. Or rather, it is a mistake, but its thier mistake and not mine.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's a bit more damage than I would have expected at fighter to do on one hit, but I'm gratified to hear that the AC is spot on the design goal.</p><p></p><p>The reason that the DR is not lawful and epic is that I didn't want to rule out a non-epic party taking on this challenge. A mistake added to the game in 3.5 edition however makes that somewhat problimatic. </p><p></p><p>The reason the save DC's are low is the design goal is that a character with poor saves in that category will still make the save about 2/3rds of the time (if they've paid attention to thier weakness), and with good saves should probably not fail. That's about as high as I feel comfortable with. I dislike how much high level play depends on single die roles, especially the way many existing monsters are built (low AC's, high DC 'save or die' attacks, high attack bonus relative to thier own AC, etc.). If I'm failing to meet this design goal, I'll think about fixes.</p><p></p><p>I don't have FC1, and it sounds like that they have slightly different design goals than I do. If they have Demogorgon stated out at CR 23, then they are targeting primarily a non-Epic audience. For my part, if the outer planar lords aren't significantly more powerful than ordinary mortal heroes, I think that creates an internal consistancy issue. On the other hand, if they are too much above mortal heroes, then there is no point stating them out at all because they can't interact with the PC's in any meaningful way. I would have targeted about CR 29 for Demogorgon, Ssendam, ect. </p><p></p><p>For reasons that will come out as I get more of them stated up, Baseraxs is intended to be near the low end of Slaad Lord power, so a CR around 22-25 is ideal AFAIC. </p><p></p><p>Still, I'm not sure I buy it is as low as 22. Somethings you didn't mention:</p><p></p><p>He's got several abilities that don't even allow a save: reverse gravity at will, power word (kill) three times a day, and word of chaos at will (in 3.5, this could TPK a 15th or even 20th level party, which is just dumb). </p><p></p><p>His real AC is effectively much higher than that. Against lawfuls, you are dealing with someone who will have Cloak of Chaos up (+4 to AC) [Edit: nm, just noticed that its a deflection bonus] and has an effective +1 bonus to AC due to his aura. And he's somewhat built to fight defensively if he has the AC advantage and isn't under time pressure, which take that 24th level fighter whom you mention up to the point where he needs a 20 to hit if he's lawful and would seriously cramp anyone else.</p><p></p><p>As for spell casters, he has a brutal grapple, strong resistances, a strong Fort save, and a few immunities. The spell resistance isn't going to knock out many spells against a spell caster that cares about his penetration, but its not intended to. It's intended to block the occasional spell from a spell caster that didn't work on penetration, and provide a significant defence against wands, staves and the like. If you think it needs to be more important, I'll bump it up by 5 points.</p><p></p><p>He has greater dispelling at will, which is likely to seriously debuff a high level party depending on buffs. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Indeed it does.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3344982, member: 4937"] Now that's what I'm talking about. Thanks. More than a few levels over 20 offend my 1st edition sensibilities, and as I get older I find it harder and harder to find games - especially long running ones - so I've little experience with 3rd edition high level play. That's perfectly fine with me. The idea is to target a CR which makes for a reasonable 'big bad' for a party at or just above 20th level. My design goal is an average of 6 rounds of combat with a CR equivalent party. Thus the high hit points, high AC, and hopefully decent saves and immunities. You will find that if I think that the change in 3.5 is a mistake, that I'll just ignore it. Emotion is just one example of that. So, yes, not official, but not a mistake either. Or rather, it is a mistake, but its thier mistake and not mine. That's a bit more damage than I would have expected at fighter to do on one hit, but I'm gratified to hear that the AC is spot on the design goal. The reason that the DR is not lawful and epic is that I didn't want to rule out a non-epic party taking on this challenge. A mistake added to the game in 3.5 edition however makes that somewhat problimatic. The reason the save DC's are low is the design goal is that a character with poor saves in that category will still make the save about 2/3rds of the time (if they've paid attention to thier weakness), and with good saves should probably not fail. That's about as high as I feel comfortable with. I dislike how much high level play depends on single die roles, especially the way many existing monsters are built (low AC's, high DC 'save or die' attacks, high attack bonus relative to thier own AC, etc.). If I'm failing to meet this design goal, I'll think about fixes. I don't have FC1, and it sounds like that they have slightly different design goals than I do. If they have Demogorgon stated out at CR 23, then they are targeting primarily a non-Epic audience. For my part, if the outer planar lords aren't significantly more powerful than ordinary mortal heroes, I think that creates an internal consistancy issue. On the other hand, if they are too much above mortal heroes, then there is no point stating them out at all because they can't interact with the PC's in any meaningful way. I would have targeted about CR 29 for Demogorgon, Ssendam, ect. For reasons that will come out as I get more of them stated up, Baseraxs is intended to be near the low end of Slaad Lord power, so a CR around 22-25 is ideal AFAIC. Still, I'm not sure I buy it is as low as 22. Somethings you didn't mention: He's got several abilities that don't even allow a save: reverse gravity at will, power word (kill) three times a day, and word of chaos at will (in 3.5, this could TPK a 15th or even 20th level party, which is just dumb). His real AC is effectively much higher than that. Against lawfuls, you are dealing with someone who will have Cloak of Chaos up (+4 to AC) [Edit: nm, just noticed that its a deflection bonus] and has an effective +1 bonus to AC due to his aura. And he's somewhat built to fight defensively if he has the AC advantage and isn't under time pressure, which take that 24th level fighter whom you mention up to the point where he needs a 20 to hit if he's lawful and would seriously cramp anyone else. As for spell casters, he has a brutal grapple, strong resistances, a strong Fort save, and a few immunities. The spell resistance isn't going to knock out many spells against a spell caster that cares about his penetration, but its not intended to. It's intended to block the occasional spell from a spell caster that didn't work on penetration, and provide a significant defence against wands, staves and the like. If you think it needs to be more important, I'll bump it up by 5 points. He has greater dispelling at will, which is likely to seriously debuff a high level party depending on buffs. Indeed it does. [/QUOTE]
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