Encounter Level Difficulty

Im trying to design an adventure for my players and I'm trying to figure out the hardest thing they could fight at their level. They are a balanced party of 11th lvl characters, and will be fighting a CR 13 Advanced Huge Clay Golem. They will have almost no preperation time. Do you think this is too hard? It seems tougher than CR 13 due to its 15 foot reach, and DR 10/adamantine AND bludgeoning. I have a few contigencancies to save them from a party wipe and was just wondering what other people think.

On top of that, what would you say is the highest CR that this party could face? The DMG makes a CR +1 or 2 over the PC's level sound really deadly, but anything less is a push over.

daTim said:

Im trying to design an adventure for my players and I'm trying to figure out the hardest thing they could fight at their level. They are a balanced party of 11th lvl characters, and will be fighting a CR 13 Advanced Huge Clay Golem. They will have almost no preperation time. Do you think this is too hard? It seems tougher than CR 13 due to its 15 foot reach, and DR 10/adamantine AND bludgeoning. I have a few contigencancies to save them from a party wipe and was just wondering what other people think.

On top of that, what would you say is the highest CR that this party could face? The DMG makes a CR +1 or 2 over the PC's level sound really deadly, but anything less is a push over.

Click to expand...

A fresh party should be able to handle a +2 CR encounter without difficulty.

A fresh party not particularly prepared nor caught with their pants down should be able to handle an isolated +3 CR encounter. Do not be terribly surprised if someone dies, but zero casualties is more likely.

A party of 8th level or higher should have adequate tactics for dealing with big reach creatures.

The DR may be a problem if they lack either a strong Powerattacking grunt or an admantine bludgeoning weapon. If they have good mobility and space to work they still may be able to wear the thing down with ranged attacks alone.

How high an encounter level can you go? +4 CR runs a small risk of a TPK and is very likely to cause a death or two. Always keep circumstances in mind. A well buffed 11th party might crush a CR 15 encounter without breaking a sweat.

daTim said:

They are a balanced party of 11th lvl characters, and will be fighting a CR 13 Advanced Huge Clay Golem. They will have almost no preperation time. Do you think this is too hard?

Click to expand...

From your post, I take the golem will be alone. The point is, as golems are not to smart (and clay move 20 ft., unless self-hasted), can they pull out, prepare and come back fight the big monster ? If they can, they'll probably crush him (since a balanced party will probably think of disintegration, and a slowed non-spellcasting monster is a dead monster). 15' reach or not. But someone can always get unlucky in the fight, or regret the cursed wounds during next encounter.

The Golem will be rampaging through a small city, so if they dont intervene in some way it will kill lots of people, destroy much of the town and eventually kill several NPC friends who would die to defend the city. So basicly they are in a slight time crunch to kill it and are rather motivated.

Here are its stats if anyone is curious... Advancing monsters is tough work!

HP: 143 + DR 10/Adamantine and Bludg.
AC: 23, Touch 6
Saves: +6/+4/+6 (not that important)
Attack: +23/+23 at 15 feet (good thing no power attack...)
Damage: 4d8+11 cursed wound damage (avg 29 dmg)
Can haste itself for 3 rounds, acid heals it 4 to 1

A lvl 15 monk would clean this thing up nicely, too bad there are none. Also nobody in the party has an adamantine bludg. weapon, though there are some in town.

Well, MY 11th level party consisting of a Psion, a Wizard, a Cleric, and a Druid would have a problem against it (although they could probably beat it down by surrounding it with summoned cannon fodder that can do a few more than 10 dmg per attack and can soak up dmg), more with killing it than not getting killed.

daTim said:

The Golem will be rampaging through a small city, so if they dont intervene in some way it will kill lots of people, destroy much of the town and eventually kill several NPC friends who would die to defend the city. So basicly they are in a slight time crunch to kill it and are rather motivated.

Here are its stats if anyone is curious... Advancing monsters is tough work!

HP: 143 + DR 10/Adamantine and Bludg.
AC: 23, Touch 6
Saves: +6/+4/+6 (not that important)
Attack: +23/+23 at 15 feet (good thing no power attack...)
Damage: 4d8+11 cursed wound damage (avg 29 dmg)
Can haste itself for 3 rounds, acid heals it 4 to 1

A lvl 15 monk would clean this thing up nicely, too bad there are none. Also nobody in the party has an adamantine bludg. weapon, though there are some in town.

Click to expand...

CR/EL is a very rough estimate. Especially unreliable when you use the more exotic monsters (Demons, Dragons, Golems) or templates or advancement rules.

A Cloud Giant (17 Hit Dice, 15 foot reach) is only CR 11, but for a party with the right spells, the Giant can be defeated easily and a party with the wrong combination can be crushed by the cloud giant. Likewise, the advanced golem you are considering.

If you know the players and characters (from a long running campaign), a far better analysis is to compare individual character tactics against the opponent monster. Do they have characters that can penetrate DR, with weapons that bypass or through power attack? same for SR, spell immunities, etc. What spells do the players normally memorize? Will those spells be effective against the golem?

Will the party know about the Golem ahead of time, i.e. hear rumors, see it in the distance, etc, or will they fight it without preparation time?

If the monster is immune to most characters, will it turn to a 1 on 1 duel between one character and the monster?

With regards to ELs, my encounters range between -5 and +5, with the assumption that they won't flee/negotiate with monsters that are +5 or over, but on occassion they surprise me by defeating an EL +5 monster.