CM
Adventurer
Actually, if they use ranged attacks, they deal 2 damage no matter what. That basically means every dagger they throw automatically hits, and automatically does max damage. Free critical hits for everyone!
It's not quite as bad if you give orcs the Slayer theme, since they would only do 1 damage, and only on melee attacks. Hobgoblins get 1 damage every round no matter what attack mode they are using.
And that is just the Slayer theme. Imagine giving those kobolds the Magic-User theme. Now they can now throw magic missiles and rays of frost at will, infinitely. This will be a very short battle.![]()
We all know that feats (and therefore themes) are quite powerful. Why should we expect a monster with a theme to continue to be a pushover? (Assuming that monsters can even be customized with themes designed for player characters).
My money is on there being a set of special monster themes/templates which aren't game-breaking when applied to NPCs/monsters.