Is There Possibility of a PF1.5 or a 3.5 Revival? Whether Directly or Something With Similar 'Ethos'

[Alzrius]

Tradition!

2e's Monstrous Compendium 1:

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1e MM:

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Fair enough, but that just shifts the question to why that was the case back in AD&D 1E. I mean, I've seen the episode of Kolchak the Nightstalker that supposedly inspired Gary Gygax to make rakshasas vulnerable to blessed crossbow bolts, but there's nothing in there about the spell immunity. Is that from some of the original Hindu epics?

 

[Bohandas]

Hey, at least they removed how certain creatures were flat-out immune to spells of a certain level or lower. Like, what sense did it make that a CR 9 rakshasa was immune to spells of less than 9th level?

But by the same token, what sense did it make that golems were immune? They kept that one. Why did they keep it on some creatures and not others?

 

[Theory of Games]

As a design concept, Challenge Rating is broken nonsense.

At first I thought it was just me running it wrong. Then I found the "discussions" on Paizo, Reddit and elsewhere of GMs' problems balancing encounters with RAW CR.

It no work.

The reality is that action economy will always trump the best CR calculations. How were the PCs built (rolls, array or PB)? How much 'arcane drip'? Also, how good or bad is the GM at tactics? Then the math rocks enter the chat ...

So I just dumped CR and went back to eyeballing encounters, just like we do with old-school D&D

 

[Voadam]

Fair enough, but that just shifts the question to why that was the case back in AD&D 1E. I mean, I've seen the episode of Kolchak the Nightstalker that supposedly inspired Gary Gygax to make rakshasas vulnerable to blessed crossbow bolts, but there's nothing in there about the spell immunity. Is that from some of the original Hindu epics?

My guess, purely a guess, is that it was a fairly gamist design choice to make a really majorly (but not completely) spell immune monster to drive it more to the Kolchak blessed crossbow bolt solution. You can kill them with +3 or better weapons or the top tier metero swarm or wish spells, but for the most part its go with the blessing. Even a 1st level reporter can kill them with their TV achilles heel. Otherwise you need powerful magic weapons (something decently powerful parties might reasonably have) or a 17th+ level magic user (as clerics and druids and illusionists did not get 9th level spells).

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Hey, at least they removed how certain creatures were flat-out immune to spells of a certain level or lower. Like, what sense did it make that a CR 9 rakshasa was immune to spells of less than 9th level?

Tradition!

This, and I also like that some monsters just have a whack ability, as long as it's not a TPK in disguise.

 

[Bohandas]

As a design concept, Challenge Rating is broken nonsense.

At first I thought it was just me running it wrong. Then I found the "discussions" on Paizo, Reddit and elsewhere of GMs' problems balancing encounters with RAW CR.

It no work.

The reality is that action economy will always trump the best CR calculations. How were the PCs built (rolls, array or PB)? How much 'arcane drip'? Also, how good or bad is the GM at tactics? Then the math rocks enter the chat ...

So I just dumped CR and went back to eyeballing encounters, just like we do with old-school D&D

Definitely. There was a growing understanding of the issue over the course of 3e's life cycle. I remember when 3.5e came out, they did some hyping up of having remade some monsters to be more CR-appropriate. To a large degree, 3.0 monsters were created by just taking AD&D monsters and translating their special abilities to 3e, and eyeballing a CR based on those. I remember an article on the website calling out the ogre mage as being poorly designed, because it has 37 hp, AC 18, and attacks at +7 for 3d6+7 (or flies and uses ranged attacks at +2 and 2d6), which is on par with something like an owlbear (CR 4) but it has to be CR 8 because they have a 1/day cone of cold dealing 9d6 points which is WAY too strong for a CR 4 creature. I believe the article then went on to provide a redesigned version with significant physical buffs and with the magic toned down a notch, and I think the Elemental Mages from MM5 were a similar attempt at a "fixed" ogre mage.

I think part of the problem is that CR needs to be accompanied by some kind of flags as to the mosnter's role in a combat. Like some code added next to the CR that clearly telegraphs that, for example, "hey, this CR 8 ogre mage is a glass cannon"

 

[Alzrius]

I think part of the problem is that CR needs to be accompanied by some kind of flags as to the mosnter's role in a combat. Like some code added next to the CR that clearly telegraphs that, for example, "hey, this CR 8 ogre mage is a glass cannon"

I'm not a fan of explicitly designating roles per se for monsters, if for no other reason than it further encourages a meta-game mindset which has always struck me as a poor fit for the vagaries of play. While I agree that some monsters are better at certain activities, the eccentricities (for lack of a better word) of any given situation are quite often more salient than their roles.

That said, probably the most palatable example of this that I can recall is how Bad Axe Games' Teratologue (part of their Trailblazer set of "3.75" products) differentiated between "total CR" and "spine CR," where the latter only took into account the "spine" of the monster's stat block (e.g. its Hit Dice, attack values, saving throw values, and a few other things common to all stat blocks) and the former took into account the totality of the stat block (most notably the special powers, spells, and spell-like abilities, if any).

What it found was that the more the spine CR matched the total CR, the more likely the monster was to be a "martial" type, which could get the most bang out of its proverbial buck if it closed into melee and slugged it out. By contrast, if the spine CR was notably weaker than the total CR, the monster was essentially a caster; if you had it close to melee, you were likely ignoring most of its special powers (which made up a large chunk of its total CR) and so it would be punching considerably below its weight class (hence why things like balors and pit fiends, if you ignored their long lists of SLAs, weren't able to stand up to high-level martials in a fight).

 

[Theory of Games]

I think part of the problem is that CR needs to be accompanied by some kind of flags as to the mosnter's role in a combat. Like some code added next to the CR that clearly telegraphs that, for example, "hey, this CR 8 ogre mage is a glass cannon"

I've never seen to date (and I've been looking) a CR "fix" that actually works. Because it can't be fixed: there are too many variables at play during combat to craft a reliable "one size fits all" solution.

With old-school play, the core rules (and hopefully the DM) warn the players that combat is a dangerous option. To be good at it requires team tactics, luck, and some common sense (if it's going bad, run away)

 

[DEFCON 1]

All I know is that when I read down the multiple giant lists of Feats at the d20PFSRD... on probably 95% of them I see what they do and think "Geez... this thing is ass! Why would anyone ever take this stupid thing, and who thought it was worth designing it?" LOL!

Pathfinder Feats-- take an extremely niche situation that will probably only come up like once in an entire campaign... and then make a specific game mechanic necessary as the only way to deal with it... rather than the DM just making a ruling at that moment of "That's something your character probably can deal with. Make an X check to see."

 

[Alzrius]

Pathfinder Feats-- take an extremely niche situation that will probably only come up like once in an entire campaign... and then make a specific game mechanic necessary as the only way to deal with it... rather than the DM just making a ruling at that moment of "That's something your character probably can deal with. Make an X check to see."

I once had an idea of making all of the feats in a chain only require a single slot. Essentially, you bought the entire chain for the "cost" of one feat; the caveat was that you only got the benefits of the subsequent feats in the chain as you met their prerequisites. It essentially made the feat you selected level up alongside your character.

Of course, I never got a chance to put any of that into play, so I have no idea how well it'd work at the table.