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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
[3.5] CRs still out of whack?
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<blockquote data-quote="kigmatzomat" data-source="post: 1050344" data-attributes="member: 9254"><p>Any time you use an incremented system there's a degree of rounding. By "strong for CR5" that it is tougher than the majority of CR5s but not enough to be CR6. Kind of like how you'll find leaps on PCs carry capacity and not gentle curves. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yep, invalid. Fact o' the matter is that casters counter brutes by dumping large amounts of mostly unavoidable damage on opponents at range. Casters are especially good against DR/- creatures because energy attacks bypass DR. Fireballs, searing light, lightning bolt, etc all do damage on par with multiple hits from a fighter. Then there's augmenting the durability of the party tank through buff spells and healing. Even against things they can't affect due to SR or just being low on spells they can be useful in combat by being a nuisance or a flanker (in a fight vs. an iron golem the mage Shielded, Mage Armored, Blurred, and Mirror Imaged to be unhittable enough he could survive as a flanker, giving the fighters an extra +2 to dump into Power Attack)</p><p></p><p>I run a low magic game world and trust me, you have to carefully choose your high HD creatures because the party can't blast it, charm them, use Protection vs. (something), or toss up protective Walls like they normally would. As a result I tend to give things with special abilities a "situation modifier:neutered magic" adjustment to CRs and hold them for later. There's a number of things that start getting important like the lack of high level magic items (few flaming/frosting or burst items), not to mention potent spell batteries like high level wands and staves. DR is incredibly dangerous since it nerfs so many attacks and when stacked on a creature that can't be sneak attacked like an Elemental the party's damage output is just low. (FYI: when fighting high DR or sneak-resistant targets the rogue in my game would resort to attacking with a torch rather than his blade just to do the d4 fire damage; now he lobs flasks of alchemist fire and thunderstones to stay out of range)</p><p></p><p>Compare your party to a typical party of a fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric using the NPCs out of the 3.0 DMG. At low levels no big deal but at about 6th level or so it starts getting obvious because the casters would have had 3rd level spells and been dumping 5d6 spells on the Elemental (or even 3d4+3 magic missles). Likely your psuedo-mage was firing d8+2 arrows (-5DR =~2hp ea.) when even a MM (~10hp) would have taken out about 15% of the elementals HPs.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kigmatzomat, post: 1050344, member: 9254"] Any time you use an incremented system there's a degree of rounding. By "strong for CR5" that it is tougher than the majority of CR5s but not enough to be CR6. Kind of like how you'll find leaps on PCs carry capacity and not gentle curves. Yep, invalid. Fact o' the matter is that casters counter brutes by dumping large amounts of mostly unavoidable damage on opponents at range. Casters are especially good against DR/- creatures because energy attacks bypass DR. Fireballs, searing light, lightning bolt, etc all do damage on par with multiple hits from a fighter. Then there's augmenting the durability of the party tank through buff spells and healing. Even against things they can't affect due to SR or just being low on spells they can be useful in combat by being a nuisance or a flanker (in a fight vs. an iron golem the mage Shielded, Mage Armored, Blurred, and Mirror Imaged to be unhittable enough he could survive as a flanker, giving the fighters an extra +2 to dump into Power Attack) I run a low magic game world and trust me, you have to carefully choose your high HD creatures because the party can't blast it, charm them, use Protection vs. (something), or toss up protective Walls like they normally would. As a result I tend to give things with special abilities a "situation modifier:neutered magic" adjustment to CRs and hold them for later. There's a number of things that start getting important like the lack of high level magic items (few flaming/frosting or burst items), not to mention potent spell batteries like high level wands and staves. DR is incredibly dangerous since it nerfs so many attacks and when stacked on a creature that can't be sneak attacked like an Elemental the party's damage output is just low. (FYI: when fighting high DR or sneak-resistant targets the rogue in my game would resort to attacking with a torch rather than his blade just to do the d4 fire damage; now he lobs flasks of alchemist fire and thunderstones to stay out of range) Compare your party to a typical party of a fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric using the NPCs out of the 3.0 DMG. At low levels no big deal but at about 6th level or so it starts getting obvious because the casters would have had 3rd level spells and been dumping 5d6 spells on the Elemental (or even 3d4+3 magic missles). Likely your psuedo-mage was firing d8+2 arrows (-5DR =~2hp ea.) when even a MM (~10hp) would have taken out about 15% of the elementals HPs. [/QUOTE]
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[3.5] CRs still out of whack?
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