Challenging Challenge Ratings...again

[Kerrick]

I should be posting monster questions here instead of in the Godsend thread.

UK, I've got a problem. Mithril and adamantine aren't real materials, so we don't have any densities for them, which makes it impossible to determine the golem stats. Mithril is much lighter than iron, so I'd place it around a +20 Strength bonus, but that would mean that it has only 40 Strength - lower than an iron golem - and 19 HD (vs. an iron golem's 22). I think adamantine is around the same as steel, density-wise, so about 27. Same story, though - it would be 43 Strength and 22-23 HD.

I seriously think basing strength off material density is the wrong way to go about it. I can see the line of logic (strength increases in proportion to density), but it falls apart when you have materials that are extremely strong and yet light, like cast aluminum, titanium... and mithril. Gold is incredibly dense, but very soft - I don't think a golem made of gold would be very strong, though it would have a VSC or two due to its immense weight.

I'll play around with some things, but I'm thinking right now that golem strength should be based directly off material strength - probably hit points per inch. Thus, a golem's power increases in direct proportion to the material from which it's made - mithril is better than iron, adamantine is better than mithril, and neutronium is better than adamantine. It also makes it much easier to make golems from random new materials - if you know the hardness and hit points, you're good to go; no more screwing around trying to figure out the density (and personally, I can't make heads or tails out of that table or how you got those numbers).

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Kerrick mate!

I should be posting monster questions here instead of in the Godsend thread.

DOH!

UK, I've got a problem. Mithril and adamantine aren't real materials, so we don't have any densities for them, which makes it impossible to determine the golem stats.

With hypothetical materials the trick is to create hypothetical densities.

Mithril is much lighter than iron, so I'd place it around a +20 Strength bonus, but that would mean that it has only 40 Strength - lower than an iron golem - and 19 HD (vs. an iron golem's 22). I think adamantine is around the same as steel, density-wise, so about 27. Same story, though - it would be 43 Strength and 22-23 HD.

I can't remember exactly where I'd have both but probably equate Mithril with Aluminium and Adamantine with Uranium.

I seriously think basing strength off material density is the wrong way to go about it. I can see the line of logic (strength increases in proportion to density), but it falls apart when you have materials that are extremely strong and yet light, like cast aluminum, titanium... and mithril. Gold is incredibly dense, but very soft - I don't think a golem made of gold would be very strong, though it would have a VSC or two due to its immense weight.

The Golem has to have strength by density to move its own mass.

The softness/hardness of a material is represented in its Damage Reduction - not its strength.

A punch from a 5 ton Golden Golem is likely to hurt more than a punch from a 1000 pound Mithril Golem.

I'll play around with some things, but I'm thinking right now that golem strength should be based directly off material strength - probably hit points per inch.

I disagree...but feel free to tinker.

Thus, a golem's power increases in direct proportion to the material from which it's made - mithril is better than iron, adamantine is better than mithril, and neutronium is better than adamantine. It also makes it much easier to make golems from random new materials - if you know the hardness and hit points, you're good to go; no more screwing around trying to figure out the density (and personally, I can't make heads or tails out of that table or how you got those numbers).

Its based on how much more dense the material is contrasted with flesh/bone.

 

[Kerrick]

I can't remember exactly where I'd have both but probably equate Mithril with Aluminium and Adamantine with Uranium.

From what I determined, mithril is about equal to titanium - around 1.06 g/cm3. I haven't been able to figure out adamantine, though.

The Golem has to have strength by density to move its own mass.

Right, but what if it's not that massive? Let's take the mithril golem as an example. It's made of a very light, very strong material. It's not that dense, but it should still have more HD than iron, because it's "better".

The softness/hardness of a material is represented in its Damage Reduction - not its strength.

Right, got that. BUT... I was playing around last night, and I hit on a workable solution:

HD = 9 + material hardness; Strength = average of hardness and hp/inch, + average Strength for size. DR = hardness

With this in mind, we get a nice progression of golem strengths:

Flesh: HD 9, Strength 21, DR 0/- (I figure flesh has hardness 0 and 2 hp/inch)

Clay: HD 12, Strength 25, DR 3/- (clay has around 8 hp/inch)

Gold: HD 14, Strength 28, DR 5/- (I figured gold has around 12 hp/inch)

Stone: HD 17, Strength 31, DR 8/-

Iron: HD 19, Strength 40, DR 10/-

Mithril: HD 24, Strength 52, DR 15/-

Adamantine: HD 29, Strength 60, DR 20/-

A punch from a 5 ton Golden Golem is likely to hurt more than a punch from a 1000 pound Mithril Golem.

Well yeah... it weighs 5 times as much.

Its based on how much more dense the material is contrasted with flesh/bone.

Oh.

 

[Kerrick]

I'm still playing around with some things, but I can tell you that the weight for your diamond golem is off, by a lot - the density of diamond is 218.5 lbs/cu. ft.; a diamond golem 14 feet tall made of solid diamond occupies 77.76 cu. ft., and weighs 16,990 (17K) pounds. That seems like it's too much, but the height feels about right - diamond is a lot harder than stone, and a diamond golem should be larger, though I'm not sure how much larger. It would gain 1 VSC by my system (its weight exceeds the max for Large size, but not the max for Huge size).

I've also figured out the densities of mithril and adamantine - 351.8 lbs/cu. ft. and 395.8 lbs/cu. ft., respectively (adamantine golems should be 24 feet tall, not 30 - I'll explain later).

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Kerrick mate!

From what I determined, mithril is about equal to titanium - around 1.06 g/cm3. I haven't been able to figure out adamantine, though.

Right, but what if it's not that massive? Let's take the mithril golem as an example. It's made of a very light, very strong material. It's not that dense, but it should still have more HD than iron, because it's "better".

Because an iron piece is better than a gold piece...right.

Theres no reason why a lighter golem should deal more damage than a heavier one. So the idea that a Mithril golem is better than a Gold Golem because its tougher is as credible an argument as saying the Gold Golem is better because it is heavier and deals more damage.

Right, got that. BUT... I was playing around last night, and I hit on a workable solution:

HD = 9 + material hardness; Strength = average of hardness and hp/inch, + average Strength for size. DR = hardness

With this in mind, we get a nice progression of golem strengths:

Flesh: HD 9, Strength 21, DR 0/- (I figure flesh has hardness 0 and 2 hp/inch)

Clay: HD 12, Strength 25, DR 3/- (clay has around 8 hp/inch)

Gold: HD 14, Strength 28, DR 5/- (I figured gold has around 12 hp/inch)

Stone: HD 17, Strength 31, DR 8/-

Iron: HD 19, Strength 40, DR 10/-

Mithril: HD 24, Strength 52, DR 15/-

Adamantine: HD 29, Strength 60, DR 20/-

Now why the heck would anyone want to make one of your Gold Golems when they could make an iron golem for a fraction of the material cost?

Well yeah... it weighs 5 times as much.

Then how is the lighter golem necessarily 'better'?

Oh.

Exactly.

 

[Kerrick]

I screwed up. Mithril is slightly heavier than titanium (4.55 g/cm3), which sounds about right. It's 4.7 times as dense as flesh, or around a +20 Strength modifier. This would give the mithril golem 19 HD and 50 Str.

Of course, mithril is supposed to be lighter than most metals (including adamantine), so I posit that either the height or the weight of the adamantine golem (most likely the height) is wrong.

An iron golem is 12 feet tall, and mithril is 18, so it would seem to follow that adamantine should be 24. If we use that, it occupies 622.1 cu. ft. Keep the weight the same, and the density ends up around 6.34 g/cm3, somewhere between mithril and iron - right about where it should be.

By this, we can determine that adamantine is 5.28 times the density of flesh, which would give it around +22 Strength. Thus, an adamantine golem would have 20 HD and Strength 52.

Anyway...

Theres no reason why a lighter golem should deal more damage than a heavier one.

And yet mithril golems deal more damage than iron golems (according to the ELH). Yeah, I know that's a specious argument, but still.

So the idea that a Mithril golem is better than a Gold Golem because its tougher is as credible an argument as saying the Gold Golem is better because it is heavier and deals more damage.

The fact that mithril is lighter probably means that a mithril golem has more metal making up its volume, as opposed to gold. An iron golem is ~30% metal by volume.

Now why the heck would anyone want to make one of your Gold Golems when they could make an iron golem for a fraction of the material cost?

Who would blow that much gold to make a gold golem when they could put it to much better use, like making two or three iron golems, or even a couple mithril golems?

Then how is the lighter golem necessarily 'better'?

I'm just following the logic laid out in the books. Flesh - clay - stone - iron - mithril - adamantine. Better materials = better golems. I was thinking of making two "branches" of golems: stone (stone and gemstones) and metal (iron, mithril, etc.), that progress differently.

Exactly.

You make it sound like it's self-evident, but it's not. Examples and explanations are a good thing.

 

[Kerrick]

I did some thinking about this at work. You have good points (as I meant to concede earlier); we're toward the same goal, just from different points of view. My reason for using hardness/hit points is that I think it would be easier - all materials need them for purposes of breaking objects, and thus you don't have to do extra work, whereas using density requires a good bit of extra calculation (especially if you want to be precise).

I also figured something out: I overlooked a rather critical point - that a material's density is a contributing factor (but the ONLY one) to its strength. For example: we have two doors, one made of gold and one made of iron, both 1 inch thick. The gold door is much softer, and thus easier to damage, but it's a lot denser and thus would take about the same amount of time to hack through (i.e., more hp/inch).

I also figured out how they determined hardness and hp/inch for materials. They used iron as the baseline material; all others' hardnesses are then compared to it and assigned numbers thereby. For example, stone is around 3/4 as strong as iron, thus hardness 8.

Hit points per inch were determined from the material's density relative to iron. A value was derived therefrom and used in this formula: hp/inch = (density * hardness) + 20. For example: mithril is around half as dense as iron (roughly the equivalent of titanium), but half again as strong, so its hp/inch is: (0.5 * 15) + 20 = 27, rounded up to 30.

By this we can determine that adamantine is, in fact, twice as hard as iron and roughly the same density. We can also determine hardness and hp for other metals:

Gold: Hardness 5, hp/inch 34

Silver: Hardness 6, hp/inch 28

Mercury: hardness 6*, hp/inch 30

Bronze: hardness 8, hp/inch 30

Iron: Hardness 10, hp/inch 30.

Titanium: Hardness 12, hp/inch 26

Mithril: Hardness 15, hp/inch 27

Adamantine: Hardness 20, hp/inch 40 (density roughly = iron)


*I'm guessing here, since mercury is a liquid at room temperature.

Unfortunately, this also shows that the formula I've been using to determine golem Strengths probably won't work, since golems made from all the above materials end up more or less the same (everything from gold to mithril is 39-41, and adamantine is 50).

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

(Kerrick not sure I have a reply for your above posts just yet - if something strikes me I'll get back to you, interesting stuff...but as you yourself note, your method makes all the golems very close in power).

Okay, so still having a bit of jip with the CR/EL system, specifically EL. However, I remembered something last night, that I really wanted to parallel the 4E Level Role mechanic over the top of 3E and see what resulted.

Basically it looks like:

Minion Monster: CR = PC Level x0.33 (1/3)
Standard Monster: CR = PC Level x0.66 (2/3)
Elite Monster: CR = PC Level
Solo Monster: CR = PC Level x1.33

e.g. For a 20th-level PC Party

Minion Monster = CR 6
Standard Monster = CR 13
Elite Monster = CR 20
Solo Monster = CR 26

So putting together an encounter (for a party of 5 PCs) you might want:

1 Elite Monster
2 Standard Monsters
4 Minion Monsters

Or 1 Balor, 2 Glabrezu and 4 Babau (CRs by WotC...I just had the 3.5 MM handy)

At least thats the basis of the idea, which I think would VASTLY simplify the EL stuff from the CR/EL document.

Still need to work out a number of things here but I have a good handle on them.

Any thoughts? I think this could be a revelation in helping people understand putting together encounters rather than my original system, which gives exactly the same results but just looks ten times more complex.

 

[Kerrick]

(Kerrick not sure I have a reply for your above posts just yet - if something strikes me I'll get back to you, interesting stuff...but as you yourself note, your method makes all the golems very close in power).

That's okay. I'm still pondering how to make it workable; I'm thinking of just assigning hp/inch + 10 for Strength. *shrug*

Okay, so still having a bit of jip with the CR/EL system, specifically EL. However, I remembered something last night, that I really wanted to parallel the 4E Level Role mechanic over the top of 3E and see what resulted.
...
At least thats the basis of the idea, which I think would VASTLY simplify the EL stuff from the CR/EL document.
...
Any thoughts? I think this could be a revelation in helping people understand putting together encounters rather than my original system, which gives exactly the same results but just looks ten times more complex.

I think it's very workable, and it looks pretty simple. Anything that would simplify encounter building would be a boon.

On a side note, it's kind of funny... when I was revising the wealth tables for Project Phoenix, I couldn't get things to work properly until I accounted for five party members instead of four. I think that is supposed to be the standard.

 

[paradox42]

That is indeed an interesting take. And it's another example of good ideas arising from cross-pollination between the editions- certainly it looks to be worth trying, to me.

I have one of my parties set to attack a Phasmalich (thanks Alzrius!) probably this weekend, so maybe I can use this to throw in a couple of minions he has waiting to help. The fact that they're going after him because he's casting a ritual to awaken a Ruin of Ages (thanks Philip for another favorite from the Epic Monsters thread!) actually brings in a beast well beyond the Solo level, but really the point of the fight is that they're trying to stop him and ideally shouldn't see the undead city at all.