Dear bloody god: Calystrx (Threats to Nentir Vale Preview)

[Matt James]

So which one of you named it? And was Malystryx, the Great Red of the underappreciated Dragonlance: Fifth Age material, any inspiration for the name?

I did not name it as it was previously released under the old Hammerfast book.

 

[mearls]

So which one of you named it? And was Malystryx, the Great Red of the underappreciated Dragonlance: Fifth Age material, any inspiration for the name?

Yes, that was the inspiration. I loved the Fifth Age RPG.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Yes, that was the inspiration. I loved the Fifth Age RPG.

I thought it might be--about a year or so ago, I was doing some random Googling and dug up a post by you from rec.games.frp.misc singing its praises. I wish I'd known it when we met briefly in 2007.

Any hope of seeing any kind of revival?

 

[Psikus]

Dear God. Most importantly, it's one of the first monsters I've ever seen that shrugs off marks like water. Each turn it just ends a mark upon him and then presumably eats the rest of the party at his whimsy. This is probably one of the strongest monsters in 4E because of its ability to outright not care about marks.

This looks like a job for... the knight! Ok, not really, because the slide 3 thing really screws with Defender's Aura, but still, I'd say this is an encounter that favors Essential defenders over their traditional, marking brethren. While not a hard lock by any means, getting Def. Aura cancelled on a hit is still way better than automatically losing a mark at the end of turn. After all the recent discussions comparing defenders, I found this an interesting point.

Apart from that, this is yet another impressive solo. Man, do I like the new monster books...

 

[Nullzone]

I've long considered giving solos the ability to ignore marks, even if temporarily. Also considering giving elites similar action recovery traits at paragon (although likely without the mark removal)...this just reaffirms the idea in my mind.

 

[Riastlin]

I've long considered giving solos the ability to ignore marks, even if temporarily. Also considering giving elites similar action recovery traits at paragon (although likely without the mark removal)...this just reaffirms the idea in my mind.

Allowing solos the ability to deal with marks is certainly worth consridering, though I might be more amenable to giving them a save vs. any mark at the start of their turn rather than just flat out ignoring them.

Removing them at end of the solo's turn really only helps with triggered actions or solo's that have multiple initiatives. Though I would note that in the Calystrx's example, as written and interpreted by the author, the mark "ignore" wouldn't really help if the marking defender had an initiative right after the last head, or right before the first head (since the end of Cal's turn is at initiative 10).

By contrast, going the save route allows a) the solo to potentially ignore the mark during its active turn while b) still making marks meaningful -- if the solo fails the save, then its still subject to the mark.

All that being said, I ran the new Beholder (levelled up to 12) as a solo vs. a level 11 party of 6 and even with the swordmage's mark being up the entire encounter, the party was still hard pressed by the end of it. The ranger was a bit of a weeble wobble (and almost got tossed off a tower), the leader was petrified for several rounds, etc. Even the swordmage eventually took to going full defense on her turn because she was still taking net damage (even with the temps granted by her mark). I did not give the beholder anything to deal with marks, but it still ended up being a tense battle. Had I allowed it to save vs. the mark, it might have been enough to kill 1 or more PCs without too much difficulty.

 

[generalchaos34]

im actually planning on running calystryx since i was using hammerfast as a skeleton for my current campaign, and while the party knows little of the dragon, im def going to use the updated version for the campaign now (prob scaled down) although i was planning on the party getting help from some NPC groups depending on how they treated them, also, having them fight her in Hammerfast next to some of the guard towers will allow the PCs to use the ballistae mounter there to attack her. Right now the party is carrying a Mcguffin to be destroyed in the Iron Tomb of Hammerfast, and naturally they need to get permission to enter before they engage its horrors. They havent arrived yet, but i was thinking that they should come during the summer dragon festival as a source of foreshadowing about Calystryx. Im still going to have Thar trying to resurrect her, but im thinking of combining his story theme with the main baddie from Runecutters ruin (irresponsible use of divine runes, plus a few nifty battles) and to top it off ill make Thars lair similar to the tomb in Sleeper in the Tomb of Dreams, but make all the carvings on the wall be about the Dragon being a Far Realm monstrosity. This could open the door to a more Far Realm themed Paragon tier, since my Heroic tier has been mostly undead.

 

[Erudite Frog]

holy moly, this dragon looks to be really deadly. great work mr. matt james! It looks like you four designers might have made the best 4e product this year.

 

[Aegeri]

holy moly, this dragon looks to be really deadly. great work mr. matt james! It looks like you four designers might have made the best 4e product this year.

This year? Try since Dark Sun last year IMO.

That's right, I went there.

 

[Talaeden_Denthiir]

Kudos to both Matt and Mike. I can't wait to spring something like this on my players! Sad thing is, they just hit the Epic Tier! Any chance you two could give some hard and fast house rules on how to update Calastryx to the epic tier?

P.S. - I even got a Headless Ashardalon in my Wrath of Ashardalon Boxed set, so ironically, i can just say it sprouts "X" number of heads lol!

~Teo