Design & Development: Elite Bulette

[Scribble]

That's... interesting. Hmmm. Without knowing hardly anything about it, I think, on the whole, that I like it.


Cheers,
Roger

I'm guessing that Bullettes, when safely beneath the ground, can heal a few points of damage once or twice during an encounter.

 

[JohnSnow]

Fixed that for you.

The mods have specifically asked people to stop using the "FTFY" thing. It's not usually either as cute or clever as the poster thinks.

And in some cases (like this one), it's not accurate either. That's already our second Design & Development article for the month (the first was on 12/3), and it's not even the 15th of December yet.

By comparison, we got our first Design & Development article last month on November 9th, and ended up getting five articles before the end of the month.

If you're going to attempt to be snarky, please at least try to base it on some factual evidence.

 

[AWizardInDallas]

Okay, so it doesn't sound all that innovative to me? Do we really need the word 'elite' on the monster's title to accomplish that?

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

This sounds way more Jaws-like than the 3.5 Bulette, and as a result is awesome. My only encounter 3.5 Bulettes was more like "A sack of hit points and experience bursts from the ground! Slash it to death before it slashes you to death!" I mean, its only notable ability is the ability to leap into the air to claw at more people. That screams neither "land" nor "shark" to me.

This, conversely, sounds like a half-way point between Jaws and Tremors. The burrow speed seems to have been sped up quite a bit so as to be tactically useful, and there's a lot of going above and below ground. This in turn sounds like it puts the party under a lot of pressure; they certainly don't sound as superheroic as they're sometimes made out to be.

I likey.

 

[Shroomy]

I was hoping for some more in-depth information concerning elite monsters. The actual crunch revealed (that elite monsters count as 2 creatures for encounter building and rewards) is not anything I did not already know from previous "Design & Development" articles (or various other official sources). For example, I would like to know if an elite creature scales differently from other creatures so it retains its elite ability against higher level PCs.

 

[M.L. Martin]

That's... interesting. Hmmm. Without knowing hardly anything about it, I think, on the whole, that I like it.


Cheers,
Roger

My immediate instinct is to think 'Second Wind', since it's described as bloodied. In SWSE, creatures can't take second winds, but perhaps D&D monsters or elite monsters get the capacity, or the bulette may have it to represent its extreme toughness. Then again, it could be something completely different.

 

[Rechan]

I'm wondering why they introduced this elite monster idea instead of just making the monster into a challenge for a higher level party.

An elite monster is basically the opposite of a minion - you want some stronger, fewer monsters without increasing the overall difficulty.

 

[Stogoe]

I dislike the name Bulette. Why does that fluff get pushed into my game? I wish they'd just call them Landsharks, like I want.

</unfunny humor-ish-ness>

EDIT: This sounded more witty in my mind, and when I only saw two responses in the thread. I apologize for it being even less funny than advertised.

 

[Rechan]

It's the Fezzik rule. You learn different techniques for fighting many people, than you do fighting one person at a time. So it seems to be with monsters. There's a design technique when they are supposed to fight many people, and a different one when they are only supposed to fight one at a time. A consistent source of irritation for me is when the big bad monster that I fear is going to TPK the party goes down in two rounds because of the heavy co-ordinated assault that the PCs lay on it. Hopefully by designing some monsters to take on multiple PCs this won't happen as much, and by coming up with a naming scheme this makes it easy to pick up of the books when you are designing an encounter.

This.

 

[Simon Marks]

Okay, so it doesn't sound all that innovative to me? Do we really need the word 'elite' on the monster's title to accomplish that?

Sure.

Elite means "These monsters, while designed for level x, are really tough and shouldn't be used in large groups"

The point is, the difference between (say) 4 level 10 monsters and 2 level 12 monsters and 2 level 10 elite monsters is more significant than in 3.5

The problem with all the 'monster level' systems is that they only work if given with defined groupings. It's one of the significant weaknesses of CR. 2 challenge rating 3 creatures does not equal 1 CR five creature doesn't equal 4 CR one creatures. Well, some do but many don't.

The Minion->Normal->Elite->Solo groupings seem simple enough.