Did WotC change some monster's CR's ?

[Trainz]

It appears to me (from my campaigns) that some of the monster's CR's are lower than their lethality level. I take for example (to name a few) Dragons, Elementals, Giant Scorpions, and Giants.

When I put these in a game, my players wince because they KNOW they will get close to have their butts handed back to them for a meager experience reward.

So...

Is there some official erratta or somesuch somewhere on the weeeb that I can get, or is there something as close as possible to "official" out there ?

Thanks for any and all links you guys will provide.

 

[DanMcS]

Dragons are definitely set at a lower CR than their stats would otherwise indicate, to make the dragon an especially tough monster.

I'm not sure about elementals, they seem tough but are generally melee brutes.

Giant scorpions and giants in general are definitely melee brutes. If you go into melee with them at levels appropriate to their CRs, you will get beat down. Happened to our 11th level party against giant scorpions last session.

On the other hand, a third level spell or two (fly) makes a giant scorpion encounter trivial; once you get 30' up, they can do nothing but die slowly or retreat as you pelt them with arrows.

Similarly for giants. These kinds of hulking smashing monsters are tough in stand-up melee, but by the levels you encounter them, you're supposed to be smart enough to avoid a stand-up melee with overpowering brutes. Boulders tossed from giants are scary, but not nearly as bad as their melee attack routines.

By mid-levels, every character should have useful missile weapons, mobility aids like potions or boots of flying or levitation, your wizard should be packing a blasting wand for emergencies. These are the kind of expectations the D&D CR system is built around. If you don't have these kinds of things then you'll find some encounters rather harder.

Swarms are another monster type that seems hyperdesigned towards these assumptions. If you don't have a wand for blasting or a tactical-nuke sorceror, you basically have to retreat from them, because 2.5 of your average (fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard) four-member party are completely useless against them. I count the cleric as half because they often have some damaging spells. Swarms should have DR 15/- or so, not just be immune to melee weapons- a giant's club that might smash several dozen of the component creatures still counts as having done nothing to the group.

 

[noeuphoria]

They are hard if you play to their strengths. Giants? Yeah, you melee with them, it's gonna get tough. On the other hand, a well-placed confusion spell in their midst can pretty much render a group of giants useless. Or sit back 100 feet, take a few rocks, and watch them fumble their reflex saves against your fireballs and flamestrikes. Elementals? Can be affected by all kinds of extraplanar spells, i.e. banishment, holy word, dismissal. And once again.... horrible will saves, and they're not immune to mind-affecting spells any more in 3.5. Dragons.... well, dragons are just pimps, I think they are slightly underrated. That being said, my party did manage to take out a decently-sized red dragon with some well thought out tactics, but it was also on our second try, and we still lost 2 characters.

 

[Trainz]

I see what you mean guys.

However, my DM views combat encounters in a special way...

Lets say we meet a giant scorpion, fly up, and rain death from above, he won't give us any XP because he says that there wasn't any risks involved.

So, what that means is that when we do meet a melee encounter, at least one of us goes toe to toe with the critter to make sure we do receive the XP's.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Sounds like a DM problem!

Seriously though, he is evidently setting up the encounter with a higher EL (forcing you to fight on the creatures terms) and the DMG normally advocates scaling up the xp rewards in those circumstances. i.e. if you are in the position where you have no choice but to melee against giants you should be given more xps for defeating them +50% or +100%

(DMG p39)

Cheers

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Special as in "retarded," eh?

 

[noeuphoria]

Bump that! Encounters, theoretically, should be designed with player abilities in mind. If you're fighting giants, maybe they have a giant cleric to dispel and heal, one who actually has a decent will save... Giant scorpions by themselves don't present that much challenge after a certain level... the pcs are smarter than them and have more resources.

 

[dcollins]

It appears to me (from my campaigns) that some of the monster's CR's are lower than their lethality level. I take for example (to name a few) Dragons, Elementals, Giant Scorpions, and Giants.

Most folks will agree with that, especially Dragons. However (per the thread title), I don't believe anything changed. The same problem was in both 3.0 and 3.5 -- it's on the list of obvious things to fix that they failed to do in 3.5 (in favor of a bunch of $%@&).

In particular, I think that Giant CRs are too high. I wish their Hit Dice were lower (since they break the whole pattern-by-size laid out in the MM).

 

[the Jester]

I believe the 3.5 MM actually raised some CRs from their 3.0 levels for some of these- I seem to recall someone stating that in the early analyses of the changes in 3.5.

 

[Epametheus]

Some dragon CRs were raised.

Otherwise, nope, no change.