Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 906072" data-attributes="member: 3051">Re: Colossal Scorpion:*cough*HARM*cough*Ah, using a broken spell to counter a broken CR.  Otto's works also; anything without a save and that doesn't care how many HP you have is perfect here.Here's the way I see it.  There are three kinds of monster:1> The brute-force types.  Animals, especially Dire ones, Beasts, Vermin, etc. fall into this category.2> The cool-ability ones.  Fey, for example.  Pathetic combat abilities, but powerful magic.3> The mixed-bag guys.  Outsiders and Dragons, with a little bit of everything.Groups of adventurers almost ALWAYS would fall into that third group, even if the individuals don't.  How many parties have you seen with all Fighters, all Mages, or all Clerics... well, drop that last one.  Each group always has a weak point, since it's the combination of different styles.  The Monk ignores the fighter-types and goes after the spellcasters.  The Fighter goes after the Rogues.  The Wizard goes after the Fighter.  And so on.So, when you send the party up against something from group 3 (or a mixed combination of 1 and 2), no problem, the CR system works just fine.  Everyone goes after their natural targets, and the bad guys don't have any single ability strong enough to consistently drop any of the good guys in one shot.  The group works together, all that healing and flanking and such.In my experience, the problems start when you throw all group 1 or all group 2 at the party, which is especially easy if it's the one-big-monster variety.  You're increasing the deadliness against the enemy's chosen prey without increasing its vulnerabilities from certain party members.  You're more likely to have a few people twiddling their thumbs since their types of attacks can't get through.  Besides not being fun, it's also dangerous.Which is more likely to cause casualties:A> a Fiendish Dire Tiger, orB> a CR 8 spellcaster riding a CR 8 Dire Tiger?B might do more damage spread across the whole group, but A is more likely to just absolutely slaughter one or two party members before going down; Pounce + Smite Good...  (Although, the thought of a Hasted, buffed up Dire Tiger is enough to give the willies.)</blockquote>

Verification