DMG Excerpt: Customizing Monsters

[Lizard]

"Have plain vanilla mind flayers got you in a rut? Does your beholder need some extra tentacles? Do you ever say to yourself 'why can't a dire ape spit acid-glue?' Well, have we got the solution for you! Coming this fall: The Book of Involved Templates. Listen to the following testimonials from actual gamers like you:

I already own it. It's called Advanced Bestiary from Green Ronin, and it's one of the Top 5 D&D supplements EVAR, IMHO. Cannot recommend highly enough.

"My evil druid was dull and lifeless until I started throwing the plant template on everything in the monster manual. Next week my PCs will fight plant aboleths, plant dopplegangers and plant Demogorgon!" -- Smedley P. Cruikshank

You've read my campaign notes!

 

[The Little Raven]

half-fiend vampiric sorceror weregoat

Nitpick: This isn't possible in 3e RAW. Vampire template requires the creature to be a humanoid or monstrous humanoid. It changes the creature's type to undead. Half-Fiend template requires the creature to be a living, corporeal creature. It changes the creature's type to outsider. Once you apply one of those templates to the creature, it becomes ineligible for the other template.

And that doesn't even touch on the Lycanthrope requirement for humanoid or giant, which is violated by the change to undead/outsider, as well.

 

[Lizard]

Nitpick: This isn't possible in 3e RAW. Vampire template requires the creature to be a humanoid or monstrous humanoid. It changes the creature's type to undead. Half-Fiend template requires the creature to be a living, corporeal creature. It changes the creature's type to outsider. Once you apply one of those templates to the creature, it becomes ineligible for the other template.

And that doesn't even touch on the Lycanthrope requirement for humanoid or giant, which is violated by the change to undead/outsider, as well.

I retroactively follow the advice I've been given for everything in 4e, and ignore the rules. If making vampire dragons is wrong, I don't want to be right.

(I think Fiendish would work, though. Let's see. Take an orc. He was born Fiendish. Give him 10 sorcerer levels. Then make him a weregoat. Still doesn't change his type. Then make him a vampire. So it works so long as you apply the templates in the right order and replace 'half-fiend' with 'fiendish'.)

As a fiendish weregoat, he's probably a follower of Orcus. Hmmm. (Scribbles notes)

 

[The Little Raven]

So it works so long as you apply the templates in the right order and replace 'half-fiend' with 'fiendish'

And so long as you can't retroactively fail to meet the requirements. For example, if you apply the half-celestial template to yourself, then change your alignment to evil.

 

[hbarsquared]

I think the trouble is that you're thinking of the NPC as a "level 6 veteran". He's not a level 6 veteran. He's a guy with a +9 melee attack that does 1d8+4 damage who can use the "veteran's gambit" power once per encounter. Those abilities are not computed from class levels. They are just a set of modifiers that are appropriate for a level 6 challenge.

The challenge here is that, if you give him a +3 blade, he only gets a +2 benefit and you want to know why. If he starts out the encounter with the +3 blade, then maybe he never really did have a +9 melee attack with an ordinary sword. Maybe his "natural" ability is really +8? Or maybe, that warcaster behind him cast a buff on his sword? Or maybe, he really does have a featureless +1 sword, which is a particularly sucky magic item in 4E?

This is how I interpret it.

All we know, and all that matters from an encounter building standpoint, that a "Level 6 Whatever" will have a +9 attack bonus. What sums up to create that attack bonus does not matter.

It could be from a +2 sword, and +7 from somewhere else, or an ordinary sword with the +9 solely from inherent ability. It's a +9 bonus, and that is all that matters to the PCs.

If you want to make sure to have a +2 sword as the treasure from one of your guards, assume that one of the guards has one. His attack bonus is still +9, but +2 of that is from the sword, and the rest from "somewhere else." You can have seven guards with identical statistics, yet wielding magic weapons of different levels, and simply assume that due to different backgrounds, different amounts of training, and the luck of the gods is there to make up for any missing attack bonuses.

 

[BASHMAN]

I agree. It seems like it should be +2 to hit and damage rolls from wielding +3 greatswords, due to the +1 threshold. It is also possible that the ogre usually uses a greatclub and the greatsword has +1 proficiency and average damage when compared to the greatclub. If that is the case a +3 greatsword would provide +3 hit and damage. Even so the example should be a little more clear about the details.

I think that you are making the problem way more complex than it is. Threshold +1 means max enhancement bonus from items is +1. So an Ogre with +1 Threshold with a +5 Unholy Avenger does +1 to hit and damage with it.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think that you are making the problem way more complex than it is. Threshold +1 means max enhancement bonus from items is +1. So an Ogre with +1 Threshold with a +5 Unholy Avenger does +1 to hit and damage with it.

I am beginning to think they should have been a little clearer in the DMG article...

An Ogre with +1 magic threshold and a +5 Unholy Avenger gets a +4 bonus to attacks. Treat the "Magic Threshold" like it was a magical enhancement bonus that is innate to the creature and already figured into the stats, and you get pretty close to the actual rules.

 

[Vaeron]

An Ogre with +1 magic threshold and a +5 Unholy Avenger gets a +4 bonus to attacks. Treat the "Magic Threshold" like it was a magical enhancement bonus that is innate to the creature and already figured into the stats, and you get pretty close to the actual rules.

That's exactly right. I'm just going to go ahead and assume the +1 threshold ogres with +3 greatswords getting +3 to hit/damage was a type-o... So I hope that wasn't a real excerpt from the DMG, but just a guy typing it up real fast and not paying attention to his own math.

 

[FadedC]

That's exactly right. I'm just going to go ahead and assume the +1 threshold ogres with +3 greatswords getting +3 to hit/damage was a type-o... So I hope that wasn't a real excerpt from the DMG, but just a guy typing it up real fast and not paying attention to his own math.

Sadly after all the typos and faulty examples in the 3.0 books, my hopes aren't too high that 4.0 will be pristine. I'll just be happy if they cut them down.

 

[Simon Marks]

I just assumed that the Ogre's weren't 8th level but instead were 5th level...

Example works fine then.