ECL of Monsters Part III: Are Ogres ECL 8? The Adventures of Ghorgor.

[Wippit Guud]

So, for an example, we'll use... Ogre!

Ogre - Big, dumb idiot. No combat tactics, no ranged weapons, no co-operation between other ogres, no targetting specific characters. CR - 2


Ogre - Big, craft combat machine. Useful feats, co-operative tactics, using feats to their advantage (large and in charge), using ranged weapons. CR - 6

Ogre - As Ogre #1, but character charge at it, not thinking about trying to hit from distance to avoid reach, and meta game, thinking CR 2 is nothing. CR - 8.

 

[drnuncheon]

ECL and CR should be considered the same thing. THAT is how you fix this problem.

There are very good reasons that they are not the same thing, which have been gone over every single time this topic has come up. Or are you seriously suggesting that a pit fiend (CR 16) won't overshadow the 16th level characters that he's hanging around with?

Oh, how about an Efreet? Yeah, those 3 wishes/day would come in real handy to an 8th level party.

Come on.

J

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

This is probably the last update because after the last session I have pretty much made up my mind that Ghorgor performs just fine as ECL 8.

The PC began the session confronted with the daunting task of climbing through a vertical air shaft in which blast of hot steam occured every 1D6 round. The very hot steam dealt 8D6 of damage and the shaft was very long.

The presence of an 11th level wizard in the party would have made it much easier. As it stands, an 8th level sorcerer cohort with spiderclimb combined with several spell of protection against elements were the party's best bet.

The trouble is that casting 7 spider climb spells seemed a waste of ressources and that anyway several PCs were too slow to climb the shaft in a reasonable amount of time. It was quickly established that anyone with a move of 20 (meaning a climb speed of 10) would take too much time to climb the shaft and they'd be flayed alive despite the protection spells if they tried it.

The solution? One spider climb was casted on Ghorgor and a rope was solidly tied to his waist and shoulders. Everybody hanged on to it! (Not a pansy rope, it was an ogre's rope; pulled right from Ghorgor's climbing kit)

I'm not kidding! The druid shifted into a rat to lighten the load but that's about it. We were worried about the 600 pound tiger but a quick look at Ghorgor's carrying capacity showed that he was perfectly able to do it.

So that does it for me; Ghorgor's huge strenght is much more useful out of combat to the party than any social grace he is losing because of his low CHA.

Combat wise; more of the same. The player handling Ghorgor was particularly lucky early in the combat (dealing upward of 50 point of damage in a single round on two occasions) and ridiculously unlucky later on (going as far as rolling two 1s in a full attack!). Low HP forced him to be careful toward the end of the fight. On average he was very useful.

Now Ghorgor is level 4. He has 12 more HP and is now specialised in his great axe. The future is looking bright for everybody's favorite ECL 8 ogre.

*cheap music marking the end of a documentary*

 

[Wolfspider]

Bravo! *stands and claps*