Eye on Dark Sun: Ravenous

[Riastlin]

New Eye on Dark Sun article up, surprised no thread yet.

Really like the Ravenous, though I wish there were more standard creatures. The soldier and artillery work very well together but I have a feeling they'll just get swarmed by the party without a careful setup by the DM. Still, very nice imo.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page

 

[catastrophic]

I'm wondering where they are positioned on the scale between normal 4e monsters, and some of the real heavy hitters from the dark sun monster book.

 

[Kinneus]

What's the point of the Sorcerer's Ravenous Disintegrate power? Are PCs likely to be vulnerable to necrotic damage at any point? I kept looking for another power that it or its allies had that would inflict necrotic vulnerability, but I'm not seeing anything. Pretty poorly-designed power, unless I'm missing something.
Also noticed that the Champion gets a damage bonus versus prone and immobilize creatures... yet none of its powers prone or immobilize. Nor do the Sorcerer's. The Thrall's grab might count as immobilize, but still. This all just seems really sloppy to me.

 

[Riastlin]

What's the point of the Sorcerer's Ravenous Disintegrate power? Are PCs likely to be vulnerable to necrotic damage at any point? I kept looking for another power that it or its allies had that would inflict necrotic vulnerability, but I'm not seeing anything. Pretty poorly-designed power, unless I'm missing something.
Also noticed that the Champion gets a damage bonus versus prone and immobilize creatures... yet none of its powers prone or immobilize. Nor do the Sorcerer's. The Thrall's grab might count as immobilize, but still. This all just seems really sloppy to me.

Good point on the prone or immobilized, I hadn't noticed that. The Champion's mark though, does make the marked target vulnerable 10, so that portion does work well together.

The prone/immobilize though is still up in the air. Perhaps if it was grabbed instead. I might consider changing the power on the thrall to immobilize, though that could be a bit rough too. I still think that the biggest problem is the fact that 2 of the 3 are elites which means a standard fight is likely to be 5 on 3 if you want the most synergy.

 

[Dedekind]

Good point on the prone or immobilized, I hadn't noticed that. The Champion's mark though, does make the marked target vulnerable 10, so that portion does work well together.

The prone/immobilize though is still up in the air. Perhaps if it was grabbed instead. I might consider changing the power on the thrall to immobilize, though that could be a bit rough too. I still think that the biggest problem is the fact that 2 of the 3 are elites which means a standard fight is likely to be 5 on 3 if you want the most synergy.

Yes, the Champion's mark provides the vulnerability and that is pretty touch since they will almost always have a mark. I don't get the prone/immobilize, either. Maybe that was supposed to be weakened?

 

[Shroomy]

By definition, if you're grabbed you're also immobilized. All three types of monsters are supposed to work together.

 

[Kinneus]

Ah, okay. It was 2 AM and I was tired, so it's really no surprise that I missed that aspect of the champion's mark. With that in mind, I'm warming up to these monsters a little bit. I like the flavor; it's very logical, that there'd be a 'down-side' to defiling, and it explains why not every two-bit defiler just made himself a Dragon as soon as he stumbled on a forest.

The prone/immobilize thing is still troubling, but not a huge deal, because there are of course plenty of monsters that prone and immobilize that you could team the Champion up with.

I like these monsters because I feel like this is something I would've wanted to do in my campaign eventually, but then I would've had to homebrew it. I might have done a slightly better job, but at least now I don't have to.

 

[Alphastream]

I absolutely love the art for this article. That ravenous person is an excellent mix of beautiful/horrid and really sets the tone for the article.

The monsters work really well together, continuing the excellent work we see in products like Monster Vault Nentir Vale where monsters come in groups that really can work together. Too many monsters are delivered across a spread of levels, making it harder to get them to work together as a cohesive whole. This article did a great job with flavor, crunch, and added something new to Athas.

 

[Mummolus]

Dark Sun seems to be benefiting a lot from cool little synergies like these three monsters - a group of belgoi can work together beautifully as well, manipulating people into ideal position for their allies to flank and so on.