frankthedm
First Post
Agreed. I'm earning XP to make myself stronger, not to level up every foe i fight. It's fine and dandy to have leveled humanoids as officers, elites and commanders, but the bulk of their forces should be in low level grunts. Great Cleave should NEVER be allowed to seem weak, which is exactly what tends to happen as the tribe of 1st level orcs fuse together and becomes a squad of barbarian3/warrior2 orcs.[sblock=humanoid organizations]Goblins: Gang (4-9), band (10-100 plus 100% noncombatants plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 20 adults and 1 leader of 4th-6th level), warband (10-24 with worg mounts), or tribe (40-400 plus 100% noncombatants plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 20 adults, 1 or 2 lieutenants of 4th or 5th level, 1 leader of 6th-8th level, 10-24 worgs, and 2-4 dire wolves)Ruin Explorer said:This is actually a serious problem, for me, particularly with 3E. With 1E/2E the "point" was clear. Monsters were largely static, and thus an increase in power meant you could deal with more/tougher monsters. With 3E and everything advancing and so on, it suddenly meant that you could end up taking on types of monster you were "more powerful than" but which had been advanced to the point where they'd caught up, which could feel a little dumb and computer-game-ish (Oh, look it's the Blue Imps, they have 3x as much HP as the Green Imps).
I mean, obviously there is a point, but I think you can go too far, and I think 3E did, with some of the perfectly CR-level-matching in pregen adventures, to the point where things got a little predictable and dull. I know 4E has it's minions, normal monsters, elites and bosses, and I hope at a certain stage, elites become like normal monsters, or even minions, and there are some guidelines as to when that might be, and thus we might find that the PCs can defeat 20 Ogres at once when before 2 was a challenge (rather than, yawn, fighting 2 really ADVANCED Ogres).
Orcs: Gang (2-4), squad (11-20 plus 2 3rd-level sergeants and 1 leader of 3rd-6th level), or band (30-100 plus 150% noncombatants plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 10 adults, 5 5th-level lieutenants, and 3 7th-level captains)
Bugbears: Solitary, gang (2-4), or band (11-20 plus 150% noncombatants plus 2 2nd-level sergeants and 1 leader of 2nd-5th level)
Gnolls: Solitary, pair, hunting party (2-5 and 1-2 hyenas), band (10-100 plus 50% noncombatants plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 20 adults and 1 leader of 4th-6th level and 5-8 hyenas), or tribe (20-200 plus 1 3rd-level sergeant per 20 adults, 1 or 2 lieutenants of 4th or 5th level, 1 leader of 6th-8th level, and 7-12 hyenas; underground lairs also have 1-3 trolls)[/sblock]