Garnfellow
Explorer
Wow, just wow.
Our group almost got slaughtered last night by a single grell in a twisty section of 5-ft-wide corridor. This was a 5th level party, and grells are supposedly CR 3. But 10 freaking tentacle attacks, with each hit triggering its own DC 14 Fort save or causing paralysis. And that's no even including the beak or its grapple attack.
Now, I've always loved grells since the first Fiend Folio, and I clearly wasn't paying attention to these messages boards when Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil or Monster Manual II came up, because I do not remember a hue and cry over this thing's much-too-low Challenge Rating. I had no idea 3e grells were so crazy nasty.
Lords of Madness, thank Pelor, revises the grell's attack into a single save = DC 10 + each tentacle hit in that round. Mechanically much, much simpler to resolve and much more in line with a CR 3 monster. Too bad our DM didn't have the updated stats, but luckily no one died.
Moral of the story: DMs, use the updated grell.
Our group almost got slaughtered last night by a single grell in a twisty section of 5-ft-wide corridor. This was a 5th level party, and grells are supposedly CR 3. But 10 freaking tentacle attacks, with each hit triggering its own DC 14 Fort save or causing paralysis. And that's no even including the beak or its grapple attack.
Now, I've always loved grells since the first Fiend Folio, and I clearly wasn't paying attention to these messages boards when Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil or Monster Manual II came up, because I do not remember a hue and cry over this thing's much-too-low Challenge Rating. I had no idea 3e grells were so crazy nasty.
Lords of Madness, thank Pelor, revises the grell's attack into a single save = DC 10 + each tentacle hit in that round. Mechanically much, much simpler to resolve and much more in line with a CR 3 monster. Too bad our DM didn't have the updated stats, but luckily no one died.
Moral of the story: DMs, use the updated grell.
