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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 3833432" data-attributes="member: 114">/off topicI felt that Mike Mearls' Ogre Mage makeover completely mishandled the fundamental aspects of the creature. He came at it from a certain perspective that meant that sleep, charm person etc were just 'cluttering the list'.The thing is, I've always seen Ogre Mages used as infiltrators, making their way into human society with their polymorph and invisibility to hide, their sleep and gaseous form to bypass obstacles, their charm person to make friends in high places and gain positions of influence in order to further their evil schemes.They are a great relatively low level 'mastermind of evil schemes', BBEG's who are pulling the strings and have some punch for the final showdown.Mike views it as a "kick in the door and face an Ogre Mage. It isn't as much of a threat as a stone giant" kind of problem. I think the problem is with an inadequate view of how the monster can be used in an adventure.I'm going on about this at length because I fear that what other designers see as 'a mess of incompatible abilities' *I* see as interesting alternative hooks for using the creature in an adventure. I ran a great 3.0e adventure with a planar bound bearded devil helping a wizard to create a vast undead army by slaughtering whole villages and using its 'animate dead at will' ability. An ability which was removed from the bearded devil in the 3.5 revision to help it focus on its melee fighting as a sole tactic.I want monsters with a rich array of tactical and strategic uses, not single-focussed foes.Cheers</blockquote>

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