Gaps In The Monster Lineup

[Brian Chalian]

I think this is a terrible idea. There is no way I want to roll attacks for 104 monsters every round! A dozen enemies is the outer limit. Why not just have the trap transport them to a demiplane big enough for a couple of nightwalkers?

"This is intended to be an encounter with an almost guaranted TPK, but the party has an intelligent artifact called a Penumbral Scepter that gives various undead controlling functions."
Must you introduce artifacts?

 

[Buzzardo]

I think this is a terrible idea. There is no way I want to roll attacks for 104 monsters every round! A dozen enemies is the outer limit. Why not just have the trap transport them to a demiplane big enough for a couple of nightwalkers?

"This is intended to be an encounter with an almost guaranted TPK, but the party has an intelligent artifact called a Penumbral Scepter that gives various undead controlling functions."
Must you introduce artifacts?

Answers to several questions:

Room size. It isn't the size of the room that prevents huge creatures. It is the size of the two entrances.

Walls of Force and teleportation: They are already on a demiplane nested inside the Astral. It is a place where all conjurations and all divinations do not functions. Hence teleport and similar spells don't work.

Artifacts: They are 18th level heading for the end of the campaign at 20th. The artifact has massive drawbacks for possession, and fits into the story climax perfectly.

Constructs: Could use them, but it wouldn't fit the story.

Mummies- Hmm. Okay. I will nuke the mummies and add a few more Ragewinds. That makes for a total of 20 monsters. Big encounter, but again it is supposed to kill the party, except for their advantage unknown to the trap setter.

 

[Buzzardo]

Wow, a GM/player* out of Monte Cook's own heart!

Personally I find the attempt to provide a monster of every type for every CR to be hugely irritating. It results in a huge number of worthless designed-by-committee junk monsters like the Phantom Fungus that seem completely lifeless. I guess you disagree!

*edit: ok, designer/author, *sigh*. Jeez, this is so depressing.

It's a fair issue on the contrived monsters, and I take your point. But... How much sense does this make?:

In the three WoTC Monster Books there are NO CR 13 monsters. A scant handfull at CR 14-16.

At the same time there are:

in the neighborhood of half a dozen at each of CR 11, CR 17, CR 19.

Just irritating trying to find the right monster for the job. Surely they could have taken one of the good monsters with a purpose and point, and bumped it to CR 13, just for the sake of thoroughness?

It just strikes me as odd, given the rest of 3rd edition stuff is so brilliantly and insightfully put together.

 

[kamosa]

It's a fair issue on the contrived monsters, and I take your point. But... How much sense does this make?:

In the three WoTC Monster Books there are NO CR 13 monsters. A scant handfull at CR 14-16.

At the same time there are:

in the neighborhood of half a dozen at each of CR 11, CR 17, CR 19.

Just irritating trying to find the right monster for the job. Surely they could have taken one of the good monsters with a purpose and point, and bumped it to CR 13, just for the sake of thoroughness?

It just strikes me as odd, given the rest of 3rd edition stuff is so brilliantly and insightfully put together.

I think this is because there isn't much difference between a CR 13 and a CR 14 monster. CR only really works at low levels. Anything beyond 3rd or 4th level and the difference between players, characters chosen, GM style and magic items available cause wide fluxuation between parties. So, I don't see how you could finely tune monsters to a CR of 13 VS CR or 12.

Plus at that level monster customization takes over from base stats in terms of how effective the monster is against the party.

My last point is that CR is essentially just a GM crutch. It's only purpose is to help the GM balance the adventure. At some point you don't need the crutch as much, so there isn't as much need for that crutch to exsist at higher levels. Your question is the logical equivalent of asking why there are not crutches developed for world class sprinters. If you a world class sprinter, chances are you don't need them. If you playing at a level where the CR's are in the mid to high teens, you probably don't need Wizards to hold your hand on deciding what is a challenge for your party.

 

[Brian Chalian]

Room size. It isn't the size of the room that prevents huge creatures. It is the size of the two entrances.

Walls of Force and teleportation: They are already on a demiplane nested inside the Astral. It is a place where all conjurations and all divinations do not functions. Hence teleport and similar spells don't work.

Artifacts: They are 18th level heading for the end of the campaign at 20th. The artifact has massive drawbacks for possession, and fits into the story climax perfectly.

Could the undead have been created in that room specifically because the door was too small for them to escape? If so, that would allow bigger monsters. Since neither Create undead nor polymorph any object are conjurations or divinations, it's a plausible occurance.

I've always been leery of artifacts, but since I don't buy modules anyway that shouldn't stop you.

20 monsters is workable, especially if they attack in two waves. I've never heard of ragewinds before, though. Do you have enough leeway in your word count to add a parenthetical "(DMs that only have the core rules should substitute 13 nightwalkers.)?"

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I think that having a range of monster types representing all CRs is a good thing. (Mind you, this is not the same as saying that the Phantom Fungus is a good monster... )

As a DM, I like customizing a monster until it screams "No more pain, Master!" as much as anyone. But there's times when the party does something I just never expected, and that's when having a critter I can use off the shelf is crucial. Since higher level parties have many more abilities to surprise me with, it's more important to have well-designed base creatures on hand for higher CRs than for the lower range.

CR is a useful index even if one particular group of 12th-level characters is more or less powerful in a certain situation than the CR estimate expects. As the DM, I'll have gotten a handle on this translation factor already, and if I have both a CR 10 and a CR 14 undead to choose from I can quickly be prepared whether I'm running an atheistic party or one that's heavy on divine power.

As a designer, I find it a challenge to my creativity to look at gaps in the existing array of monster types. By definition, this demands that I come up with a kind of creature that no one has done before! Trying to think about what a huge CR 10 fey would be like, for example, is often a good source of inspiration for me.

One of the first things we did when we started work on the Masters and Minions series was to do a gap analysis on the SRD monsters, looking at type, subtype, alignment, etc. The good news is that there's lots of under-explored combinations, enough to keep designers busy for quite some time! I'll post a link to the chart we made as soon as it goes up on our site; email nat@behemoth3.com if you're impatient (and have Filemaker )

As far as I can tell from my Excel file, the official sources do pretty much have undead for most CRs

Is your Excel file publicly available? I've been working on a mega-index of monsters, building on Seeker95's, and I'd love to know of any others that are out there.

 

[S'mon]

It's a fair issue on the contrived monsters, and I take your point. But... How much sense does this make?:

In the three WoTC Monster Books there are NO CR 13 monsters. A scant handfull at CR 14-16.

At the same time there are:

in the neighborhood of half a dozen at each of CR 11, CR 17, CR 19.

Just irritating trying to find the right monster for the job. Surely they could have taken one of the good monsters with a purpose and point, and bumped it to CR 13, just for the sake of thoroughness?

It just strikes me as odd, given the rest of 3rd edition stuff is so brilliantly and insightfully put together.

In the old days we never had to worry about this - if there was a demon in a room, it was because there was a demon in that room, not because we needed an EL 13 encounter at +2 EL to the designated 4-PC, 25-PB 11th level party to absorb 50% of party resources... :\

If I were designing a monster manual I might include a variety of monsters at different power levels so there'd be something to fight that could challenge a party of any level 1-20, but it would never occur to me to try to fill every niche. If I were designing an adventure I'd happily use a CR 11 monster instead of CR 13 - heck, if I were desperate to make it an equivalent EL 13 challenge a few buff spells/items would do nicely. It's very easy to boost the MM creatures' ACs, especially.

 

[Knight Otu]

Is your Excel file publicly available? I've been working on a mega-index of monsters, building on Seeker95's, and I'd love to know of any others that are out there.

Talk about a complete file...

No, my file is not publicly available. I guess I could attach it, though. 946 kb zipped, 4500 kb unzipped. But much less detail than Seeker's file (Name, size, type, subtypes, HD, alignment frequency, alignment, CR, source and page). Multiple sheets for sources, and a complete list.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Talk about a complete file...

No, my file is not publicly available. I guess I could attach it, though. 946 kb zipped, 4500 kb unzipped. But much less detail than Seeker's file (Name, size, type, subtypes, HD, alignment frequency, alignment, CR, source and page). Multiple sheets for sources, and a complete list.

Seeker95 (Glenn)'s file can be both complete and public because it's all open gaming content; it sounds like your listing includes sources that aren't open (i.e. official Dungeons & Dragons books other than the MM). Making an index of non-open content public is kind of a gray area, but I'd still love to see it! Please do mail it to me privately (tav@behemoth3.com) as an attachment.

 

[der_kluge]

It just strikes me as odd, given the rest of 3rd edition stuff is so brilliantly and insightfully put together.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Apparently, you never tried writing a book on magic item creation.