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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6982427" data-attributes="member: 6787650">It depends on the archer's stats, but don't underestimate the effect of +4 to Str. Rufus will, on average, take about 1.3 rounds to impose grapple/prone on the Death Slaad, and it has a much better chance to break his grapple and stand up. Against Rufus, trying to break the grapple is not a waste of an action, especially when you factor in regeneration, so if Rufus was trying to grapple I'd feel obligated to code up grapple-breaking logic for the Death Slaad, where it tries to compute the usefulness of attempting to break the grapple. Against Brutus (I believe) I already know the answer so I can just hard-code a "don't bother and just attack or cast spells".Edit: also, the archer does less damage with a Rapier because of no Dueling style, so he'll have a harder time overcoming the Slaad's regeneration.Don't get me wrong--the Slaad has countermeasures against grapple. Cloudkill creates heavy obscurement which combines with blindsight to cancel out the effects of prone; Fear makes Brutus drop what he's holding and run away; Fireball bypasses AC completely. That's why it's so important for Brutus to have Mage Slayer (and ideally Lucky too, but again, it's complicated writing the AI for when to use Lucky so I didn't yet, I just gave him Tough instead). Like Superman, magic is his weak point. I just haven't coded it up yet.So don't think of it as a real death slaad--think of it as a stand-in for a generic CR 10 monster, since spells or the lack thereof generally don't affect CR, according to the DMG. (Which just goes to show how crude of a metric CR is. It really doesn't measure deadliness at all; all it's useful for is computing XP awards.)</blockquote>

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