twofalls said:
I ought to clarify a few points, and thank you for your observations. First off, I did in fact feel the Ogre was a little too much, we even joked about it when they first found out that the adventure started off with an Ogre hunt. My goal however, was to test the CR system, and as such I approached it objectivly discarding my experience and preconceptions.
Not all CRs are accurate, though. You might want to try another monster instead, or a wide variety of monsters. Most will work out all right.
Three tactics used were 1st... to blunder into its lair and confront it in a water mineral laden cave fulll of 'mites that inhibited any large weapon used (the Orges club, the Rangers Greatsword) and all missile weapons. This resulted in specacular modern art on the already wet walls using the PC's innards as media.
The dual-wielding ranger used a greatsword?
Second they hid the rouge in some roots near the entrance and called it out, cast entagle its save was an 18 (all rolls were open as this was a test of the system) and fortunatly the rouge saved as well. It them charged out and dined on the PC's buffet style.
What did the mage do in this battle?
Third tactic, after the group had been remade into 1st level killing machines was to again cast entangle on it (again it saved with an 18) and then to missile it with bows why a spell buffed ranger (prot from evil and sheild) fought it up front. They had a hard time with the 16 AC (the rolls were unimpressive to say the least) and after three rounds the Ogre managed to hit the Ranger. As observed by the previous posts, the ogre one hit killed any PC in the party.
The revision to CR 3 makes a lot of sense to me, 2d6+7... that was the bad news of the day. The last combat brought the 26Hp Ogre down to 2 hp, without the Ranger ever landing one blow (with two weapons he didn't manage to hit the Ogre once, robbing the party of his 18St Damage).
An 18 Strength ranger at 1st-level is not an appropriate test of the CR system. He'd cut through slightly lower CR creatures way too fast. CRs are playtested with 25 point buy PCs, and most games use reasonable stats (even if not 25 point buy). And even then he couldn't hit? Talk about bad luck.
I find it hard to picture a 1st-level character using 28 point buy getting an 18. That's hurting their other stats quite harshly. What
were his other stats? Did he have low Dex or Con, because those are important. Etc. (I also want to be sure you were using point buy properly, eg starting with 8, and so forth.)
The Stat system I use is on pg. 20 of the 3.0 DMG, 28 pt stat buy. I aslo started each player off with a windfall of +100 G and a special item (of masterwork or +1 in strength).
Giving out free +1 weapons would overpower them. At that level, if you want something at +1, you usually cast a spell.
As for spell selection, the initial fight was with the Diviner prepared to try to talk to the Ogre (not a happening thing). His opposing school was necromancy, so he ultimatly ended up with a pair of Magic Missile spells and buffs (FR spellcasing Prodigy feat enabling 4 level 1 spells).
I'm going to ignore the non-core feat for the moment and just point out that the wizard player seems like they were new. (In fact, I think you might have said that above.)
Two identical spells? He should have traded one out for something like Color Spray. (Tactics are an invisible part of CR, of course.)
