Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Why is it that I have no problem imagining Anubis sitting alone in his room rolling up thousands of characters and running mock combats? Yeah, I did that too, when I was ten (Anubis wasn't born yet)-- I've since moved on to being a professional game designer and actually playing on a regular basis with real people who enjoy my company.
If you can stand to wade through Anubis' ranting, he raises some valid concerns.
Let's see if we can all get on the same page here.
Start with a baseline for ability scores-- I don't care what you want. Personally, I like Elite Array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8). You may prefer 4d6. Whatever your baseline, that's "FREE."
Ideally, you should find that a party of 4 PCs is "moderately challenged" (EL-4 in UK system, EL = Character Level in SRD system) by the same things that the Core rules say are moderately challenging. If you're coming up with any result other than that, there's a problem in the CR ratings.
Anubis should also try running his Trog Zombie combat again under these conditions:
Don't count ability scores-- fine. But add the template of his choice that results in +1 to +2 CR (the same difference as "counting ability scores"). Unless the templates are inordinately combat-loaded (meaning, these are standard templates with ability score increases, darkvision or other abilities, some DR, some skill points, a feat or two, etc.-- like an aasimar or tielfing) he should get the same "catastrophic" results as before.
Sitting in your room running combats doesn't account for the intelligence of players. At some point, realizing their weapons are not working on the zombies, Mialee will whip out her long sword, Lidda will dig out her greek fire, and Jozan will use cure light wounds to damage them. If all else fails, the party has to flee. Sometimes, even when the CRs match up, extenuating circumstances make for an uneven matchup, and you have to regroup.
This, of course, assumes that Anubis can find players who are more intelligent than him, and willing to abide his company.
Although not a valid proof against ability scores, his Trog combat shows a couple of things:
1) Fractional CRs do not "add up" the same way that CR1 and above "add up." In the core rules, for example, we know that doubling the number of creatures = +2 EL. This is not the case with creatures of fractional CR, however. With fractional CRs, you must first make it to EL1 before you can use this rule-- 2 creatures at CR1/2 = CR1, NOT CR 2 1/2. (Don't have my DMG with me, correct me if I am wrong.)
For any creature whose base CR is less than 1, this is an issue.
2) Trog Zombies are undercosted. Since they are CR1 in SRD, they should be CR1.5 in UK. Any other result means that they will not prove to be a "moderate" encounter in the correct numbers. Anubis has a very valid point that a creature's reductions to CR should probably not allow it to dip below it's CR based on HD alone. I am sure there are exceptions to this rule (a big Gas Spore or something with no means of attack or movement but a lot of hit points is probably not equal to its HD) but it is worth taking a look at.
Wulf
If you can stand to wade through Anubis' ranting, he raises some valid concerns.
Let's see if we can all get on the same page here.
Start with a baseline for ability scores-- I don't care what you want. Personally, I like Elite Array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8). You may prefer 4d6. Whatever your baseline, that's "FREE."
Ideally, you should find that a party of 4 PCs is "moderately challenged" (EL-4 in UK system, EL = Character Level in SRD system) by the same things that the Core rules say are moderately challenging. If you're coming up with any result other than that, there's a problem in the CR ratings.
Anubis should also try running his Trog Zombie combat again under these conditions:
Don't count ability scores-- fine. But add the template of his choice that results in +1 to +2 CR (the same difference as "counting ability scores"). Unless the templates are inordinately combat-loaded (meaning, these are standard templates with ability score increases, darkvision or other abilities, some DR, some skill points, a feat or two, etc.-- like an aasimar or tielfing) he should get the same "catastrophic" results as before.
Sitting in your room running combats doesn't account for the intelligence of players. At some point, realizing their weapons are not working on the zombies, Mialee will whip out her long sword, Lidda will dig out her greek fire, and Jozan will use cure light wounds to damage them. If all else fails, the party has to flee. Sometimes, even when the CRs match up, extenuating circumstances make for an uneven matchup, and you have to regroup.
This, of course, assumes that Anubis can find players who are more intelligent than him, and willing to abide his company.
Although not a valid proof against ability scores, his Trog combat shows a couple of things:
1) Fractional CRs do not "add up" the same way that CR1 and above "add up." In the core rules, for example, we know that doubling the number of creatures = +2 EL. This is not the case with creatures of fractional CR, however. With fractional CRs, you must first make it to EL1 before you can use this rule-- 2 creatures at CR1/2 = CR1, NOT CR 2 1/2. (Don't have my DMG with me, correct me if I am wrong.)
For any creature whose base CR is less than 1, this is an issue.
2) Trog Zombies are undercosted. Since they are CR1 in SRD, they should be CR1.5 in UK. Any other result means that they will not prove to be a "moderate" encounter in the correct numbers. Anubis has a very valid point that a creature's reductions to CR should probably not allow it to dip below it's CR based on HD alone. I am sure there are exceptions to this rule (a big Gas Spore or something with no means of attack or movement but a lot of hit points is probably not equal to its HD) but it is worth taking a look at.
Wulf
