Insanely dangerous things you can throw at low level players fairly

[FireLance]

I agree that CR is a blunt instrument, but unless someone can come up with a matrix of monsters vs classes, it's the best we've got.

Consider:
An ogre is likely to slaughter a 1st-level party that has no magical support or special equipment. However, a wizard or a sorcerer with sleep has a good chance of taking one down with a single spell. He has a 81.25% chance of affecting 4 or more hit dice, and an average ogre has a 45% chance of failing a DC 11 Will save, i.e. the ogre snoozes 36.56% or more of the time.

Even a simple tanglefoot bag can make the battle a cakewalk - the party only needs to hit AC 8 because it's a ranged touch attack, the ogre is Large and has a Dex of 8. The ogre is 30% likely to fail the initial DC 15 Reflex save, and since the average ogre has a Str modifier of +5 and is armed with a greatclub and longspear, it is unlikely to succeed at either the DC 27 Str check or deal the 15 points of slashing damage needed to break free. The party can just stay out of its reach and missile it to death.

Similarly, wererats hold no fear for paladins because they are immune to lycanthropy. A single wererat encounter is the best way to level a solitary paladin.

CR is a good rule of thumb. However, like all rules, it needs to be applied intelligently.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Re: Driders....

The MM says a Drider is created when a 7th level drow fails a test by Lolth.

At no point though in the description does it say that the drider retain those abilities when converted by Lolth. If you assume those powers are retained then sure the drider is a hefty CR7 challenge if not even a little higher.

Everyone seams to be ignoring that all driders are 6th level clerics, wizards or sorcerers, in addition to their other spell-like abilites..,

Hello haste, fireball, cause serious wounds (can be delivered with a bite attack & poison , too!) et cetera.

 

[Rel]

In a previous campaign our party of 3 3rd level characters was about to leave a tomb we had explored. We had fought a few undead and taken a couple of hit points of damage here and there but the whole thing was easier than we thought it would be (too easy to be true).

As we made our way toward the exit we heard some noises that were obviously a group of armored humanoids coming our way. Turned out to be some Hobgoblins. They attacked and we started to fight them. At first it looked like there were probably 8-10 of them. A challenge for our party, certainly, but nothing we couldn't overcome.

Then they started coming from all the side passages as they circled behind the party. We continued to kill one after another but they kept coming. There were 50 of them!

We downed over 40 of them as we fought our way to the exit. My character (a Cleric/Wizard) was using every scroll he had and casting 0-level spells in some fairly creative ways in an attempt to survive. We had finally slain all the ones between us and the exit passage. We could literally see the light at the end of the tunnel (and by this point it was after 1:30 am at our game session). That's when the Drider attacked us.

But we didn't give up. I burned charge after charge on my Wand of Cure Light Wounds trying to keep our fighter alive and swinging at the Drider. But it was no use. We just didn't have enough gas in the tank and one after another we fell to the Drider and handful of remaining Hobgoblins.

But they didn't kill us. They captured us and left us bound while they carried out their nefarious plan within the tomb and then left us there to eventually escape from our bonds.

After the session I asked the DM, "How in the f*** were we supposed to survive that?!" His response was that the party was supposed to get captured in order to further the storyline.

I'm a DM too and I can understand that logic. But I asked, "Why didn't the Hobgoblins just grapple me? My character is a weakling and they could easily have wrestled me to the ground and held a knife to my throat and the rest of the party would have surrendered." His response was that he wasn't all that familiar with the grappling rules.

Trust me. It would have taken a lot less time to read over the grappling rules than it did for us to fight 50 Hobgoblins and a Drider!

That reminds me - I should kill his Star Wars character in our upcoming game this weekend.

 

[David Argall]

XP

"if the PCs have the foresight to use their skills to get past the Iron Golem then they have overcome the challenge (remember BAb is just another skill) and deserve the XP"

They deserve experience, but not the standard experience for beating an Iron Golem. They face a "weak" monster, and thus should get less XP.

Any time the monster is unusually tough or weak, the standard XP should be modified accordingly. In the case at hand, there are 2+ ways to beat the monster instead of the normal one, and thus the value of success, either way, has to be reduced. [They do it the hard way? Their stupidity. They get the same XP as the smart party that did it the easy way.] Alternately, if we give the monster some major special advantage, the XP should be increased.

The standard figure is for the standard situation. When the situation is not standard, neither is the XP reward.

 

[Frosty]

Rel, it made for a good tale didn't it?

 

[S'mon]

I agree that CR is a blunt instrument, but unless someone can come up with a matrix of monsters vs classes, it's the best we've got.

Consider:
An ogre is likely to slaughter a 1st-level party that has no magical support or special equipment. However, a wizard or a sorcerer with sleep has a good chance of taking one down with a single spell. He has a 81.25% chance of affecting 4 or more hit dice, and an average ogre has a 45% chance of failing a DC 11 Will save, i.e. the ogre snoozes 36.56% or more of the time.

Slightly faulty logic there - it takes an average of 3 sleep spells to Sleep an ogre. Few if any Sorcerers take Sleep - they know it'll be useless later - while few Wizards have 3 handy. And even if they do, the ogre is likely killing a 1st level PC each round until Sleeped.

I think the CR system is good in conception, I think the implementation is often poor. Bizarrely, the monster CRs in my '2000 Survival Guide' at the back of my 1st-print PHB seem generally a lot more accurate than the ones in the Monster Manual. The fault seems to lie in the MM implementation, not in the original DMG/PHB's conception. An ogre is basically a big tough 4th level Warrior - classic CR 3, just as a bugbear is classic CR 2, gnoll CR 1, hobgoblin CR 1/2 (orcs with STR 15 & great axes dam d12+3 are a bit tough as CR 1/2, IMO).

Even a simple tanglefoot bag can make the battle a cakewalk - the party only needs to hit AC 8 because it's a ranged touch attack, the ogre is Large and has a Dex of 8. The ogre is 30% likely to fail the initial DC 15 Reflex save, and since the average ogre has a Str modifier of +5 and is armed with a greatclub and longspear, it is unlikely to succeed at either the DC 27 Str check or deal the 15 points of slashing damage needed to break free. The party can just stay out of its reach and missile it to death.

I had a party (2nd level with several 1st level NPCs) throw a Tanglefoot bag at an ogre once - it (critical?) missed AIR and Entangled one of the PCs! The ogre killed all the NPCs before finally it went down.

 

[the Jester]

A forest-fire.

Hey, I've used this one too! Although it was started by a pc... who died in the fire (poetic justice).

 

[Rel]

Rel, it made for a good tale didn't it?

Well, Frosty, in retrospect, I'm proud of how well we held up under the impossible odds. But at the time, it caused a lot of resentment in the campaign. The whole thing really smacked of railroading and "you're going to get captured no matter what because it serves my plot".

Like I said before, I am a DM myself and I can understand (if not condone) that mindset. But if you are going to try and pull off a "capture the party" scenario, do it in the most painless way possible. Don't create a 4+ hour combat that you know the party can't win just to accomplish something that would take 10 minutes otherwise.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Did your DM know this? It seems from talk on other topics that surrender rarely if ever happens. Most players would rather die and create a new character. So maybe he also figured that trying to get you to surrender as a group would be meaningless.

Well, Frosty, in retrospect, I'm proud of how well we held up under the impossible odds. But at the time, it caused a lot of resentment in the campaign. The whole thing really smacked of railroading and "you're going to get captured no matter what because it serves my plot".

Like I said before, I am a DM myself and I can understand (if not condone) that mindset. But if you are going to try and pull off a "capture the party" scenario, do it in the most painless way possible. Don't create a 4+ hour combat that you know the party can't win just to accomplish something that would take 10 minutes otherwise.

 

[S'mon]

Well, Frosty, in retrospect, I'm proud of how well we held up under the impossible odds. But at the time, it caused a lot of resentment in the campaign. The whole thing really smacked of railroading and "you're going to get captured no matter what because it serves my plot".

Like I said before, I am a DM myself and I can understand (if not condone) that mindset. But if you are going to try and pull off a "capture the party" scenario, do it in the most painless way possible. Don't create a 4+ hour combat that you know the party can't win just to accomplish something that would take 10 minutes otherwise.

I just read over the grappling rules - I'm not sure why this would be a quick way to end the fight, a grappled character isn't helpless, and can't be coup-de-grased, all grappling gives is +4 to hit him, and the grapplers pinning him can do automatic subdual damage, which for hobgoblins is a max of 4 hobgoblins doing 1d3 subdual/round each - presumably the other party members would swiftly rescue the grappled mage.