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<blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 3838833" data-attributes="member: 40961">DM-Rocco-&nbsp; You answer those questions for yourself.&nbsp; I really don't care.&nbsp; I just want to see if you can place a CR on this hypothetical creature.Look.&nbsp; Essentially, what's going on is this.&nbsp; We've got a DC 20 fort save or die effect.&nbsp; As players go up in level, their only defense against this is their increasing fortitude save.&nbsp; What likelihood of success makes encountering this effect good game design?I'll be up front about what I expect that we'll find.&nbsp; We'll find that for many levels, the likelihood is too high that the monster starts killing characters left and right.&nbsp; We'll find that for some levels, the fighters and high fort characters can encounter the monster with low likelihood of death, but at these levels the wizards and rogues will still drop like flies.&nbsp; And then finally we'll find that at a certain point, the fighter only dies on a 1, and the wizards and rogues have a small but real chance of death.In the first set of levels, the encounter is unbalanced.In the second set, the encounter only balances if the monster is deemed very stupid, and intentionally attacks the characters most likely to survive its attack.And in the third set, the monster will be an annoying anti-climax.&nbsp; It will have to be killed quickly because the chance that someone will roll a 1 is too high to accept, but it will kill characters so rarely that when it DOES kill a character, everyone will be angry that they died due to a fluke natural 1.I don't think the effect balances.&nbsp; It bypasses secondary defenses, like ability scores and hit points, which means that it all comes down to one die roll no matter your level or your stats.&nbsp; I don't think that a high odds or low odds die roll is going to be satisfying.&nbsp; I think that no matter what you do, the encounter will suck.Suggesting that CR is not to blame, monster design is.&nbsp; Or rather, save-or-die design.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Cadfan, post: 3838833, member: 40961"] DM-Rocco- You answer those questions for yourself. I really don't care. I just want to see if you can place a CR on this hypothetical creature. Look. Essentially, what's going on is this. We've got a DC 20 fort save or die effect. As players go up in level, their only defense against this is their increasing fortitude save. What likelihood of success makes encountering this effect good game design? I'll be up front about what I expect that we'll find. We'll find that for many levels, the likelihood is too high that the monster starts killing characters left and right. We'll find that for some levels, the fighters and high fort characters can encounter the monster with low likelihood of death, but at these levels the wizards and rogues will still drop like flies. And then finally we'll find that at a certain point, the fighter only dies on a 1, and the wizards and rogues have a small but real chance of death. In the first set of levels, the encounter is unbalanced. In the second set, the encounter only balances if the monster is deemed very stupid, and intentionally attacks the characters most likely to survive its attack. And in the third set, the monster will be an annoying anti-climax. It will have to be killed quickly because the chance that someone will roll a 1 is too high to accept, but it will kill characters so rarely that when it DOES kill a character, everyone will be angry that they died due to a fluke natural 1. I don't think the effect balances. It bypasses secondary defenses, like ability scores and hit points, which means that it all comes down to one die roll no matter your level or your stats. I don't think that a high odds or low odds die roll is going to be satisfying. I think that no matter what you do, the encounter will suck. Suggesting that CR is not to blame, monster design is. Or rather, save-or-die design. [/QUOTE]

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