Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3839105" data-attributes="member: 2268">Do me a favour and try not to infer anything from my questions when all I'm trying to find out is if you have a special kind of encounter in mind, or are leaving it up to the people answering it. I thought it polite to ask you, since you put the challenge up, if you have more details in mind, so I could take them into account before I post, and not get them from you after I posted. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Since it's left to me, let's look at a few different versions. Up front, I usually am a bit stingy with magical items compared to standard D&D baseline, except for potions and "special "items that are meant to stay with a character longer.1) As a planned encounter: This would include a "special use" for that monster, one that gives characters a chance to prepare a bit for the encounter to come. This should be mentioned in the monster description, though. With that in mind, I'd actually peg your monster appropriate, if pretty challenging, for a group of around 8th level. At that point, the cleric of the group will have two death wards available, and if the group has done their legwork, he will know they'll need them further. In a group of 4, he can cover the two most likely to meet the monster in direct melee (and hence be victim to its death attack effect) with countermeasures against it, while the other two try to attack it without getting into line of sight. Depending on the HD/combat ability of that monster, the resulting melee can take 2-3 rounds, making it an interesting encounter for an end fight, and one the group will be HAPPY to end quick, too.2) As a random encounter: With that DC, an "appropriate" Fortitude save should enable a survival chance of 80% for my personal tastes (yeah, even random encounters should be allowed to kill PCs now and then), which would mean on a 2 (minimum to make a save), the base Fort bonus would have to be +14...something fighters and their like routinely get at level 20, wizards and their like only at epic levels, or with the right magical protection. I could start arguing now that all those "low Fort" classes have built-in and assumed external ways to equalize that gap in their defenses, but I view that kind of number-niggling a bit of a sandbox exercise, since everybody can pull up those numbers that support his PoV. So I'll simply say level 20-22 would make this monster an appropriate "random encounter", maybe something you meet in the Abyss or the Plane of Shadow while chasing a demon around.What sticks out of your posts (and of course correct me if I'm wrong) is the opinion that, if the setup enables the characters to come up with appropriate countermeasures against the monster's special effect, it automatically means that ability, and in turn the monster as a challenge, is worthless. This may be your opinion, of course, but I certainly don't share it. The fact that this monster has the ability is what makes the characters try and find out good ways to survive it before they meet it. That's part of the challenge of the monster, too. It's not the best possible scenario to reduce everything to "characters meet monster out of the blue, how many survive". If the characters can find out about that DC 20 death effect, and show some effort to negate or partially neutralize it, they are effectively starting the fight before they encounter the monster itself, which can be a challenge as well as the melee at the end. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification