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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 7936264" data-attributes="member: 93670">Yes.  That is why there were[spoiler="three higher cr ones in the mm alone"][ATTACH=full]119253[/ATTACH][/spoiler]and I'm pretty sure there were some other versions in other mm analogs (mm2 mm3 etc) that were special & deserving of their own name beyond just earth elemental similar to the mtof 202 earth elemental myrmidon but not recalling their names or the books they were in I'm not going hunting for them. Your own observation shows how far off the mark & deep into blatant disingenuous arguments that some people keep making claiming that bypassing DR was required.  Also keep in mind that because <a href="https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Elemental_Type" target="_blank">elemental traits</a> made a creature immune to critical hits & flanking  in this case crit fishers couldn't help (and were dramatically more effective at getting crits even at level 1 in 3.5 than 5e's mid-late game ones) not could a rogue's sneak attack. The fact that this creature was immune to both barring some class features or something shows how easy it was for a creature to shake things up & force the players to shift tactics because of having more involved systems than "half damage unless you have a magic weapon"[ATTACH=full]119254[/ATTACH]so you looked to the high strength barbarian & other builds aimed at getting big hits on the first hit rather than more reliable damage across multiple attacksYes, improved critical is a class feature for one fighter archtype giving you 19-20 crits, but in 3.5 even simple weapons had 19-20 crit weapons with martial & exotic weapons having 18-20 crit weapons that would both be extended with a larger crit range with improved critical & such.  Also power attack was in the phb as were high damage weapons using 2d6/d12 & things like weapon specialization (+2  damage with a specific type of weapon such as a greataxe)Also it's a bit off the mark to say a fighter needed 4 feats because I made an extreme example.. especially considering they would have that by 4th level[ATTACH=full]119256[/ATTACH]and could have power attack at first with weapon focus/weapon specialization(Level 4 prereq there) plus two other feats by 4th.Regardless of what you think about all those feat chains, the fact remains that there are severe problems with implimenting wotc's own published variant rules because they went so far overboard expunging this sort of combat  & the problems caused by trying to impliment the dmg's optional flanking and facing discussed <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/tactical-combat-module-hasnt-it-always-been-there.670770/" target="_blank">over here</a> because if so much missing structure attest to that.  The ironic thing is that a variant rule to "simplify" combat and allow it to function "so you don't need special feats to make moving more than 5 feet and attacking not be worthless. An 11th-level 5e fighter can run a full 30 feet, knock you to the ground, and Action Surge 5 attacks in your face with advantage as part of the base model, before any upgrades or subclass feats kick in. " could have been done with a couple sentences that don't require the gm to  fix the variant rule by rebuilding the core rules.edit:  don't get me wrong, 5e did a lot of things that improved the game, but at the same time they went too far in many many areas & ended up creating new problems by not giving enough considerations to how removing things in the name of streamlining gameplay would affect other parts of the game</blockquote>

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