Kruthik Hivemind: What were they thinking?

[Anthony Jackson]

Eh, you're right. It says a creature of level +2 to level +4 is okay for a "hard encounter".

You can actually go a lot over that and still have a functional encounter; in particular, you can fairly safely use brutes that are many levels above the party, seeing as a level +4 brute has the same attack bonus and AC as a same-level soldier. The main problem is that a really high level standard monster, even if it's an XP match for the party, tends to be pretty boring, because standard monsters don't have many abilities to give them flavor. Still, I'm pondering using a Gibbering Mouther (level 10) against a level 3 party.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Ah, the aura non-stacking might have helped us a little, since there were so many adults in our fight. I still think it would be better if the hivemind gave a straight forward bonus to damage or hit rather than doubling damage. It's much more in the spirit of 4e for a start.

 

[Mengu]

Ah, the aura non-stacking might have helped us a little, since there were so many adults in our fight. I still think it would be better if the hivemind gave a straight forward bonus to damage or hit rather than doubling damage. It's much more in the spirit of 4e for a start.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's just left over text from before some of the changes, sort of like the x2 drow attack. Maybe there will be errata on it if enough people take note. Who knows.

 

[Iron Sky]

You can actually go a lot over that and still have a functional encounter; in particular, you can fairly safely use brutes that are many levels above the party, seeing as a level +4 brute has the same attack bonus and AC as a same-level soldier. The main problem is that a really high level standard monster, even if it's an XP match for the party, tends to be pretty boring, because standard monsters don't have many abilities to give them flavor. Still, I'm pondering using a Gibbering Mouther (level 10) against a level 3 party.

Our party of 4 4th level PCs (+ a tamed dire wolf) took down a Level 11 Elite Devourer in one encounter, then a Level 8 Elite Bulette + 2 bandits + 4 rabble in the next fight.

The Devourer fight took about 4-5 rounds and some of us still had some powers left at the end. The Bulette fight was longer, at about 3 rounds to deal with the bandits and 7-8 rounds to take out the Bulette(since all its defenses except Reflex were nigh-unhittable).

The Devourer fight was short, dangerous, and intense enough to be interesting, but half-way through the Bulette fight, it became pretty routine(read: boring). Does go to show that sometimes even a party can take on even monsters 7 levels higher - and elite!