Old or Venerable Creatures

[the Jester]

Quite a while back, I threw a 1st-2nd level party against an ogre. In order to give them a fighting chance, I made the ogre venerable and applied the appropriate stat modifiers to it. So, I have two questions:

1. Does anyone else do this sort of thing to tweak encounters?

2. If you were to do so, how would you adjust the monster in question as far as CR goes?

Obviously, I eyeballed the ogre's CR change when I did this; as far as I know there's no "official" rule on this kind of thing (the closest I can find is that creatures built with the elite array get +1 CR). I'm just curious as to what others think of this, and about their experiences regarding this (I am always looking for ways to fine tune the difficulty of encounters! )

 

[pallandrome]

To be fair, whenever I make a wizard or druid, I almost always make them venerable if the GM lets me.

I do the same thing with Pallies, so I can be like Gandalf.

 

[Notmousse]

I'd say it depends on if you want to make a physical or magical character.

For magical characters I'd place old and venerable at +1 CR.

For physical characters I'd crop the CR by 1 at old, and 2 for venerable.

 

[Tonguez]

I once had a malnourished and abused Ogre runt which I created by halving all her ability scores. SHe was not suppose to be a combat encounter but just incase I knoked he CR down -1

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Hmm, I ahve never used Venrable creatures before. Good idea, though I would probably not mess with their CR much, if at all. The losses are not that potent, unless it is a brick type like a giant, when I might lower its CR by one at most.

If it has spells or save DCs based on mental stats, no drop at all.

And I enjoy rejecting venerable characters. Lol, a 70 year old adventuring.

 

[Notmousse]

Hmm, I ahve never used Venrable creatures before. Good idea, though I would probably not mess with their CR much, if at all. The losses are not that potent, unless it is a brick type like a giant, when I might lower its CR by one at most.

If it has spells or save DCs based on mental stats, no drop at all.

And I enjoy rejecting venerable characters. Lol, a 70 year old adventuring.

You don't think a -6 to Con hurts enough for 2 CR drop?

 

[hanniball]

If it is a physical creature, I'd drop it's CR by one for each age category after middle-aged.

I would like to see how you are determining the typical lifespan for most of the creatures in the MM. Exactly how old is a venerable Elasmosaurus?

 

[kenobi65]

Exactly how old is a venerable Elasmosaurus?

65 million years, give or take a few.