Paper Minions - WT?

[Majoru Oakheart]

I imagine the 17th level party would clean up, though depending on the location, many of the dragons would probably escape due to high speed.

Really? It would murder my 15th level party. 200 hitpoints is not too bad if we are only fighting 1 or 2 of them. Beyond that, only one or two of us is likely to be immune to fire. Their breath weapons would kill the wizard, barbarian, and fighter within a round or two. They ONLY have hitpoints as a defense against that. They have a lot of them...but after so much damage in one round, everyone dies.

 

[Rystil Arden]

That really depends on what you consider rules in 3.5e.

Is it possible to find certain creatures in 3.5 who have the right mix of AC and bonuses to hit in order to use a lot of them without causing too big of a problem? Yes. Because AC, to hit bonus, and damage isn't directly tied to CR...you can find some that are in the range you want. Also, since CR is only a guideline, you could probably even use way lower than usual CR monsters and maximize their hitpoints while giving them better armor in order to create the numbers you want.

Ideally, you want creatures who have low hitpoints so the battle doesn't drag on and on. You want them to have an AC that can't be hit on a 2 by the fighter(or the other way around, enough hitpoints to survive a couple of hits by the fighter, but low AC to guarantee they are hit). You want them to have attack bonuses high enough to hit the PCs, but not be overwhelming. Meanwhile, you want them to have damage high enough that the players think twice about ignoring the monsters, but low enough that when 6 monsters attack the same character with a full attack that it won't kill him in one round.

Sure, all of this might be possible to find. Although, I think you'd probably have to settle for SOME of it and rely on luck to make sure you didn't have problems with the rest. And to be fair, if you use a lot of really weak monsters then most of the time the players aren't going to complain, they got to defeat the monsters and they weren't really in any risk of dying except by crits and the like. However, it takes a lot of searching and know how in order to get the exact kind of monster you want. And if you are writing a published adventure, it likely won't come out as a "valid" encounter.

It seems like a lot of work and effort to go through when 4e does all the work for you.

Oh, writing a published adventure is a whole different story. Fortunately, I don't do that. I can create appropriate large-scale battles (or smaller-scale battles or what-have-you) in 3.5 very quickly without any trouble, but I will agree that writing everything down takes a long time, and then it usually won't have the same EL as they would expect in an adventure. At high enough levels in 3.5, the entire CR system simply wasn't a usable benchmark any more.

This is why 4e is so much easier to use for GMs who can't get a sense of what will be easy or hard for their PCs based on the encounter and not the Challenge Rating numbers. And for beginner GMs, this is a vast improvement.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Really? It would murder my 15th level party. 200 hitpoints is not too bad if we are only fighting 1 or 2 of them. Beyond that, only one or two of us is likely to be immune to fire. Their breath weapons would kill the wizard, barbarian, and fighter within a round or two. They ONLY have hitpoints as a defense against that. They have a lot of them...but after so much damage in one round, everyone dies.

For my most-recent party that reached slightly higher level (so I'll delevel them to 17 since I remember what they had back then, though it has been a long while since I played that campaign):

So many things do fire damage that some of my party has some fire resistance (one was an Azer and thus immne). Some of them have Evasion, and those can make the DC 24 Reflex save in their sleep for no damage. Are you assuming the dragons win Initiative with their 10 Dex? As soon as the Cleric goes, he'll Mass Resist Energy the party for 30 Fire Resist all around. That negates more-or-less all fire damage unless someone is unlucky enough to fail a save (it happens). The level 17 Wizard probably hasn't prepared Wail of the Banshee, though that would kill more than half of them (assuming they came into range in order to use their breath attacks or melee) if she had. More typically, she would destroy them with Metamagicked Cones of Cold that they need around a 20 to save against.