Roper, not an Aberration?!?

[Grayhawk]

--WARNING: This thread includes Forge of Fury spoilers!--

I'm currently DM'ing The Forge of Fury, and it struck me that the Roper is a Magical Beast and not an Aberration.

In the 3e MM p.5, Beasts are descibed as having a 'reasonably normal anatomy', and Magical Beasts are 'similar to beasts', while an Aberration has a 'bizarre anatomy'. (Btw, these desciptions are also in the glossary of the 3.5 MM. Here a Magical Beast is said to be 'similar to animals' as there are no Beast in 3.5).

So why isn't the Roper an Aberration?

 

[shilsen]

Because the roper representative noticed that magical beasts get better HD, BAB and saves than aberrations and skipped lines when WotC was having all monsters sign in for a chance to be in the MM?

Seriously, I have no clue - it definitely seems better suited for classification as an aberration.

 

[the Jester]

Especially in 3.0 (when you also have beasts and shapechangers as monster types) I feel that it's sometimes wise to view monster types as almost akin to classes- in other words, maybe the design choice has to do with stats as well as inner logic.

 

[Grayhawk]

So there's really no reason why I shouldn't change the Roper in my game to be an Aberration?

Why I'd bother doing it at all, is that it'll make a difference for Knowledge checks and favored enemy bonuses.

What else will be affected by such a change?

 

[Grazzt]

Roper should definitely be an Aberration.

 

[Li Shenron]

So there's really no reason why I shouldn't change the Roper in my game to be an Aberration?

Why I'd bother doing it at all, is that it'll make a difference for Knowledge checks and favored enemy bonuses.

What else will be affected by such a change?

Basically nothing else. There could be some spell which affect only one of the two types but not the other, or some class abilities, Wild Empathy coming to my mind - but not that it makes a difference in this case, since the Roper is too smart to use this against it.

Now that I think about it, you'd better take the roper out of The Forge of Fury completely (I am running the same adventure now, only updated to 3.5). There is even a sidebar which says basically that if the PCs fight against, they can only die!

On the other hand, I agree it looks much more like an aberration.

 

[Grayhawk]

Now that I think about it, you'd better take the roper out of The Forge of Fury completely (I am running the same adventure now, only updated to 3.5). There is even a sidebar which says basically that if the PCs fight against, they can only die!

You've propably already seen it, but since you're runing FoF as well, I'd want to point you to this thread in General, as it deals with that module and it's lethal challenges.

In our last session the party fought the Trog's. I used some suggestions from Claudio Pozas (post #44 in the FoF thread), and changed the Trog Sorcerer to a Cleric and put in a shrine to The Tentacled God. So I'm keeping the Roper, but they've been giving some warnings and some hints.

Btw, I'm playing a house ruled mix of 3.0 and 3.5. For instance, I let the Trog's stench ability do Str damage as per 3.0, as I find that it makes encounters and creatures more unique if they affect the PC's in a unique way, opposed to 'just' imposing generic sickness penalties. Besides, I like the randomness of rolling and the look on my player's faces when I tell them they've been strenght drained - they didn't know that it was just for 10 rounds.

(In this fight the Dwarf's Con was reduced by 7 points, due to 2 lucky rolls from 2 Stirges munching on him as he entered the Glitterhame.)

I think I'll go and add a 'FoF Spoiler' note to the first post of this thread.

 

[frankthedm]

Now that I think about it, you'd better take the roper out of The Forge of Fury completely (I am running the same adventure now, only updated to 3.5). There is even a sidebar which says basically that if the PCs fight against, they can only die!

Then it is vitally important to KEEP it. Without that gentle reminder of how dangerous the D&D world is supposed to be, players may devolop a sence of invulnerability that will lead them to belive the world is thiers on a silver plater and all creatures exist to die on thier swords.

 

[AuraSeer]

Then it is vitally important to KEEP it. Without that gentle reminder of how dangerous the D&D world is supposed to be, players may devolop a sence of invulnerability that will lead them to belive the world is thiers on a silver plater and all creatures exist to die on thier swords.

Sure, that might happen-- but only if the DM is the kind of spineless wuss who fudges die rolls to keep his players alive at all costs. Barring that, the concept of danger will become very clear the first time a PC gets offed due to a tactical error or a DM's lucky crit. Even then, you're assuming the players are total clueless newbies who have never touched an RPG before in their lives, and therefore don't already understand how the game works.

Sticking an invincible monster in an adventure is a piss-poor excuse for game design, no matter what the excuse is. If you're going to be that lame, you may as well forget the monster and just use the old unavoidable insta-death trap. "Oh, you pressed the blue button? A rock falls down and the whole party is dead. No, you don't get a save. New character time!"

 

[Li Shenron]

Then it is vitally important to KEEP it. Without that gentle reminder of how dangerous the D&D world is supposed to be, players may devolop a sence of invulnerability that will lead them to belive the world is thiers on a silver plater and all creatures exist to die on thier swords.

What? It's a Roper. A ROPER! A CR 12 creature in an adventure for 3rd level character is not exactly a "gentle reminder" .

First of all, there is absolutely no clue for someone who hasn't encounter that monster before to guess that it is so hard to kill. Players (unless they are veteran D&D gamer) may be afraid of a massive ogre, a giant creature, a dragon or something else that they might have heard about in books or movies, such as vampires. Heck, in one of our very early adventures a couple of players wanted to run away from orcs, and when some other laughed they said "are you kidding, they are ORCs! they are strong and eat people, let's run!!!".

But a roper looks just an animated piece of rock (or worse) with a toothy maw, there are hundreds of monsters that look more threatening at first sight. The only lesson they are going to learn if you let them fight and die like this is that the DM is the god of the game, who can kill you at any point if he wishes so. And that's something that I don't want my players to think about me.

There is no need for an impossible encounter to show the players that the PC sometimes die, because that actually happens indeed with normal encounters every now and then.