Rust Monster Lovin'

[Imp]

I was once playing in a long running campaign that adhered reasonably close to the vanilla 1e/2e rules, about as much as most such games did anyway. Losing all your stuff was considered a signficantly worst fate than dying. Death -- A little cash, loss of one point Con, and you are back in the game. Stripped -- You are so ineffective that you cannot contribute to the party. The DM would have to let you create new PC one level behind everyone else and at ~20% of the wealth because that was the minimum that could plausibly contribute to the party enough to justify a share of the XP and moolah in a non-stupid way -- the stripped PC simply could not.

That's crazy. 1 point of Con was huge in 1e, if you were getting bonuses from it, or on the edge of a penalty. And very hard to recover or make up for. I'd toss the equipment, easily – assuming of course the party was friendly enough to let me get my hands on the next +1 or +2 whatever I was proficient in. Or buy it from them, or something. By no means did 1e characters have all their wealth concentrated in baubles they were wearing, in my experience! Once they got to a respectable level they usually had big money in the bank.

 

[Kishin]

. A 15 HD Rust Monster with increased size is challenge rating 7 with a 22 Constitution score. The +4 modifier, large dice amount, and high constitution makes it a DC 27 reflex save. The Rust Monster landing 2 touch attacks is near guaranteed against a character like this and passing that reflex save if you are a low dexterity character in full plate, a "clanger", is nearly impossible. Antenna attack, lose 10 grand in gear and take 1d8+9 damage is a real spirit breaker.

The fact that the save DC on the Rust Monster's Rust ability is almost always out of reach of the types of character its designed to target is what has always made me dislike the creature.

Basically, where are you metal-plated melee specialists? At the front of the party. Their movement' is reduced because they're in heavy armor, so they're not outrunning it, and their reflex save is generally terrible, so they're not gonna save successfully. Under these circumstances, you will almost certainly get chased down, and you -will- lose an item. Lateral thinking is great to encourage in a game, but you can do it without stacking the deck to the degree the rust monster does against the average melee character. Its a rather heavy handed approach to the concept,

 

[jmucchiello]

My question is why did you invent a new rule system for destroying objects when the sunder rules already exist? (Especially after the design elegance discussion earlier this week.)

Shouldn't a change to the rust monster (and the rusting grasp spell) just change them so they cause damage to weapons/armor as sundering does. You compare the CR 3 rust monster to the Ogre. So a good way to see how good a rust monster should be at destroying weapons would be to swap out the ogre's existing feats and replace them with Power Attack and Improved Sunder. Play ogre like he hates weapons and see how the encounters go.

(I know you can't sunder armor by the RAW, but obviously the rust monster would be the exception.)

 

[GSHamster]

I thought it was generally accepted wisdom that "save or die" attacks were not good design. That's essentially what the rust monster is. Save, or your best weapon dies. This new rust monster spreads out the dying over several rounds, giving the players a chance to react.

I will agree that the weapon mystically returning to normal is a bit weird, but I'm sure you could come up with some new flavor to cover it.

Also, you guys with your crazy tactics, and carrying multiple weapons on you, are pretending you are the sole audience for D&D. Imagine a group of 12-year-olds working through a low-level D&D adventure for the first time. A rust monster is going to rock them hard, and possibly make it impossible for them to keep going without a TPK. WotC needs to design for newbies just as much as the hardcore. In some ways it's more important to design for the newbies.

I think the biggest problem with the rust monster is that it's CR is way too low. That means a new person could encounter it long before they are really ready to deal with it. If it was a CR 10 or so monster (with CR 10 HD, etc), it would work much better, as it is more probable that player will be experienced at that point.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Hey, I just can't wait to see some of the reactions when Mike and the devs tackle another horribly-designed (but cool-looking!) monster: the Beholder.

 

[The_Gneech]

Also, you guys with your crazy tactics, and carrying multiple weapons on you, are pretending you are the sole audience for D&D. Imagine a group of 12-year-olds working through a low-level D&D adventure for the first time. A rust monster is going to rock them hard, and possibly make it impossible for them to keep going without a TPK. WotC needs to design for newbies just as much as the hardcore. In some ways it's more important to design for the newbies.

I was a 12-year-old working through a low-level D&D adventure for the first time, once. So were all of my friends.

None of us were traumatized by the rust monster.

Designing for newbies by giving them false impressions is not a good idea. Nor is designing for newbies by weeding out the hardcore.

-The Gneech

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hey, I just can't wait to see some of the reactions when Mike and the devs tackle another horribly-designed (but cool-looking!) monster: the Beholder.

Yeah, I'd love to see all the sacred cows go under the microscope. Heck, I'd love to see the results published as variant species in a future MM, for those who prefer them and don't want to tote around printed out Web pages.

 

[Fishbone]

Amen. I've always hated the Beholders and thought they were overCRd and needlessly complicated.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Well, they tend to be, paraphrased from another poster, "magical vending machines of save-or-die". They're about as exciting as toast.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I had a couple of problems with Mike Mearls' re-design, actually. I like the idea of removing the "all-or-nothing" nature of ol' Rusty, but I don't like the idea of the rust's effects fading after 10 minutes.

I agree- I thought it would be better to use a variation of the standard Sunder rules for equipment, with the Rust Monster's attack dealing a variable amount of damage to the equipment. The variation would allow for partial damage (number of hp dmg by RM attack) which could then be repaired using the Craft skill (or Craft skill and Item Crafting feat if a magical item).