Savage Species - Astral Deva

[Savage Wombat]

I was leafing through Savage Species looking for a 10th level character idea. Anyway - my eye fell upon the Astral Deva. Take a look at it if/when you have the book.

Now, at 10th level they're a long ways from having the full abilities of an ECL 20 class. But compared to a 10th level standard PC? They're disgusting!

7 HD, an average of +4 to each stat, spell resistance, energy resistances, DR 5/+1, Flight, mystic aura, and a slew of minor clerical spells castable at will?

This is the equivalent of a 10th level cleric?

I don't know that I'd say the entire system of levelling-up monsters is broken, but I suspect the really high-powered ones might well be. Opinions?

 

[gfunk]

Last weekend I was flipping through my friend's copy of SS and noticed the same thing as you. It seems that a few monster classes gain power disproportionately at certain levels and are weaker in others. The Deva is pretty strong at mid-levels, but IMO it tends to become somewhat weaker at higher levels. I really don' think an 18th level deva can hold its own among a party of that level.

In the case of a troll, he gets regeneration 1 at 4th level. Effectively, it makes that PC unkillable under ordinary circumstances. But I don't think an 11th level troll can be a very good front-line tank compared to an 11th level figther.

 

[Celebrim]

The big problem with the CR, EL, ECL system has always been that they do not actually scale in a linear fashion. Four CR 4 challenges _might_ be equal to a CR 8 challenge (but probably not), but four CR 1 challenges may actually be weaker than a CR _3_ challenge, but 4 CR 16 challenges are together probably much more dangerous than a CR 18 or even CR 20 challenge. A 2nd level warrior is probably as tough as a CR 1 monster, but a 20th level warrior is probably no worse than a CR 10 monster. A 3rd level character may well be three times as powerful as a 1st level character, but a 20th level character is not three times more powerful than a 18th level character. A race with +4 ECL is not at first level nearly as powerful as a 5th level character with a +0 ECL race, but a 16th level character with a +4 ECL race/template is often more powerful (sometimes much more) powerful than a 20th level character with a +0 ECL race.

I haven't seen savage species, but if they haven't tried to fix this basic problem then they almost certainly stretched the system way past the breaking point.