SKR's problem with certain high level encounters

[Celebrim]

With regards to the CR issue, I think it is irrelevant. As a system, CR/EL works as well as anything that wouldn't be too complex to use, and where it doesn't work it provides a 'fudge factor' for providing lesser or greater experience if in the opinion of the DM special circumstances make the encounter more or less difficult. In published products of better quality, this is already done to a certain extent. We could probably go a bit further by suggesting things like 'If the party does not have a cleric of at least X level, award 150% the normal experience for this encounter.' or 'If at least one member of the party does not have a +X weapon, award 200% of the normal experience for this encounter'.

No big deal.

Could interesting advice be written on it? Sure, but I don't think you'd ever be able to get away from XP guidelines .

Speaking of DR, I think it might be interesting to rule that it was proportional. That is, suppose I only have a +1 weapon, and the monster has 20/+2 DR. It might help things to rule that the +1 weapon halved the DR of the critter to 10, therefore allowing greater interaction. For that matter, I don't know what the point of ever increasing numbers is anyway, since a monster with 15/+5 DR is far more interesting to me than one with 50/+5 DR.

For 4th ed. if either monsters usually had smaller numbers before the slash or if having a portion of the second quality fulfilled proportionally reduced the first number it would be better IMNSHO.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

"If you have a cleric with Harm prepared, it doesn't matter if the beastie has 10,000 HP."

Yeah, assuming you are one of the three DM's in the country that haven't rule 0'd Harm as the most obviously broken spell in the game. I don't think I'd allow Harm as a 9th level spell, much less a 5th. The default solution arrived at independently by at least half the DM's in the country is to rule that harm gets a save, with the results of a successful save being a cause critical wounds that never leaves the foe with less than 4 h.p. The other 49% cap the damage in some fashion.

Oh, I agree with you. I'm just talking from a non-rule 0 perspective.

Besides, Harm is only the most obvious example. There are plenty of other spells (and spell affecting feats) that make big HP somewhat irrelevant at high levels.

Patrick Y.

 

[JadeLyon]

Re: Re: Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain

I just wanted to bring this up again, in case anyone missed it in the middle of a large chunk of writing.

I think mearls makes an excellent point here. The Monster Manual would have been immeasurably enhanced by providing basic tactical information for each critter, and notes about its vulnerabilities and the impact of masking them.

In fact I think a supplement which gave this treatment to all the OGL monsters would probably make an excellent netbook (or even product). Any takers?

Cheers

Here! Here!

I'd pay 100 bucks for a supplement that gave good DM tactics on how to run DMG monsters.

I'm serious!

I can't count how many times I've gotten into an encounter with my PCs and they mince me. I spend the time and energy trying to play a Monster to the best of my ability, but I have either never played this monster, or only used it a few times. My players have the benefit of playing their character for 2 years, or better yet, playing a similar character for 15 or 20 years. In order to really challenge a high level player, you have to either use a monster or NPC that you know how to play VERY well, or fudge things behind the screen.

Also, I can't count how many times I've browsed the forums and noticed an off-hand way to play a creature. Something I never would have though of.

I have 18 years as a DM under my belt. But, I also have a job and a family. I look for every little thing that can help. Something like that would be fantastic.

Oh My.

Can someone please do this soon? By next Sunday? That's when we play next.



Anyway, concerning SKR's rant, I think this could be a possible solution. When writing high level creatures, put SERIOUS role-playing and combat tactics in the description. Then we'll get an idea of what the creature is like.

You'll either get a great description with all kinds of tactics, or something more like "This guy is just a baddie. Don't put him in your campaign unless you want a serious hack fest. Flavor = 1 (out of 10)"

If the industry moved to this standard, then nobody would write up a monster with the above notes. They'd go back to the drawing board and come up with a Flavor = 10 creature!

 

[Bragg Battleaxe]

I have a couple of problems with High-Level play.

1. It seems that the higher the character level, the higher the reliance is on magic items rather than class features. Obviously the Wizard and Sorcerer are exceptions.

2. At high levels, it seems much more likely that either the DM or the PCs are going to lose badly by miscalculating "something". This "something" might be a CR or memorizing the wrong spells. I guess what I am saying is that the game gets so complicated at these levels that there is just too much to keep up with to expect someone not to make a mistake. It just plain sucks when your character dies because of something YOU forgot but THEY never would have, if that makes any sense.

 

[mearls]

Re: Re: Re: Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain

Here! Here!

I'd pay 100 bucks for a supplement that gave good DM tactics on how to run DMG monsters.

FWIW, I wrote a book for Fantasy Flight called The Monsters Handbook which addresses monster tactics. It doesn't cover each creature in detail, but it does cover each basic monster type.

It's due out this fall.

 

[Storminator]

Speaking of DR, I think it might be interesting to rule that it was proportional. That is, suppose I only have a +1 weapon, and the monster has 20/+2 DR. It might help things to rule that the +1 weapon halved the DR of the critter to 10, therefore allowing greater interaction. For that matter, I don't know what the point of ever increasing numbers is anyway, since a monster with 15/+5 DR is far more interesting to me than one with 50/+5 DR.

There is a simple way of doing this with the existing rules. Give a creature multiple DRs. Example:

20/+1, 10/+2, 5/+3, and 2/+4

Then the creature gets the best DR it can.

If you have no magic weapon, that's 20 points.
A +1 weapon, that's 10 points.
+2 gives DR 5, +3 DR 2, and a +4 weapon, no reduction.

Pretty sweet!
PS

 

[Celebrim]

Storminator: Excellent suggestion.

 

[wyrdrune_wolf]

I've had problems with save-or-die (or taken out of the fight) spells since many years ago in 2e. I've tried many variations on solutions and am still working on such today.

High level play is inherently harder to balance if for no other reason than your players can take many different routes, one player might be a hardcore powergamer and another might just want to be a courtier and if you're trying to keep them both happy and having fun you have to tailor encounters very carefully.

The effigy for example may not work best for a generic fight, or for even some parties, but perhaps there is a party whose composition leaves one particular player is a good position to defeat the enemy for whatever reason, so the gm can use that for to let that player shine.

Just a few random thoughts.

 

[Numion]

This isn't that big a deal for me as a player or as a DM. I can always roleplay it.

This is the tough part of high-level play. Convincing your players to be scared when faced with ten guardsmen with crossbows trained on them.-Tacky

Why should they be scared? IMHO the point of high-level playing is that the characters are more powerful than the mooks of the world. They shouldn't take crap from guards with crossbows any more than Trinity is arrested at the beginning of the movie Matrix.

 

[vsper]

SKR's porblem

Shortly after 3e came out a bunch of us sat down and began to play. We wanted to test the system, and see its merits and its flaws. CR’s were one of the problems. I believe it stems from the problem there are too many variable in the problem to work well. Its not that I see CR’s as being incorrect, but being a poor choice to base the encounter, as a lone criteria. The GM must weigh in all of the PC’s special abilities and the monsters special abilities. For example, a Fire using monster might b a challenge if the party has little protection from fire, but easy for one heavily protected. In the end I eyeball it, and custom make each encounter for the party.

I tend to run long campaigns and have found the experience and treasure to be a problem. I believe Monte Cook once said the game mechanic was to have the party increase in level every three or four game sessions based on a six month campaign. Since I run multi year campaign I have to look differently at XP. I generally want them to go up every (1+level) game sessions. What I did was modified the first edition xp chart, lowering the rate at which the xp increases and then divide by the character level. Its kind of complicated, but gives them better xp for creatures with special abilities. They of coarse then get a good chunk of xp from role playing.

The problem with slowing down progression in this manner is that the standard treasure drop is too much. By level 7 you could have PC’s with way too much gear and money. So this too needs to be lowered. When you factor in these two changes it runs pretty well