Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MostlyHarmless42" data-source="post: 7232849" data-attributes="member: 6845520">The chart is fairly self explanatory and allow more freedom once you understand them. Within those rules are suggestions for nearly every ability in the game for monsters and how they effect the power level of a monster, and they have clear cut guidelines for gauging your own. Again, you are more than welcome to give monsters class levels, just realize that a) it will restrict you, and b) player classes have higher damage output and lower respective health than most monsters. The tankiest of pcs is STILL a glass cannon compared to a "tanky" monster of a relative similar strength. This is deliberately done because a monster's only job is to take hits and deplete party resources before dying. Preferably, they will do this in an interesting way.I agree that one can always playtest a monster to figure out how strong they are. As to your claims of weak monsters based on the chart, we cannot say that definitively. A number of factors influence how strong a monster is in play, even dice luck aside. First, his party may not all be min maxed or optimized, and even they are, they may not be metagamers or strategically minded. Additionally, we lack context of when and where these encounters will take place, or the party composition. There is a big difference between the first encounter of the day and the eighth. The chart assumes multiple encounters each day even at deadly difficulty, and if he is doing his job right a boss encounter shouldn't be the first fight of the day, especially with a creature who can literally harass them practically unhindered to keep then from resting. Ethereal is a POWERFUL tool when used appropriately, as is flight. If they lack ranged characters or magic capable of dealing with it, even a normal succubus could be a real hassle.Good encounter design if far more important than anything else. If you want proof, I point you to tucker's kobolds as an example of good encounter design with "weak" monsters. That said, a DM is more than welcome to increase the difficulty past Deadly. I can and do typically do so. I've found for my group and play style typically Deadly x2 does the trick, then again, I usually run 2-3 encounters a day and only about 2 of the 5 players are what I would call optimized. Your milage may vary, as will any other DM. Got munchkins? Race the party xp cap one level. Less than the suggested encounters per day? Raise it another. Are you too lazy to use good tactics thst fight? One more! The trick is to realize the chart us itself guidelines. Only he will be able to tell if something is too strong or weak, best advice we can give him is to make sure he knows all the tools at his disposal.Feats are a great way to adjust monsters as well, either prepared or especially on the fly midsession for minibosses. I do see that humorous situation as being a perfectly good explanation as well. Perhaps the person she's trying to summon is her patron then? Or a queen of the succubi? It's fine either way and up to the DM, just merely things to consider. The boss as described sounds more like a Tiefling than a fiend narratively soeaking, but I can understand why he'd want her to have charm, flight, and ethereal abilities because they make for a cool boss, so giving her them just sort of makes her a Succubus anyway. Cabrion or Night Hag are other good options as well."...and you promised me a promotion five gnomes, three centaur, and a rather lecherous mindflayer ago! I'm starting to think you just enjoy having me sworn my soul to you for power!"</blockquote>

Verification