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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3349782" data-attributes="member: 4937">Thanks again.I wouldn't worry about it.  You should see me in aggressive argumentation mode.  I'm flame proof, and I consider your criticism helpful and more gratifying even than much of the praise.  I could quibble with alot of what you say, but since I'm not wanting an argument here I'll try to minimize the quibbling.Which I think is highly ungratifying and which I will do my best to avoid. Nonetheless, I tend to agree with you that while I've given them alot of defense, I've not given them enough offensive ability and I've probably neglected a few key areas.Well, as presented the CR of the final baddy is in the low 30's and probably can't be defeated by a party of say 22nd level without considerable help - which is basically what the text says.I was expecting 120-200 damage per round.By my estimate, a maximized empowered disentigrate would do on average about 57 damage to Baseraxs + about 16 damage for each DC of the save was above 36.200 damage per round would require 4 full rounds take down Baseraxs.Fair enough.  I'll make a note of the rules assumptions when I do section #16, which is supposed to contain alot of the crunch that goes along with section #1's flavor.I'll take it under consideration.I'm having a hard time envisioning what saving throws bonuses are like at this level of play.  I'm presuming something like +3-4 above the sample characters in the DMG to be pretty typical, which still makes DC's around 25 pretty rough.  Nevertheless, I agree with you that I'm not putting enough pressure on the party - I'm not 'stealing' enough of thier actions - especially since for most of the Lords I've deliberately steered away from instant death effects.  However, I want to avoid putting the sort of pressure on the party that they feel the need to cut and run if the fight goes over 2 rounds.   That tactic is perfectly reasonable given that most published opponents at this CR have alot of save or die effects and/or dish out average 200+ damage on a full attack.  I'm trying to avoid putting that much pressure on the party that it forces those kind of tactics, and I'm trying to avoid luck dependency.  I want, for lack of a better word, the 'drama' that seems to be missing from so much high level play (or at least high level combat).So, let's talk about fixes.  Any or all of the following is under consideration.1) DC and SR boosts - I could cheese the SL's (Slaad Lord's) SLA' and SR's out by an across the board +5 increase to the DC and SR.  This would put the SR close to the CR+10 rule of thumb, and would make the DC's certainly threatening to parties a couple CL's below CR.2) Go the full divine rank 0 route - As it is, the SL's are almost fully divine rank 0 creatures, and by the time I get to listing the mechanics general to SL's we are going to be practically there anyway.  The relevant additional immunities by going this route would be form change immunity (already not a large problem, since most are shape changers), mind effecting spells, energy drain, and ability drain.3) Attack boosting - The SL's are being seriously hurt by the fact that they depend on natural attacks and not items.  So they are missing iterative attacks, x1.5 strength modifers, magical enhancements, etc.  They idea here would be to boost thier natural attacks up a bit in hopefully a believable non-cheesy way to make up for this flavor constraint.  I could break the flavor constraint, and plan to in at least one case, but I don't want to go there just because of system mechanics.4) Stat Boosting - I could increase the ability scores of the SLs across the board by say 10% (20 would become 22, 30 would become 33, etc.).  This would further boost the DC of SLA's for those SL's that depend on them, make the damage from combat brutes more threatening, further boost the hp's by 30 or so, possibly add a point or two to AC and generally all around buff the SL.  5) Add epic DR - The problem I have with epic DR is the same problem I have with magic DR at this level.  It's either just irrelevant because everything can overcome it, or else its overwhelming because the party just doesn't have epic weapons.  Nonetheless, I want the SL's to overcome epic DR, and giving them epic DR just makes that easier without making a special exception.I'm leaning toward #1 and #2, feel pretty good about #3, and will take step #4 if you think its necessary.  I don't feel good about #5, but I'm leaning that way just because I dislike more fiddly rule exceptions than I'm already making.As a final note, I don't own 'Book of Vile Darkness' to check this, but from what I remember of it and glancing at the web enhancement I would say that my SL's as presented aren't far off the power scale of the archfiends in that book.  Are the BoVD's epic challenges way overrated, or has 3.5 had that much power inflation?   I don't want to cheese out the monsters so that the 'new' CR 24 is that much more potent than the 'old' CR 24.  That way really lies madness.  Anyway, strange new SL latter today.</blockquote>

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