D&D 5E When Fiends Attack: Are Balors, Pit Fiends and Ultraloths too weak?

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm doing it slightly differently... I have been slowly re-writing all the CR10+ monsters in the monster manual to actually follow the CR rules. The fact that Dragons have wildly differing CR numbers and often have the same effective stats is what started me down the path (Blue and Green Dragons were some of the most obvious that made me start looking at it closer).

I'm making direct MM page replacements to fit into my spiral bound monster manual (after all the pages fell out).

I'm AFB so can't check the details of DMG CR calculation, but even discounting Frightful Presence, Legendary Resistances, and the breath weapon and just plugging in the Adult Blue Dragon's raw damage numbers into http://1-dot-encounter-planner.appspot.com/quick-monster-stats.html gets me a CR of 15, vs. a book CR of 16. Once you account for all the things I skipped, I doubt not that the CR of 16 is quite correct by DMG rules. (Whether DMG CR rules are an accurate measure of monster strength is, however, a completely different story. IMO 5E CR is mostly meaningless except for calculating kill XP, since monsters of disparate actual strengths can all wind up with the same official CR.)

Just checking: you realize that Legendary Actions increase offensive CR just like normal attacks do, don't you? At least half of the dragon's offensive CR comes from the 3x tail attacks it makes every round. When I try to imagine why you would think dragons are over-CR'ed, the best hypothesis I can come up with is that you might perhaps be overlooking legendary actions in your CR calculations.

 

[MostlyDm]

I'm doing it slightly differently... I have been slowly re-writing all the CR10+ monsters in the monster manual to actually follow the CR rules. The fact that Dragons have wildly differing CR numbers and often have the same effective stats is what started me down the path (Blue and Green Dragons were some of the most obvious that made me start looking at it closer).

I'm making direct MM page replacements to fit into my spiral bound monster manual (after all the pages fell out).

I'm curious about this... can you give a more detailed example? Like... what age Blue/Green dragons had miscalculated CR, and how was it miscalculated?

 

[Valdier]

I'm curious about this... can you give a more detailed example? Like... what age Blue/Green dragons had miscalculated CR, and how was it miscalculated?

It isn't so much that they are miscalculated, that they are overly capable with almost no difference between the actual creatures. Each of them *barely* round up or down from CR 8 (CR 7.75, 8, 8.25), assuming you give Fear, Flight, Resistances, and Immunities absolutely no values.

The biggest callout is they are effectively the same creature skinned slightly different and don't justify a change in CR. (Specifically I used the Young Adult age to calculate).

A Balor btw, should probably be a CR 16

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It isn't so much that they are miscalculated, that they are overly capable with almost no difference between the actual creatures. Each of them *barely* round up or down from CR 8 (CR 7.75, 8, 8.25), assuming you give Fear, Flight, Resistances, and Immunities absolutely no values.

The biggest callout is they are effectively the same creature skinned slightly different and don't justify a change in CR. (Specifically I used the Young Adult age to calculate).

By DMG rules, the differences are pretty significant, and the CRs are calculated correctly, according to http://1-dot-encounter-planner.appspot.com/quick-monster-stats.html, which I have found to be accurate in the past.

Young blue: 67 damage per round at +9 to hit. (45+45+(55*2))/3 ~= 67. AC 18 and 152 HP. That's CR 9.
Young green: 57 damage per round at +7 to hit. (44+44+(42*2))/3 ~= 57. AC 18 and 136 HP. That's CR 8.

CR makes a big deal out of small variations in HP, damage, and to-hit. The additional CR is absolutely significant and justified by DMG rules. The young blue is about 10-15% tougher than the green, so it's not surprising that it has a CR 12% higher.

 

[Valdier]

And the Balor?

Per the dmg, I do not get the same defensive numbers as you. I'll check again in a few.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And the Balor? I'll wait. Respond to the whole post not the straw man please.

What straw man? You made some claims that confused some people; you provided additional details and people including me are still confused, but beginning to suspect that you're calculating something incorrectly.

I don't have anything to say about the Balor except what I've said before: it's weaker than you'd expect for its CR because so much of its offense is tied up in its death burst, which makes the Balor the high-level version of a Gas Spore: it's a scary-looking fragile creature which explodes when you kill it.

What are you expecting me to do about the Balor? Do you want me to check your math?

Edit: it's also kind of unfair to make a big deal out of someone not addressing a portion of your post when that portion of your post was a throwaway "BTW" afterthought.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And the Balor?

Per the dmg, I do not get the same defensive numbers as you. I'll check again in a few.

Since I'm relying on http://1-dot-encounter-planner.appspot.com/quick-monster-stats.html (I'm AFB, Away From Book), it's possible that that web app has a bug in it. Maybe it doesn't correctly implement the DMG table. If you could be more specific about how your numbers are different, we might be able to track down the discrepancy if one exists.

 

[werecorpse]

Well, my question is less 'is the Balor killable by level 9 characters', since that particular battle has been waged on here plenty of times, and more 'is it a problem if it can be killed by level 9 characters'. Assume for the moment that it is possible for level 9 characters to do that - what does the game gain or lose by that fact? Lots of people seem keen to focus on the CR, but that also seems irrelevant - the fact is that the Balor is the top-level Demon, the guy at the end of the Abyssal dungeon, the Cyberdemon of the Abyss. For that narrative, does the Balor need to be completely untouchable until the party is 'high level', or are you happy for him to be fightable (and killable) in the mid tiers?

IMO the game loses something by having supposedly top level monsters able to be killed by a bunch of mid level adventurers. It's still playable, and it can be fun but it loses when the narrative of "this is a terrible foe that even skilled Warriors cannot hope to defeat" is countered by giving it a whoopin' when you are 9th level.

In the same way that the game loses something if you play monty haul style. Cheap victories feel cheap.

I once played in an ad&d campaign where we had fancy magic items and by the time we were about 4th or 5th level we had killed stone Giants and various potent daemons & Demons that in other games we were only meeting at 9th level. It felt unearned, and like we didn't really have anywhere to go.

On the flip side while I agree with most of Capn Zapp's post one thing I disagree with is having scaled up humanoids. In the same way that I don't want my 9th level party to be defeating a top end demon I similarly don't want them to be fighting a scaled up goblin or Orc. Low level monsters should be able to be a threat in an army but one thing D&D does well is have a crapload of different beasties to battle. Don't give me scaled up 10th level goblins, give me things that narratively I should fight at this level - medusa controlled golems, githyanki Knights, abyssal chimera etc. I don't mind the odd hobgoblin warlord etc but IMO high level monsters should usually not be scaled up low level monsters.

Love the idea of the AD&D5E.

 

[MostlyDm]

Yeah, Valdier, the reason I was questioning you is because I had run the numbers on a few monsters I'd seen cited as having incorrect CR (such as the Balor or the NPC Mage) and in each case the CR checked out as long as the math was done with the assumptions laid out in the DMG.

It's fine to say that those assumptions are bad. That's an opinion we can discuss. But saying some CRs are wrong by their own metric is a statement about facts, not opinions. It's either correct or incorrect, based on the math.

That's why I was curious about the precise math you did on the dragons, to see if you made an error.

 

[CTurbo]

I've always found it easier to fight a strong solo monster than it is to fight a few medium strength monsters or even a lot of weak monsters.


After reading more about the 5e Balor, it does seem to be a little "weaker" than it maybe should be. I does "feel" wrong for a common group of mid-tier PCs to be able to defeat one in a fight. I think maybe a properly played Balor would probably be a little tougher than it appears. It's an intelligent creature that would likely never be alone especially considering the MM lists them as "generals over demonic armies" and the fact that it can, by rule, summon more demons once per day. I think it would be irresponsible for a DM to have a Balor fight a party by itself.

I also think that a Balor and Pit Fiend should probably have legendary actions since they're pretty much the highest demons/devils in the book. They SHOULD be endgame tough.

Just my opinions of course.