Father Wendigo posted:

Minor thing, but wouldn't this effectively make resistances into outright immunities?

ProfessorCirno posted:

Claiming it's ok because you just improvise is the same godawful cop out that Mearls did with stealth rules. Only in this loving game would "the rules are lovely" somehow equate to "...on PURPOSE, so you IMPROVISE, it's all by design!" Anywhere else "the rules are lovely" means "the rules are lovely."

They didn't make the monster rules this grand secret technique to ensure DMs would learn not to rely on the rules and go by feel. They just hosed up and made bad rules.

Rhjamiz posted:

I think my favorite example of CR being a poo poo metric was the notorious CR 3 Giant Crab.

Mendrian posted:

The most offensive thing about CR is that it exists at all. Really.

Consider that in AD&D you had this huge rear end monster manual, and the only thing that really informed you as to what was appropriate or inappropriate for your party to face was HD. HD were then (and now) a lovely metric for how strong a monster is anyhow, so it was mostly blind guesswork. What AD&D did correctly is that it didn't really try to tell you that monster of HD level X was the same challenge for a party as any other monster of HD level X. You pretty much had to read each monster and judge each encounter manually. It was tedious, but there wasn't another obfuscating system on top of it that actively lied to you about the terrible meat-grinder encounter you had accidentally constructed.

Rhjamiz posted:

I think my favorite example of CR being a poo poo metric was the notorious CR 3 Giant Crab.

ritorix posted:

Running away doesn't work because 5e combat is rocket tag. Tag, you're already unconscious. You can get back up again just as quick but if the party decides to run they will leave people to die.

What these games need is a "con" system like mmos have. A mechanic to tell ahead of time "this thing will kick our rear end." In video games they literally get a skull icon or names in red text. Having that would require valid CR levels.

3.5e Complete Adventurer posted:

Assess Opponent: As a standard action, you can use Sense Motive to ascertain how tough a challenge an opponent poses for you, based on your level and your opponent's CR. This skill check is opposed by the opponent's Bluff check. To attempt this task, your opponent must be visible to you and within 30 feet. If you have seen the opponent in combat, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus on the check.

The accuracy of the assessment depends on the amount by which your Sense Motive check result exceeds the opposed Bluff check result. On a successful Sense Motive opposed check, you can gain the following information:

pre:

Opponent's CR				Assess Opponent Result
4 or more less than your level/HD	A pushover
1, 2, or 3 less than your level/HD	Easy
Equal to your level/HD			A fair fight
Equal to your level/HD plus 1, 2, or 3	A tough challenge
Exceeds your level/HD by 4 or more	A dire threat

A successful assessment reveals that your foe belongs in one of two adjacent categories (for example, "Easy" or "A fair fight"). If your Sense Motive check result exceeds the opposed Bluff check result by 10 or more, you can narrow the result down to a single category.

By contrast, if the target's Bluff check result equals or slightly exceeds your Sense Motive check result, you gain no useful information. If the target's Bluff check result exceeds your Sense Motive check result by 5 or more, you may (at the DM's option) gain a false impression, believing your opponent to be much stronger or weaker than he really is (equal chance of either). If the target's Bluff check result exceeds your Sense Motive check result by 10 or more, your assessment is off by at least two categories (for example, a dire threat might be assessed as a fair fight).

Special: The Combat Intuition feat grants a +4 bonus on Sense Motive checks made to assess opponents. It also enables you to narrow your assessment of your opponent's combat capabilities to a single category. Finally, it allows you to accomplish this task as a free action.

An opponent that is particularly vulnerable to your typical attack routine (for example, a vampire facing a high-level cleric of Pelor) registers as one category less challenging; one who is resistant to your typical attack routine (for example, a golem opposing a rogue who relies heavily on sneak attacks) registers as one category more challenging.

Try Again: You can use this skill on a different opponent each round.

3.5e Complete Adventurer posted:

Combat Intuition
Your keen understanding of your opponent's moves and your instinctive feel for the flow of combat enable you to shrewdly assess your opponent's combat capabilities.
Prerequisite: Sense Motive 4 ranks, base attack bonus +5.
Benefit: As a free action, you can use Sense Motive to assess the challenge presented by a single opponent in relationship to your own level/Hit Dice (see the assess opponent option under the Sense Motive skill). You gain a +4 bonus on such checks and narrow the result to a single category.
In addition, whenever you make a melee attack against a creature that you made a melee attack against during the previous round, you gain a +1 insight bonus on your melee attack rolls against that creature.
Special: A fighter may select Combat Intuition as one of his fighter bonus feats.

3.5e Player's Handbook II posted:

Vatic Gaze
Your arcane studies have brought forth your nascent talent to sense magical auras and the power that others are capable of wielding.
Prerequisite: Arcane caster level 9th.
Benefit: You can use detect magic at will.
Also, as a swift action, you can attempt to determine an opponent's spellcasting ability. You make a Sense Motive check (DC 5 + target's caster level). If this check succeeds, you learn the highest-level spells the target is capable of casting. This benefit grants you no insight into spell-like or supernatural abilities.

Gharbad the Weak posted:

Can I get some info on the crab? I've heard of it, but not exactly what made it so deadly, and I do like badly CR'd things.

IT BEGINS posted:

Then why list CR at all? Just pick the monster you want, then read it and see if it's fitting for your party and players.

The point of CR is that in a good CR system, a monster of X CR will provide players of level X some equal level of challenge at all levels. It doesn't mean a CR 10 has to provide a level 10 party with an extremely challenging encounter', just that it provide a similar level of challenge as a CR 14 provides a level 14 party.

Edit: I just don't think it's too much to ask that the Giant Crabs situation doesn't happen again.

Ratoslov posted:

Okay. You only encounter it on a shoreline, where it attacks out of the water from ambush. It's a huge creature with decent AC and HP, and the ability to grapple medium-sized creatures with one claw. And it had a absolutely ridiculous grapple check. Also, it's type is Vermin, so it's immune to wide swaths of spells that might slow it down.

So, it's entire actions would be:

Round 1: From ambush, grapple someone squishy.
Round 2: Grab someone else coming to rescue their friend with it's other claw.
Round 3: Retreat into the ocean to consume it's prey at leisure.

And that's how you kill half the party with a single CR 3 critter.

LightWarden posted:

Ratoslov posted:

Round 1: From ambush, grapple someone squishy.
Round 2: Grab someone else coming to rescue their friend with it's other claw.
Round 3: Retreat into the ocean to consume it's prey at leisure.

And that's how you kill half the party with a single CR 3 critter.

AlphaDog posted:

So wait, 4 orcs aren't a Deadly encounter for 4 level 2 PCs? How many orcs are a Deadly encounter for 4 level 2 PCs? What about if they're Hobgoblins instead?

Tell me, what can they do with multipliers and so on that will make the hosed CR/XP system they already published actually work?

While you're at it, please explain to us how the system will handle stuff that gets better when there's more of it (like the Hobgoblin) as opposed to things that don't get better near allies (like the Orc).

MonsterEnvy posted:

Anyway ritorix do you have the full image of the guard drake or know were it is? It would be very helpful if you did.

MonsterEnvy posted:

The only thing I think that needs some work is how the multipliers are calculated. Because the multiplier gets too high despite the fact its not going to be as deadly as it says it would be.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Sorry I made a mistake in my post. I mean when it's a mix of CR's like say a Mind Flayer and 4 Grimlocks. The multiplier will double the xp budget despite the fact that the grimlocks are not that threatening at that stage when compared to the mindflayer. It pretty much puts the cost too high. Preventing you from using Decently high cr monsters with lower cr monsters.

This is what I think needs some work.

AlphaDog posted:

So wait, 4 orcs aren't a Deadly encounter for 4 level 2 PCs? How many orcs are a Deadly encounter for 4 level 2 PCs? What about if they're Hobgoblins instead?

Tell me, what can they do with multipliers and so on that will make the hosed CR/XP system they already published actually work?

While you're at it, please explain to us how the system will handle stuff that gets better when there's more of it (like the Hobgoblin) as opposed to things that don't get better near allies (like the Orc).

ritorix posted:

So were any of those actually a good system in the context of 3.5?

Agent Boogeyman posted:

Don't forget Wights that had Level drain if they hit you. I think they were also CR3. In fact, anything that had Level drain made CR worthless as a guage because as soon as it took affect, guess what? The encounter is suddenly more dangerous in difficulty! I hated level and ability drain, I haven't noticed, is it gone from 5E like it was in 4E? (My tummy feels tell me "no")

AlphaDog posted:

Because what you really meant is that 4 orcs are a deadly encounter for 4 level 2 PCs and that there's literally no problem with the encounter building system except for that.

Is that right? Or are you just trying to change what we're talking about so you're not completely wrong?

MonsterEnvy posted:

Despite your opinion of me and my original post. What I said in my 2nd post is what I meant from the start. I was not talking about the Orcs being a deadly challenge. I think the encounter buildings main problem is that the multiplier does not really work well for creatures when their is a decent difference in CR between them. A gang of 5 CR 1's should not double the difficultly xp value of a Cr 10 if their encountered together. As The CR 1's would bearly be any threat.

The Crotch posted:

Intellect devourers can set your intelligence to zero when they're not doing their SOD, stunning you until this damage is reduced or removed (I think the easiest way to do that is Greater Restoration?).

AlphaDog posted:

So say what you actually mean instead of something different, and nobody will be able to "misinterpret" you.

I'm still waiting for your response to the parts of that post that can't be brushed off by telling me what you would have said if only you'd said what you meant.


I'm sure he really meant to say was "shadows and intellect devourers", so it's just like that's what he said and you're just being a dick by not acknowledging that.

quote:

Devour Intellect. The intellect devourer targets one creature
it can see within 10 feet of it that has a brain. The target must
succeed on a DC 12 Intelligence saving throw against this
magic or take 11 (2d10) psychic damage. Also on a failure,
roll3d6: If the total equals or exceeds the target's Intelligence
score, that score is reduced to 0. The target is stunned until it
regains at least one point of Intelligence.

quote:

While you're at it, please explain to us how the system will handle stuff that gets better when there's more of it (like the Hobgoblin) as opposed to things that don't get better near allies (like the Orc).

MonsterEnvy posted:

Here is how their save or die works.


They don't actually take Int damage from the 2nd part there is just a 2nd roll to see if the die roll is higher then the Int of the target. If the roll is higher Int is reduced to 0 and the target is stunned. However if the number is not high enough it does not do anything. Because another thing about the save or die the Int devouerer does is that it has 2 checks before it succeeds which makes it better then most save or dies already.

Grimpond posted:

CR 2 Intellect Devourers

The Crotch posted:

Intellect devourers can set your intelligence to zero when they're not doing their SOD, stunning you until this damage is reduced or removed (I think the easiest way to do that is Greater Restoration?).

Grimpond posted:

oh, so it's actually an "almost" guaranteed death sentence for anyone not a wizard rather then a guaranteed death sentence for anyone not a wizard. Ah Yes, good ol' CR2 save-or-dies.

guy who did the math posted:

Int 8: 60% fail 84% fail (50% death)
Int 9: 60% fail, 74% fail (44% death)
Int 10:55% fail, 63% fail (38% death)
Int 11: 55% fail, 50% fail (28% death)
Int 12: 50% fail, 38% fail (21% death)
Int 13: 50% fail, 26% fail (13% death)
Int 14: 45% fail, 16% fail (8% death)
Int 15: 45% fail, 9% fail (4% death)
Int 16: 40% fail, 5% fail (2% death)
Int 17: 40% fail, 2% fail (1% death)
Int 18: 35% fail, 0.5% fail (0.5% death)

quote:

They don't actually take Int damage from the 2nd part there is just a 2nd roll to see if the die roll is higher then the Int of the target. If the roll is higher Int is reduced to 0 and the target is stunned. However if the number is not high enough it does not do anything. Because another thing about the save or die the Int devouerer does is that it has 2 checks before it succeeds which makes it better then most save or dies already.

RPZip posted:

The chance of failure for a fighter who dumped int to 8 is still ~50% (60% chance of rolling a 12 or lower, which with a -1 Modifier will fail the save, and then a 83.8% chance to fail the "3d6 roll lower than 8"). The second roll's chance of succeeding on a character with 8 int is so high it doesn't help much. It's still ~34% with 10 int, too, and both are pretty bad considering that that's the going to be the chance for a level 2 or level 20 fighter to be taken out of the fight.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Yes but the Fighter may not have dumped Int it could have been the warlock in the back who did. He does not need it anymore then the Fighter does. Anyway I know the math as I just posted a chart. (Plus I am the type of guy that never likes to have a -1 stat.)

MonsterEnvy posted:

Yes but the Fighter may not have dumped Int it could have been the warlock in the back who did. He does not need it anymore then the Fighter does. Anyway I know the math as I just posted a chart. (Plus I am the type of guy that never likes to have a -1 stat.)

Pretty much it's only a huge threat if the target is stupid and it has no way of knowing who is stupid. Logicaly it should attack whoever is closest instead of the person who is dumbest. While the may be the same person sometimes a monster is just deadly to certain things. This is no more deadly then an Ogre hitting a level 2 caster on the head

Effectronica posted:

Okay. Given that melee classes in D&D are not known for prioritizing INT, there's some big overlap between "attacks closest target" and "attacks most vulnerable target" without purely gamey tactics like putting wizards in front when intellect devourers may be near or the DM obliging the players by having the intellect devourers unfailingly seek out the worst possible targets.

MonsterEnvy posted:

They don't actually take Int damage from the 2nd part there is just a 2nd roll to see if the die roll is higher then the Int of the target. If the roll is higher Int is reduced to 0 and the target is stunned. However if the number is not high enough it does not do anything. Because another thing about the save or die the Int devouerer does is that it has 2 checks before it succeeds which makes it better then most save or dies already.

Bhaal posted:

Let's assume a target has 10 int and no proficiency for int saves, they have just over a 1 in 3 chance to be turned into a vegetable whenever an int. devourer hits them with this ability.

If they have a 9 int it is a 44% chance, each round, of needing a greater restoration (or or be brought back from the dead) to recover from the CR2 monster.

For 11 int it is a 27.5% chance.

Int is probably among the most common dump stat across the classes. I would bet the average int score taken across all PCs will be around a 10.0. Against the int. devourer, they effectively have a save or suck against the majority of PCs. Wizard being the main exception, with a footnote for druid and rogue as they will have proficiency on their int saves and so the math works out a little better for them overall. Just because you roll more dice, the > 25% chance for most cases means it's save or die. Every round.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Correct it's off set by being squishy and unlikly to survive more then 2 rounds.