A comment about golems (the stained glass one to be specific) [Archive] - Wizards Community

A comment about golems (the stained glass one to be specific) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Repentinus
12-26-04, 01:48 AM I recently ran an adventure where a stained glass golem was the "boss" of a maze of sorts. Keep in mind that according to all that I have read this is a CR 5 creature. Which should taken 20% resources of a group of 4 5th level characers. Amongst the group was a 5th level rogue weilding a +1 rapier, a 5th level monk using his fists, a 5th level ranger with two longs swords, and a 5th level favored soul with a +1 ghost touch bastard sword. Not a bad group and they had done pretty well against anything CR 3 through 5 that I had thrown at them so far. Then this fight came.

And they weren't doing jack to it.

First comes the magic immunity. Okay no spells other that sounds effects. Makes sense so no real problem there.

Then the damage reduction 10/Adamantine. That's a tough one right there. Not too many people can do more that 10 damage in one hit at level 5. And since DR applies to each attack and not just total damage for that round, we figured the ranger could do a max of 4 hps of damage beyond the DR, the favored soul could do 2 and the monk could do 1. And that's possible for max.

Next comes the fast healing 5. This is the real killer here. We'll take the afore mentioned damage (a possible max combined damage of 7 per round) and then apply the FH5. Which means its health jumps back up to where only 2 damage had been dealt this round. Since a stained glass golem has 86 hps on average (which is what I run my monsters on) it would take 43 rounds of doing MAX damage in order for this group to kill this golem.

Now granted its AC sucks, a wopping 15. And its attack isn't that deadly. 2 rakes at +10 for 1d8+1/19-20 x2 damage looks a lot worse that it rolls. But due to the fact that the party couldn't do anything to it it was murdering the group. I had to use the DM intervention to get this thing to not kill the entire group totally which I hate doing.

I looked around later figuring that the translation from 3.0 to 3.5 boosted its CR. Nope. I looked at the web golem (CR 7) in comparison to it. Looks on par. So I'm figuring I either read something wrong, or played something wrong or its CR was just needs to be adjusted.

What are your thoughts?
cwslyclgh
12-26-04, 04:37 AM the CR system assumes that you have at least 1 fighter or barbrian type in a party that can dish out a fair amount of damage per round in combat... also at 5th level an adamantine weapon in the group would probably be pretty common, an adamantine long sword only costs 3k or so.
General_Ridley
12-26-04, 03:43 PM yeah, adamantine weapons don't have to be hard to find.

hey, you could have allowed a quiver of 20 adamantine arrows to be right outside the cave, dropped by an arrow demon long ago.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Repentinus 12-26-04, 01:48 AM	I recently ran an adventure where a stained glass golem was the "boss" of a maze of sorts. Keep in mind that according to all that I have read this is a CR 5 creature. Which should taken 20% resources of a group of 4 5th level characers. Amongst the group was a 5th level rogue weilding a +1 rapier, a 5th level monk using his fists, a 5th level ranger with two longs swords, and a 5th level favored soul with a +1 ghost touch bastard sword. Not a bad group and they had done pretty well against anything CR 3 through 5 that I had thrown at them so far. Then this fight came. And they weren't doing jack to it. First comes the magic immunity. Okay no spells other that sounds effects. Makes sense so no real problem there. Then the damage reduction 10/Adamantine. That's a tough one right there. Not too many people can do more that 10 damage in one hit at level 5. And since DR applies to each attack and not just total damage for that round, we figured the ranger could do a max of 4 hps of damage beyond the DR, the favored soul could do 2 and the monk could do 1. And that's possible for max. Next comes the fast healing 5. This is the real killer here. We'll take the afore mentioned damage (a possible max combined damage of 7 per round) and then apply the FH5. Which means its health jumps back up to where only 2 damage had been dealt this round. Since a stained glass golem has 86 hps on average (which is what I run my monsters on) it would take 43 rounds of doing MAX damage in order for this group to kill this golem. Now granted its AC sucks, a wopping 15. And its attack isn't that deadly. 2 rakes at +10 for 1d8+1/19-20 x2 damage looks a lot worse that it rolls. But due to the fact that the party couldn't do anything to it it was murdering the group. I had to use the DM intervention to get this thing to not kill the entire group totally which I hate doing. I looked around later figuring that the translation from 3.0 to 3.5 boosted its CR. Nope. I looked at the web golem (CR 7) in comparison to it. Looks on par. So I'm figuring I either read something wrong, or played something wrong or its CR was just needs to be adjusted. What are your thoughts?
cwslyclgh 12-26-04, 04:37 AM	the CR system assumes that you have at least 1 fighter or barbrian type in a party that can dish out a fair amount of damage per round in combat... also at 5th level an adamantine weapon in the group would probably be pretty common, an adamantine long sword only costs 3k or so.
General_Ridley 12-26-04, 03:43 PM	yeah, adamantine weapons don't have to be hard to find. hey, you could have allowed a quiver of 20 adamantine arrows to be right outside the cave, dropped by an arrow demon long ago.