Post/Author/DateTime	Post
LukiLoki 01-03-07, 06:01 PM	In general, I think the monster advancement rules are great. I do it all the time and it really has opened up the range of monsters I can use now that my PCs are middling-high level (12-13 -- that's high for our group anyhow). But... I'm just now working on advancing a Darktentacles to Huge size and appropriate CR for tonight's game (it's Tolkein's birthday, and I wanted to do a scene from LotR -- y'know, where they're at the gates to the Mines of Moria...), and this guy's going to be TOUGH at only CR 11. So, a question: Do you think I should take into account the extreme increase in grappling effectiveness for a Large --> Huge size increase? I mean, grappling is pretty much what this thing does, and at huge size, it does it verrry well. Too well, I'm afraid. I hesitate to arbitrarily bump up the CR, but this thing's looking like a tough encounter for my level-12 party, like a CR 13 or 14 encounter. Or maybe I should just stop at the upper extreme of Large size, but then the CR is only 9: not a very tough challenge for my PCs, and I want this to be the climactic encounter of the session. Thoughts?
dawnbringer 01-03-07, 07:10 PM	The grapple bonus for being large is already applied into the darktentacles grapple. All you do when you advance it to huge is add +4 to it's grapple bonus from what it already was. And since i love darktentacles, I'm gonna post a scenario with them tomorrow.
LukiLoki 01-03-07, 07:24 PM	I get that. But there's more to it than just the size bonus. I've given it 12 HD, so, the BAB went up by 8. +8 Grapple. Also, Large --> Huge means +8 Str. Another +4 to Grapple. Add in the size bonus to Grapple for Huge size, +4, and that bad boy's got a whopping additional +16 to grapple, for a bone-crunching +46! (It has a +16 racial bonus) I'm probably going to leave it as is, but it will excercise the Improved Grab option of taking -20 and not being considered grappled. That way, it'll be a bad day for one PC, but the rest get a little easier time of it. btw, I decided on CR 13, giving it a +2 bump for "Monster possesses special attacks that significantly improve combat effectiveness"
Radijs 01-03-07, 07:57 PM	You'll want to go for the -20 option anyway, especially because of the whole denied dex issue and less attack stuff.
dok 01-03-07, 09:14 PM	Yeah, I'd just default to the -20 penalty for all Grapples. (Plus, that way it can grapple multiple PCs!)
The_Cheeseman 01-03-07, 09:32 PM	I recently had a very similar issue with a monster I built that was modeled after the darktentacles. This was for what I intended to be a very difficult encounter for a 32nd-level gestalt campaign. The creature I made could generate any number of tentacles, and had the same restrictions on the number of tentacles per person, based on size. Well, when the multi-pouncing, iai-jutsu master white slaad got grappled by 36 tentacles and essentially torn limb-from limb... Let's say it wasn't pretty. It pretty much slaughtered my party, and I was quite disappointed in the performance. Sure, it had a grapple mod of +79, but you'd think ONE of them would have thought to use freedom of movement...
dawnbringer 01-04-07, 04:12 PM	Alex, Max, craig n stuff don't read this. Basically, apply the magma animental template to the darktentacles, and make it native to the plane of magma. Have the PCs journey to a big bit of earth (an island, if you would), floating on the magma. Have something the PCs need be near the edge of the island, and when someone tries to get it, use wall of force to block him off from the rest of the party and proceed to grapple him and try to drag him into the lava
drakkonflye 01-06-07, 09:06 PM	Alex, Max, craig n stuff don't read this. :rofl: As I read this post, I saw this line without seeing the paragraph following it. By far, this one line is probably one of the funniest things I've seen posted yet. :P