Post/Author/DateTime	Post
DMCuindless 09-12-07, 12:12 AM	Okay, I'm not a new DM. Far from it in fact. That being said, I find myself falling into a trap as far as combat goes, which I think is indicative of an inability to use monsters to their fullest. I find it really easy to smack my party around with big, powerful monsters with hundreds of hitpoints, a +30 attack bonus and a strength of 30 (Giants and the like), but my monsters get the crap kicked out of them when they're spell-ability heavy and damage light. Is this an inherent inconsistency of the CR system, or am I just not doing it right? For instance, my players recently stormed an old giants enclave. Their first encounter was against three Hill Giants, pretty standard for their ECL. After 12 gruelling rounds of combat and two character deaths later, th emonsters are finally down. Many of the players were down quite a few hit points. Next, they ran into a trio of half-fiend green hags, which should have wiped the floor with their now very diminished party. Five rounds of combat later, we have three dead hags. They even had time to buff... So what do you other DMs think? Am I doing something wrong, or is it the system?
Talisman 09-12-07, 12:33 AM	Spellcasters (including special-ability-users) will often get pwned unless they have one or two beefy brawlers to hide behind. Especially the arcane-blaster archetype; all the buffing in the world won't save your d4-HD self when the melee masters get in your face. I suggesting you give the spellcasters one or two medium-strength bad guys as meat shields. These will allow them time to lay down several more spells while the party deals with the bodyguards. Aside from that, it depends heavily on your specific party. What's party makeup? How tactically cunning are they? Are you using the monsters intelligently, or just throwing them at the PCs? What's the terrain like? Etc.
DMCuindless 09-12-07, 12:52 AM	The party composition is as follows: Aasimar Paladin 9 w/ Human Cleric 7 cohort Human Bard 9, Cleric 1 Elven Ranger 7, Wizard 2, Arcane Archer 1 Human Swashbuckler 5, Rogue 4 Gnome Rogue 9 Dwarf Cleric 9 As far as tactics go, they're pretty sound. The Paladin is the most experienced D&Der as well as the party leader. He typically uses his free actions to shout combat tactics to the party in a special code they've come up with. I sometimes assume that the more intelligent enemies can figure out the code because its pretty easy to understand. As for the hags, they were polymorphed to appear like angels, though the PCs quickly saw through that (party paranoia at its best). I had the hags charm both the rogues in the first round since they have a mere +2 Will save. Following that, they went invisible and allowed the chaos to ensue. Unfortunately, the chaos ended up being a hasted Arcane Archer's 4 attacks (rapid shot) with very lucky miss chance rolls, dropping the swashbuckler's charmer into negatives. After the breaking of the hag covey trio, the PCs made pretty short work of the hags... Was that bad tactics on my part, good tactics/luck on there's or a mismatch in CR?
Senevri 09-12-07, 02:32 AM	well... Half-fiend Hags are kinda meh. There's not much synergy. Still, their +15/+15, 1d4+5 Claw routines should... nah, the damage is piddly. You should have probably gone for Weakness/Poison/Contagion. But, Polymorph and Charm Person? Did these Hags have caster levels? A Green Hag Half-fiend is CR 7. Hardly more than a speed bump - if even that - for 9th level characters... 3 Wizard levels do get Alter Self and Charm Person, I guess that's what you had? Did you use Grease and Color Spray? In any case they're fragile targets, so they should have gone for some more defensible location, or used better disabling tactics. They're (weak) casters, they should know that three feet of steel kinda hurts when it's shoved into your gut. And, as all know, loss of caster levels is a bad thing. Melee is easier, because it's harder to mess up - most classes add to your BAB and STR increases are easy to come by. So... To summarize, you could have played them a bit better, but three half-fiend hags with filler class levels? Not so strong. They should have charm'd the local mayor and set the town after them with torches and pitchforks.
DMCuindless 09-12-07, 03:58 AM	well... Half-fiend Hags are kinda meh. There's not much synergy. Still, their +15/+15, 1d4+5 Claw routines should... nah, the damage is piddly. You should have probably gone for Weakness/Poison/Contagion. But, Polymorph and Charm Person? Did these Hags have caster levels? A Green Hag Half-fiend is CR 7. Hardly more than a speed bump - if even that - for 9th level characters... 3 Wizard levels do get Alter Self and Charm Person, I guess that's what you had? Did you use Grease and Color Spray? Crap... did I say Half-Fiend, I meant Half-Fey. That gave them several charm based abilities as freebies. In any case they're fragile targets, so they should have gone for some more defensible location, or used better disabling tactics. True, though the crux of the encounter was supposed to rely on the idea that they're angels trying to help the characters. Granted, it was a rookie mistake to think they'd trust an encounter, but it was at least supposed to set them off guard for a little bit. Perhaps if they had just started off on the offensive with disabling tactics. They're (weak) casters, they should know that three feet of steel kinda hurts when it's shoved into your gut. And, as all know, loss of caster levels is a bad thing. Melee is easier, because it's harder to mess up - most classes add to your BAB and STR increases are easy to come by. So... To summarize, you could have played them a bit better, but three half-fiend hags with filler class levels? Not so strong. But as CR 7 creatures, three of them should theoretically be equal to three Hill Giants, and that just doesn't seem like the case. They were way easier to take out than the giants... They should have charm'd the local mayor and set the town after them with torches and pitchforks. Couldn't happen... they were trapped at the current location by other forces.
1337Ninja 09-12-07, 04:22 AM	Green hags seem, to me, to suffer from the problem of having great utility spells that don't actually do anything in combat, and nothing to fight with. All they can attack with is weak claws, and the only SLA they have that can be used for combat without some pretty intense inventiveness is invisibility, which ends as soon as they attack. And this half-fey template sounds like it adds yet more of this. Charm is good, but it isn't dominate. You can't make PCs attack their allies, and they are likely to snap out of it as soon as you start to attack their friends. Even worse, you (intentionally or not) prevented them from using their out-of-combat abilities for any proper use. Pretending to be angels isn't going to work when they have no ranks in Bluff. So basically, it seems that you got a creature that is based on noncombatant abilities and increased its CR by adding more, and expected it to balance out with a full-on tank that does nothing but grunt outside of battle. It's like expecting a diplomat PC to do as much in a fight as a feral frenzied berserker. They would have been better off having then invisibly push boulders down on the PCs, using pass without trace to stop themselves from being tracked, and slowly wearing the PCs down. If you want a creature that isn't a tank to hurt the PCs, then creatures with classes are your best bet. A wizard would have been able to, at CR 7, fly under the effects of greater invisibility and hit the PCs with suggestion and fireball. If you want a support caster to have a major role, support it with tanks. I ran a half-fiend wizard 5 against 8 level 6s. Even with enough of them to be an appropriate encounter, they would have been killed in moments. Instead, she was supported by a group of shifter tanks. She turned an easy encounter into a very close fight by silencing the druid, who was wild shaped into a fleshraker dinosaur and jumping at the party wizard, using glitterdust to blind the party tanks, making them useless, and then entangling them, to make them easy prey. All this was done while invisible. Even better, I got to make her a recurring villain thanks to invisibility and flight after the shifters died.
DMCuindless 09-12-07, 04:33 AM	Green hags seem, to me, to suffer from the problem of having great utility spells that don't actually do anything in combat, and nothing to fight with. All they can attack with is weak claws, and the only SLA they have that can be used for combat without some pretty intense inventiveness is invisibility, which ends as soon as they attack. And this half-fey template sounds like it adds yet more of this. Charm is good, but it isn't dominate. True, though the Half-Fey template gives Dominate Person as well. You can't make PCs attack their allies, and they are likely to snap out of it as soon as you start to attack their friends. The two rogues who were charmed ended up doing just that without me telling them to. As it turns out, they had deep seated problems with the party. Even then, the combat didn't last long. Even worse, you (intentionally or not) prevented them from using their out-of-combat abilities for any proper use. Pretending to be angels isn't going to work when they have no ranks in Bluff. They had ranks in bluff, but it didn't matter because you can't use that skill to control how PCs react. So basically, it seems that you got a creature that is based on noncombatant abilities and increased its CR by adding more, and expected it to balance out with a full-on tank that does nothing but grunt outside of battle. It's like expecting a diplomat PC to do as much in a fight as a feral frenzied berserker. They would have been better off having then invisibly push boulders down on the PCs, using pass without trace to stop themselves from being tracked, and slowly wearing the PCs down. Now these are some good suggestions! If I had just started them on full offensive posture instead of bothering with the whole "bait and switch" routine, I probably could have done a lot more damage. I tried to make what would have made a great combat encounter into a roleplaying encounter that just wasn't going to happen. If you want a creature that isn't a tank to hurt the PCs, then creatures with classes are your best bet. A wizard would have been able to, at CR 7, fly under the effects of greater invisibility and hit the PCs with suggestion and fireball. If you want a support caster to have a major role, support it with tanks. I ran a half-fiend wizard 5 against 8 level 6s. Even with enough of them to be an appropriate encounter, they would have been killed in moments. Instead, she was supported by a group of shifter tanks. She turned an easy encounter into a very close fight by silencing the druid, who was wild shaped into a fleshraker dinosaur and jumping at the party wizard, using glitterdust to blind the party tanks, making them useless, and then entangling them, to make them easy prey. All this was done while invisible. Even better, I got to make her a recurring villain thanks to invisibility and flight after the shifters died. All good suggestions, and I'll keep them in mind next time I have them fight monsters that are heavy on spell-like abilities.
Senevri 09-12-07, 06:50 AM	But as CR 7 creatures, three of them should theoretically be equal to three Hill Giants, and that just doesn't seem like the case. They were way easier to take out than the giants... Well, technically, Three successful "Charm Person" spells, and they've "won". As for RP... you must first start by getting them used to non-hostile RP encounters, some which are actually beneficial - IE, act the right way and you get free, oh, hour-per-level boosts are pretty good, and reasonable to gain from an encounter with a friendly outsider/fey/wotnot. ( Feel free to use DM magic on duration *coughpersistentspellcough* ) Also, you could use the other type of bait-and-switch. I had my players mow down eight "zombies" which looked like normal humans except for the fact they were bleeding from their scalp. ...Then, I had them run into a normal NPC, who had been caught in an explosion and was bleeding from the scalp. As it turns out, my players aren't that trigger happy... although they were suspicious.