Author Topic: [3.5]Improved monster classes: adapting creatures for player use-Taking Requests  (Read 392230 times)

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Anomander

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Well, there is always asking the player to correct the problem before dropping rocks.
Either way, smuggling cheese with a sheet that initially looks harmless is something I call abusing the Dm's trust. A player doing that knows damn right that he's sneaking something in.

Kajhera

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Epic spells pretty much explicitly let you do whatever you want, with a high enough spellcraft+gold, or enough allies. Check out the spell creation rules, also the Mythal seed; trying to 'balance' these would take pretty much an entire rebuilding of the system, somehow preserving what makes epic epic.

(When I ran for an epic party, they had not a particular amount of trouble with a xixecal and no epic spells, but they were also all undead.)

Few notes on early levels:

[spoiler]DR is in quantity in line with other DRs, but its descriptor seems a bit too complicated at level 2. Good and Adamantine would probably be plenty before it gets Epic. Who has a good-aligned non-magic adamantine weapon anyway, and why do we hate them?

Strength and Con boosts are a bit scary. o.O

Telepathy isn't a sense, um, that has nothing to do with the build of the monster, just puzzled me.

If you don't want the Xixecal's extra speed to count as base land speed, make it a bonus of some variety.[/spoiler]

Anomander

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Indeed. But casting an spell requires a spellcraft check the stronger it is.

In this case, it is a wide aura transforming people into iceblocks with a save and a 1/3 chance of death without a save to try stopping being one for a minute and can be invoked with a fullround action.
Lets convert this into a similar Epic Spell:

[spoiler]Transform Seed: +21 (transform into inanimate block of ice)
Slay Seed: +25 (1/3 odds of death each attempt to get free, no saves)
Reduce casting time to 1 round (fullround action): +18
No verbal/somatic components: +4
*Seeds that already have an instantaneous duration cannot be increased* (So the one minute duration is breaking the very limits of epic magic): (+/x? modifier to Spellcraft check)
Change from target to area: +10
Change area to 20-ft. radius : +2
Increase area by 100% (radius of 26400ft at level 26, so x1319): +5276
No mitigating factors, bypasses SR, DC scaling with HD and effect cannot be dispelled. And the effect is not static.[/spoiler]

Spellcraft check DC to cast it: 5356 (addition of or multiplied by ? for taking effect every round for a minute)
(Do we agree that no level 26 wizard can cast this without massive shenanigans? Let alone afford the expenses of developing the thing?)

Telepathy is included in the abomination type bundle.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2011, 05:51:20 PM by Anomander »

b100d_arrowz

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Killing characters off for playing within the rules is such a dick move I struggle to find words to express it.

Counterpoint: The fifth level kobold player summons a Sarruhk. At this point, as the DM, for the good of the game I have no problem with having the Sarruhk slip it's bindings and do something horrible to the PC.
Nothing wrong with that as the Sarrukh is probably much smarter and far more devious then the player character, and if you summon something and don't expect it to come back and try and get free from your chains  :nonono
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oslecamo

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Request: Gray Shiver (Dragon 343).

It's a CR9 monster, the result of a spider making its home in the skull of a destroyed lich and inheriting some of its power and all of its ego.

You mean the diminutive "casts as CR" spider that has a dominate-person poison and several other goodies? Challenge acepted!

But first...

Anomander

Troll
[spoiler]
1-Well at first level good luck geting a 20 on Str even with the racial modifier. So we're looking at more of a 18-19 Str with 3d4+9 vs 2d6+6. And if you need to move to get in melee, it's 1d4+4 (or 2d4+8 causing an aoo) vs 2d6+6. The troll gets ahead on full attacks but back in charges.

2-The monk and paladin healing aren't that good of a comparison point. Those guys aren't low tiers by chance. Also the troll won't get to heal both nonlethal and normal damage at the same time because it's natural healing, not a magic or spell effect.

3-Well it could be the troll twisting itself before jumping to create a basebal/boomerang-like effect where something turns in mid-air, or cartoon-style of flailing its arms to change direction mid-air, or anime-style of super kung-fu, take your pick. And as long as the whole movevement it's in a straight lineand whitin your speed you can get anywhere.

5-Any self-respecting rogue will be tumbling trough the battlefield to avoid reprisal full attacks from monsters with lots of teeths and claws. Or can just hit the aoo to stop the full extra claw attacks. But good point on multiple rends, that was not intended. Will put a clause that the extra claw attacks can't trigger rend.
[/spoiler]

Chesire cat
[spoiler]
1-Hide In plain Sight  becomes irrelevant when enemies get blindsight and mindsight and tremorsense and whateversight. But I feel like waiting and see how the cat player that is sacrificing caster levels and our dear DM deal with this.

2-It's still a sorceror, whose main weakness is low level of spells known, for every illusion/enchantment it picks, is one less Polymorph/teleport/binding/hax dragon spell spell he knows.

3-But on the other hand, it also means a player can be tempted to play a sorceror and "gasp" lose caster levels! What was the last time you saw someone pick sorceror and plan a build that only goes to 6th level spells until 20th level?

[/spoiler]

Tarrasque
[spoiler]
3-Noted. I'm DMing a party with a lv8 tarrasque right now, and I plan to throw them medium level fullcasters later on, will see how it goes.

6-It's still something I do for every monster with SLAs here, and you're the first one to complain about it. It being a basic rule is no problem, I'm freaking rewriting whole monsters here! And yes I do strive for the abilities to be synergetic. Now some base classes do offer multiple paths, and so do some of my monster classes, but that's lots of extra work on my side of the field. Making a "pretty tarrasque" a viable and interesting path is just something I don't have the free time to do.  Finally cha is the dump stat in D&D. It would feel bad if a 1st level tarrasque has to burn points in Cha that will only be useful when it actually starts geting Cha-based abilities.

7-Dispel and AMF are "dun-dun-DUN" spells themselves! No wonder the best grapplers are casters (usually with some polymorph/wildshape help). High dex dudes have escape artist, or at least a cheap anklet of translocation (dispel and AMF items are much harder to come by). Now I guess I could make freedom of movement grant a bonus... But I won't because I'm personally offended from that rule, in particular because it's a 3.5 rule, whereas in 3.0 FoM only worked against magic effects, as it's suposed to.

8-There's more than one way to instil fear. Dragons scare you not only by being big but also by being shiny/colourful and very self-confident. There's a reason why ancient warriors liked to make themselves look as outrageous as possible before the whole "camouphlage" thing set in.

9-Ah yes it's indeed suposed to be most of an anti-magic effect. And do notice that the original blocked a much more limited selection of spells, meaning a caster could snipe it from a distance much easier. Plus this way it works as bait. If the caster aproaches enough to try to get trough your carapace, it's possibly in your natural weapons range!

10-But I wanted that effect whitout needing to resort to non-srd feats.

1-Neither do energy drain or ability damage spell instant death, they just weaken you. And with mindblank, regeneration and carapace, giving it death ward as well would be kinda too much. You can still get it trough items and spellcaster allies as you sugested.


[/spoiler]

Wild Hunt
[spoiler]
1-Hell no! The ranger's companion is renowed as one of the worst out there, and its main use being as a flying mount when you get the bat option. They won't be reliably grappling casters because they don't get to ignore freedom of movement (nyah!), and brute monsters like a Fire Giant (CR 10) has a +25 grapple modifier, which easily beats the +17 a 10 HD hound would have. Skirmish won't be triggering every round, and they'll basically be breaking their teeths in anything with DR. Now compare to a druid's fleshraker companion with venomfire or a plain dire bear (CR 7, obtainable by druid at lv13, 9 with that other feat). The hound is pretty tame compared to that.


6-Players screwing over the DM's plot is inevitable. But even then the wild hunt can't stop a lich from regenerating. It's not coming back to life, it's already dead! Some other monsters to prevent the lich, like the Tarrasque that stops them from coming back into existence, not just back to life. As for the DM side, it's expected he has some responsability and doesn't throw things the players cannot deal with. Several monsters out there could prevent ressurection as well (cough Barghest). Heck, below lv 7, good luck bringing dead players back to life!

9-Ah, good point on the 1 fullround. Gonna change it to 10 minutes.

10-We'll just have to disagree here then. You believe that's level-30 badass, I do not.

11-Then I clearly didn't write the ability clear enough, because it's not suposed to be able to further enanche already enchanted weapons. Clarified.

12-The Wild Hunt is a myth of life and death, destruction and renewal. And even if he comes back to life, if he runs for 1 hour, he's lost the battle. The evil wizard will finish his evil ritual, the dark general will butcher the capital, etc, etc

13-Good, but you see, at those levels, there's no such thing as "normal" anymore. The sheer number of combinations possible, and how strict your DM is will result in a lot of possible combinations. In my games that reach epic, we do stuff like assaulting Asmodeu's personal plane butchering armies of demons, undeads and demon-undeads, having to break trough walls of magic defenses and whatnot, or slaying armies of angels and then animating them all at once to make a blashpemous army of flying zombies on the spot if we're on Evil team and feel like we can take on Celestia by now.

And yes, a DM needs to optimize monsters against well optimized players. Most things straight out from the MM will only really challenge newbie players. Even Catty commented she needed to start pimping up her monster, despite admiting the party being pretty much all tier 3.

As a final note, evading natural 1s is part of epic play for me. Stuff like gods and abomination are naturally immune to them, everybody else can pick pride domain and/or steadfast determination and similar.
[/spoiler]

Xixecal
[spoiler]
1-Barbarian is tier 4. And altough DR never hurts, let's be honest, what does it matter DR 1 at 7th level?

2 and 5-The reason why I didn't give them at full power from the start and made them scale. But ok making the bonus an enanchment.

6-Look, one of the things many people complain in D&D it's that you can use mental scores to enanche your martial capacity, but it seems like you can never use your physical scores for enanching mystical abilities. Well no more. Monsters should be allowed to use magic with their muscles and/or life force instead of needing to be pretty.

7-Good point about the duration, changed it to 1 round per 4 HD.

10-Yeah that's called synergy.

11-See the same argument with the Tarrasque. Also there's no such thing as too high main stats.

12-I'm kinda lost here. If casters are the thing to watch out for, what's the problem with defensive measures against them?

14-Ah, corrected.

15-Because it's already over lv10 and there's much worse stuff out there by then.

16-Ok, it's good at killing stuff. Adventurers are suposed to kill stuff.

17-Melee monsters are renowed for having exceptional melee stats, and they can easily afford to spend some points to pump up their melee attacks. Most later MMs even sugest how much the monster likes to start with and then comments it adapts depending on how easy it is to hit the player. The Xixecal in particular has no armor proficiencies and unlike other monsters also didn't get extra bonus to AC, and its big size isn't helping things much. Even its natural armor won't really keep up with the much faster monster's escalating attack bonus. Also you don't exactly need to beat its regen, if you beat it in incosciouness, they can just keep hiting it until they realize fire burns it quite well.

18-Ok, greater cleave can bypass it now.

19-That's what you get for being two levels lower than your oponent.

20-Because IRON HEART SURGE cannot be used if you're immobilized. All maneuvers need you able to physically act as base rule.

21-Whatever, there's more important things to discuss.

22-You may not have the balls to deal with high power D&D, but I assure you it exists and can be quite a good experience.  My longest running PbP has no less than an abrupt jaunt wizard filled with prcs, a psionic archmage, and a rainbow mage servant war weaver, among others, and all I restrict are endless loops and minion combos.  Yes sometimes it breaks down in a player-DM duel, but competitive gaming is still gaming, and pretty good if you know what you're doing. Now I'm not making this classes to stand toe to toe with abrupt jaunt wizards and whatnot, but so that at least they won't fall to a simple quickened spell.

23-Removed the bonus to combat maneuvers, but swift actions stay. Yes geting more actions is part of high level play.

24-By all means read again my reply to 22.
[/spoiler]

Anomander

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Troll
[spoiler]
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1-Well at first level good luck geting a 20 on Str even with the racial modifier. So we're looking at more of a 18-19 Str with 3d4+9 vs 2d6+6. And if you need to move to get in melee, it's 1d4+4 (or 2d4+8 causing an aoo) vs 2d6+6. The troll gets ahead on full attacks but back in charges.
The starting strength score of an example seems pointless to argue. But okay. Let's not assume the Troll begins with a +2 to all stats given by the DM.
You forgot what Reckless Assault does. Extra attack on a fullattack and on a charge. The troll dominates in a fullround attack, and if it needs to move, it can charge.
Troll on a charge deals 2d4+8 (3d4+12 with a missed AoO) vs 2d6+6, with two tries against the DC to deal damage. At level 1, considering missing too often in a melee battle can mean death, having more than one try to deal anything, even if its less damage, is a good thing.

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2-The monk and paladin healing aren't that good of a comparison point. Those guys aren't low tiers by chance. Also the troll won't get to heal both nonlethal and normal damage at the same time because it's natural healing, not a magic or spell effect.
There aren't many other comparisons of non-spell abilities giving self healing to compare it with. If there are, its probably still not better than Troll self-healing. It heals too much/too often/too fast.

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3-Well it could be the troll twisting itself before jumping to create a basebal/boomerang-like effect where something turns in mid-air, or cartoon-style of flailing its arms to change direction mid-air, or anime-style of super kung-fu, take your pick. And as long as the whole movevement it's in a straight lineand whitin your speed you can get anywhere.
I'll go with the troll fart. Thank you very much.

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5-Any self-respecting rogue will be tumbling trough the battlefield to avoid reprisal full attacks from monsters with lots of teeths and claws. Or can just hit the aoo to stop the full extra claw attacks. But good point on multiple rends, that was not intended. Will put a clause that the extra claw attacks can't trigger rend.
...it was just an example of damage output in rebuttal to you stating a barbarian could 1 hit everything. The rogue could be a commoner, a fighter or whatever. Its not about what they can do to evade damage but what happens to them when they receive it. The point was: Troll damage potential is a whole lot bigger than a barbarian of its level with one of the best weapons.[/spoiler]

Cheshire
[spoiler]
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1-Hide In plain Sight  becomes irrelevant when enemies get blindsight and mindsight and tremorsense and whateversight. But I feel like waiting and see how the cat player that is sacrificing caster levels and our dear DM deal with this.
Is your definition of useless being something that can still be countered past a specific level? Hide in Plain Sight is ALWAYS useful if only because not everything got some supernatural sense. If something needs to cast a spell to gain such a sense, its probably in response to realizing the presence of an invisible creature at which point usefulness has already been acquired in going at least one round undetected to mess them up and in having the caster waste an action getting the special sense. If a character really wanted to improve its HiPS, it could just invest a feat in Darkstalker and acquire anti-detection magical items. Even the spell superior invisibility is vulnerable to True Seeing.

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2-It's still a sorceror, whose main weakness is low level of spells known, for every illusion/enchantment it picks, is one less Polymorph/teleport/binding/hax dragon spell spell he knows.
A sorcerer doesn't need more than one spell per level to accomplish each of those kinds of effects. Worst case scenario, it uses its badass enchantments to take ownership of some wizards to cast all that stuff for him or purchase/scribe scrolls, rods, runestaves, staves or wands of those spells if it feels a need to cast them (if especially nasty, use dominated wizards with the craft feats to make it all that stuff). I don't see the weakness.

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3-But on the other hand, it also means a player can be tempted to play a sorceror and "gasp" lose caster levels! What was the last time you saw someone pick sorceror and plan a build that only goes to 6th level spells until 20th level?
Oh yes. Probably a few but the one example that strikes me was a gish swiftblade. Could fight like a monster and fly as Ex abilities to waltz around the battlefield in an antimagic field. A real mofo.
But even on that other hand, what does it change? A sorcerer deciding to multiclass and advance with handicapped spellcasting that way would get more being a Cheshire Cat to do the same. Unless its to grab a single level of sorcerer.
[/spoiler]

Tarrasque
[spoiler]
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6-It's still something I do for every monster with SLAs here, and you're the first one to complain about it. It being a basic rule is no problem, I'm freaking rewriting whole monsters here! And yes I do strive for the abilities to be synergetic. Now some base classes do offer multiple paths, and so do some of my monster classes, but that's lots of extra work on my side of the field. Making a "pretty tarrasque" a viable and interesting path is just something I don't have the free time to do.  Finally cha is the dump stat in D&D. It would feel bad if a 1st level tarrasque has to burn points in Cha that will only be useful when it actually starts geting Cha-based abilities.
I am not surprised. People rarely complain when its to their advantage.
You are rewriting monsters and they end up working differently, ignoring a rule applying to every monsters in the game. Being constant in bypassing that rule is not really an argument in how that is not shaking the balance. Specifically stating that SLAs do not use Cha takes more of your free time than just keeping it the way it is. The idea is not to make a Cha based Tarrasque, it just gives it a reason to have a base Cha score higher than 8. If a character feels like it prefers its monster abilities and do not really care about the DC of its SLAs, it can keep Cha as a dump stat without losing too much. I am actually a firm believer that Cha and Int are the best two stats in the game. Cha and Int can be applied to almost every mechanics. If you insist on keeping it so because that's just how you like it, Min/Maxing or not, well, its your homebrew and lets leave it at that.  :rollseyes
Though perhaps it wouldn't be so bad as a new Monster feat for your list. Gives the Min/Max what I think is the usual price.

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7-Dispel and AMF are "dun-dun-DUN" spells themselves! No wonder the best grapplers are casters (usually with some polymorph/wildshape help). High dex dudes have escape artist, or at least a cheap anklet of translocation (dispel and AMF items are much harder to come by). Now I guess I could make freedom of movement grant a bonus... But I won't because I'm personally offended from that rule, in particular because it's a 3.5 rule, whereas in 3.0 FoM only worked against magic effects, as it's suposed to.
*Slams table* Objection! *taps a character sheet* The best grapplers are dedicated grapplers (often a psychic warrior, though) modified with a polymorph type spell cast by their caster buddy.
Being personally offended by an official correction to something playtesters decided needed a fix is a reason to leave it unfixed. An alternative would not be beyond reason.
If a DM feels a 3.5 rule not to his liking, nothing stops him to stick with 3.0 or make an hybrid to his liking. Fixing it would help the classes pass in games where the DM is not personally offended by Freedom of Movement.

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8-There's more than one way to instil fear. Dragons scare you not only by being big but also by being shiny/colourful and very self-confident. There's a reason why ancient warriors liked to make themselves look as outrageous as possible before the whole "camouphlage" thing set in.
Self confidence = force of personality = charisma. That ancient warrior thing feels a lot like an intimidation check with some kind of make-up giving it a circumstance bonus. Intimidation is charisma based. My previous point stands; its based out of Frightful Presence, which is Cha fueled. Another use for Charisma that is being ignored to make the ability score worthless.

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9-Ah yes it's indeed suposed to be most of an anti-magic effect. And do notice that the original blocked a much more limited selection of spells, meaning a caster could snipe it from a distance much easier. Plus this way it works as bait. If the caster aproaches enough to try to get trough your carapace, it's possibly in your natural weapons range!
I notice no difference. Your revised Carapace is doing the very exact same thing as the original. It doesn't block anything new and is only giving a gap for stuff sent at it within 30ft. Now the Tarrasque is a bait for moronic casters! Now they can just send their illusion selves within range and cast their spells through them instead going there themselves to make their spells land. How is having a flaw in something that didn't have any making it better? If it wants them in reach, it'll just Rush at them, attack and grapple.

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10-But I wanted that effect whitout needing to resort to non-srd feats.
Make it at least cost an immediate action. Or just say that whenever they attack it they provoke an AoO, that way only one counter can be done without Combat Reflexes and it doesn't cheapen out everything.

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1-Neither do energy drain or ability damage spell instant death, they just weaken you. And with mindblank, regeneration and carapace, giving it death ward as well would be kinda too much. You can still get it trough items and spellcaster allies as you sugested.
Or just remove some of the offensive abilities that are too much and replace them with that. Being hard to kill is the Tarrasque's main selling point, after all, and those debuffs can actually be quite deadly. Ability drain/damage is not covered by deathward either, by the way.
The monster actually has that as part of its original bungle. It would be like removing some of the abomination traits off a Xixecal, like maybe those same immunities, if you catch my drift.[/spoiler]

Wild Hunt
[spoiler]1-Hell no! The ranger's companion is renowed as one of the worst out there, and its main use being as a flying mount when you get the bat option. They won't be reliably grappling casters because they don't get to ignore freedom of movement (nyah!), and brute monsters like a Fire Giant (CR 10) has a +25 grapple modifier, which easily beats the +17 a 10 HD hound would have. Skirmish won't be triggering every round, and they'll basically be breaking their teeths in anything with DR. Now compare to a druid's fleshraker companion with venomfire or a plain dire bear (CR 7, obtainable by druid at lv13, 9 with that other feat). The hound is pretty tame compared to that.
The encounters are not all consisting of casters, and they don't actually all have Freedom of Movement...
It can use the druid's progression for animal companions. They would actually have +19 at level 10, so they do have a good chance to win the grapple. Especially considering their numbers.
Fleshraker with venomfire? Of course, let's always compare everything to the cheesiest version of anything it can be compared to. I don't recall direbears dealing skirmish damage, being able to sneak well on their own, having DR and SR and inflicting auto-dimensional anchors on their preys or any other particularly noteworthy goodies.
Skirmish give a lot of extra damage even if it hits but once and the Wild Hunt can equip his hounds with amulets of natural attacks to bypass DR if its that much of a problem. It still doesn't change that they are pretty much tanky rogue/scouts. And getting more than one as a class ability is too much.

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6-Players screwing over the DM's plot is inevitable. But even then the wild hunt can't stop a lich from regenerating. It's not coming back to life, it's already dead! Some other monsters to prevent the lich, like the Tarrasque that stops them from coming back into existence, not just back to life. As for the DM side, it's expected he has some responsability and doesn't throw things the players cannot deal with. Several monsters out there could prevent ressurection as well (cough Barghest). Heck, below lv 7, good luck bringing dead players back to life!
That's arguable. Killing an undead creature puts it back to being dead. While unlike the working of Gather the Death, that ability specifically to returning to life (thus still allowing people to be raised back as undead creatures), I would say that a phylactery returns a dead lich to unlife, so only Gather the Dead stops it form coming back.
Maybe a reason why the Barghest isn't meant to be played by as a PC. Their anti-rez is forgiving though; only works on humanoids and 50% of failure.
The rarity of means to resurrect at low level is balanced by there being a lot less save-or-dies in your every day encounters, I think.
As I said, I don't have a problem with the ability itself. Just saying that its acquired a bit early and that its more of a level 20 thing. It can still be used against the players to their grief.

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12-The Wild Hunt is a myth of life and death, destruction and renewal. And even if he comes back to life, if he runs for 1 hour, he's lost the battle. The evil wizard will finish his evil ritual, the dark general will butcher the capital, etc, etc
I'm not reading that in its MM entry. If you're basing that on folklore then pretty much all the Feys are invincible. It should have some kind of flaw, like that not happening when its killed by a cold iron weapon or something like that since the metal is anathema to feykind. Even a lich doesn't come back if you destroy the phylactery, or a vampire when you do the whole vampire death ritual thing. Like the anti-rez thing at level 14, it can be used against the players and stuff returning to life has a lot of frustration potential.

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And yes, a DM needs to optimize monsters against well optimized players. Most things straight out from the MM will only really challenge newbie players. Even Catty commented she needed to start pimping up her monster, despite admiting the party being pretty much all tier 3.
I agree, if a DM actually wants to manage an optimized party. I'll note that Catty had to pimp our monsters in response to a party filled by your creatures. Will every DM need to do that to keep things remotely challenging if they accept your stuff into their campaign?[/spoiler]

Xixecal
[spoiler]
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1-Barbarian is tier 4. And altough DR never hurts, let's be honest, what does it matter DR 1 at 7th level?
You're dodging the issue. Its not about whether or not DR1 is cool at level 7th (and it is). The Xixecal gets it a level 2. It makes a much larger difference at that level.
Some poisons won't work because the damage of the weapon is negated, each time you are dealt damage has a chance to remind you every hit point counts (especially considering the rate of natural healing when you don't have cure magics). Then there is the awesomeness of not being bothered by normal insects, disease carrying rats, walking freely on caltrops you spread yourself around and so on.

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6-Look, one of the things many people complain in D&D it's that you can use mental scores to enanche your martial capacity, but it seems like you can never use your physical scores for enanching mystical abilities. Well no more. Monsters should be allowed to use magic with their muscles and/or life force instead of needing to be pretty.
Its pretty much covered in the Tarrasque section.
Though I don't recall people making much of a fuss over it. I think it might be because Str and Dex covers almost everything battle oriented and giving those stats as a main spellcasting ability would allow gishes to fully own in both departments. Most X to Y effects of mental to combat affects a single aspect of combat at a time while an ability used for spellcasting pretty much only offers more spells or better DCs. Once you get both you have the entire mystical aspect covered, making physical to mystical more meaningful and powerful than the opposite.
There are actually a few rare ways to replace a typical mental stat usage with a physical ability score, but are indeed far and few and often very restricted.
I can picture some beast using its blood or lifeforce and losing life to generate magic; I have a hard time imagining a beast creating a prismatic wall with his muscles. Not without laughing, at least.
I will also note that not many spellcasters are getting their main casting stat increased every level either.

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10-Yeah that's called synergy.
Which brings me back to the original problem: Now every attack slows and drains Con. It should be doing one or the other. It shouldn't bypass Con damage/drain immunity seeing how those kinds of attacks are way too dangerous to bypass some form of surefire protection. Even 1 or 2 at a time, especially considering all the synergy. Perhaps a swift action to make all its natural attacks inflict Slow or a swift action to make them deal Con damage/drain would be a balancing factor.

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11-See the same argument with the Tarrasque. Also there's no such thing as too high main stats.
Not as valid now considering all the good stuff a healthy charisma score could do to a Xixecal if it was built more in line with the original monster.
The point was not about whether or not getting 2 unheavely high stats with everything else in the abyss was a good or bad idea; I am disputing the notion that such a creature not being able to "afford" the raise a third stat a bit higher than abyssal, considering its major increases elsewhere, might not be a blatant exaggeration.

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12-I'm kinda lost here. If casters are the thing to watch out for, what's the problem with defensive measures against them?
Dimensional Lock: level 8th spell.
Dire Snowstorm: Dimensional Lock on crack at level 10. Massive range bigger than the Epic Spell its meant to emulate.
Still lost? :)

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15-Because it's already over lv10 and there's much worse stuff out there by then.
Hearing you, there will always be worse, and that justifies every little injustices like a creature receiving a few uses of a spell inaccessible to any caster its level.

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16-Ok, it's good at killing stuff. Adventurers are suposed to kill stuff.
Most are. But they don't all get an infinite number of Quicken Spell-like ability feats.

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19-That's what you get for being two levels lower than your oponent.
Or two level higher, no doubt.

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20-Because IRON HEART SURGE cannot be used if you're immobilized. All maneuvers need you able to physically act as base rule.
Exactly. I never said otherwise. Only that it cleanses the user of status effects.
This is ways better than iron heart surge and can be used as a mental action. Isn't that good enough? Does it really need to be done faster too?

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22-You may not have the balls to deal with high power D&D, but I assure you it exists and can be quite a good experience.  My longest running PbP has no less than an abrupt jaunt wizard filled with prcs, a psionic archmage, and a rainbow mage servant war weaver, among others, and all I restrict are endless loops and minion combos.  Yes sometimes it breaks down in a player-DM duel, but competitive gaming is still gaming, and pretty good if you know what you're doing. Now I'm not making this classes to stand toe to toe with abrupt jaunt wizards and whatnot, but so that at least they won't fall to a simple quickened spell.
Woah there. Getting personal now?
I had my share of very high power epic and, yes, it is fun when properly managed. I am not anti-super-epic despite whatever impression I may have given you. Sorry if you felt offended by the comment. I forgot to also note the exception where a game without fairness is what a DM offers to his players. I'm saying this with the memory of too many such epics game that went nowhere after or before the first encounter when a DM realized that it was way over his abilities and preferred to abandon the game over asking his players to tone their characters down. What you consider epic gameplay is not the same for everyone else either.
I am saying that Perfect Freeze is a big thing, because it is, and I'll leave it at that.[/spoiler]
« Last Edit: October 30, 2011, 06:31:29 AM by Anomander »