What were your D&D hacks?

The Game Room
161

The entire challenge rating system is completely ineffective, a lot of things are seriously under or over CR’d. Plus, CR is meaningless when considering the different classes and how vastly different in power they can be. The Druid, Cleric, Wizard, and Psion group can probably stomp encounters five or six CR higher than them, if not more, and do it reliably. The Fighter, Monk, Paladin, and Rogue, on the other hand, will have a hard time even with even-CR monsters.

Consider monsters of varying CRs that are either far too powerful for their level or far weaker. The Mind Flayer, a CR 8 monster, can probably obliterate an 8th level party unless the group has a hard counter to his once per round conical stun attack. If the battle starts out pretty even rather than with the party having some massive advantage like catching the illithid by surprise, they are unlikely to win or even survive if the mind flayer is played competently.

A Tyrannosaurus is also CR 8, and yet can be defeated by a 3rd level wizard in a single spell, with minimal chance of failure, and can be defeated by a 5th level wizard with zero chance of failure. These wizards may be able to take a mind flayer if they were extremely well optimized, but defeating the tyrannosaurus requires nothing more than using simple spells in a straightforward manner.

These are quick and easy examples that came to mind, but the monster manuals are absolutely full of things that wildly vary in power but have the same CR. I don’t know if a CR system could work well if it were done better; it may be too complex a question to boil down to a challenge rating. But at the very least it can be said the designers didn’t do a very good job at assigning CR to their monsters.

Well, if you want an explanation of my reasons for it, one of the main factors is that I like the world my characters live in to remain consistent. That means that the rules are, to them, equivalent to the laws of physics in the real world. A DM that arbitrarily alters the rules means that my characters’ world is no longer consistent, and that harms my suspension of disbelief. It becomes a world where the laws of physics (and magic) arbitrarily change in order to add drama and excitement to your life.

Additionally, I put effort and time into making my characters actually match up to their concept, mechanically. Whatever my concept is, I go to great effort to make sure the mechanics of my character will support it, so I’m not making unfounded claims of what my character is capable of (of course, the character may boast, but that’s part of the concept too). The DM changing things on the fly makes me feel as though my effort in doing this was meaningless, because it means my character is not as capable as I have made her; she is as capable as the DM decides she should be, since if my success is deemed to be too great, it will be made to not work for the sake of making the plot work the way the DM wants.

As for improvisational DMing, it’s a very touchy issue. I know it is impossible for a DM to prepare everything beforehand. If I veer off into an unexpected course, the DM must improvise. But I think this can be done while maintaining consistency and adhering to the rules. A DM can have a selection of premade statblocks prepared to assign to NPCs they need to improvise into existence. A DM should decide beforehand what resources each significant entity (organization, boss, etc) in their campaign has at their disposal; even if they haven’t decided how, precisely, those resources are allocated, I think this works much better than the DM suddenly giving a character or organization resources specifically to counter a clever plan I came up with.

More than anything, though, I want to be able to trust that anything that occurs in the game - especially things that affect my character, or that my character is trying to affect - follow rules that are consistent, that my character and I can understand, at least theoretically, even if we never in practice get around to finding that information. Such consistency goes further than almost anything else in establishing a world for my characters that I can suspend disbelief in and enjoy playing in, confident that my success and my failure are both in my own hands, that the arbiter of this world, my DM, is fair and impartial, not trying to mold my actions into his story. The story, whatever it turns out to be, should emerge on its own from fair results.

162

It works fine, so long as the GM doesn’t mind putting his finger on the scale occasionally. :wink:

Thanks for the answer!

163

He had been fully informed of the concept in advance. So you agree with me it was all his fault. Splendid. Any other brown, smelly pearls of wisdom you’d like to share?

164

It’s even more complicated than that. A warrior-type group that lacks any major spellcasters can bat WAY above their expected encounter level against single-enemy or small encounters. And they’re good at hordes of weak monsters. But a horde of medium-difficulty enemies comprising an appropriate encounter will run them over.

Spellcasters, on the other hand, tend to be more broadly effective across different encounter compositions.

Seriously - played a 3e game with a Paladin, a Barbarian, and my Ranger/Rogue, and the GM could not find any solo monsters that would even slow us down. Our focus-fire capability just killed things way too quickly. He finally hit the right encounter composition with about a dozen… I think they were very large animated objects, but it’s been a few years. We had trouble because even if we killed one every round, we’d take significant damage back from the others. And, lacking a caster, we had no crowd control.

165

Yes. Maybe you should try including this stuff in your posts in the future instead of expecting us to read your mind. I’m only judging you by what you tell me, after all.

Anyway, it still reeks of bad communication to me.

166

That’s very interesting–I would have thought it would be the other way around, with non-casters specializing in taking on multiple encounters, whereas casters used up their daily resources faster. But I guess a warrior’s main expendable resource is hit points :).

167

Well, you develop different reflexes once you get used to fighting people in groups…

168

OK, I’ll bite : which spell are you thinking about here ? The statline I’m finding on the SRD has 180 HP, its lowest save is Will at +8 (which is still pretty high a mark for a lvl 3 caster), and it has Scent so no Invisibility/Darkness shenanigans.

Looks like a fine slab of beef to me, so what am I missing ?

I guess it only has 2 Int so that’d be a vector of attack, but Touch of Idiocy doesn’t do damage (and can’t drop it below 1, *and *you have to safely get in touch attack range of a guy with reach, +20 on his attack and enough damage on that attack to kill a 3d4 HP weakling without even rolling dice so good luck with that), Bestow Curse would work but it’s a higher level spell… I am nonplussed.

169

There’s nothing in the rules that says that any CR 8 creature should be able to stand up to any other given CR 8 creature. Maybe a level 8 fighter can’t achieve a 50-50 win ratio against a dire tiger. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that they both present the same amount of challenge to a party of PCs. The set of abilities that are useful to PCs and the set of abilities useful to their foes have some overlap, but they’re not the same.

Consider: Which would you rather have on a PC, a 1/week ability that kills your target if it fails a save, or a 1/minute ability that puts your target to sleep for a minute if it fails a save (assume save DCs, etc. are the same for both). Now, which of those two abilities would you less want to see on a monster you’re fighting?

170

Closest I can come up with is the only 3rd level spell that has offensive powers and no save: sleet storm. If by “defeat” you mean “escape from,” that’d probably work.

171

You’re right about the Int, that is the vector of attack, you just didn’t think of the right spell. Ray of Stupidity, 2nd level spell. Ranged touch attack, deals 1d4+1 int damage (so minimum of two) and no save since it’s a touch attack. The tyrannosaur’s touch AC is horrible, so even a 3rd level wizard is pretty likely to hit it. The 5th level wizard is guaranteed a win since he can just cast fly and hover outside the dinosaur’s range, so the tyrannosaur has zero chance of ever causing damage to him at all.

I suppose this is appropriate to mention for this thread. That spell will take down any Animal in one hit, guaranteed, since the one thing all animals share is having 2 or less Int.

172

Ah, OK, didn’t know that one. But Ray of Stupidity is apparently a known broken spell if Google is any indication, in that it does straight damage unlike all the other “Ray of…” spells that inflict temp. decreases and can’t put a stat below 1.

173

Ah. That’s in the Spell Compendium, not part of any SRD I’ve ever seen, and yeah, it sounds completely broken. In my GMing days, I generally required spells outside of the SRD to get pre-approval from me, and if a player came with this spell, they’d need to do some serious negotiation to get a weakened version of it in the game. For example, I’d allow it if the text were changed to mimic Ray of Enfeeblement, replacing “Strength” with “Intelligence.” That’d turn it from an insanely good spell that kills every animal to a decent wizardfucker.

174

I seem to recall arguing years ago on the ENWorld forums that a rogue dual-wielding whips with Improved Trip, Greater Two-weapon fighting etc, could effectively deny a stone golem any attacks. I forget the exact build and math I was working with, but the thing is I never actually considered this an exploit. I was just following what these abilities seemed clearly meant to do. And I’m not exactly a rules lawyer. If I thought of it, somebody who scoured the books looking for loopholes was doing it long ago.

175

Relevant OOTS.

176

Even without Ray of Stupidity, the tyrannosaur is still easily defeated by anyone with flight at their disposal, and there’s a lot of other touch attack type spells that will similarly disable or remove the threat at less than 8th level. For instance, a 3rd level psion can also take it by manifesting psionic levitate and ego whipping it; it’ll take more of the psion’s resources than just casting effectively one spell, but he can do it with minimal chance of failure.

In any case, that’s just one example. Over-CR’d monsters are also pretty common (honestly, considerably more common than under-CR’d ones). The very third monster in the Monster Manual, the Allip, has a CR of 3, and yet even with decent knowledge of optimization I would be hard pressed to put together a party that can defeat this foe: it is incorporeal, has a decent fly speed, and drains wisdom. It also has 11 intelligence, which means it can and should use decent tactics; it doesn’t just charge in and try to fight straight up. It’s not a supergenius, but it does have average human intelligence, so any tactic an average human can think of, it should be able to implement. Putting one of these vs. a level 3 party is pretty much a recipe for a TPK. And let’s not forget this thing deals ability drain, which means that even if the party miraculously kills it or manages to get away, if any of them have been hit by it they need to spring for one or more castings of restoration, a 4th level spell that wouldn’t be available to the party’s casters until 7th level minimum.

177

You mean, you made one of those assumptions you were badmouthing in your previous posts? :smiley:

178

I suppose my question is, setting Ray of Stupidity aside, whether a party of four third-level psions could reliably take on four Trexes a day? I don’t think four third-level sorcerers or wizards could.

179

I dunno. I can imagine taking this on pretty easily:

  • The cleric turns undead first round; assuming a charisma of 12, has a 45% chance of getting the allip to flee. After that, the cleric will use cure medium wounds for, let’s say, a +3 to hit; this will have a lot of trouble hitting, but will deal about 12 points of damage when it does. The cleric might use other spells instead, such as bless or aid or protection from evil.
  • The wizard breaks out the magic missiles. Four castings of this will, by itself, kill the allip (2d4+2 per casting for 7 points average, vs. 26 hp)
  • The fighter type, let’s figure str 18 and greatsword, is power-attacking for attack bonus of +6 (+1 weapon, +1 wf, +4 str, +3 BAB, -3 PA), average damage of 20 (2d6, +6 PA, +6 str, +1 weapon). That’s gonna hit the AC 15 allip 60% of the time, bringing average down to 12; 50% of the time that’ll miss due to incorporeality, bringing the average down to 6.
  • The rogue is gonna suck in this battle, no doubt–let’s just be generous and say the rogue might manage to do 1 point per round of damage, assuming the rogue also has a magic weapon (you did say optimized).

Okay, so we’ve got a good solid 13 points of damage a round that the allip is facing. On average, that allip is going down in two rounds. But it could go down in a single round: if the fighter hits the first round and does average damage and makes it past incorporeality, and the wizard gets off a magic missile that does at least six points of damage, that’s all she wrote for the allip. There’s a little less than a 30% chance of that happening. If the rogue maneuvers to allow the fighter to flank, and if the fighter charges, and if the cleric has had time to cast bless, we can up that chance pretty significantly by giving the fighter +5 to attack.

The fascinate effect can present a real problem. But the cleric is likeliest to make it through the will save, and if the turn undead works, the cleric has plenty of time to shake everyone free of the fascinate effect and put up some protection from evil spells, making the allip’s attacks very weak (remember it only has a +3 to hit).

You might be thinking of the old “attack through the walls” cheese that undead creatures use. Remember that undead creatures don’t automatically have senses allowing them to see through solid rock, so an undead that tries this trick is going to have a very hard time coming out at exactly the right point; more likely it’ll come out a few squares away from the party. A turned allip might decided to get all crafty, but there’s no reason to think the allip will play it sane (and good reason to think it’s stark raving mad, given the description). Playing an allip as a madness-driven monstrosity who makes an initial creepy approach but then fights to the undeath is very reasonable.

180

Yeah, I assumed you were making an effort to communicate clearly. My bad.