Stronger than a Great Wyrm Red?

[TheDarkDM]

Alright playground, I am faced with an interesting question. While perusing the various 3.5 books in my possession searching for an appropriately frightening monster for my PC's, I came across Dendar the Night Serpent in Champions of Ruin, one of the later Forgotten Realms splatbooks. Now, Dendar is presented as a CR 26 monster, and should thus be roughly on par with a Great Wyrm Red dragon. However, several traits make me question this:

AC 42 and an attack bonus of +65

Constant True Seeing

Nearly 1200 hp - while this merely increases Dendar's staying power, it is still far higher than most monsters. (the Great Wyrm Red has 'only' 660 by comparison)

SR 40 - not the hardest thing to get around, but still fairly high for any caster not specialized in penetrating SR.

Ignore Armor - an ability applied to Dendar's attacks that allows its bite to ignore both natural armor and regular armor bonuses to AC. Now, this obviously means that many traditional tanks become far more vulnerable when in melee with Dendar. Again, not so bad, until we come to:

Nightmare Venom - this ability forces anyone struck by Dendar's bite (its only attack) to make a DC 53 Fortitude save or fall unconscious. The only way to cure this unconsciousness is through a Wish or Miracle spell. While the common wisdom in light of this would be to stay out of range, this is complicated by the fact that Dendar is Colossal, giving it 40 ft. reach, and moves at 80 ft. a round. Even if the party manages to remain outside of range, they would still have to deal with:

Unleash Nightmares - Dendar's breath weapon forces all targets inside a 100 foot cone to make a DC 26 Will save. Failure means an effective, untyped, instant kill.

Now, I realize that a properly optimized metamagic caster with orb spells could easily take Dendar down. However, the CR system was never designed to cope with such things, and is meant to handle a more traditional, less optimized party. With this in mind, is a CR of 26 appropriate for this monster?

[BobVosh]

Seems about right to me.

Level 23+ chars should constantly be immune to death effects and poisons.

Easy to gate in something to ignore SR. Or other things, lots of ways for wizards to ignore SR.

1200 damage is easy to deal. Reach 40 is just par for course at that level.

True Seeing isn't rare at that level either.

All in all he seems about right for the level.

[kamikasei]

Bear in mind that
a) The CR system is broken.
b) High level play is broken.

It's not worth your while to worry about the CR of a creature at those levels. It's an unreliable indicator at all levels and there are too many variables for it to be meaningful in epic. Just look at what he can do to the specific party of players you want to throw him at, and make your judgment based on that.

[Saph]

Honestly, the CR system simply doesn't work once you get into epic levels. 3.5's encounter system is already creaking in the 15-20 range - once you hit epic levels it gives up the ghost completely.

A "traditional" core party going up against this thing is going to die horribly, because a normal 26th-level character can't make a DC 53 Fortitude save, so four bites and the party's dead. The casters won't be able to break its SR, and the fighters won't be able to withstand its attack bonus.

A cheesed party with Epic Spellcasting will wipe this thing out without even blinking, because Epic Spellcasting is completely stupid. Unless this thing has access to epic spells too, in which case it becomes a game of "who can abuse the system more?"

For something in the middle, it depends completely on your group. Some builds will be able to destroy this, others have no chance but to run away. It's not a very helpful answer, but there's no definite one.

[TheDarkDM]

Oh, I realize that the CR system is a sad, crippled child at this point in play. I'm simply curious as to the playground's opinion of how this thing compares to similarly CR'd monsters.

And in response to BobVosh, you make a good point about poison and death immunity being commonplace. The issue with the Venom and breath weapon is that one (Venom) is an extraordinary ability without the poison tag, and the other is not a death effect, but instead an untyped supernatural ability.

[Zeta Kai]

The upshot of the previous comments is that you can make up a CR that is above ~22 for this critter, & people will just roll with it. The Hecatoncheires (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/abomination.htm#hecatoncheires), for instance, has a CR of 57 (one of the highest in the ELH), but I've had multiple parties with an average party level in the low-to-mid 30's take it down without too many problems. Saph is quite right: CRs are borked before you go epic, & after that, they are a wild guess.

[BobVosh]

Well, makes it a bit more difficult. Still it isn't nearly fast enough to catch a wizard. (phantom steed = fly 240)

Can you type out the whole breath of death? Is it mind effecting? Is frenzied berserker immune?

[Saph]

Can you type out the whole breath of death? Is it mind effecting? Is frenzied berserker immune?

Both are untyped with no keywords. But frankly, I don't see how it matters. Beating anything in epic levels is trivial if cheese is allowed. You don't look at monsters when deciding what to use in epic - you look at the party.

[TheDarkDM]

To quote:

...all creatures within a 100-foot cone must make the saving throw, and those that fail are carried by their own nightmares into the Night Serpent's belly, in addition to being driven insane.

Reading this again, and taking into account that the Night Serpent has the swallow whole ability (2d10+28+1d6 Nightmare spells DC 36/round), it seems that it isn't quite an instant kill. Oops. :smallannoyed:

However, still quite nasty.

[Boci]

To quote:

...all creatures within a 100-foot cone must make the saving throw, and those that fail are carried by their own nightmares into the Night Serpent's belly, in addition to being driven insane.

Reading this again, and taking into account that the Night Serpent has the swallow whole ability (2d10+28+1d6 Nightmare spells DC 36/round), it seems that it isn't quite an instant kill. Oops. :smallannoyed:

However, still quite nasty.

Do remember she hates using her breath weapon though, so she's hardly going to start combat with it.

[Acanous]

What's all in your party? I can think of a number of ways a Great Wyrm Red could be a tougher challenge to overcome.

For instance, a lv 23 Ranger/Dervish TWF spec could, with one spell for preperation, mop the floor with either beastie in a single round.

further, True seeing doesn't make your Spot checks for you. Said Dervish could propably close to melee without any serious problems.

YMMV. Optimized slayers are way, WAY more potent than equal- or even a few levels higher- CR monsters. Regular, run of the mill parties could die in a single breath weapon from either, depending on what's all there, how they play.

The best thing the Dragon has going for it are it's immunity to fire (Meaning that it can fight in an active volcano or lava pit, forcing the party to get flame-retardant before the fight) and it's spell like abilities (And a couple spells). A GWRD can use it's own hoarde's magic items in battle. It has more versitile attack options and I'd play the GW smarter than the nightmare beast.

[Nightson]

Dendar cannot fly.

Therefore Dendar will be lucky if she does a single point of damage. Of course, as the DM, you should give Dendar an equivalent flight speed.

[TheDarkDM]

Before stating current party composition, I should clarify that they are fairly far from facing anything of this magnitude. I simply like to plan ahead.

Current party (all level 13):

Duskblade
Favored Soul
Knight
Swordsage
Bard/Druid/Fochlucan Lyricist
Wizard/Loremaster

The most optimized one is the Duskblade, who plans to eventually dip into Sanctified One and Elemental Savant to make all his energy damage untyped divine damage. The wizard joined the game recently and is nowhere near optimized, though she has begun to dip into the splatbooks. For some reason the Favored soul has yet to go beyond Core in his spell selection despite me opening all published 3.5 material.:smallconfused: The Bard only just joined so I have yet to get a read. Swordsage is self explanatory, she specializes in Desert Wind and Shadow Hand. And the knight...well, don't get me started on the level of suck that class has compared to the others on this list.

As for the specific fluff for Dendar, if I were to run her it would be refluffed, and in an environment similar to the astral plane.