ColossusCrusher's Open Source Encounters!

[ColossusCrusher]

This is going to be a list of enemies that I've created that are freely available for anyone to use in their own games. My creations use the same rules as the PCs regarding character creation: 40 Point-Buy, average HP gain, full WBL gain and up to two Flaws and two Traits. All Official WotCo material allowed; Dragon Magazine and third-party on a case-by-case basis.

All entries will have a link to their Myth-Weavers sheet, an explanation of their capabilities and some suggestions for DMs who want to use them. Oh, and if you do actually use them, please let me know how it goes and/or link me to the encounter. I'd love to see what happens. :)

It goes without saying that I'd love comments and suggestions on this and future entries as well.

Index
E6 Terrorbot (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16017118&postcount=1)
Rainbow Warsnake (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16018951&postcount=5)

So without further ado, allow me to present the E6 Terrorbot!

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=628638

Quick Data:
HP: 62
AC: 20
Race: Warforged
Class Breakdown: Barbarian 1/Fighter 4/Soul Eater 1
Class Notes: Sprit Lion Totem ACF, Warforged Fighter Substitution Levels 1 and 4
Approximate CR: 7 or 8

In and of itself, the E6 Terrorbot is a pushover - decent HP, sure, but it has quite low damage. The trick is in the Soul Eater level that gives it Energy Drain combined with its three natural attacks. In an E6 game where the PCs will only ever have six levels (and thus lack easy access to Death Ward), taking even a few negative levels is reason to panic. Obviously it's an incredibly binary encounter - you either have Death Ward or you don't.

So how would you go about using this monstrosity at later levels when the PCs have the counter? Might I suggest an on-hit activated item of Dispel Magic? At CL 10 a 3/day item of Dispel Magic would only cost 36,000 gold, easily within the budget of an Evil Overlord who uses Terrorbots as shock troops. A CL 20 Greater variant would cost 144,000 for the record.

As for scaling this thing up, well, Soul Eater is full BAB, all good saves and has a bunch of great class features. By the time you have ten levels in it you've hit ECL 15. Two levels of Totemist grant access to the Girallon Arms Soulbind, giving you four claws, two slams and a bite attack, while Improved/Superior Unarmed Strike allow you to use that BAB to good effect, granting you four more attacks based on your BAB. It turns your natural weapons into secondary attacks, but Multiattack covers that nicely. Upgrade to improved if the feat slots are open.

Remember, it only take a few negative levels to cripple a PC. Make them suffer!

EDIT: Unless your PCs give you their express permission to throw your hardest punches, please don't use this in an actual game - unless they get an alpha strike off and crush it in two rounds or so it's just a TPK waiting to happen.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

In and of itself, the E6 Terrorbot is a pushover - decent HP, sure, but it has quite low damage. The trick is in the Soul Eater level that gives it Energy Drain combined with its three natural attacks. In an E6 game where the PCs will only ever have six levels (and thus lack easy access to Death Ward), taking even a few negative levels is reason to panic. Obviously it's an incredibly binary encounter - you either have Death Ward or you don't.

This sounds immensely and unnecessarily cruel: it's basically a TPK against an unprepared party, and a meaningless encounter to a prepared party. That sounds like poor encounter design to me, truth be told. It's a fun build, yes, but given that the Book of Vile Darkness is one of the most broken pieces of 3.0 game design (in fact in many places it's a shining example of how not to balance game mechanics), I'd be hesitant to manipulate its poorly conceived rules to throw binary encounters at players.


Remember, it only take a few negative levels to cripple a PC. Make them suffer!

...but the goal of a GM is to have fun while making sure the players are having fun. I know I'd hate this encounter: either it's an irritating fight against an opponent who, even if we beat, weakens us considerably in a way we can't prevent, or it's a pushover against a foe who can barely touch us. Neither one is particularly fun.

I'm open to seeing other things you have, but this one strikes me as a terrible encounter for any number of reasons.

[The Mentalist]

Snip

Basically what Djinn said, maybe if it were a Save vs Negative Level (or Fatigue may be better, or it being a Terrorbot fear, fear is a nice scaling penalty) on one or two (one, definitely one) of it's attacks this has a chance of being less of a binary encounter.

Pharoh's Fist did a Samurai that stacked fear effects nicely for the arena, it was a deathmachine against a solo creature but a party could handle it nicely though still be challenged by it, something more like that would be a better option. Something with temporary penalties that don't end an encounter for the player in a single full attack.

Remember that the players are SUPPOSED to win, they're supposed to cringe and worry about that and feel uncertain about it, maybe even half of them will be dead before they win but they are, in general, supposed to come out ahead of a CR equivalent monster.


Edit: Part of the cool part about designing challenges for the PCs is that you don't have to follow their rules, the trick is do to this in a way that will be fun for your players and not things that will just cause distress.

[ColossusCrusher]

Yeah, I know it's pretty cruel - unfortunately that's the automatic path my mind takes me in when I concept these kinds of things. I know I can do the alternate thing - my PCs had a lot of fun dealing with Zerg ported into Mage: the Awakening as Abyssal monsters, but I do tend towards the meaner aspect of DMing. As for that "make them suffer" crack, I should probably color that blue.

The bad news is that the other ones I've already finished are similar to this type in terms of ridiculous meanness. The good news is that you've both inspired me to make encounters that are less thought experiments and more *encounters*. Your advice has been a solid eye-opener for me though - getting this kind of honest feedback was part of why I made this thread in the first place.

[ColossusCrusher]

New Entry: Rainbow Warsnake

Link: http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=630434

Quick Data:
HP: 125
AC: 23
Race: Lesser Aasimar
Class Breakdown: Warmage 4/Rainbow Servant 10
Approximate CR: 15 or 16, possibly higher depending on DM use of the Warsnake's insane versatility

So what can the Warsnake do? Anything. Take a look at the Warmage spell list (Complete Arcane). It's got a good number of debuffs and all of the blasting you'll ever need. Now look at the Cleric spell list. Yeah. Exactly. And toss in spontaneous casting just for giggles. Versatile Spellcaster lets you keep spamming the higher-level spells while you can Extend or Persist your best Cleric buffs. But why Extend/Persist instead of Split Ray and Empower? For that you need to think about what happens at level 15.

Cleric Spell Access states that any Cleric spells not on the Wiz/Sorc list are cast as DIVINE spells. Here's where the alignment restriction comes into play - Sacred Exorcist is Good-only, and Rainbow Servant is nonevil/nonchaotic. Exorcist grants you a pool of Turn Undead, which qualifies the Warsnake for Divine Metamagic. Grab Quicken at 15, Persist at 18 and a few Nightsticks and you're more than set to smite those Evil PCs of yours. And after Exorcist? Church Inquisitor is great for a level but locks you in as LG, Contemplative gives you a free domain at first level - how do the Celerity, Envy, Spell or Trickery domains sound? Planning and Time are great too, but the Domain Powers are free feats you already have. After that, well, you've got a bunch of free levels. Have fun and don't lose caster levels. :)

The Warsnake is a pretty well-known build and one of the ways Warmages stay relevant in high-level play. While I wouldn't recommend going full on God Cannon against the PCs, it's flexibility should allow you to find something to challenge them with.

(This is the second of my reserve encounters - the next two are the last ones that were made before opening this thread and thus are more of a thought experiment than anything else.)

[The Mentalist]

I would actually love to see a good write-up of Zerg into d20, I've only ever seen Zerglings when someone ports them in.

As for this next one I'm genuinely surprised not to see you go all out on the magic items (Belt of Battle, Anklet of Translocation). This one seems like a reasonable (if boring) humanoid encounter actually. It's a straight caster, just like any other straight caster really, you could do basically the same thing by throwing a Gesalt Warmage/Favored Soul or a Mystic Theurge at them. Also I think that ESPECIALLY for the noncombatant flaw there are some RP requirements for an NPC that would make it a less than viable opponent.

You're building characters and what is fun and viable for a character is not always the same for a monster. For example the Rainbow Warsnake build is pretty much a terrible opponent to go against solo because where it has some very good power when its working in concert with other creatures alone it is not worth the CR 15-16 you've placed it at, it doesn't have the actions or the raw power to counter an entire tier 2-4 party on its own (let alone opposing other full casters)

Leave DMM Persist abuse to your players, DMM Persist kind of sucks on an opponent you're only going to see once anyway, the buffs don't need to last all day, they just need to last the duration of the fight. Give this guy some multispell potions instead (not actually in the rules but you're making an NPC what do you care) and let the players loot them, that's cool and unique loot that will make your Artificer jump up and down to reverse engineer and your party mundanes happy to have quick access to a buff-regimen.

You'd also be better off going with a Gish than a double list caster too because its a more versatile encounter and can play to the party's strengths and weaknesses. If you can get into melee on this guy (not difficult since he doesn't have any real way to out maneuver your PCs or get out of the combat) he's sucking high DC concentration checks to do anything really exciting and he basically becomes another fighter (or worse assuming he didn't cast Divine Power earlier in the combat) and a fighter without any cool feat trees to make him an interesting challenge.

TL;DR: the Rainbow Warsnake is a CR 13-14 support opponent, CR 12-13 solo opponent and really needs options against melee classes who can and will get into combat with him and rip him into tiny bits.

Edit: A DMM Split Ray or DMM Twin Cleric would actually be a much cooler fight than a DMM Persist Cleric.

I may actually design a creature that gets limited Sorcerer spell casting and throws duplicates of all of its spells, it'd be a cool monster that has multiple threat options, buff two minions at once, double damage on the blasty spells, double area battlefield control and either have them come in groups or give him some decent melee defenses/movement modes so he can deal with the party Barbarian/Fighter...

Another note on interesting encounters to throw at your players, make a monster or a template that has all spells cast on him extended, this gives him buffs that last the entire fight but it also lets DoT spells (such as the humble Melf's Acid Arrow) and debuffs be doubly effective as well.

[ColossusCrusher]

You're right - unfortunately most (read: pretty much all except for a small PbP that's barely started) of my d20 experience is on the player side of the table, so I'll see what I can do to port over some of my WoD DM-thinking into these designs.

I do have an idea for a modified golem-type construct that's got spell turrets or something like that. I really appreciate the reality check though - I need to stop thinking as a player and start thinking as a DM. I think my next one should be more in that direction though. Are there any good resources for encounter creation? The SRD seems to be a little lacking in that regard.

[The Mentalist]

You're right - unfortunately most (read: pretty much all except for a small PbP that's barely started) of my d20 experience is on the player side of the table, so I'll see what I can do to port over some of my WoD DM-thinking into these designs.

No worries, we all were new to these sorts of things once.



I do have an idea for a modified golem-type construct that's got spell turrets or something like that.

That actually sounds like something that's a lot of fun to fight. Especially with the right spells in the spell turrets, I would recommend something in the repair construct line targeted on the golem for one of them. A direct damage spell (Lesser Orb or Magic Missile?) for one or two (different spells) and maybe a debuff or battlefield control for the fourth. Something like Entangle would be good, something to slow down the inevitable melee assault.



Are there any good resources for encounter creation? The SRD seems to be a little lacking in that regard.

Djinn in Tonic wrote a philosophy of design essay that I considered linking you to this afternoon but it's not really "encounter creation". It comes with a bit of practice and a certain amount of understanding that the cool part about monster entries isn't how big its HP pool is or how much damage it deals with its biggest attack but what kind of cool tricks it can bull. This is kind of the reason why Dragons get more play than Titans, they have more options and cooler ones too.

There is a room for a big pile of hitpoints (giants) but in general players are going to have more fun fighting something with a moderate (but not extreme) amount of options. Remember that when you're designing a monster you don't have to follow the rules of the classes or the templates, infact I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to. The number one goal is to make an interesting and balanced encounter, though there is more to an encounter than the monsters. I was at a tournament a few weeks ago and we were fighting 6 dragons one after the other and the best fight was the red dragon in the volcano because the islands moved on the lava and there were columns of fire that we had to avoid. It's that sort of thing that makes for a good encounter, something that you're not dealing with every day, be it breath weapons, interesting terrain elements, monsters that are flat out immune to something (though never make this the only something that one player does well)

Golems are interesting because of their magic immunity
Dragons are interesting because they have a lot of options
Demons are interesting for being off the shelf gishes
Hydras are interesting because of their number of attacks

Giants are not interesting because they get nothing but hitpoints
Level 1 orc hordes are not interesting because they get nothing at all
The Tarraquase is not interesting because he has weaknesses you can drive a truck through


The big question I would recommend you ask yourself coming from a player's background is "Would this be an exciting encounter or would this just be beating something until it falls down and we take its stuff?" Or in the case of your Terrorbot "Would I have fun fighting this monster or would it just frustrate me that it crippled my character in one round"

Remember that as a DM your job is to make sure your players have some sort of fun, novelty is fun, challenges are fun.

Another good way to explain it is that monsters should look more like Warblades than like Barbarians.