Da'Shain
2013-09-29, 08:47 PM
For the first, test battle of my new campaign, I'm planning to throw a pack of Megaraptors (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/dinosaur/megaraptor) at the party of 4 level 10 characters. This is meant to simply ease the players into their new characters and let them figure out how they work together; hence why it's only CR 9 and involves a bunch of enemies of individual HD less than half their level. However, looking at the Megaraptor's feats, they really don't lend themselves to the fluff at all - pack hunters without a single Teamwork feat among them? Travesty!
So I decided to swap out their feats for Outflank and Stealth Synergy, except for one who'll take Improved Grapple and act as the decoy ("You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that's when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two raptors you didn't even know were there."). And now, while I don't think these guys are going to seriously inconvenience the party (unless I have all three of the hidden raptors pounce on the wizard ... muahaha), giving them teamwork feats makes them more powerful together than simply calculating CR as normal really reflects.
Is this worth a bump up and a bit of extra XP? And in general, how does everyone else run this? If you swap out monster feats and play them intelligently, do you adjust CR?
So I decided to swap out their feats for Outflank and Stealth Synergy, except for one who'll take Improved Grapple and act as the decoy ("You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that's when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two raptors you didn't even know were there."). And now, while I don't think these guys are going to seriously inconvenience the party (unless I have all three of the hidden raptors pounce on the wizard ... muahaha), giving them teamwork feats makes them more powerful together than simply calculating CR as normal really reflects.
Is this worth a bump up and a bit of extra XP? And in general, how does everyone else run this? If you swap out monster feats and play them intelligently, do you adjust CR?