The most frustrating monsters to encounter as a PC...besides rust monsters

[daremetoidareyo]

I'm all ears. No rust monsters allowed.

[Rangô]

Hey there!
As a DM I've never had so many complaints as I faced the party against Golems, no matter which CR, practically untouchables. Also I remember that Ghosts and Shadows were rather hard without a ready-for-service spell list. And my favourite for final boss, Beholders... I love antimagic field and desintegration MUAHAHA

[Seppo87]

Anything stealthy with high touch AC, saves and generally a lot of ways of avoiding being attacked entirely is pretty frustrating.
NPCs tend to do this depending on how you build them.

[The Viscount]

Bebiliths are very nasty to fight because they destroy your armor.

Shadows and Allips are horrendous at the level (3 for both) you can first encounter them, because chances are you won't have any weapons to hurt them with, and you may not have the right spells. Shadow is worse because it can actually kill you, and create another shadow possibly before the combat ends.

That damn crab is of course a legend at the low CRs you fight it, same goes for adamantine clockwork horror.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I've never had to deal with one, but I imagine an enemy who uses forced dream and time hop is incredibly annoying. Rolled a 20? Not anymore you haven't!

[Eldariel]

The first time I ran into a Ragewalker, that was Rage-inducing indeed. Couldn't get into melee without Bloodlust & Chain trips, it had sufficient spell resistance that using magic was difficult (and the encounter took place in a Temple fully under Forbiddance so transportation and summoning magic was impossible), ranged attacks are turned against their users. We didn't have Assay Resistance in our sourcebooks, which would make the fight a cakewalk. Ultimately we won with our Cleric's last Destruction successfully and luckily getting through the spell resistance and it rolling poorly on Fortitude (then again, it's got pretty bad Fort-save at +13; it needs a 10 to save vs. a 26 Int Wizard's Flesh to Ice/Baleful Polymorph/whatever) but not before much of our party had beat each other senseless and it had shrugged off a number of Fort save-or-dies. Those quickened empowered CL20 Blade Barriers against a level 13 party didn't help either. And that's without it having any Living Spells available; we would've been so screwed if it had a couple of Living Blasphemies lying around. And this being only CR14 vs. a 7-man level 13 party.

That said, Ragewalker is just an annoying fight and one that casters particularly in the open can easily deal with (though its spells are hard to dispel and the Will-save to resist bloodlust is tough so one has to never let it get close/have like 28+ Wisdom, and hope it can't just nuke you with Blade Barriers and Walls of Fire). Indeed, if it were played optimally it would've probably just obliterated the Cleric as soon as it recognized him (Empowered Blade Barrier + Quickened Empowered Blade Barrier is 157 damage, tough for a level 13 Cleric to survive) and tried to make the Wizard go nuts; with its Hide, the environment and Initiative it had the first move. The lesser and non-casters would've had no chance.


But Ragewalker has nothing on something like Adamantine Horror, which can just wipe out all your items permanently and you gotta save vs. Disjunction for each and every one of them without magical protection to stop that from happening. Damn that thing.

[Marlowe]

Will o' the Wisps.

Flight. Make touch attacks. Non-magical permanent invisibility. AC and touch AC so high that most level-appropriate PCs need 20s to hit it. Immune to most magic either by dint of being nigh-impossible to hit or by simply being immune. Very obviously a creature put together for a puzzle-boss fight back in the bad old days and never redone as something sane. The solution to the puzzle is that it's not immune to Magic Missile.

Had a PbP campaign die because the DM thought it was a clever idea to make one of these the first encounter. Nobody wanted to go throw the real-time weeks of rolling dice to get the natural 20s required to get rid of the thing.

Special mention for the homebrew demons some other DM threw at us in another PbP. Every time you hit them, or cast a spell on them, or did anything to them you had to pass several Will saves or have your PC COMPLETELY REMOVED FROM EXISTENCE and all memory of your existence removed from everyone else's memory. How anyone with enough working brain cells to type two words in a row couldn't see how broken this was I cannot understand.

When one of the players queried the guy, he commented something about how he expected us to just use summons and animal companions on them.

[Zaq]

Of the ones I've seen in a live game? Will o' Wisps, Cranium Rat Swarms, and worst of all, the Teratomorph. That damned Teratomorph derailed the campaign for the better part of a real-world year! Stupid Plane Shift aura . . .

[WeaselGuy]

My group got beat to hell by some damn ghost lion. We (5 of us, pretty balanced party) were around level 7ish, and exploring some sort of catacombs, and here comes this damn ghost lion out of the wall, claw claw biting us, and forcing some sort of save or lose-a-turn on anything he hit. We were totally unprepared for incorporeal anything, so about all we could do was hope we passed our saves and let the cleric and the wizard whittle it down without nailing us with aoe.

On the note of a Bebilith though. Same group, same characters, about level 13 or so. Playing with some random crit fail table, our caster rolled a nat 1 on some spell, and "suddenly, a bebilith!" (one of our catchphrases now). Ate our BSF for lunch, gave my Champion of Corellon Gryphon Rider a run for his money, and resisted just about everything the Wizard through at it. Our Cleric managed to nat 20 a dismissal to save us all. I think we got 2 levels from that encounter, after everything else we were fighting finally died. Heh. Fun times for the "Otyugh Slayers, Inc" (We Split the Party™).

[Malimar]

Disenchanters. There's a reason they were never ported to 3.5 other than by the 3rd party Tome of Horrors. Imagine a rust monster, except instead of just rusting your stuff, it touches you with Mordenkainen's disjunction.

[Gildedragon]

Disenchanters. There's a reason they were never ported to 3.5 other than by the 3rd party Tome of Horrors. Imagine a rust monster, except instead of just rusting your stuff, it touches you with Mordenkainen's disjunction.
They actually were: Fiend Folio

I'll throw my hat into the ring with the ethereal filcher

[Inevitability]

Disenchanters. There's a reason they were never ported to 3.5 other than by the 3rd party Tome of Horrors. Imagine a rust monster, except instead of just rusting your stuff, it touches you with Mordenkainen's disjunction.

That's called the Adamantine Horror. :smalltongue:

[Malimar]

They actually were: Fiend Folio

Were they?

...why so they were!

There you go then.


That's called the Adamantine Horror. :smalltongue:

That too. But there's supposedly only one adamantine horror in the world, but lots of disenchanters.

[Eldariel]

Were they?

...why so they were!

There you go then.

They are however CR17 so it's nothing special. That's the same CR as a Gray Elf Focused Abjurer/Master Specialist/Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil 17 with their Disjunctions/Maws of Chaos, and the option of Quickening a few + Celerity, Shapechange (into e.g. Choker or Chronotyryn for doublecasts) and so on. CR17 creatures can pretty much do whatever and they aren't terribly scary since the company they keep is so stiff. For funzies, Adamantine Clockwork Horror is supposedly CR9 though, because MM2.

[Amphetryon]

Meenlocks can be frustrating if you take their CR at face value.

[Pex]

Beholder, Medusa, Basilisk, Cockatrice, Gorgon

At will save or die as often as it wants. I can appreciate in 4E, Pathfinder to a degree, and in 5E they've mitigated the danger so that you don't necessarily die just because you rolled 5 or less, but in general combat just becomes a question of how long your luck lasts and relief you aren't the one being attacked that round. I acknowledge parties do win and have been in such parties, but chances are high someone bites it and needs to be fixed. Only once ever for me, knock on wood, against a basilisk.

Undead

When the party couldn't possibly have the means to face them. By that I mean level/energy/ability score drain when you are not at the level in which you could protect yourself or at least readily recover from the effects. I remember a Pathfinder game session where we were 4th level, had to fight a wraith, and needed to go to NPC Hospital afterwards. I hated that.

[Inevitability]

They are however CR17 so it's nothing special. That's the same CR as a Gray Elf Focused Abjurer/Master Specialist/Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil 17 with their Disjunctions/Maws of Chaos, and the option of Quickening a few + Celerity, Shapechange (into e.g. Choker or Chronotyryn for doublecasts) and so on. CR17 creatures can pretty much do whatever and they aren't terribly scary since the company they keep is so stiff. For funzies, Adamantine Clockwork Horror is supposedly CR9 though, because MM2.

It's slightly more reasonable if you don't use it until ECL 17 and then dump a ton of lesser clockwork horrors in to make it a balanced encounter. Lots of weak monsters may usually not be a viable challenge for ECL 17 PC's, but if their buffs and magic items are stripped away all the time they may be.

[Malimar]

They are however CR17 so it's nothing special. That's the same CR as a Gray Elf Focused Abjurer/Master Specialist/Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil 17 with their Disjunctions/Maws of Chaos, and the option of Quickening a few + Celerity, Shapechange (into e.g. Choker or Chronotyryn for doublecasts) and so on. CR17 creatures can pretty much do whatever and they aren't terribly scary since the company they keep is so stiff. For funzies, Adamantine Clockwork Horror is supposedly CR9 though, because MM2.

The Tome of Horrors version is CR3, which is a level where you still hardly have any magic items, so each loss is more keenly felt.

[Snowbluff]

Disenchanters. There's a reason they were never ported to 3.5 other than by the 3rd party Tome of Horrors. Imagine a rust monster, except instead of just rusting your stuff, it touches you with Mordenkainen's disjunction.

Adamantine Clockwork Horrors for similiar reasons and otherwise killing you outright.

EDIT: Swordsaged. :P

[The Insanity]

Humans. gbyfv

[paperarmor]

Drowned. Horribly under cr. Thought it'd be thematic for a pirate campaign. Nope.

[Soranar]

Any creature that have a constant ''save of suck'' ability because , no matter how high your saves are you can always roll badly

Best example:

party of 4 (paladin, paladin, cleric, bard)

everybody is level 2

we encounter what should be a walk in the park : 3 ghouls in a tunnel

Due to bad dice we're all paralyzed except for the bard who is seriously considering running away. Finally the cleric manages to snap out of it and gets lucky on a turn undead roll (nat 20) and saves the day.

3 levels later a near identical encounter (4 ghouls in a tunnel, we're all level 5 now mind)

TPK

Ghouls kept hitting us, none of us were immune to paralysis and every other DC 15 fort check failed. Their damage was pitiful but with 1 bite and 2 claws each killed us slowly but surely.

[Telok]

It really depends on if the party plays 'combat as sport' and just walks into fights or if the party plays 'combat as war' with scouting and information gathering before going into the dungeon.

I've seen bufffed and templated hydra go down in two rounds to 'combat as war' parties twice. On the other hand a vampire giant octopus that was confined to an underground lake killed at least 5 level twelve PCs across three attempts. They never did kill it or get all the magic gear back from the victims. Every time, even once they knew what was there, they walked in unprepared for aquatic or undead combat.

For frustrating, inaccessable spellcasters with an infinite attack resource. It can be a spider climbing warlock in a large cave or a wolf riding goblin sorcerer with a wand of magic missile, once it was a psychic archer on a giant bat. Ranged touch attacks, mobility, and being inaccessable to stupid fighter types who focus exclusively on melee (which always seems to be a third or half the party).

[Esprit15]

A well run vampire is terrifying. Save or suck at will, DR that the party needs to prepare for, fast healing to draw out the battle, negative levels, and if you do kill them improperly, the odds are decent that your party should sleep with one eye open. For the rest of their lives. Oh, and they're all at least fairly clever, so odds are they won't fight fairly like your average monster.

Not so bad when you're prepared for them, not too bad in a blank room with nothing of note, terrifying when you realize midway through dinner with your host that the wine is poisoned, the soup is poisoned, the bread was poisoned, the incense burning around the room were (surprise!) also poison, and at this point you've all failed enough saves, one against paralysis, that the party is incapacitated before initiative even had to be rolled.

[icefractal]

It really depends on if the party plays 'combat as sport' and just walks into fights or if the party plays 'combat as war' with scouting and information gathering before going into the dungeon.I've heard this, but - it's not like the monsters can't use tactics too. "Powerful but dumb thing you can defeat with good planning" is one thing, but there are some monsters that could easily harass a party to defeat if the DM didn't take pity.

On topic - things that can stay out of LoE almost all the time - incorporeal creatures with Flyby Attack popping in and out of the walls, for example. It's an effective tactic, but a really annoying one.

[Spore]

Lich Illusionists. They have convinced the town populace that they are innocent traders. When you try to attack her openly, she only uses defensive magic and later on accusing you of attempted murder. If you succeed to slay her in secret, nothing happens because her phylactery is hidden pretty well. Stealing it would mean breaking into a trading corporation's warehouse.

[Inevitability]

Lich Illusionists. They have convinced the town populace that they are innocent traders. When you try to attack her openly, she only uses defensive magic and later on accusing you of attempted murder. If you succeed to slay her in secret, nothing happens because her phylactery is hidden pretty well. Stealing it would mean breaking into a trading corporation's warehouse.

Why would you want to attack them, though?

[Willie the Duck]

Chaos Beast (CR 7)-- it touching you, or you touching it means you become close to unable to act and start to lose 1 wis a round unless you spend your action and make a dc 15 CHA check. Only cures? Restoration, heal, and greater restoration. Only the first of which will you have access to at level 7 and you better have it memorized (because the afflicted won't last until next morning). Oh, and they don't die, they become chaos beasts, so unless you have a wish, you lose your character permanently. Did anyone think this through?

[Willie the Duck]

Lich Illusionists. They have convinced the town populace that they are innocent traders. When you try to attack her openly, she only uses defensive magic and later on accusing you of attempted murder. If you succeed to slay her in secret, nothing happens because her phylactery is hidden pretty well. Stealing it would mean breaking into a trading corporation's warehouse.

What's so horrible about that? A regular human criminal whom only you know is an evil-doer can also do the 'you can't attack me because that makes you the murderer' thing just as well.

[ShurikVch]

Crawling Claws
Diminutive Construct (swarm) with SR 10 at CR 1/3? :smallconfused: Seriously?

[The Viscount]

The Ephemeral Swarm is also a real bad fight. It's a CR 5 monster that's a swarm, and also incorporeal. Every round that you are in their squares, you take 1d6 Strength damage. When you reach 0, you die!

[Willie the Duck]

Swarms in general do not seem like they were really playtested much.

[Inevitability]

Swarms in general do not seem like they were really playtested much.

No, but they didn't need to, because they'll obviously die to a single blast spell, which all wizards will have prepared all the time because evocation is obviously the best school. Then to make sure the wizard wouldn't end the encounter with a single spell, they added some HP.

[J-H]

Swarms are very party-composition dependent. My 6-player level 4 party wiped out two spider swarms very quickly - but they have a blaster sorc with Fiery Burst and a DFA.
They are in combat with another swarm right now, and if it survives it'll be because everyone decided to target the two big spiders instead (not likely, they have +4s against AC 20-24 dwarves).

The phase spider that just attacked their rearguard is more likely to be annoying; it can swift-action phase in, standard attack, and move-action phase out without provoking any AOOs. The poison is DC17 and does 1d8/1d8 CON - pretty hefty at level 4! Of course, it's a CR5 opponent.

[Arbane]

No, but they didn't need to, because they'll obviously die to a single blast spell, which all wizards will have prepared all the time because evocation is obviously the best school. Then to make sure the wizard wouldn't end the encounter with a single spell, they added some HP.

Pretty much all the things I was going to list have already been covered.

I've lost a character to a Beholder. (The Fighter failed a Fortitude save. His one good save...)
My characters have killed vampires. (Pretty sure the GM had nerfed them a bit, which is fine by me.)
My current group nearly lost one character to Ghouls last session - he'd gotten split from the group, two ghouls attacked, one bad save later...
Out current GM has thrown a LOT of swarms at us (he says his random encounter tables may be skewed). Very annoying when the only blastomancer in the group is a semi-NPC cohort of a player who can't always make it, with a bad case of LOLRandom Behavior.
One more I'd add: Monks. They make lousy PCs, but they are FRUSTRATING enemies - high saves, good AC, high mobility, a stunning attack... (One GM sicced a smart undead monk at us - he was a recurring villain for several levels.)

[Esprit15]

I'm just loving how many things here are either things my party has encountered, or things I've thrown at my players.

[Iceheart2112]

In Pathfinder: the pugwampi. At low levels it is entirely frustrating with its unlucky aura. A group of 3 turned what the dm thought was going to be an easy fight into a 3 hour pain fest. So much hatred.

[Arc_knight25]

In Pathfinder: the pugwampi. At low levels it is entirely frustrating with its unlucky aura. A group of 3 turned what the dm thought was going to be an easy fight into a 3 hour pain fest. So much hatred.

This. This is the worst. Our DM liked them so much that late campaign they made a Pugwambi Lich. enjoy that save or die spell...oh and take the worst roll. It was tough but fun.

[Sayt]

Swarms or Quicklings, personally.

[Calthropstu]

Illusionists.

Nothing as annoying as wasting large numbers of spells and resources on something that doesn't even exist.

Or coming up on a bridge that has been turned invisible with an illusionary bridge set 10 feet to the left. (that one got me some very nasty responses)

[Calthropstu]

Oh, and there is also the vampire bullete.

Nasty.

[PraxisVetli]

Boneclaws. They don't seem dangerous.
Add 3 levels of Warder. See what happens.

[Marlowe]

Chokers are really, really annoying. Especially for casters as low levels.

Another monster that was obviously cooked up for a "special occasion" back in the day and then never updated properly.

Iron Half-Golems; with their DR20/Adamantine and only 4 HPs, are either a nightmare or a joke depending on what assets the party has available. There's not much middle ground there.

[Inevitability]

Chokers are really, really annoying. Especially for casters as low levels.

For casters? Try them as casters! Two spells a round at no extra cost = win. The nonassociated class level CR rule even means that a CR 10 choker cleric will be only a single caster level behind on a CR 10 human cleric.

[ben-zayb]

The first monster that I hated was the Behir. Then again, I was a multiclass rogue/monk on that game, so it's as low op as it gets.

[nedz]

I'll throw my hat into the ring with the ethereal filcher

+1 to this.

Also Spawn of Kyuss are hilariously tricky - almost caused a Kyussapocalypse when I used them.

[Arutema]

Pathfinder Robots.

The collector and gearsman both have hardness 10, and their low CRs mean they show up well before the PCs are likely to have adamantine weapons, and before weapons and spells can consistently do more than 10 damage/hit on all but a two-handed power attack build.

And even if you do have such a build, the collector has a fly speed, so it can stay out of range of the one PC that can hurt it.

The gearsman, on the other hand, just hits like a truck. d8+d6+11 is damage to be reckoned with for a cr4 even without said hardness.

And they still have construct traits, just in case you brought an enchanter to the party.

[Arbane]

I'll throw my hat into the ring with the ethereal filcher

"You can't. The Filcher stole it." :smallamused:

[tiercel]

The Shadow.

The Shadow?

The Shadow.

Touch attacks that do lethal Strength damage mean that these critters stay dangerous even at levels significantly above their CR (especially in numbers).

Never mind the whole CR-3-creature-that-can-end-the-world thing. (I can only assume the reason Shadows haven't ended the world is that most gods put their followers on instant DEFCON One the instant a Shadow gets anywhere near a humanoid-populated area of any size.)

[Arbane]

The Shadow.

The Shadow?

The Shadow.

Touch attacks that do lethal Strength damage mean that these critters stay dangerous even at levels significantly above their CR (especially in numbers).

Never mind the whole CR-3-creature-that-can-end-the-world thing. (I can only assume the reason Shadows haven't ended the world is that most gods put their followers on instant DEFCON One the instant a Shadow gets anywhere near a humanoid-populated area of any size.)

AND they're intangible, which means low-level characters can do bupkis to them without spells.

(And I understood that reference.)

[molten_dragon]

I forget exactly what it's called, but it was a swarm of ghost rats from MM2. They're only CR 4 or 5, so at the point you face them, they're damn near impossible to hurt.

[molten_dragon]

Pathfinder Robots.

The collector and gearsman both have hardness 10, and their low CRs mean they show up well before the PCs are likely to have adamantine weapons, and before weapons and spells can consistently do more than 10 damage/hit on all but a two-handed power attack build.

And even if you do have such a build, the collector has a fly speed, so it can stay out of range of the one PC that can hurt it.

The gearsman, on the other hand, just hits like a truck. d8+d6+11 is damage to be reckoned with for a cr4 even without said hardness.

And they still have construct traits, just in case you brought an enchanter to the party.

Oh my god yes. I'm running Iron Gods right now and the first couple books had some fights that took forever because the party had to slowly plink away at the robot doing 2-4 damage on average due to hardness.

[Inevitability]

I forget exactly what it's called, but it was a swarm of ghost rats from MM2. They're only CR 4 or 5, so at the point you face them, they're damn near impossible to hurt.

Ephemeral Swarm, I believe. It got mentioned at the top of this page.

[Inevitability]

I personally have had really boring GMs over the years, so I have no really stand-out annoying creatures from experience, but....

I must say, conceptually, the Lich is probably really annoying simply because there is literally no limit (in RAW) on what can and can not be a phylactery. And amulet made for a diminutive, invisible, incorporeal fairy? Sure. Giant statue that looks like window dressing? Sure. The ****ing mountain? Why not?

In fact, I'm going to go run a campaign based around not letting a lich turn the entire freaking planet in to his own phylactery. That's some M.A.D. shift right there.

Er... there are, in fact, strict RAW limits on phylacteries.


Each lich must make its own phylactery, which requires the Craft Wondrous Item feat. The character must be able to cast spells and have a caster level of 11th or higher. The phylactery costs 120,000 gp and 4,800 XP to create and has a caster level equal to that of its creator at the time of creation.


Regardless of the phylactery’s form, its game statistics remain the same: size Tiny, hp 40, hardness 20, break DC 40.

Because the lich has to create their phylactery themselves and it has to be Tiny, I don't see how you could have it be a microscopic amulet, giant statue, mountain or planet.

[SangoProduction]

Er... there are, in fact, strict RAW limits on phylacteries.





Because the lich has to create their phylactery themselves and it has to be Tiny, I don't see how you could have it be a microscopic amulet, giant statue, mountain or planet.

OK. Cool. I was informed otherwise. Took a look and it seems I was informed incorrectly. Thanks for pointing it out. Again, I never actually saw it in play.

Though, I think it could be a cool campaign hook that there's an undead cult who's working to desecrate the world so (perhaps unknowingly to them) it may become the phylactery of a lich... or perhaps an ascension attempt. idk. Would kinda suck to be the god of a dead world but hey, whatever floats your boat.

[Malimar]

Because the lich has to create their phylactery themselves and it has to be Tiny, I don't see how you could have it be a microscopic amulet, giant statue, mountain or planet.

Doesn't it also have to be a non-magical Object before it gets turned into a phylactery, so no Creatures and no Artifacts?

So yeah, there's a lot of RAW limitations on phylacteries... though your regular wizard lich is likely to be clever enough to make it hard enough to find and destroy his phylactery even with the RAW limitations (which, of course, the DM is also free to ignore if they choose).

[MisterKaws]

They're not monsters, but I don't think it can get more annoying than Chaotician/Xaositect Kenders.

[Bronk]

Doesn't it also have to be a non-magical Object before it gets turned into a phylactery, so no Creatures and no Artifacts?

So yeah, there's a lot of RAW limitations on phylacteries... though your regular wizard lich is likely to be clever enough to make it hard enough to find and destroy his phylactery even with the RAW limitations (which, of course, the DM is also free to ignore if they choose).

There's also the dry lich, that starts out with 5 canopic jar phylacteries, or, eventually, the lich can develop the 'Fragmented Phylactery' epic spell, and either get more phylacteries or divide his current one into smaller pieces.

[Inevitability]

There's also the dry lich, that starts out with 5 canopic jar phylacteries, or, eventually, the lich can develop the 'Fragmented Phylactery' epic spell, and either get more phylacteries or divide his current one into smaller pieces.

Having multiple phylacteries is overrated. Even with simple phylactery-hiding methods, your foes are unlikely to find yours unless they have access to ridiculously powerful magic. And if they do, then they might as well use the same methods to detect all phylacteries.

Having more than one phylactery would only be useful if your enemies know the location of one, but not all. Then again: no self-respecting lich would leave clues or pick predictable items for his phylactery.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Having multiple phylacteries is overrated. Even with simple phylactery-hiding methods, your foes are unlikely to find yours unless they have access to ridiculously powerful magic. And if they do, then they might as well use the same methods to detect all phylacteries.

Having more than one phylactery would only be useful if your enemies know the location of one, but not all. Then again: no self-respecting lich would leave clues or pick predictable items for his phylactery.
I think the main advantage of having multiple phylacteries, and being able to replenish them (this is key), is that you can carry one or more with you. If you accidentally die to something that doesn't recognize your phylactery (such as +5 sizing tarrasque of lich-eating), you can spawn right where you were, and carry on. If you find an interesting safe place, you can hide a phylactery there, effectively creating a respawn point for the surrounding area.

It's probably one of those things that doesn't hold up in really optimized environments, but I can see some utility up to a fairly high OP-level. Although an auto-resetting trap of phylactery-creation linked with an auto-resetting trap of genesis (and something to destroy the default portal provided by the spell) would be pretty cool. Endless discrete dimensional bubbles with phylacteries in them.

[Beheld]

Just tell everyone you have like 500 phylacteries, and then carry around one phylactery which is all your magic items in one item, so that you can be sure no one destroys it :smallcool:

[Calthropstu]

I don't see anyone saying "demi lich"

Those things are ridiculous, even optomized.

[Beheld]

As for the thread... Aboleths, Gelugons, Basically anything that has "the entire world is unreal around you" written on their character sheet.

[PraxisVetli]

(such as +5 sizing tarrasque of lich-eating)

Where do I get me one of them??

[nedz]

where do i get me one of them??

Ravenloft.

[Inevitability]

Ravenloft.

Big T wouldn't be that unlikely a darklord. After all, he's smart enough to make moral decisions (if only barely) and has caused widespread death and destruction.

I wonder what his domain would look like. Maybe a realm where all inhabitants are doomed to return to life upon death and all buildings slowly reconstruct themselves, so that the tarrasque may never truly destroy something?

[Randomthom]

PF Wendigo, not sure how they compare to a 3.0/3.5 version.

These guys can wreck your party while out in the wilderness without ever needing to come into contact with you. All they need to do is use their nightmare (unlimited range) on one of the party's low will save people and within a few days they'll be munching on someone. They can remain hidden easily by use of distance, quick flight and control weather. They can escape combat if things are going poorly (120 ft. flight speed) and have decent DR (15/cold iron and magic).

Bizzarely not technically immune to trip but a CMD of 49 means that they might as well be.

[Eldariel]

PF Wendigo, not sure how they compare to a 3.0/3.5 version.

These guys can wreck your party while out in the wilderness without ever needing to come into contact with you. All they need to do is use their nightmare (unlimited range) on one of the party's low will save people and within a few days they'll be munching on someone. They can remain hidden easily by use of distance, quick flight and control weather. They can escape combat if things are going poorly (120 ft. flight speed) and have decent DR (15/cold iron and magic).

Bizzarely not technically immune to trip but a CMD of 49 means that they might as well be.

3.5 Wendigo is a template, but a very frustrating one. They're basically always Windwalking, give you perpetual -2 to Wisdom-checks and hit you with a Will save-or-take 1d3 Wis damage. Their bite causes a Disease that likewise does Wisdom-damage over time. They can easily fight for a short time and then go back to Windwalking to regenerate. Best of all, you can toss a CR3 one at the party on level 1 when they have absolutely no chance of harming it in its Gaseous Form complete with its Regeneration (Fire deals normal) and Damage Reduction (5/Cold Iron), and fairly decent AC (base + Charisma deflection and significant stat buffs). It doesn't have Nightmare, but given how bloody low the CR can get I'd say it's probably more problematic to fight against. PF Wendigo again falls prey to the fact that it's CR17 meaning it's competing with level 17 Wizards in terms of the terror it can inflict; that's rough company.

[The Viscount]

That reminds me of two more that are beyond frustrating, and into straight lethal territory.

The Night Twist (MMIII) at night generates an effect extending out 75 miles (or more if advanced) that if you fail your save, you cannot sleep or do anything but approach the creature (That means no spell restoration). If you prevent someone, they take damage over time. Better hope you can cross the distance before anything bad happens. The only way to end it is to use limited wish (which you don't HAVE at the level 12 you should encounter this CR 12 monster) or to kill the thing. If you kill it, great job, it ends! Now you are cursed with a nightmare effect that can only be removed with limited wish (which again, you don't have). Too bad you wandered 75 miles out to get the thing.

There's also the Plague Blight for acute death. It's moderately tough due to all physical attacks dealing half damage and an aura of strength damage. What really makes it frightening is that if it hits you with its slam, you contract a Con damaging disease than triggers a save EVERY ROUND, lasting until you reach Con 0 (and die), make 2 successful saves in a row (good luck with your decreasing con), or receive a remove disease spell (which you actually do have for this CR 6 monster), so you better have that spell ready, or you're gone. If somebody dies from it, their corpse becomes nothing in 24 hours unless you remove disease on it, so better return fast if you want to raise dead on them.

[daremetoidareyo]

That reminds me of two more that are beyond frustrating, and into straight lethal territory.

The Night Twist (MMIII) at night generates an effect extending out 75 miles (or more if advanced) that if you fail your save, you cannot sleep or do anything but approach the creature (That means no spell restoration). If you prevent someone, they take damage over time. Better hope you can cross the distance before anything bad happens. The only way to end it is to use limited wish (which you don't HAVE at the level 12 you should encounter this CR 12 monster) or to kill the thing. If you kill it, great job, it ends! Now you are cursed with a nightmare effect that can only be removed with limited wish (which again, you don't have). Too bad you wandered 75 miles out to get the thing.

There's also the Plague Blight for acute death. It's moderately tough due to all physical attacks dealing half damage and an aura of strength damage. What really makes it frightening is that if it hits you with its slam, you contract a Con damaging disease than triggers a save EVERY ROUND, lasting until you reach Con 0 (and die), make 2 successful saves in a row (good luck with your decreasing con), or receive a remove disease spell (which you actually do have for this CR 6 monster), so you better have that spell ready, or you're gone. If somebody dies from it, their corpse becomes nothing in 24 hours unless you remove disease on it, so better return fast if you want to raise dead on them.

Your descriptions of these monstrosities are awesome. I both feel your pain and want to inflict that pain on others after giving them ample opportunity to formulate a plan of attack. Do the rust monster, please.

[nedz]

The Night Twist (MMIII) at night generates an effect extending out 75 miles (or more if advanced) that if you fail your save, you cannot sleep or do anything but approach the creature (That means no spell restoration). If you prevent someone, they take damage over time. Better hope you can cross the distance before anything bad happens. The only way to end it is to use limited wish (which you don't HAVE at the level 12 you should encounter this CR 12 monster) or to kill the thing. If you kill it, great job, it ends! Now you are cursed with a nightmare effect that can only be removed with limited wish (which again, you don't have). Too bad you wandered 75 miles out to get the thing.

It was Errated - which is just as well since it would be hard to fit into most worlds.

Pages 110–111: Night Twist
Remove “Survival +17” from the Skills line of the stat block.
Also, the range of the night twist’s despair song ability is 50 feet per HD, not 5 miles per HD.
Changes to the stat block for the ancient night twist:
Advancement: 26–48 HD (Huge)
In the Combat section of the ancient night twist, delete the sentence: It summons plants to its aid if faced with superior numbers. The ancient night twist does not have the ability to summon plants.

[Vertharrad]

OK. Cool. I was informed otherwise. Took a look and it seems I was informed incorrectly. Thanks for pointing it out. Again, I never actually saw it in play.

Though, I think it could be a cool campaign hook that there's an undead cult who's working to desecrate the world so (perhaps unknowingly to them) it may become the phylactery of a lich... or perhaps an ascension attempt. idk. Would kinda suck to be the god of a dead world but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Kiaransalee from FR was actually a goddess from another world(a dead world).

On topic - Rust Dragon, any near normal group has quite a chunk of rustable metal. My female elven ranged ranger/sorceress came across one in a campaign about Kyton, lost a cursed armor arrow tips, etc.; the only reason she was left with a rapier...was because it repeatedly made the save against the dragons breath weapon. Being pinned was no fun at all. And any treasure from the hoard was non-metallic.

[Ferronach]

I always hated most of the oozes that you can encounter.

Use the wrong weapon and you have a swarm on your hands.
Use the wrong material to attack them and you weapons can dissolve.
Use the wrong damage type and it does nothing (or very little).

And to make matters worse, I seem to recall an ooze or two that were anti-casters. Arcane ooze or something like that?

[nedz]

Why has no one mentioned Shadow Dragons ?

Level loss is very annoying.

[The Viscount]

It was Errated - which is just as well since it would be hard to fit into most worlds.

Ah yes, that makes it a bit less of a problem, but it still means the instant somebody fails a save you're all in to kill it. I had forgotten how almost every other monster in MMIII was erratad.

Your descriptions of these monstrosities are awesome. I both feel your pain and want to inflict that pain on others after giving them ample opportunity to formulate a plan of attack. Do the rust monster, please.

Well I'm glad you enjoyed it. Rust monster it is.

The rust monster's famous to most, and for good reason. The creature is evil, and the thing is designed for use by the cruelest DMs. Nonmagical metal items are good as gone, and good luck making the save if you have something magical at CR 3. What turns this thing to truly evil is that they gave it scent and track so it can find you if you somehow escape. Whoever added the line about eating gold and silver as well is cruelty incarnate. A PCs wealth is all they have in this world. The only small mercy is that like the allip, fighting it won't kill you, since it just wants your metal. Like almost every threat, it hurts brutes harder than casters.

But how could I talk about the rust monster without discussing his psionic counterpart, the Folugub! He's only CR 2, which makes sense because he can only destroy crystal and blessedly cannot track you. This is a rare one in that brutes are least in peril here (unless you bought weird crystalline armor), and it's actually dorje users who are in greatest danger. I'm sure there's other things it will take (I hope it doesn't apply to psicrystals) but at least it doesn't eat your money. Neither of the buggers give you any treasure though, to make up for eating yours.

If you want to complete the unholy trinity to prove to druids even they are not safe or just to be a mean person, you have the wood woad. It's a largely unassuming monster at CR 4, fair amount of health. What makes it nasty is warp wood at will, with the ability to retry until you fail. Treewalk means it can teleport all around the field, and it will get the drop on your party, and it has the ability and intent to club the bejeesus out of them, unlike the other two.

A group of level 3 adventurers could encounter all of these in a single day, and still be "owed" one encounter, which would almost certainly end one or more of them.

EDIT: Oh that reminds me!

2 more monsters with similar theme of their frustrating abilities.

The Vasuthant is a nasty little undead who has a surprising array of things at CR 2. It's got a lot of resistances and immunities, blindsight, and a 60 foot aura of suppressing any light source, granting concealment you need LLV or darkvision to see through. Fortunately he's too small to use his strength drain on anything but your familiars (though he could kill most pretty quick), but he can fly perfect, so will likely evade your brutes. The pain comes with its 3/day ability to make itself or an enemy reroll any die roll. It makes fighting it a bit annoying, but because it's such a low CR and only 2 HD, it could very easily be added on to a multiple monster encounter with little change in CR, or rebuked by necromancers for a frightening fight. Save or dies suddenly become save and save and save or dies with these guys in the mix. Don't get me started on the big versions. They're CR 17 and they will end you. They have assorted nasty SLAS (like time stop), they can force a reroll every round, and 3/day they can redo entire TURNS. Tremble.

The Corruptor of Fate isn't necessarily unfair, but he will be very annoying to fight. If you touch him or he hits you, you get a bestow curse for only 50% chance of doing anything every turn (hey at least at CR 5 you have access to remove curse), and whenever attacking him, you must roll twice and take the worse value for attacks and damage! There's no getting around this one, you just have to deal with it.

[MisterKaws]

I always hated most of the oozes that you can encounter.

Use the wrong weapon and you have a swarm on your hands.
Use the wrong material to attack them and you weapons can dissolve.
Use the wrong damage type and it does nothing (or very little).

And to make matters worse, I seem to recall an ooze or two that were anti-casters. Arcane ooze or something like that?

Living Disjunction? Living AMF? Living Slashing Dispel?

Or maybe a Living Locate City Bomb? :smalleek:

[Inevitability]

Living Disjunction? Living AMF? Living Slashing Dispel?

Or maybe a Living Locate City Bomb? :smalleek:

Living Painless Death. :smallamused:

[daremetoidareyo]

Living Painless Death. :smallamused:

Living grim revenge is really good at hand to hand combat.

[Hunter Noventa]

I can't think of anything specific at the moment, but every time I've encountered something Large Size or greater that uses any kind of grapple I just want to burn the book it comes from. Before you have access to freedom of Movement, being grappled by something focused on it is inevitable. The only counter is Freedom of Movement, because you can't build your character to grapple, you're too small. Between size bonuses, strength bonuses, and not needing to be good at anything else, monsters cheat at grappling. End of Line.

[Malimar]

Living grim revenge is really good at hand to hand combat.

Living Love's Pain. Fight an ooze, discover afterwards everyone you ever loved is dead.

[Calthropstu]

A custom monster that did something along these lines...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Ntx-EF3LzKY1nQ5rTUP2g


would be kinda cool.

[Willie the Duck]

I can't think of anything specific at the moment, but every time I've encountered something Large Size or greater that uses any kind of grapple I just want to burn the book it comes from. Before you have access to freedom of Movement, being grappled by something focused on it is inevitable. The only counter is Freedom of Movement, because you can't build your character to grapple, you're too small. Between size bonuses, strength bonuses, and not needing to be good at anything else, monsters cheat at grappling. End of Line.

It's an arbitrary distinction, but I always say that that is a frustrating (and even though I tend to cut the designers a lot more slack than many people do, I tend to also say that grapple was apparently very poorly thought through) mechanic, not a frustrating monster.

[Khedrac]

The Drowned (from MM3) - the aura can take out anyone not prepared for it, level is very little advantage here.

[Calthropstu]

It's an arbitrary distinction, but I always say that that is a frustrating (and even though I tend to cut the designers a lot more slack than many people do, I tend to also say that grapple was apparently very poorly thought through) mechanic, not a frustrating monster.

Pathfinder did a lot to fix that.

Though they still allowed the ring of free action so timmy power gamers can just flat out ignore it.

[Ferronach]

The Drowned (from MM3) - the aura can take out anyone not prepared for it, level is very little advantage here.

Two of these almost wiped a 6 man party of level 6 or 7s that I was part of. Until my warforged managed to smash their skulls in that is hahaha.
Not breathing occasionally has its perks :)

[EvilBarrels]

In my last campaign, I decided to use my homebrewed D&D setting. It was completely untested, and as a result, a lot of the custom rules and monsters were a lot more OP than I anticipated.

The very first encounter was almost the last. My imps had a very high Speed stat, allowing them to dodge and counterattack very easily. They would've died in one shot from most weapons, but they simply couldn't be hit. And half of these issues resulted in a counterattack.

After that encounter, I nerfed the counterattack ability. Almost causing a TPK using my setting's equivalent of guard dogs was fun, but it's damn annoying for anyone who's not DMing.

[Thurbane]

I can't think of anything specific at the moment, but every time I've encountered something Large Size or greater that uses any kind of grapple I just want to burn the book it comes from. Before you have access to freedom of Movement, being grappled by something focused on it is inevitable. The only counter is Freedom of Movement, because you can't build your character to grapple, you're too small. Between size bonuses, strength bonuses, and not needing to be good at anything else, monsters cheat at grappling. End of Line.

It's entirely possible we might be playing them wrong, but in our games, grapple based monsters tend to suck.

The way they generally play out is they grapple/snatch/swallow one PC, apply some damage or status effects to it, while the other PCs wail on the beast with impunity. Unless the monster has a specific ability that says otherwise, they generally need to suck up a large penalty to hold onto the PC with one limb, if they want to make attacks with others. If they don't do this, they lose all (most?) offensive abilities against anyone except the grappled.

It's generally a ticking clock for the rest of the party to smash the monster before the grappled succumbs to damage or lethal status effects - but once you throw in a few power attacks, it almost always comes out in the favour of the PCs.

...at least at our table. Like I said, maybe we're doing it wrong.

[daremetoidareyo]

It's entirely possible we might be playing them wrong, but in our games, grapple based monsters tend to suck.

The way they generally play out is they grapple/snatch/swallow one PC, apply some damage or status effects to it, while the other PCs wail on the beast with impunity. Unless the monster has a specific ability that says otherwise, they generally need to suck up a large penalty to hold onto the PC with one limb, if they want to make attacks with others. If they don't do this, they lose all (most?) offensive abilities against anyone except the grappled.

It's generally a ticking clock for the rest of the party to smash the monster before the grappled succumbs to damage or lethal status effects - but once you throw in a few power attacks, it almost always comes out in the favour of the PCs.

...at least at our table. Like I said, maybe we're doing it wrong.

This is my experience too. Even with our houserule that freedom of movement doesn't affect grapples.

[Arbane]

Just tell everyone you have like 500 phylacteries, and then carry around one phylactery which is all your magic items in one item, so that you can be sure no one destroys it :smallcool:

You could make it a ring or something... maybe it could turn the wearer invisible...

[Beheld]

You could make it a ring or something... maybe it could turn the wearer invisible...

That's pretty pathetic for a Phylactery. I think baseline you are looking at +5 saves, +6 to casting stat, and then a bunch of other effects stacked on from the MiC.

[Inevitability]

That's pretty pathetic for a Phylactery. I think baseline you are looking at +5 saves, +6 to casting stat, and then a bunch of other effects stacked on from the MiC.

It was a reference to the One Ring.

[Beheld]

It was a reference to the One Ring.

I realize that, but aside from the fact that the One Ring only makes Hobbits invisible because they are weak and sneaky and can only use a small amount of the power, and that the Ring doesn't operate to create the new body of Sauron like a Phylactery, my point was that the things that are done by the most powerful characters in Lord of the Rings are weaksauce compared to the minimum of what a 13th level Lich would be expected to do.

[Hunter Noventa]

It's entirely possible we might be playing them wrong, but in our games, grapple based monsters tend to suck.

The way they generally play out is they grapple/snatch/swallow one PC, apply some damage or status effects to it, while the other PCs wail on the beast with impunity. Unless the monster has a specific ability that says otherwise, they generally need to suck up a large penalty to hold onto the PC with one limb, if they want to make attacks with others. If they don't do this, they lose all (most?) offensive abilities against anyone except the grappled.

It's generally a ticking clock for the rest of the party to smash the monster before the grappled succumbs to damage or lethal status effects - but once you throw in a few power attacks, it almost always comes out in the favour of the PCs.

...at least at our table. Like I said, maybe we're doing it wrong.

In my experience grappling monsters usually come in packs or are accompanied by other creatures, that might be part of my problem with it. But the earlier post about it being a frustrating mechanic are correct, because countering it is basically all or nothing.

Thankfully our regular DM has mostly shied away from them.

[jindra34]

In my experience grappling monsters usually come in packs or are accompanied by other creatures, that might be part of my problem with it. But the earlier post about it being a frustrating mechanic are correct, because countering it is basically all or nothing.

Thankfully our regular DM has mostly shied away from them.

My prefered response to grapple monsters when I use to play 3.x was to be really LITTLE. Because the game prevented you from grappling anything more than a certain number of sizes smaller.

[Beheld]

My prefered response to grapple monsters when I use to play 3.x was to be really LITTLE. Because the game prevented you from grappling anything more than a certain number of sizes smaller.


You can only bull rush an opponent who is one size category larger than you, the same size, or smaller.

While I can see how you would make that mistake, I hope you can see, after having it explained, how you were wrong. "one size category" only applies to the larger part, not the entire list. This is really clear, because if you tried to apply it to the second part of the list "one size category the same size" is word salad, and obviously saying a qualification that is in the first entry of the list applies to the first and third but not second does not make grammatical sense.

[ExLibrisMortis]

That's pretty pathetic for a Phylactery. I think baseline you are looking at +5 saves, +6 to casting stat, and then a bunch of other effects stacked on from the MiC.
I just want to point out that this is is pretty cheesy - phylacteries are by RAW made from nonmagical items and can't have additional effects built into them. While you can craft an item that's been temporarily disabled (=nonmagical) into a phylactery, I wouldn't count on that being accepted, because at some point, the phylactery will be illegal (when the dispel wears off).

At that level of cheese, you're not relying on magic items to provide resistance bonuses or ability score bonuses, you're stacking buff spells on top of invisible buff spells on top of even more buff spells, because items are costlier than free spell slots.

[Beheld]

I just want to point out that this is is pretty cheesy - phylacteries are by RAW made from nonmagical items and can't have additional effects built into them. While you can craft an item that's been temporarily disabled (=nonmagical) into a phylactery, I wouldn't count on that being accepted, because at some point, the phylactery will be illegal (when the dispel wears off).

At that level of cheese, you're not relying on magic items to provide resistance bonuses or ability score bonuses, you're stacking buff spells on top of invisible buff spells on top of even more buff spells, because items are costlier than free spell slots.

???????????

I see no rules anywhere that say you can't enchant your phylactery. It's a magic item, and you can add magic effects to other items.

2) The magic item isn't about being a defense for your character. It's about convincing anyone who kills you not to destroy it. If you are killed, but the person who kills you believes you have a bunch of phylacteries stored all around the world, and they pick up a magic item that is worth your entire WBL, they are a lot less likely to break it apart and destroy it, since you know, wouldn't it be nice to have huge bonuses to all your stats and some cool magical effects instead?

[Telok]

I once had a lich's thingy be it's spellbook. Extra large, adamantine covers, and custom spells boosted the value (before enchantment) to over 50k gold pieces. Normally it would have worked fine but the guy playing the party caster in that game had serious ADD and never understood the concept of custom spells or non-monetary value. Since it wasn't a magic item he could immedately use or actual gold he thought it was trash. He gave it to a 5th level npc cleric in a village they passed through on thier way to the big magic university.

They never did pass that way again so I didn't figure out what happened. But there was an old dungeon nearby if I needed it. Or there was the fact that even necromancer liches can still cast illusions.

I still think that the sport/war difference to approaching combat makes a big difference in what's a frustrating encounter. The sport approach tends to start combats at short ranges in an arena like setting with the players not knowing what they'll encounter next. Take 'that dang crab' for instance, a cr... 3? encounter on a beach. In a 'combat as sport' the party walks along a beach, makes spot checks, and the encounter begins with the crab charging out of the surf and grabbing someone. The party then fights the crab in melee with sword and spell which is a TPK. In 'combat as war' the party is mounted because walking everywhere is slow and tiring, so they also have pack animals and/or remounts. The crab has been living here long enough to grow to it's current size so either the local villagers, nearby fishermen, or the sailors that trade along the coast know about it and told the party when they asked about local hazards. Even if the area is totally uninhabited the beach is still littered with the bones and shells of the crab's previous meals. So the party starts off knowing that this is the beach of death and either goes around or sends out an expendable animal to 'scout' for danger. When combat does start it starts beyond charge range, with the party mounted and armed with missile weapons which reduces the fight to "out-think the Int -- huge vermin".

That said there are some critters that are still super annoying even for prepared, combat as war parties. Suprisingly, illithid. At the appropriate CR their mind blast DC is threatening, their spell resistance is really annoying, and if you don't land Dimensional Anchor on the first try they Plane Shift out as a standard action as soon as thier side isn't winning the fight.

[Beheld]

In 'combat as war' the party is mounted because walking everywhere is slow and tiring, so they also have pack animals and/or remounts. The crab has been living here long enough to grow to it's current size so either the local villagers, nearby fishermen, or the sailors that trade along the coast know about it and told the party when they asked about local hazards. Even if the area is totally uninhabited the beach is still littered with the bones and shells of the crab's previous meals. So the party starts off knowing that this is the beach of death and either goes around or sends out an expendable animal to 'scout' for danger. When combat does start it starts beyond charge range, with the party mounted and armed with missile weapons which reduces the fight to "out-think the Int -- huge vermin".

That said there are some critters that are still super annoying even for prepared, combat as war parties. Suprisingly, illithid. At the appropriate CR their mind blast DC is threatening, their spell resistance is really annoying, and if you don't land Dimensional Anchor on the first try they Plane Shift out as a standard action as soon as thier side isn't winning the fight.

I've never read such a compelling demonstration of how everyone who ever says "combat as sport/combat as war" is really just talking about how they think it is the DM's job to go super easy on them and cheat in their favor so they don't lose.

Nothing you listed there is even remotely related to an ability a character actually has, and comes down to "There can't possibly be an enemy based on surprise, the DM has to tell us in advance what we might face!"

[ExLibrisMortis]

???????????

I see no rules anywhere that say you can't enchant your phylactery. It's a magic item, and you can add magic effects to other items.

2) The magic item isn't about being a defense for your character. It's about convincing anyone who kills you not to destroy it. If you are killed, but the person who kills you believes you have a bunch of phylacteries stored all around the world, and they pick up a magic item that is worth your entire WBL, they are a lot less likely to break it apart and destroy it, since you know, wouldn't it be nice to have huge bonuses to all your stats and some cool magical effects instead?
Libris Mortis, page 151, section on Liches, sixth paragraph, second sentence: "A phylactery cannot be part of another magic item, nor may additional magical properties be built into it". You can't add magic item properties to a phylactery, period.

I agree with your second argument in principle, though I'll note it's dangerous if your enemies include an artificer with Retain Essence :smallwink:.

[Beheld]

Libris Mortis, page 151, section on Liches, sixth paragraph, second sentence: "A phylactery cannot be part of another magic item, nor may additional magical properties be built into it". You can't add magic item properties to a phylactery, period.

Yeah I'm just going to ignore the weird nonsense rules from Libris Mortis about Liches, just like I do all the other weird nonsense rules that try to replace all the Core rules. When I want to know how a Lich Works, I open the MM that has Liches in it.

[Draconium]

On topic... The most annoying monsters in the games I play vary widely, bit let's go with one that hasn't been mentioned yet - another PC. You know, when another character makes a stupid decision, or behaves in an aggravating way? Yeah, that gets extremely frustrating. Luckily, it's not too common, at least for me. And I'm not exactly innocent of being the frustrating one, either...

[ExLibrisMortis]

Yeah I'm just going to ignore the weird nonsense rules from Libris Mortis about Liches, just like I do all the other weird nonsense rules that try to replace all the Core rules. When I want to know how a Lich Works, I open the MM that has Liches in it.
If you're going to ignore the rules at will, why even bother posting? At least mention that you're playing core-only...

[Beheld]

If you're going to ignore the rules at will, why even bother posting? At least mention that you're playing core-only...

I'm not ignoring the rules at will, I'm ignoring nonsense rules that contradict the monster entry posted some other place. If somewhere in Unapproachable East it says that Aboleths are really land bound animals instead of sea bound aberrations, that doesn't change anything, because if people want to use an Aboleth, they are going to open up the MM and look at the aboleth.

[Telok]

I've never read such a compelling demonstration of how everyone who ever says "combat as sport/combat as war" is really just talking about how they think it is the DM's job to go super easy on them and cheat in their favor so they don't lose.
I fail to understand you.


Nothing you listed there is even remotely related to an ability a character actually has
"Talk to NPC" isn't an ability that characters have?

[Beheld]

"Talk to NPC" isn't an ability that characters have?

"Use Magic Powers to Force All Monsters to Reveal Themselves to Locals, Even When They Wouldn't" isn't an ability characters have.

Look I get it, you will totally be stomped on if your DM doesn't give you a full list of every single encounter your party will ever face in advance, so your DM does it, that doesn't mean that everyone else is playing the game wrong and you are the one true light in the darkness.

EDIT: Which leads directly into the other issues, like how do you know a monsters entire statblock from a random villager's half remembered description of something he saw a part of once a month ago.

I mean, I have personally written houserules that revamp the knowledge system and rules for figuring out what some random commoner is describing when he doesn't have the knowledge rules, but I have no doubt, as one of the many pretentious "I play Combat as War so I'm better than you" jerks rolling around, you just assume that you get to find all this stuff out from talking to someone who also can't make the knowledge check and would have died if he was ever within 80ft of one. After all, we all know the old adage about how one blind guy touches an elephants left back leg, and yells out "Yep, it's definitely an elephant!" to the other blind guy 100ft away.

[TheCrowing1432]

Drow with clever use of Darkness and their Sleep Poison can be terrifying.

[PraxisVetli]

"Use Magic Powers to Force All Monsters to Reveal Themselves to Locals, Even When They Wouldn't" isn't an ability characters have.

Look I get it, you will totally be stomped on if your DM doesn't give you a full list of every single encounter your party will ever face in advance, so your DM does it, that doesn't mean that everyone else is playing the game wrong and you are the one true light in the darkness.

EDIT: Which leads directly into the other issues, like how do you know a monsters entire statblock from a random villager's half remembered description of something he saw a part of once a month ago.

I mean, I have personally written houserules that revamp the knowledge system and rules for figuring out what some random commoner is describing when he doesn't have the knowledge rules, but I have no doubt, as one of the many pretentious "I play Combat as War so I'm better than you" jerks rolling around, you just assume that you get to find all this stuff out from talking to someone who also can't make the knowledge check and would have died if he was ever within 80ft of one. After all, we all know the old adage about how one blind guy touches an elephants left back leg, and yells out "Yep, it's definitely an elephant!" to the other blind guy 100ft away.

First, I disagree. It's perfectly logical to ask npc's if there are particular hazards that need to be watched for. Something he saw part of once a month ago could still be gigantic, shiny, too many legs, and a giant claw that cut his ox in half before disappearing into the surf. Still plenty of information to encourage scouting and planning with bows. Do you brazenly waltz into dungeons you know are populated with ox-swallowing monsters with research or scouting?

Second, I don't actually know what you're talking about with blind men and elephants.

[Beheld]

First, I disagree. It's perfectly logical to ask npc's if there are particular hazards that need to be watched for. Something he saw part of once a month ago could still be gigantic, shiny, too many legs, and a giant claw that cut his ox in half before disappearing into the surf. Still plenty of information to encourage scouting and planning with bows. Do you brazenly waltz into dungeons you know are populated with ox-swallowing monsters with research or scouting?

Second, I don't actually know what you're talking about with blind men and elephants.

Sometimes it makes sense to ask NPCs sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time when you do, you will get little to zero useful information. Even when you do get useful information, it won't be on every single enemy that exists that you will ever run into. I'm not sure why a coastal village has oxes walking along the beach at all, but honestly, no, nothing about "a monster jumped out of the ocean and ate my ox" tells you that it's a good idea to kite with Mongol Arching, since that requires the creature to be an idiot Vermin (which it is, but "it ate my ox" sure ain't going to tell you that) so that you know it won't just walk back into the water where it lives and can ignore your arrows.

All of this ignores that the crab is a CR 3 monster, so it's one of the four monsters your party is going to run into today, do the villagers also tell you all about the other three that they also don't know about? Do the villagers have anything to say when they haven't conveniently been oxen walking and then were conveniently allowed to escape after it killed their oxen? Like if say, this ocean living creature just happened to show up within the last few days, instead of months ago to give them time to have a convenient run in?

Look, don't get me wrong, I really don't care that they go around asking NPCs about threats. I get mad that they: 1) expect the NPCs to have +1000000 to all knowledge checks, 2) Expect the NPCs to have encountered every enemy they will ever face and lived to tell the tail, 3) have their PCs act as if they all have +10000 knowledge checks, 4) Then condescend to everyone else by telling them how they play D&D like loser casuals who just don't get it, because they would totally have advance knowledge of every fight and take 573 days to kill a Basilisk with their leet tactics of war!, because only filthy casuals just put a blindfold on the Barbarian and point him at the barrow entrance like a sport!

EDIT: Second, there's an old adage about how a bunch of blind people touch an elephant and all think it is a different creature. The point here being that apparently limited information being passed on from random commoners who can't identify the monster, to PCs who can't identify the monster, is somehow enough to identify the monster. IE: Two people who have no idea what they are doing somehow combine to perfect monster knowledge. The reference to the old adage is to emphasize how silly that is.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'm not ignoring the rules at will, I'm ignoring nonsense rules that contradict the monster entry posted some other place.
The Libris Mortis rules do not contradict the Monster Manual. Even if they did, recent publications can and do override older ones. That's how the publication structure is organized. You are ignoring the rules, apparently because they don't suit your argument.

Even if we use MM rules only, which we're not, you can't add effects to a phylactery. Creating a phylactery (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm) requires 120 000 gold, for a market price of 240 000 gold. By the item creation rules, a non-epic item (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/basics.htm) can cost up to 200 000 gp. Phylacteries have an implicit exception, but any additional effects do not. As such, you can't add any effects without also requiring the Craft Epic Wondrous Item feat.

A further reason you couldn't add further enhancements to a phylactery using MIC rules, is that those rules don't work on slotless items, such as phylacteries. Incidentally, the MIC rules on combining magic items 'contradict', or rather, replace the DMG rules, for certain items at least. By your reasoning, we can't use them.
In short: you are selectively 'allowing' rules into the argument, and that's annoying. The baseline is that all rules written are RAW. While nobody is required to know all books by heart, you can at least recognize the RAW when someone provides a direct quote. Doing so doesn't stop us from talking about different possible rulesets and readings. As I wrote, I think it's a good idea to disguise your phylactery as something useful. In fact, that is one of the trends suggested in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?491701-Most-Evil-Phylactery-Hiding-Places), including MaxiDuRarity's suggestion of using a device from Ravenloft to get around the 'no further magic' restriction, any my own of using voidstone (nonmagical DC 25 save versus disintegrate).

[Beheld]

You are ignoring the rules, apparently because they don't suit your argument.

What argument? I made a joke, I don't care at all whether the thing that only ECL 16 level characters willing to blow their entire WBL for a Phylactery item can or can't work. The fact that I'm not going to read a completely different book in order to run a monster is just the basic fact of the game for 99.9999% of GMs.


In short: you are selectively 'allowing' rules into the argument, and that's annoying.

No, I'm "selectively" using the Lich entry to run liches, just like "selectively" use the Glabrezu entry to run Glabrezu and don't go hunting around for the table of random not deaths and then have all my Glabrezu's be immortal, because Fiendish Codex 1 said that Demons never die, and when you kill a Glabrezu, it breaks into a million fine sized Glabrezus that all run off in different directions until they eventually get to the Abyss and reform into that exact same Glabrezu and with all the same memories and thoughts and plans.

That's the point. Monster entries are where you fine the rules for the monsters in question, not offhand sentences in the middle of 36 pages of prose.

[Marlowe]

I've never read such a compelling demonstration of how everyone who ever says "combat as sport/combat as war" is really just talking about how they think it is the DM's job to go super easy on them and cheat in their favor so they don't lose.

Nothing you listed there is even remotely related to an ability a character actually has, and comes down to "There can't possibly be an enemy based on surprise, the DM has to tell us in advance what we might face!"

Funny. I always thought the DMs job was to produce a compelling narrative with the players as the protagonists. Yes, including cheating in their favour so they don't lose if losing means end of game, annoyed players who don't want to play with you anymore, arguments with girlfriend who you dragooned into playing the Barbarian, et al.

If the players don't want to play with you, you don't have a game. And you won't have a game with those people again, most likely.

Coming from a historical wargaming background rather than an RPG one, I have to say; you seem to have the wrong attitude. D&D is not a competitive game, it is a social one.

When I play a historical wargame, my job is to rush my opposite without mercy for the glory of...what was it last? Oh yes, the Wendisch people! When I play D&D as a PC, my job is to be a worthy team member. And when I play as a DM, my job is to put on a show where the PCs are the stars.

There is no point. None. In killing your PCs when DMing. The DM has infinite resources. We all know this. You are not proving anything by not letting your PCs win. Except that you're a poor sport.

[Beheld]

Funny. I always thought the DMs job was to produce a compelling narrative with the players as the protagonists. Yes, including cheating in their favour so they don't lose if losing means end of game, annoyed players who don't want to play with you anymore, arguments with girlfriend who you dragooned into playing the Barbarian, et al.

If the players don't want to play with you, you don't have a game. And you won't have a game with those people again, most likely.

Coming from a historical wargaming background rather than an RPG one, I have to say; you seem to have the wrong attitude. D&D is not a competitive game, it is a social one.

When I play a historical wargame, my job is to rush my opposite without mercy for the glory of...what was it last? Oh yes, the Wendisch people! When I play D&D as a PC, my job is to be a worthy team member. And when I play as a DM, my job is to put on a show where the PCs are the stars.

There is no point. None. In killing your PCs when DMing. The DM has infinite resources. We all know this. You are not proving anything by not letting your PCs win. Except that you're a poor sport.

You seemed to have missed the point. Combat as War is a term invented by pretentious ***** who like to criticize everyone who they don't like for any reason as "Combat as Sport" casuals who are playing on easy mode. So the fact that they are also "casuals who are playing on easy mode" is an ironic turnabout.

I know the DM is always going to present challenges the PCs can beat, it's just that I'd like for that to be based on the DM presenting challenges that PCs can beat, and then the PCs either beat them or not based on using their actual abilities and stuff, including, (and this is where the War/sport thing gets hilarious) actual ability to gather information, and respond to information by Both Sides! of the PCs and the Monsters. Whereas every single person who posts about "Combat as Sport (Booooo Hissssssss) vs Combat as War (Yaaaaa, this one is the right one)" is really very certain that they should be able to just get all the information for the master plan (even if their PC has no way to get that information, or it requires thousands of fortuitous coincidences) while the enemies just aren't allow to gather information and use that information intelligently.

But we are definitely told all the time that "Combat as War is the real true hard mode D&D that is way better than those filthy casuals! But really all styles are acceptable (WINK WINK!)" and so it's funny to see a perfect example of how their thinly disguised criticism of everyone else is actually more accurately applied to them.

[Qc Storm]

Nimblewrights have always kicked ass when they showed up. Being constructs, they have the typical high AC, immunities to nearly everything, and insane SR.

To make things worse, they dual wield rapiers that crit on a 12, which then forces a reflex save or fall prone. Their feats complement their annoying fighting style very well and they have a couple of spells that synergize well with what they do (haste, cat's grace).

Unsurprisingly, they originate from the monster manual 2.

[The Viscount]

In the update they changed it to a slightly better 15-20 crit range, but it's still quite frustrating to fight.

[ATalsen]

I myself am strongly in the Combat as Sport camp, but I do deal with players who seem to have a Combat as War leaning.



Combat as War is a term invented by pretentious ***** who like to criticize everyone who they don't like for any reason as "Combat as Sport" casuals who are playing on easy mode.

Maybe I’ve never seen whatever original your talking aobut, but what I have seen has painted a good picture for me of two opposing styles of play. There is some middle ground to be had, but I note that some of my own conflicts with other players and some of my frustrations with certain games come for the CaW/CaS conflict.



I know the DM is always going to present challenges the PCs can beat, it's just that I'd like for that to be based on the DM presenting challenges that PCs can beat, and then the PCs either beat them or not based on using their actual abilities and stuff, including, (and this is where the War/sport thing gets hilarious) actual ability to gather information, and respond to information by Both Sides! of the PCs and the Monsters.

This part I can and do get behind – I want to use my character sheet to overcome the obstacles. If I build a scout I want to SCOUT and find stuff out (but I better make a damn GOOD scout and add additional resources as I gain levels to counter increasing detection abilities; but that’s part and parcel to being a scout). If I build a meleeist I am going to want to fight toe-to-toe with opponents because that’s what my PC is good at, and that’s what I decided I’d have fun playing.




Whereas every single person who posts about "Combat as Sport (Booooo Hissssssss) vs Combat as War (Yaaaaa, this one is the right one)" is really very certain that they should be able to just get all the information for the master plan (even if their PC has no way to get that information, or it requires thousands of fortuitous coincidences) while the enemies just aren't allow to gather information and use that information intelligently.

And here is where you lose me.

I’m pretty sure that Combat as War people are NOT trying to play on ‘easy mode’ or whatever, I just think they get their fun by outsmarting the DM and/or their opponents. Possibly with an eye to being the most efficient in resource management that they can.


I think Combat as War is a legitimate play style, I just don’t want to be part of a (mostly) Combat as War game.


I don’t mind it when a scout determines what opposition the PCs will face, and thus allows the PCs to come up with a solid plan of engagement tailored perfectly to the abilities the PCs can bring to the fight right now.

I do mind when the plan involves backtracking, hitting town for supplies, or waiting a whole day for the casters to revise their spell selections. If casters want to leave spell slots open to fill in some better choices with a few minutes of down time, that’s awesome, but not a whole day to revise everything.

Combat as War seems to include 2 things that I don’t like:

PCs know what they are going to be facing so they buy gobs of disposables that will negate or trivialize the issues they will face, or otherwise gather resources or support outside of the PCs’ own abilities: resources their PCs do not normally possess.
The PCs come up with ‘logical’ plans to outmaneuver their opponents that do not utilize the rules of the game



(Please forgive me if you do like Combat as War and your play style does not include the above; this is simply my own experience).

Why do I dislike issue #1:
I want to play a particular PC and use that PC’s mechanics to overcome the obstacles presented by the DM. I want my selections of character abilities and class choices to make a difference in how I can overcome those obstacles. If I can gather resources that are NOT part of my character build, and use them to overcome the obstacles, then my character build is meaningless, and it doesn’t matter if I’m playing a Wizard or Fighter.

If the resources that overcomes the obstacle is one that is normally part of the PC, then I don’t have any issue with it, as that PC had to make an opportunity cost based decision on what to buy ahead of time. If a fighter always has a few Fly potions around because they want to be able to engage in melee against flying opponents, then that’s part of their normal resources, and they had to make a choice (opportunity cost) not to pick up some other resource in order to get those potions.

If instead, they can choose not to pick up any resources ahead of time, and retain the cash until they know exactly what they will face, and which resources they need to overcome it, it still costs the cash, but it no longer has the associated opportunity cost of not being able to pick some other item that may also have been useful.

The opportunity cost is more important to me than the cash cost, as cash tends to flow into campaigns pretty rapidly in my experience. If there’s so much cash in the game that there IS no opportunity cost and every character can simply have every needed item, that too is an issue, but a separate one.


Why I dislike issue #2:
If the PCs are making up things outside the rules, again, the choices I’ve made in building by PC are meaningless. [Referring to This forum post (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?317715-Very-Long-Combat-as-Sport-vs-Combat-as-War-a-Key-Difference-in-D-amp-D-Play-Styles)]: A fighter can just as easily dump a bucket of mud on the monk as a wizard can, and if mud solves the problem of ‘bees’ then no PC’s abilities were actually needed to overcome the obstacle.

Now, if a scout came back with reports of two golems, and the wizard – knowing they won’t be able to do much about them with direct spells – suggests using Stone Shape to create a pit, and then an illusion to cover the pit, and have the rogue (good Balance skill to walk along edge of pit) lure the mindless golems to fall into the pit, that’s a plan that uses existing rules and character abilities (and resources) to foil an encounter, instead of any requirement to ad hoc by the DM.

I want to use the mechanics to the game, and of my PC to engage with the game; if something has no mechanics associated with it, then it likely has no mechanical cost to perform. Effectively I feel that attempting to circumvent costs and the rules of the game is a form of cheating and I do not enjoy it.



Nothing you listed there is even remotely related to an ability a character actually has,

"Talk to NPC" isn't an ability that characters have?

My objection is more along the lines of Every PC has the ability to Talk to an NPC, so it’s not a build-choice related ability, and thus *I* want it to have limited impact on how difficult the combats are. Not a zero impact, mind you (NPCs often point you to plotlines and potential complications and that’s a good thing), but I do want my PC’s selected mechanical abilities to count a whole lot more than casual conversation with an NPC does.

I do note that its very much personnel preference on my part!

[Beheld]

Maybe I’ve never seen whatever original your talking aobut, but what I have seen has painted a good picture for me of two opposing styles of play. There is some middle ground to be had, but I note that some of my own conflicts with other players and some of my frustrations with certain games come for the CaW/CaS conflict.

...

I think Combat as War is a legitimate play style, I just don’t want to be part of a (mostly) Combat as War game.


I don’t mind it when a scout determines what opposition the PCs will face, and thus allows the PCs to come up with a solid plan of engagement tailored perfectly to the abilities the PCs can bring to the fight right now.

I do mind when the plan involves backtracking, hitting town for supplies, or waiting a whole day for the casters to revise their spell selections. If casters want to leave spell slots open to fill in some better choices with a few minutes of down time, that’s awesome, but not a whole day to revise everything.

It just really confuses me how you can say things like this and not realize the inherent false dichotomy of the SportvsWar nonsense. I mean their are other problems too that make it even more obviously a false dichotomy, but you should have right here enough to realize that.


And here is where you lose me.

I’m pretty sure that Combat as War people are NOT trying to play on ‘easy mode’ or whatever, I just think they get their fun by outsmarting the DM and/or their opponents. Possibly with an eye to being the most efficient in resource management that they can.

No one ever thinks they are playing on easy mode. All the Fighter lovers just love to talk about how fighters are good enough to keep up with CR (as long as you ban 3/4ths of the monster manual and/or play all the enemies like crippled idiots) and all the combat as war types love to talk about how their genius plans allow them to beat everything (without realizing that all their plans are terrible and require the DM to give them information they have no way to get, and then rely on fortuitous coincidence, and then require all enemies to be idiots, and then require the world to not respond to them in any way and remain frozen forever so that they never have to face more than once enemy per week so they can fit in all their elaborate bull**** plans into each encounter.)

It's just particularly funny to me, because every single person who ever said "Combat as War vs Combat as Sport" is always bringing it up to humble brag about how much better they are then plebs who play as Sport. Like in this thread, or every other thread ever where someone said it.

[ATalsen]

It just really confuses me how you can say things like this and not realize the inherent false dichotomy of the SportvsWar nonsense. I mean their are other problems too that make it even more obviously a false dichotomy, but you should have right here enough to realize that.

I’m not sure where you are coming from with talking about it as a false dichotomy.
Maybe your saying that there’s too much overlap between the categories to make them distinct?

I certainly admit there’s overlap in the middle where you can scout/scry or gather info according to the rules and use some of that (probably imperfect) info to prepare, somewhat, for the upcoming encounter(s).

But CaS/CaW really are extremes on a scale, and since I’m at one extreme end (kick in the door and go, go, go!), I find it useful as a talking tool to describe myself and other player’s styles and how they do or do not mesh, or how they do or do not meet the goals I have in playing a game.

If not CaS/CaW, then what other description of ‘prepare heavily in order trivialize an encounter’ vs ‘enter each encounter with only what you have on hand at the time and try to beat it’ would you suggest. Or are those even valid summaries of CaS/CaW to you?

[Beheld]

I’m not sure where you are coming from with talking about it as a false dichotomy.
Maybe your saying that there’s too much overlap between the categories to make them distinct?

I certainly admit there’s overlap in the middle where you can scout/scry or gather info according to the rules and use some of that (probably imperfect) info to prepare, somewhat, for the upcoming encounter(s).

But CaS/CaW really are extremes on a scale, and since I’m at one extreme end (kick in the door and go, go, go!), I find it useful as a talking tool to describe myself and other player’s styles and how they do or do not mesh, or how they do or do not meet the goals I have in playing a game.

If not CaS/CaW, then what other description of ‘prepare heavily in order trivialize an encounter’ vs ‘enter each encounter with only what you have on hand at the time and try to beat it’ would you suggest. Or are those even valid summaries of CaS/CaW to you?

The point is that it is basically this: "Best Numbers as Four vs Best Numbers as Five. I personally think 5 is the best number. But I know other people think that other numbers like four are the best number. I'm more of a Five than a Four Person.

What your favorite number is 12? You Fourist!"

Sure it is certainly true that many hated Combat as Sportists engage in varying degrees of preplanning. But the main point is that people who actually do prefer their games to be more versimilitude because Enemies can also ****ing make plans, are somehow classified as filthy Combat as Sportists, which renders the entire distinction pointless and misleading. I agree that Combat as War people want their encounters trivialized by some dumb plan they made up in advance of the encounter, but it does not follow that all people who don't want that are the same type of person, that's pretty much literally a textbook false dichotomy.

[ATalsen]

The point is that it is basically this: "Best Numbers as Four vs Best Numbers as Five. I personally think 5 is the best number. But I know other people think that other numbers like four are the best number. I'm more of a Five than a Four Person.

To put it into your numbers parlance, I can acknowledge that “four” is indeed the “best” number for me. And when I meet people who are “five is best”, then I can initiate a dialog to figure out if we can come to an agreement to use “4.5” in our game, or if that won’t work. If I find out instead they are somewhere around 12, then I'm pretty sure that we won't be happy gaming together, regardless.

What I don’t do is assume that “five is BAD” and refuse to discuss it.

To do that kind of thing I have to have some behavior or goal examples to use in the conversation, and CaW/CaS has provided that sort of tool for me.



Thanks to everyone who has been patient with this off topic conversation!

[Beheld]

To put it into your numbers parlance, I can acknowledge that “four” is indeed the “best” number for me. And when I meet people who are “five is best”, then I can initiate a dialog to figure out if we can come to an agreement to use “4.5” in our game, or if that won’t work. If I find out instead they are somewhere around 12, then I'm pretty sure that we won't be happy gaming together, regardless.

What I don’t do is assume that “five is BAD” and refuse to discuss it.

To do that kind of thing I have to have some behavior or goal examples to use in the conversation, and CaW/CaS has provided that sort of tool for me.

You seem to have completely missed my point. If you classify the 12s and the 4s are the same people, then your system is a failure that can only ever produce confusion and bad results. There aren't two types of people, People who want to leverage stupid plans for ultimate victory and "everyone else who doesn't want to do that must be a beer and pretzel's gamer." There are lots of different types of people.

In the other thread discussing this same subject, another post gave two completely different examples off the top of his head.

[daremetoidareyo]

...And thus concludes Gitp's rendition of a performance art piece using the online forum medium entitled,

"The most frustrating monsters to encounter are trolls."

Brilliant performance! It took me a while to notice.

[Thurbane]

...And thus concludes Gitp's rendition of a performance art piece using the online forum medium entitled,

"The most frustrating monsters to encounter are trolls."

Brilliant performance! It took me a while to notice.

:biggrin:

...back to the topic at hand: I would say anything with a Cause Fear (or similar attack) at low levels. The saves are often hard for melee types, and a failed save takes you out of the battle for a significant portion of the fight.

I threw a Nupperibo backed up by some Warrior 1/Adept 1 cultists early in my campaign; the player's got incredibly annoyed at constantly failing the save vs. the Fear Aura. DC 11 is really low, but with the saves of your average level 2 character, fairly easy to fail.

[Calthropstu]

I once threw a fun little combo at PCs in my game.

A mage cast black tentacles, and had 2 minotaur fighters as backup. The minotaurs readied actions to bull rush anyone who came out of the tentacles back into them.
The PCs got extremely frustrated.

[Calthropstu]

...And thus concludes Gitp's rendition of a performance art piece using the online forum medium entitled,

"The most frustrating monsters to encounter are trolls."

Brilliant performance! It took me a while to notice.

See, trolls on the internet result in flame wars because only fire and acid can kill trolls.
I suppose it could theoretically result in acid wars on the internet, but most people who use acid are too loopy to participate.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I'll confirm that Pathfinder robots can be real sluggers. In the last campaign I ran, though, I think PF tooth fairies were what the players hated the most. Hard to hit, do annoying combat maneuvers, and explode upon death. And they're low CR enough so that any encounter with them will be at least 3 or 4.

[Marlowe]

...And thus concludes Gitp's rendition of a performance art piece using the online forum medium entitled,

"The most frustrating monsters to encounter are trolls."

Brilliant performance! It took me a while to notice.

You appear to have missed the point.

[AnachroNinja]

In my experience combat as war is simply a point of view in which the PCs acknowledge the seriousness of the situation and treat every day as being at war and prepare and act cautiously. Combat as a sport always seemed to indicate a more casual mindset, treating each encounter as a seperate battle, taking risks, using HP as a resource, and so forth.

That said, my vote for the monsters are wizards. Can be run well and be crazy dangerous, or done poorly and be pushovers.

[Telok]

I just remembered, bog standard earth elementals can be really annoying if you're locked into zeroing their hit points in a limited area and they aren't run as mindless punching bags. Earthglide and tremorsense let them just punch people in the foot untill they run out of hit points and the only people who can intrinsically avoid that are those who can fly or levitate. On the other hand if you aren't locked into a ground fight they're really east to avoid, outrun, or lure into a different terrain where they can't earthglide.

[Quertus]

Marty Stu, the DMPC. Nothing the PCs do will allow them to successfully oppose a poorly run DMPC.

Nemesis, the arch rival of Marty Stu. Nothing the PCs do will allow them to defeat Nemesis - that's Marty Stu's job. And we're all here to work together to tell a story (the story of how awesome Marty Stu is), right?

Hydra. Combat as Sport* vs Hydra is almost always fatal. Especially when you add in a little min-maxed "shaky" into the mix.

On a related note, 40-headed ancient shadow dragon. I named mine "Void". Oh, you made all 40 saving throws? Then that's only 160 negative levels.

Combat as Sport* vs. Combat as War*. When there is a disconnect between how the two sides are playing, there's likely to be some frustration. Every battle is a TPK, or every battle is a mindless cakewalk, when both sides were expecting some level of reasonable challenge, is gonna lead to frustration. Of course, as an old-school gamer, "you die repeatedly until you learn" sounds to me like the way the game is supposed to be played. ;) Most other play style disconnects are probably frustrating, too, but don't exactly fit this thread**.

As far as CaW/CaS debate... as an old-school gamer, I have a different PoV on things. Combat as War is all there was; if you weren't paranoid and prepared, you died. You died a lot. "Optimization" was that thing smart players did to keep their characters alive. Metagaming and bad role-playing were the bad things people who weren't able to optimize did to keep their characters alive. Anti-optimization and "hard core role-playing" (where you make tactically inferior decisions because "it's what your character would do") were what experienced gamers did to put the game on hard mode, after they had already mastered "easy mode".

Hundreds of my characters died, from insufficient optimization, bad luck, "killer" DMs, etc. A few, like Armus, survived by playing combat as war (and dinner as war, and conversation as war, and shopping as war, and...). But a few, like Quertus, were sufficiently optimized that they could afford to play combat as sport (or, in Quertus' case, "combat as someone else's problem").

So, if anything, it seems like if anyone has room to look down on anyone else, it would be the CaS people looking down on the poor CaW players, who haven't learned how to play the game yet. But, IMO, even that is silly.

* I'm not actually sure if I'm using those terms correctly...

** EDIT: I thought of another disconnect that counts. I'm gonna misname it RAW PCs vs cinematic monsters. It's similar to the Marty Stu problem, in that there is something that the DM cares about too much that they invalidate PC choices; the differance here is that what the DM will cheat for is the story they want to tell. When the monster lasts just long enough that no-one dies, or just long enough that X PCs die, or just long enough to kill the fated-to-die NPC. I'm probably being generous calling it a "disconnect", rather than labeling it a problem with the DM, but whatever.



I once threw a fun little combo at PCs in my game.

A mage cast black tentacles, and had 2 minotaur fighters as backup. The minotaurs readied actions to bull rush anyone who came out of the tentacles back into them.
The PCs got extremely frustrated.

How many of the minotaurs failed their wis DC 5 check, and tried to bull rush the characters who escaped onto the opposite side?

[Beheld]

I love how people jump into and totally pretend this nonsense distinction works without even addressing the discussion in any way.

In the future, I'll be sure to jump into threads and say "I disagree that 1 is a better color than computer. I like both 1 and computer as colors."

[Marlowe]

I love how people jump into and totally pretend this nonsense distinction works without even addressing the discussion in any way.

In the future, I'll be sure to jump into threads and say "I disagree that 1 is a better color than computer. I like both 1 and computer as colors."

To be honest dude, your tangent seemed like a total non-issue that had little to do with the thread and came across like more an excuse for you to imply that other gamers are "pretentious" or "spoiled" or generally lesser people than yourself than anything worthy of interest.

[Calthropstu]

How many of the minotaurs failed their wis DC 5 check, and tried to bull rush the characters who escaped onto the opposite side?

The pc's were trying desperately to get to the next room to stop something bad. They never attempted retreat.

[Calthropstu]

I love how people jump into and totally pretend this nonsense distinction works without even addressing the discussion in any way.

In the future, I'll be sure to jump into threads and say "I disagree that 1 is a better color than computer. I like both 1 and computer as colors."

Nonsense, computer is clearly the superior.

[Beheld]

To be honest dude, your tangent seemed like a total non-issue that had little to do with the thread and came across like more an excuse for you to imply that other gamers are "pretentious" or "spoiled" or generally lesser people than yourself than anything worthy of interest.

I mean, sure **** talk my point all you want, but if someone shows up and types 2/3rds of their post ostensibly about my discussion but in a way that addresses it zero percent, that's still pretty weird.

[Thurbane]

http://i67.tinypic.com/ru9w61.jpg

[Beheld]

I don't know thurbane, I'm guessing you are pretty goddam hungry. If someone doesn't feed you soon, who knows what you'll do.

[Fizban]

Dunno if it's been mentioned, but I'll throw in one for "anything the designers obviously didn't playtest even the slightest." There's the usual suspects from DMG2, but even better are modules throwing around templates willy nilly.

The specific one I have in mind is from Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land, a module that starts at 9th level. Early on you fight a skeletal dragon, no biggie right? A skeletal Ancient dragon, CR 23 before applying a template that supposedly cuts that in half down to "CR 11." It has 34 hit dice and no reduction in strength whatsoever, attacking at +39 and dealing 100+ damage on it's full attack. "Oh who cares, it's melee only just kite it you moron." Difficult to do when the module explicitly states that it's somehow disguised as a tree by a Permanent Image and doesn't move until you show up (and don't try to turn invisible and run away because blindsense). If literally anyone had run that fight as written they would have noticed it was completely nuts, but who needs playtesting when you have perfectly considered formulaic templates? To add insult to injury, the very next fight is against one of the most pathetically weak things I've ever seen, a monster that's in continuous Gaseous Form (from the days before they invented the swarm subtype).

[Ferronach]

I just remembered, bog standard earth elementals can be really annoying if you're locked into zeroing their hit points in a limited area and they aren't run as mindless punching bags. Earthglide and tremorsense let them just punch people in the foot untill they run out of hit points and the only people who can intrinsically avoid that are those who can fly or levitate. On the other hand if you aren't locked into a ground fight they're really east to avoid, outrun, or lure into a different terrain where they can't earthglide.

This reminds me of my loathing of a number of the elementals and perhaps the even more irritating mephits... I seem to recall getting swarmed by mephits a time or two and having to continuously roll save or suck rolls...

[Thurbane]

I remember an encounter we had in EttRoG with a bunch of Bar-lgura skeletons that were made with the feat where they explode in a negative energy burst when destroyed. The blasts damaged the PCs and healed the other Skeletons. We had no Cleric and no proteciton from negative energy. It was a few years ago, but I'm pretty sure we had at least one party death from that one (to be fair, probably us being unprepared and un-optimized more to blame than the actual monsters). Our party was a real mishmash: Dwarf Fighter, Deep Dwarf Monk, Halfling Druid, Goblin Beguiler (was a Grey Elf before a Reincarnate) and a Human Dragon Shaman (me).

Similar circs with a near TPK fighting a Cleric (or maybe FS?) in RHoD who had the spell up that makes them explode when you kill them. I kinda hate that spell, since it's pretty much something only an NPC would ever use. Same with the Final Strike feat from Savage Species.

[Inevitability]

I once had the party fight some undead goblins. The fight itself was easy, but the location was what made it tricky.

The party fought the goblins on an immobile boat amidst a river infused with negative energy. One or two failed to reach the ship and fell into the river, where they took negative energy damage each turn and had to make swim checks (everyone failed) or be swept away from the party. When they finally managed to grab hold of the riverside, they had to climb back up. Once more, everyone failed the checks, with one even falling back into the water.

The encounter frustrated everyone but the dragonborn mongrelfolk dragonfire adept, who had a flying mount, and the dwarven cleric, who had tomb-tainted soul and proclaimed the river 'his jacuzzi'.

[Wolfkingleo]

Well to be honest, the first true disapointing encounter that my main group faced was a yuan-ti at lvl 3. Sure he was the "BBEG" of the moment and his stats were homebrewed to fit such role, but his charming abilities nearly made me want to drown my character.

In a encounter that we had a chance to kill him solo, my party (myself being a swordsage, a cleric, my fiancee rogue, a sorcerer and a druid) had him pinned in a small ship ready to be crushed, however he charmed (one throught spell another by racial ability) both me and the druid and set us on the team. So here is how it ended:

a) I killed the sorcerer with a single blow using my desert wind mannuever (plus started a discussion if Swordsage is balanced, and it was a nightmare to prove otherwise since my group and myself are composed by casual players)
b) The druid nearly got everyone killed by his summons, and then was knocked out himself
c) The annoying Yuan-ti left the place laughting as it was his birthday
d) The Cleric was the one who saved the adventure (DM itself was worried that the entire party could be killed by themselves)

In the end, few sessions later, I was able to avenge myself by flanking with my fiancee the stupid Yuan-ti, and we had a good grinding time making him suffering for this little game (I'm true neutral and she is Chaotic Neutral) and man, that felt good!

Cheers

[FearlessGnome]

Charm effects do not cause you to turn on your party. They make you consider the caster a good friend. So the character might want to stop you from killing you best buddy uncle Doom, but it most certainly doesn't make you summon monsters to butcher your other friends.

Either the DM was using Dominate Person (in which case the baddie is at least level 9), or he seriously misunderstands how Charm Person works.


This charm makes a humanoid creature regard you as its trusted friend and ally (treat the target’s attitude as friendly). If the creature is currently being threatened or attacked by you or your allies, however, it receives a +5 bonus on its saving throw.

The spell does not enable you to control the charmed person as if it were an automaton, but it perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way. You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do. (Retries are not allowed.) An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing.

[LordOfCain]

May I say the Emerald Legion is the most annoying?

[Thurbane]

Either the DM was using Dominate Person (in which case the baddie is at least level 9), or he seriously misunderstands how Charm Person works.

Have to say, this particular misunderstanding of how Charm works is more common than you'd think.

[Telok]

Have to say, this particular misunderstanding of how Charm works is more common than you'd think.

Part of the problem is that it keeps changing. In the TSR era it started out more like the dominate, I'd have to check the books to see what it ended up as in 2e AD&D. In 3e it's "friend" level, 4e splattered charm into a dozen different short term or one round duration effects, 5e has it prevent the charmed critter from attacking the caster. So anyone who has played several versions of D&D is pretty easy to confuse on how charm magic works at any one time.

[Inevitability]

May I say the Emerald Legion is the most annoying?

Depends on whether they have the full backing of a mind flayer cabal with full manifesting, as the build would suggest.

If they don't, they're bags of HP and immunities, but you can still imprison, flee, or otherwise avoid them, then leisurely prepare a way to take care of them permanently.

If they do, you're dead, because anything would die to three optimized high-level StP erudites.

[weckar]

Doppelgangers can be some of the most destructive creatures... to a gaming group, I mean.

[Calthropstu]

Have to say, this particular misunderstanding of how Charm works is more common than you'd think.

Don't remind me.

I had charmed the enemy leader, and had to argue about whether or not that leader would call off the assault on us. Stupid charm person and it's supreme vague rules.

[weckar]

Don't remind me.

I had charmed the enemy leader, and had to argue about whether or not that leader would call off the assault on us. Stupid charm person and it's supreme vague rules.

Actually, when Charm says 'threatened', do they mean on the grid or general hostile action? :smallconfused:

[Marlowe]

[Hand up]

Good sirs, ladies; might I ask what the frell is the Emerald Legion? Because I keep seeing references to it here and there but nobody ever says what it is, and all I can get on google are other old threads where people refer to it without ever explaining what it is.

[FearlessGnome]

[Hand up]

Good sirs, ladies; might I ask what the frell is the Emerald Legion? Because I keep seeing references to it here and there but nobody ever says what it is, and all I can get on google are other old threads where people refer to it without ever explaining what it is.

It's this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?101587-D-amp-D-3-5-The-Emerald-Legion-Mass-Producing-Ikea-Tarrasques) abomination. It's special bred to be immune to almost everything, and it cheats the action economy by having Mind Flayers controlling it and casting psionics through it. Basically, if an adventuring party stumbles upon one, the only thing they will reasonably have prepared to deal with it is Wish to teleport it far, far away from them.

[Marlowe]

Thank you. I found that thread, but thought it was just a reference to something these "Emerald Legion" guys were doing, rather than what they were. The explanation of where the name comes from is buried half-way down the second spoiler.

The way some mention it it made me think it was something official.

[illyahr]

It's forum-official, Marlowe. That's almost as good as official. Better than official, in some cases. Take this very thread for example: do you really think the "official" publications knew what they were doing on some of these creatures? :smallbiggrin:

So does this thread mean monsters only, or can we discuss templates also?

[daremetoidareyo]

It's forum-official, Marlowe. That's almost as good as official. Better than official, in some cases. Take this very thread for example: do you really think the "official" publications knew what they were doing on some of these creatures? :smallbiggrin:

So does this thread mean monsters only, or can we discuss templates also?

go for it.

[Inevitability]

If templates are okay, I'd like to mention Umbral. It's like a shadow, except the variety of possible base creatures ensures you won't be able to create a single strategy against these as easily.

[illyahr]

Well let's start with the Corrupted template from the Book of Vile Darkness. Boosts to Str and Con with minor penalties to Dex, Wis, and Cha. Boost to natural armor, scaling DR with HD, damage dice of natural attacks increases one size with partial vile damage, fast healing, increased DC for special attacks. All with scaling CR from +1-3 based off of HD.

All with no listed Level Adjustment. Not LA: -, it doesn't even have a Level Adjustment entry.

[Ferronach]

Well let's start with the Corrupted template from the Book of Vile Darkness. Boosts to Str and Con with minor penalties to Dex, Wis, and Cha. Boost to natural armor, scaling DR with HD, damage dice of natural attacks increases one size with partial vile damage, fast healing, increased DC for special attacks. All with scaling CR from +1-3 based off of HD.

All with no listed Level Adjustment. Not LA: -, it doesn't even have a Level Adjustment entry.

I think that this is one of the reasons for the disclaimer at the beginning of the book. The one called "HIDE THIS BOOK!" which says that the book is for DMs only.
As if that ever stopped anyone...

[ExLibrisMortis]

Well let's start with the Corrupted template from the Book of Vile Darkness. Boosts to Str and Con with minor penalties to Dex, Wis, and Cha. Boost to natural armor, scaling DR with HD, damage dice of natural attacks increases one size with partial vile damage, fast healing, increased DC for special attacks. All with scaling CR from +1-3 based off of HD.

All with no listed Level Adjustment. Not LA: -, it doesn't even have a Level Adjustment entry.
BoVD is 3.0 - it doesn't incorporate the LA mechanic. The template does add 1-3 CR, which seems fair.

[illyahr]

BoVD is 3.0 - it doesn't incorporate the LA mechanic. The template does add 1-3 CR, which seems fair.

It means that a 1 HD badger has damage reduction 10/magic, fast healing 10, Str 12 Dex 15 Con 19 (before raging), and does a point of Vile damage (which cannot be healed without a remove curse or better) with each attack. Has a pair of +3/1d3+1 Claw attacks and a -2/1d4 Bite attack. AC of 17. It also has Darkvision 60 and Immunity to Acid (incidental at this level).

This is a CR 1 creature.

[ExLibrisMortis]

It means that a 1 HD badger has damage reduction 10/magic, fast healing 10, Str 12 Dex 15 Con 19 (before raging), and does a point of Vile damage (which cannot be healed without a remove curse or better) with each attack. Has a pair of +3/1d3+1 Claw attacks and a -2/1d4 Bite attack. AC of 17. It also has Darkvision 60 and Immunity to Acid (incidental at this level).

This is a CR 1 creature.
Uh, no? A 1 HD creature gets no fast healing, no vile damage, and no DR. A 2 HD creature would get fast healing 1, +1 vile damage, and still no DR.

[illyahr]

Uh, no? A 1 HD creature gets no fast healing, no vile damage, and no DR. A 2 HD creature would get fast healing 1, +1 vile damage, and still no DR.

Ah, ok. The source I was using had it listed wrong.

Still kinda sucks that something can deal vile damage that much earlier than the party can heal it.

[Willie the Duck]

Ah, ok. The source I was using had it listed wrong.

Still kinda sucks that something can deal vile damage that much earlier than the party can heal it.

Well, that's the problem with templates in general--what they provide (and thus what they should do to CRs) can really vary in potency depending on what you attach them to.

[Thurbane]

I could be wrong, but I think Corrupted was superseded by Corrupted by the Abyss (EttDP)? It changed it quite a bit.

[SirNMN]

I can't think of anything specific at the moment, but every time I've encountered something Large Size or greater that uses any kind of grapple I just want to burn the book it comes from. Before you have access to freedom of Movement, being grappled by something focused on it is inevitable. The only counter is Freedom of Movement, because you can't build your character to grapple, you're too small. Between size bonuses, strength bonuses, and not needing to be good at anything else, monsters cheat at grappling. End of Line.

No they don't I built an all out grapple build drove my DM nuts as he tried to find a CR appropriate way to counter it

Start with a 18 strength apply voidmind template + 4 strength and improved grab Grapple trait brawler, Aberration Blood (Flexible Limbs) Jotunbrud
2 level of Barbarian bear totem improved grapple
Wizard 2 for enlarge person + 6 CL 2 Octopus familiar
half elf paragon 3 + 2 strength Bab +2 +Weapon Focus grapple CL 3 pick up balor nimbus
+ Human paragon 3 + 2 strength bab + 2 CL 5
effective level 13 Grapple + 46 - 48
ending equipped with Weapon graft greatsword bow
Gloves of the titan’s grip upgraded to at will
Belt of strength + 6
luck blade 0 wishs reroll a day
I think I had another graft that boosted strength not sure what
immunity to acid and mind-affecting spells and abilities, ability damage, ability drain, and energy drain.
DR 5/ magic
SR 10 + hd
leaving me to do constrict damage and a weapon attack with my natural weapon graft 2d6 + 12 and constrict 1d6 + 18 and burning for 6d6 damage around in combat

[awa]

that build clearly has things that come after accesses to freedom of movement (aka level 7)
and just becuase a focused grapple build can handle grapples does not mean a normal character can.

Your average mid level fighter is in for a real rough spot against a focused grapple monster

[SirNMN]

that build clearly has things that come after accesses to freedom of movement (aka level 7)
and just because a focused grapple build can handle grapples does not mean a normal character can.

Your average mid level fighter is in for a real rough spot against a focused grapple monster

your right it started level 4 and went to level 13. I was trying to make the point that grapple builds could be built on an even basis or even in the players favor, and with my touch of casting I could do other things as well.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Living Love's Pain. Fight an ooze, discover afterwards everyone you ever loved is dead.

Does the fact my immediate response to this was to giggle make me a bad person?


Actually, when Charm says 'threatened', do they mean on the grid or general hostile action? :smallconfused:

WotC is never clear in these things. I'd lean quite heavily toward the "in general" reading but YMMV, so ask your DM.