Petals: A CR discussion

[Albions_Angel]

First up, yes, we all know CR is broken.

Now thats out of the way:

The Petal. A CR 1 tiny fey from MMIII. I am heavily questioning the CR.

A petal has 5 hp with DR 5/Cold Iron. It attacks with a dagger, hitting reliably and dealing 1 damage. And only one damage. It has 17 AC so is quite hard to hit. And it can sing, putting people to sleep with a DC 14 (12 if they also use lullaby).

But even so, a typical party of level 1 adventurers probably has at least one elf and its not hard for such a party to hit AC 17. Most weapons at level one do about 5 damage on average. Basically, the petal doesnt pose much of a threat and does get hit a lot. But I can see an inexperienced party expending 1/4 of their resources to bring it down.

The thing is, adding another petal doesnt seem to make the combat twice as hard. In fact, I could add a whole bunch and the CR doesnt seem to go up much, so long as at least a couple of the party either save vs sleep or are immune.

Meanwhile, a cr 1/3 dog not only poses a far greater risk (potentially being able to kill in one hit), but adding more of them quickly ramps up the challenge. Dogs are smart enough to use some tactics so its reasonable for them to surround targets and use flank and such. The petals can do the same but its still just one damage each.

What does the playground think? Is one petal appropriately CRed? Given petals fairly unique ability of stacking songs to increase the DC, but not really improving their combat ability, should their CR scale slower?

[Inevitability]

It's significantly harder to deal 5 points of damage at range, and the petal has flight.

[Albions_Angel]

The petal has to also get into range to hit you though, and they dont get Flyby Attack.

[Deadline]

The petal has to also get into range to hit you though, and they dont get Flyby Attack.

Except they don't. They have their sleep song. So they'd sing to put you to sleep. If successful, then they'd move in for the kill, assuming you've done something that makes Petals want to kill you. Also, there doesn't appear to be a reason they couldn't employ ranged weapons if they wanted to.

[Quertus]

Ok, 7th level party, make 8 will saves, DC 14. That sounds like it could easily result in a TPK.

EDIT: never mind, their effect follows sleep's HD limit, doesn't it?

[killem2]

All I can input on this is, we had a player character who started life as a level 3 petal psion and she had a rough time staying alive.

[Albions_Angel]

Ok, 7th level party, make 8 will saves, DC 14. That sounds like it could easily result in a TPK.

Thats not how it works. If more than one sings, their songs combine and just bump the SINGLE DC. So its 7th level party (which has no immunity to sleep, no boost to wis and no elves apparently) makes a SINGLE will save, DC 22. Now that is a high DC, but lets take an average caster. At level 7, they have a +5 base bonus to Will saves. Maybe they have dumped Wis. If its a Druid, then you have their wis on top of that, + stat increasing items, + racial bonuses, they could easily have +10 or more to Will. At +12, they make the save 50% of the time, assuming no other resistance. Thats therefore an 18 in Wis and a +4 Wis item. Other wis casters will be at a similar level. And thats without high Op.

And there is still that Elf problem.

EDIT: Just saw your edit, yes, yes it does I believe. At least it says "as though by the sleep spell" and then does not have anything specific about HD, so it must follow the rules. It also requires 2 just to start sleep. So one petal cant even put you to sleep!

[sleepyphoenixx]

All I can input on this is, we had a player character who started life as a level 3 petal psion and she had a rough time staying alive.
That has a lot more to do with the +2 LA and the fact that low level casters are notoriously squishy than with the petal race in particular.


Thats not how it works. If more than one sings, their songs combine and just bump the SINGLE DC. So its 7th level party (which has no immunity to sleep, no boost to wis and no elves apparently) makes a SINGLE will save, DC 22. Now that is a high DC, but lets take an average caster. At level 7, they have a +5 base bonus to Will saves. Maybe they have dumped Wis. If its a Druid, then you have their wis on top of that, + stat increasing items, + racial bonuses, they could easily have +10 or more to Will. At +12, they make the save 50% of the time, assuming no other resistance. Thats therefore an 18 in Wis and a +4 Wis item. Other wis casters will be at a similar level. And thats without high Op.

It's really not good balancing to go "oh, but the guys with the highest will saves in the game make it 50% of the time". Because that means that every non-wisdom caster will fail at least 75% of the time, with non-casters having it even worse.
That's not "this isn't that bad", that's TPK territory if your wisdom caster (most parties only have one, if that) fails his 50/50 roll and the rest don't get very lucky.

[Troacctid]

Petals don't try to kill you. They put you to sleep and then pat themselves on the back for giving you some much-needed rest. They're not a lethal encounter on their own; they're supposed to be used in concert with other dangers, because they don't understand that you could get ambushed in your sleep or whatever. This is mentioned in the monster entry.

[Albions_Angel]

Thats a fair point. I suppose when you look at it that way, its not that a Petal is a CR1 encounter. Its a +CR2 (because you need 2 of them) to an existing encounter. They are basically a way of either taking out part of the party or guaranteeing a coup de grace from another monster.

[weckar]

Considering any standard race with a single class level in anything is also CR1... I can see Petals being CR1.
Keep in mind that the CR system is based on having to spread your resources on 4 daily encounters (something that in my experience actually rarely happens).

[Khedrac]

Also - there are plenty of other Glass Cannons in D&D. The monsters with one big "I win" ability that if you survive it are easy to take down.
(I was looking at cranium rat swarms, a psionic blast stun effect, lots of casting, high swarm damage and a decent distraction save - all very nasty for CR9. Oh, and 24 hit points, so one 5th level fireball will kill them on average damage if they fail their save.)

Petals just come down to "do you fall asleep or not?"