jmax
2018-05-19, 04:39 PM
As I go through the monster manuals to add new cheese options to my Shapechange Handbook (https://docs.google.com/document/d/127el4KqlL2ALu1chZ9WLPGFOu1InVTJ2pmxAmYAARbE/edit), I keep an eye out for monsters that would make for interesting, level-appropriate encounters in the campaign my wife runs. Today I came across something that looks really fantastic: Monster Manual III's Ragewalker (p132), a living incarnation of the essence of war. It is to war and combat as nymphs are to beauty and dryads are to trees.
Just about everything here is perfect. It would be a very difficult (but not impossible) encounter with a lot of interesting tension and flavor. It's the right challenge for the party. It's a little light on hit points, but we routinely have to fix that anyway. It definitely has the potential to be a memorable encounter.
But at CR 14 it also has a standard treasure value of 17,000 gp despite being equipped with a +5 spiked chain. The chain alone is worth 50,325 gp. How are we supposed to handle that?
The easy answer is to bump up the Ragewalker's Strength and Dexterity to increase its attack and damage rolls and drop the spiked chain to a more reasonable enhancement bonus. But obviously that can't be the intended way to run every monster with equipment, so what's the correct way to handle the loot on something like this? (I loathe the balor concept of guaranteeing that highly desirable loot is automatically destroyed when you beat a monster.)
Just about everything here is perfect. It would be a very difficult (but not impossible) encounter with a lot of interesting tension and flavor. It's the right challenge for the party. It's a little light on hit points, but we routinely have to fix that anyway. It definitely has the potential to be a memorable encounter.
But at CR 14 it also has a standard treasure value of 17,000 gp despite being equipped with a +5 spiked chain. The chain alone is worth 50,325 gp. How are we supposed to handle that?
The easy answer is to bump up the Ragewalker's Strength and Dexterity to increase its attack and damage rolls and drop the spiked chain to a more reasonable enhancement bonus. But obviously that can't be the intended way to run every monster with equipment, so what's the correct way to handle the loot on something like this? (I loathe the balor concept of guaranteeing that highly desirable loot is automatically destroyed when you beat a monster.)