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Rolaran
2007-11-24, 01:48 AM
Hello!

Alright. I have in my hand the kind of "blank check" for which many homebrewers would give an arm and a leg. My players have inadvertently unleashed a horde of unspeakable horrors from the Far Realm onto the Prime Material. Although the PCs have made no attempts to fight the creatures so far, they have since heard that just one of the creatures is capable of destroying a small town. If the party encounters one of these things at their current level (which is averaging 5-ish), it will be strongly hinted that they should flee; in a few levels, I want them to be able to take one down with careful planning and a bit of help.

However, I have decided to homebrew the creatures in question, and I often have trouble judging how tough a certain creature will be.

So, I ask those older and wiser than I in the ways of balance: what CR should I be shooting for to make a single example of the creature
a. extremely dangerous at level 5,
b. tough but doable a few levels after that, and
c. something that could stomp a village into dust and survive?

p.s. I apologize if this should be in the other forum, feel free to move it if that is the case.

VerdugoExplode
2007-11-24, 01:54 AM
Anything that is nigh invulnerable but with a specific weakness would work pretty well. If it has damage reduction 15/something strange. With that much damage reduction a village wouldn't have a chance, and most characters wouldn't either. Once they discover the weakness it should be much easier to deal with. You could do the same thing but with an immensely high fast healing trait.

The PC's will probably get stomped in the first encounter but after discovering whatever bypasses the reduction or stops the healing it makes the encounter significantly easier.

Emperor Tippy
2007-11-24, 01:55 AM
How good are your players and what classes are they?

Quietus
2007-11-24, 02:13 AM
How good are your players and what classes are they?

This is definitely the most important question here. On, say, a scale of 1-10, 1 being "Couldn't optimize their way out of a paper bag" and 10 being "Nothing short of batman and CoDzilla", where are your players at? That'll come heavily into play here.

Rolaran
2007-11-24, 02:26 AM
The characters who show up more or less every time are:

A duskblade, level 5. Not very well optimized. Tends to use his 1st level fire spell until he runs out of slots, then buffs himself and goes into melee.
A rogue, also level 5. Reasonably well optimized. Usually moves to flank, then continually attacks.
A cleric of Olidamarra, also level 5. Fairly poorly optimized. Plays like a fighter, wading into melee, then using his magic almost entirely for heals after the fight.
And a human monk/fighter, level 4. Rolled very well on stats, and is as optimized as a monk/fighter can get.

(Some of you may recognize this party from an earlier thread)

Also, the party doesn't have a whole lot of spectacular magic stuff; basically they all have +1 or masterwork weapons, and a couple of +1 protection rings.

Also also, the fluff for the monster is that it hates sentient life, so its main offensive ability will be a strong intelligence debuff (leaving anyone who melees it for too long at subsentient intelligence). For defense, I was thinking good AC from Natural Armor + Deflection bonus. I like the idea of fast healing, I'll have to look into that.

Yami
2007-11-24, 02:45 AM
My suggestion would be a will save based fear effect. At first contact, I doubt the players would be prepared for that, and if things go poorly, they are already fleeing. Then, when they level up a bit, the DC might be more manageable, and the two spellcasters should have reaserched ways to keep the frontline where they should be. (Huzzah for counter mindbending!)

And yeah, few towns last long whilest routing.

Perhaps a coupled low end DR and fast healing might work better than just one or the other. Every attack looses just a bit of punch, and the small hits just get healed. You might not even need a large AC. Works well on one of the creatures I've come to loath in a game I'm in. Cold Iron is a good DR type to throw on. Cold Iron weapons are rather cheap, (though the magical one's aren't) and yet are probably not something your party carries. Also, fire is a fairly common energy type to have resistance against, so if you go with fast healing I would council requiring acid to stop it. Or Cold, if you want to be odd, but it would be horribly metagaming to keep fire from being a bane.

One thing I'd suggest though, is a slow movement speed coupled with a ranged attack of some sort. In this way the party can still run early on, but wont be able to just down these things from range once they get started on the cleansing.

Good luck and let us know how it goes down.

The_Blue_Sorceress
2007-11-24, 05:20 AM
The characters who show up more or less every time are:

A duskblade, level 5. Not very well optimized. Tends to use his 1st level fire spell until he runs out of slots, then buffs himself and goes into melee.
A rogue, also level 5. Reasonably well optimized. Usually moves to flank, then continually attacks.
A cleric of Olidamarra, also level 5. Fairly poorly optimized. Plays like a fighter, wading into melee, then using his magic almost entirely for heals after the fight.
And a human monk/fighter, level 4. Rolled very well on stats, and is as optimized as a monk/fighter can get.

(Some of you may recognize this party from an earlier thread)

Also, the party doesn't have a whole lot of spectacular magic stuff; basically they all have +1 or masterwork weapons, and a couple of +1 protection rings.

Also also, the fluff for the monster is that it hates sentient life, so its main offensive ability will be a strong intelligence debuff (leaving anyone who melees it for too long at subsentient intelligence). For defense, I was thinking good AC from Natural Armor + Deflection bonus. I like the idea of fast healing, I'll have to look into that.


Eeesh. Have you suggested viable alternatives to his usual tactics to the Duskblade's player or the Cleric's player? Throw them up against a member of one of those classes and play the villain well (not cheesily well though, you don't want to trounce them.) A few fights like that ought to make them rethink their tactics, which will probably make the game a lot more fun for everyone, and will also prepare the necessary tactical acumen they'll need to take on one of your nasty beasties.

As for your monster, a Far Realm critter is very Cthulu-esque, which suggests to me that maybe they ought to debuff Wisdom as well as Intelligence, leaving its oppenent as mad as itself as well as dumb as a rock. You'll want to lower the damage die or number, if it's a static amount. You probably won't have to lower it much, since once you've lost enough Int to have the score of a moose, your Wis is more or less superfluous (except for making Will saves) and visa versa.

Give the critter enough HD to keep it in line, HP-wise with other meleers of the appropriate challenge rating, and adjust to see how that amount works with its other abilities. I wouldn't suggest using damage reduction and fast healing on the same monster until higher level. Pick one or the other. Damage reduction 10/magic should do the trick, or go by the damage reduction you see in other Far Realm monsters of the approproate CR. In fact, when in doubt, reference other monsters that you think are fairly well balanced and would present th desired challange to your party and guage your own creation against them in terms of how much of a challenge it poses.

Good luck,
-Blue

Rolaran
2007-11-24, 10:45 AM
Thanks everyone for your help!

Based on your advice, I gave it regeneration bypassed by something the party doesn't currently have (but could acquire easily enough), a slow speed, and a ranged attack with a built-in fear effect (also gave it tracking, just to keep the PCs on the run for a while :smallbiggrin:.) It ended up being CR 12, and seems more or less on a par with a young adult dragon- it doesn't do as much damage per round as a dragon, but the fight will only go downhill if it's not killed quickly.

Linky linky... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64407)