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Lyinginbedmon
2008-04-28, 08:40 AM
The Hellfire Engine is a construct from Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells, a CR 19 Huge construct made by Mephistopheles in Cania, the 8th Layer.

Now, as a product of Mephisto, the Hellfire Engine heavily incorporates hellfire, another of his inventions which, whilst fiery, bypasses immunity and resistance to fire, and deals full damage to objects.

HE is fairly slow, with a speed of 20 ft. It has a normal AC of 37, a touch AC of 7, and no change in it's flat-footed AC. In addition, -1 Initiative, DR 15/adamantine and good weapons, the typical array of Construct immunities, and then acid, electricity, and sonic resistance 10. Vulnerable to cold, and starts with 282 HP, with fairly average saving throws owing to it's 44 HD.

Now, alone, that doesn't seem to dangerous. But HE has some pretty big bonii bonuses. Firstly, it's natural weapons count as cold iron for damage reduction. Then, it deals 6d6 hellfire damage with both of it's slam attacks, and to anyone that grapples or attacks it in melee, though only once per turn so you can conceivably attack it 4 times with a full-attack and only take the damage once. When it's destroyed, it explodes in a 60 ft. radius dealing 20d10 unnamed damage (Reflex 32 for half damage).

My major point of contention with HE is that breath weapon. A 60 ft. cone every 1d4 rounds, that deals 20d10 unnamed damage, with another Reflex 32 for half damage.

So, let's put up a 19th level Barbarian with a pretty invested Constitution of 22. That's 19d12+(19*6) HP or on average, 237.5 HP. Let's say that HE uses the breath weapon on this Barbarian, he takes 20d10 damage, an average of 110 damage, 55 on a successful saving throw. That's almost half his hit point total, or almost a quarter on a save. And guess what, HE gets to use it again in, on average, 2.5 rounds. The Barbarian is doomed.

Then let's assume a range character, someone able to take advantage of the HE's weakness to cold. A spellcaster, clearly. At 19th level, 9th level spells are available, and the SR 29 is beaten 50% of the time. The highest-level cold spell in Core is Polar Ray, dealing 19d6 damage. Spell Resistance and Touch attack, with the benefit that HE takes 1.5 times the normal damage. Close range, the spellcaster gets 70 ft. away and fires, dealing 1.5*19d6 damage, or on average 99.75 damage, 35% of HE's HP. HE then takes a single move action, and uses his breath weapon, against which the spellcaster is fairly done for.

But there's some solace, because eventually the rays will bring it down, assuming the spellcaster fires the spell and takes a 30 ft. move action away from it each time. 3 Polar Rays later and it's down for the count, again on average.

This seems pretty darn unbalanced to me. A Sor/Wiz from Core beats it in 3 rounds, but a melee character from Core loses horribly. Is anyone else noticing this?

AmberVael
2008-04-28, 08:48 AM
This seems pretty darn unbalanced to me. A Sor/Wiz from Core beats it in 3 rounds, but a melee character from Core loses horribly. Is anyone else noticing this?

Hey, this sounds like a theory that people on the boards have been batting around for years.
Except it doesn't just apply to Hellfire Engines. :smalltongue:

Nebo_
2008-04-28, 11:09 PM
Two things:

1. D&D is a team game. You should be measuring how effective a party is against this thing, not individual characters.

2. The CR system is whack. Don't let it bother you.

The Necroswanso
2008-04-28, 11:22 PM
Both of their answers are correct.
D&D is an unbalanced poorly scripted Team game. You have to treat it as such. CR is really 50% of the time higher or lower than it should be. It's never truly accurate.

monty
2008-04-28, 11:30 PM
The question is: would that damn crab beat it (if you boosted it to the same CR)?

Collin152
2008-04-28, 11:37 PM
bonii

You exist purely to drive me to insanity, don't you!
My brain can not, will not, contain this madness!
I must receive an exorcism!
No time!
Bring me hence yon knife, that I may scatter my thougths hither and thither!

Seriously, to avoid driving people insane, don't say that.

Mewtarthio
2008-04-28, 11:44 PM
The question is: would that damn crab beat it (if you boosted it to the same CR)?

No. That Damn Crab is so evil that Asmodeus himself would smash the Hellfire Engine himself as a peace offering.

SurlySeraph
2008-04-29, 12:39 AM
You exist purely to drive me to insanity, don't you!
My brain can not, will not, contain this madness!
I must receive an exorcism!
No time!
Bring me hence yon knife, that I may scatter my thougths hither and thither!

Seriously, to avoid driving people insane, don't say that.

THE HORDES OF LATINATE GRAMMAR MARCH UPON YOU! :smalltongue:

Stycotl
2008-04-29, 12:57 AM
bonii


You exist purely to drive me to insanity, don't you!
My brain can not, will not, contain this madness!
I must receive an exorcism!
No time!
Bring me hence yon knife, that I may scatter my thougths hither and thither!

Seriously, to avoid driving people insane, don't say that.

if i could give you guys rep points on this forum, i would. but alas, we're using a repless system.

a virtual clap on the back will have to do.

aaron out.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-29, 01:35 AM
THE HORDES OF LATINATE GRAMMAR MARCH UPON YOU! :smalltongue:

But isn't bonus the adjective? The noun is bonum or something? What's the correct plural for that?

Reel On, Love
2008-04-29, 01:37 AM
This seems pretty darn unbalanced to me. A Sor/Wiz from Core beats it in 3 rounds, but a melee character from Core loses horribly. Is anyone else noticing this?

Welcome to D&D.

SurlySeraph
2008-04-29, 01:39 AM
But isn't bonus the adjective? The noun is bonum or something? What's the correct plural for that?

If I remember correctly, "Bonus" is the nominative form of the noun and "bonum" is the accusative form. But "bonus" with a macron is also an adjective. I don't have my book with me, though so I may be wrong.

Lyinginbedmon
2008-04-29, 04:14 AM
I was expecting a treatise on making a melee character able to kill the thing, and instead got rewards for latinate grammar...

Yup, this may be the wierdest thing I've started :smallbiggrin:

I analysed for 1 character (Instead of the requisite 4 minimum in a party) because, as shown, a singular Sor/Wiz can take it down without a problem, so a singular melee should have the capacity to do so as well, but they'll definitely need more equipment than the Sor/Wiz's spell focus.

Now, obviously, fire protection would be worthless for said character, and they'd need to have a weapon capable of getting past it's AC (Not too difficult), breaching it's DR (Slightly more difficult) and then actually doing a useful amount of damage (Much more difficult, without criticals at least). There's a crystal for weapons in Magic Item Compendium that allows criticals on constructs I believe, so that should help a lot. Once we're done arming them, we'll need to help them avoid insta-death from the HE.

Citizen Jenkins
2008-04-29, 06:54 AM
I was expecting a treatise on making a melee character able to kill the thing, and instead got rewards for latinate grammar...

Because we've all been over this before and this isn't even a good example. Keeping it to Core doesn't help the Wizard because Polar Ray allows SR and the best spells to beat SR (True Casting and Assay Resistance) aren't core, meaning your wizard needs to pack 6-7 Polar Rays or use another spell which gets around construct immunities and beats SR consistently. And what Wizard worth his salt prepares six Polar Rays a day and then blows all that on a single encounter? Moreso, with a Con boosting Item and Greater Rage, Con 22 is the bare minimum for a level 19 Barbarian, who should have 300+ HP with any decent starting Con score. Look at his attack power and with +19 BAB, a modest 16 base STR with rage and item booster (ignoring weapon bonus and all the other cool stuff) has a decent shot against its AC.

So yes, a Wizard with proper spell selection can toast this thing but so can even a moderately optimized Barb. Pretty much everyone accepts that Wizards are more powerful than melee combatants but that doesn't make the melee-ers so useless that they can't stand up to even moderate chalenges.

jcsw
2008-04-29, 07:54 AM
Is anyone forgetting the fact that some monsters are harder to some classes than others? In the same way that rogues are sucky vs. oozes and Psions are weak to Psion Killers.

AmberVael
2008-04-29, 09:33 AM
Is anyone forgetting the fact that some monsters are harder to some classes than others? In the same way that rogues are sucky vs. oozes and Psions are weak to Psion Killers.

Actually, a smart psion should be able to kill a psion killer in around 4 rounds, without any optimization at all.
With little to no risk, too.

Cuddly
2008-04-29, 12:59 PM
Actually, a smart psion should be able to kill a psion killer in around 4 rounds, without any optimization at all.
With little to no risk, too.

Explain how.

Frosty
2008-04-29, 01:14 PM
Do you guys think HEs are under Cr'ed or over Cr'ed?

Avor
2008-04-29, 01:39 PM
"Hell fire engine - missing something?"

The ability to fly? :P

Laurellien
2008-04-29, 01:42 PM
First of all, the nominative plural form of bonus in Latin is boni, not bonii. Bonii would refer to bonius. Second of all, the way you used the word in that sentence is as an accusative, so it would require the accusative plural, bonos. Your gender was right as it is a he. Thirdly, the word bonus in Latin is an adjective meaning good, what you meant was the English word bonus, which has a plural of bonuses.

Finally, I agree with you that the hellfire engine is powerful and could beat up a barbarian easily. But then again, class balance doesn't exist in D&D and so most CR appropriate things could beat a core only barbarian.

TempusCCK
2008-04-29, 02:38 PM
eh, also, you're assuming that the wizard knew he was fighting a fire enemy and so prepared cold spells to kill it effectively. Yes, it's easier for the wizard to learn those abstract things, but not impossible for the Barbarian to do so. He's at least going to have a freezing weapon of some sort. That will level the playing field sufficiently, and not to mention for a Barbarian to kill a CR19 enemy by himself he'd have to be in epic levels.

Frosty
2008-04-29, 02:50 PM
Well, not really. In theory, two creatures of same CR/level have about a 50/50 chance of killing the other. A single level 19 barbarian is CR19. A single level 19 barbarian has a 50% chance of killing another level 19 barbarian. A Hellfire Engine is CR19. A single level 19 barbarian has a 50% chance of killing a Hellfire Engine.

At least, that's how the logic goes. How it actually plays out depends on a lotta things, include builds and how badly WotC screwed up the CR estimates.

Reel On, Love
2008-04-29, 02:52 PM
eh, also, you're assuming that the wizard knew he was fighting a fire enemy and so prepared cold spells to kill it effectively. Yes, it's easier for the wizard to learn those abstract things, but not impossible for the Barbarian to do so. He's at least going to have a freezing weapon of some sort. That will level the playing field sufficiently, and not to mention for a Barbarian to kill a CR19 enemy by himself he'd have to be in epic levels.

?
A level 19 Barbarian should have a 50% chance of killing a CR 19 enemy, theoretically.

AmberVael
2008-04-29, 05:40 PM
Explain how.

Okay!
Well, first off, you're probably going to win initiative. Like a wizard, you should focus a little bit on that- and Psion Killers have no initiative bonus.

The Killer has 112 HP.
It's AC is 28, or 9 against touch attacks...
Now, it also has Psionic Immunity, and the ability to cast Dispel Psionics as a free action once per round.
That last ability is the only one that is troubling in the least.

So, it is CR 12. So assume you are a level 12 psion.
If you are a smart Psion when picking out your powers, you will have gotten the Crystal Shard power. It's like Orb of Force, except you get it at level one. Really, it's a good deal for a psion if you ever need to deal some damage. I highly recommend it, or at least the area power, crystal swarm. You will have taken one of those in all likelihood.
Lets assume you took Shard.
You ignore its power immunity with Shard, and it has a laughable touch AC of 9. With the amount of power points you have, it might suck on your resources a bit, but you do have the ability to kill it just in terms of damage (and this is alone, when normally you'll have a party to rely on, so resource expenditure will be out of proportion).

The only remaining thing to do (and the hardest part), therefore, is to remain out of its reach. This would be easy since it has no ability to fly, or ranged attacks, but it has that oh so nasty free dispel psionics every round. So we'll have to be a bit more clever.
The easy way would be to be use the Schism power (which can be gotten as a Telepath or with a feat) (you need a 30ft move speed). You cast schism to get a mental action to use crystal shard, then simply double move away. Since it has a 20ft movement rate, it can't charge you, or even double move after you. It could use the run action, but after that it won't have another action to attack you with, and you can simply repeat the above method until it is dead.
The second option is similar, but it involves the use of Hustle. As an Egoist you can simply use hustle every round to get an extra move action to scoot out of the way and use the above method.

A bit more amusing and slightly more risky way is to simply create an ectoplasmic wall and climb on top of it, then fire at it from there. Can it dispel the wall? Technically. But the DC will be a minimum of 27 (probably more, if you have anything to boost your manifester level by then, such as, say, Overchannel), giving it very little chance to actually dispel the wall while you just peg it until it is dead.

But simply staying out of the way is easiest, and any psionicist worth their salt should have Schism by level 12.

Note that while they could conceivably dispel Schism, they probably won't be able to do enough damage to the psion in the turns after it has done that to kill said Psion, while the psion needs an average of 3 turns using one crystal shard a round.

Lyinginbedmon
2008-04-30, 05:10 AM
Hmm...if they raised the CR and increased the land speed by as little as 10 ft. it'd be about right. That way the melee types would have a better shot at survival and the spellcasters would be in actual peril.

Hmm...but if they raise the CR, the equivalent CL of the spellcaster rises, thus increasing the attack range...perhaps if they increased the SR a bunch.

Kredine
2008-04-30, 05:24 AM
Well, not really. In theory, two creatures of same CR/level have about a 50/50 chance of killing the other. A single level 19 barbarian is CR19. A single level 19 barbarian has a 50% chance of killing another level 19 barbarian. A Hellfire Engine is CR19. A single level 19 barbarian has a 50% chance of killing a Hellfire Engine.

At least, that's how the logic goes. How it actually plays out depends on a lotta things, include builds and how badly WotC screwed up the CR estimates.
Isn't the CR of a monster designed for four characters of the level?
So therefore a level 19 barbarian should not be able to take a monster with CR19? Or am i recalling something wrongly?

Also, it's well known that at these levels spell casters can generallly kick more ass than melee fighters. My brother is a tenth level sorcerer in his campain with four or five fighter types of the same or higher level but he almost always kills more than the others combined.
Its just spellcasters suck at low levels.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-30, 08:16 AM
Isn't the CR of a monster designed for four characters of the level?
So therefore a level 19 barbarian should not be able to take a monster with CR19? Or am i recalling something wrongly?

It would be in the difficult/overpowering range ("effective EL" 23 for a single PC; it's 4 times the XP, and every XP doubling is +2 CR). That is about 50/50, since a party of four Nth-level NPCs is a an EL N+4 encounter for a party of four Nth-level PCs. (A good example of a 50/50 situation.)

Frosty
2008-04-30, 10:44 AM
Yes, an ECL X character has a CR of X and an EL of X + 4ish, in theory. Doesn't always work out that way of course.

Collin152
2008-04-30, 05:22 PM
if i could give you guys rep points on this forum, i would. but alas, we're using a repless system.

a virtual clap on the back will have to do.

aaron out.

Wooh!
My virtual back isn't nearly as fragile and fleshless as my physical back!
Well, you can't make an omlette without spending eternity a rotting husk of a sentient corpse.

Renegade Paladin
2008-04-30, 05:54 PM
"Bonii" is not a word. The plural is bonuses. In order for bonii to be the proper Latin plural, the base word would have to be bonius. As it is not, bonii is neither the proper word nor a word at all. The same goes for the common irritant that is virii.

Mewtarthio
2008-04-30, 06:34 PM
How 'bout just "boni," then?

Collin152
2008-04-30, 06:38 PM
How 'bout just "boni," then?

I shall hear of no defense;
Attempt none if you are sensible!
That word of evil sense
is wholly indefensible!

EvilElitest
2008-04-30, 06:41 PM
2. The CR system is whack. Don't let it bother you.

CR is a perfect system, it just doesn't hold up in theory............apart from being horrible badly handled in every imaginable way
from
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