MitD XVIII: It's utterly unreasonable to expect us to have been paying any attention

[hroþila]

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit weird to feel sure or indeed particularly strongly about any MitD candidate?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Why is it the perfect Monster in the Dark is a shapeshifter but the perfect Protean never shapeshifts? Why does your case for the Protean treat shapeshifting like trash most of the way through if shapeshifting is actually fire?

Ruck's essay claims nothing of the sort. MitD!Protean can be assumed to be constantly shifting and changing inside the darkness, because that is what a protean constantly does. What Ruck has patiently explained to you several times, to no avail, is that he is of the belief that on-page, visible to the reader, protean-like transformations will not happen prior to the reveal. Doylist, because Rich wants to keep the game going until the reveal. Watsonian, because MitD is still obeying Xykon's command to stay in the shadows.

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit weird to feel sure or indeed particularly strongly about any MitD candidate?

Presumably not, but also, I don't see why that's so weird about it? This ain't the early days on the thread where creatures were coming in fast and thick. While I happen to agree that there might still be a better alternative out there, with the clock running out, and fewer and fewer better candidates popping up, it is not an unreasonable thing to select one creature and be reasonably sure it will be the one chosen by Rich.

ETA: there really is only three logical positions to take:
a) You are convinced a creature proposed in the thread is the best fit, and unlikely to be surpassed.
two) You are convinced that no creature proposed fits, and therefore (if you intend to contribute to this thread), are still looking for a better fit
iii) You are on the fence between those two extremes.

Given humanity being what it is, we have a few of each category. I'd imagine iii is the larger group, but I wouldn't consider any of them any weirder than the others.

(There is technically a fourth category, people mostly in position two but who failed to propose, or even attempt to propose, better fits, merely grouching about the ones we do have, but that position I do find weird)

Grey Wolf

[Keltest]

(There is technically a fourth category, people mostly in position two but who failed to propose, or even attempt to propose, better fits, merely grouching about the ones we do have, but that position I do find weird)

Grey Wolf

If they thought there was something that fit better, wouldnt that put them in group 1?

[Kish]

For my part, I am not positively sure about any of the candidates; I am negatively sure (that is, "No, it's clearly not that, it would be thematically inappropriate/would turn half the clues Rich has given us into anti-clues" about several); and I do not find either sureness or strong feelings weird.

[Peelee]

a)
two)
iii)

I like your style.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I like your style.

I'm fairly sure I stole it from you, so yeah, you should

GW

[Crusher]

ETA: there really is only three logical positions to take:
a) You are convinced a creature proposed in the thread is the best fit, and unlikely to be surpassed.
two) You are convinced that no creature proposed fits, and therefore (if you intend to contribute to this thread), are still looking for a better fit
iii) You are on the fence between those two extremes.

Yeah, I spent... deca... year... uh, lets go with "a long time" (to avoid making anyone feel old) fairly close to group "two". In my heart of hearts I thought (perhaps still think) MitD is either some sort of prismatic creature (probably a dragon) and would thus be spectacular when revealed or a Klurichir, which is basically a Glabrezu but better (and, depending on the source, may or may not be an Obyrith rather than a Tanar'ri, fixing some issues). With that supposition in the back of my head, I've spent a lot of time hunting for candidates, expecting to eventually find a better fit than the ones we had. And I found a bunch of interesting monsters along the way.

But at this point its hard to find new stones to turn over and I'm a lot less confident we'll find something better. Plus, after spending so much time thinking about related monsters, I've seen the existing candidates in different ways and its really increased my appreciation for some of them (Slaad and Glabrezu, particularly). While I'm not in group "a" yet, I'm a LOT closer to it than I used to be.

Edit - Oh, and dartom, your guess is noted. Hmm. Is it possible to do a dragon that's half Glabrezu instead?

[Kish]

Yes, but it would lack any of the selling points of sticking the half-dragon template on a glabrezu.

(And if Rich came up with some way to add specific glabrezu features to the dragon instead of using the published generic half-fiend template, that would be something Rich made up.)

[Jasdoif]

(And if Rich came up with some way to add specific glabrezu features to the dragon instead of using the published generic half-fiend template, that would be something Rich made up.)

A problem shared by the free-form nature of the less generic half-fiend template, too.

[Crusher]

Ah, thanks. That’s too bad, makes him a stronger, demon-looking dragon rather than a stronger dragon-looking demon. Neither of which is appreciably better than the other.

[woweedd]

Honestly, i'm not certain about any of the present candidates, but I have no idea what it could be. So I think it is probably a safe bet it's one of our front runners.

[Tzardok]

I'll stick with the cipactli. It's not a likely option, but it's the one I came up with. It's mine.

[Ruck]

Ruck's essay claims nothing of the sort. MitD!Protean can be assumed to be constantly shifting and changing inside the darkness, because that is what a protean constantly does. What Ruck has patiently explained to you several times, to no avail, is that he is of the belief that on-page, visible to the reader, protean-like transformations will not happen prior to the reveal. Doylist, because Rich wants to keep the game going until the reveal. Watsonian, because MitD is still obeying Xykon's command to stay in the shadows.

Yes, thank you.

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit weird to feel sure or indeed particularly strongly about any MitD candidate?

Presumably not, but also, I don't see why that's so weird about it? This ain't the early days on the thread where creatures were coming in fast and thick. While I happen to agree that there might still be a better alternative out there, with the clock running out, and fewer and fewer better candidates popping up, it is not an unreasonable thing to select one creature and be reasonably sure it will be the one chosen by Rich.

ETA: there really is only three logical positions to take:
a) You are convinced a creature proposed in the thread is the best fit, and unlikely to be surpassed.
two) You are convinced that no creature proposed fits, and therefore (if you intend to contribute to this thread), are still looking for a better fit
iii) You are on the fence between those two extremes.

I'm mostly a), but I am open to anyone finding a better candidate that hasn't been proposed yet. I do not think, given my own skill set and base of knowledge, that I am the person who is going to find that candidate. And of the candidates that have been proposed, I feel comfortable enough with the likelihood of one of them that I'm not too pressed about looking for any more, either.

I suppose I feel "strongly" in that, of everything proposed, I think the evidence and the story strongly favors the Protean over the rest and it requires fewer justifications or explanations of anything that doesn't fit what we've seen. (Really, the only aspect I have any questions on is the Escape scene, but I don't know much about D&D creatures, so I assume there must be one out there somewhere that has the appropriate power.)

[Errorname]

Where would you even find other possible monsters. I imagine after 18 threads of discussion pretty much every monster in anything resembling officially published D&D material has been appraised.

If it's not something that's already on the list, it's something real obscure, like some weird regional folk monster or some homebrew that was circulated at a convention but never uploaded to the internet or something.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Where would you even find other possible monsters. I imagine after 18 threads of discussion pretty much every monster in anything resembling officially published D&D material has been appraised.

If it's not something that's already on the list, it's something real obscure, like some weird regional folk monster or some homebrew that was circulated at a convention but never uploaded to the internet or something.

Early on (by which I mean first/second thread), a number of people thought they could "game" the system by just publishing lists of names of monsters, got from Loki-only-knows-where. It is the reason for that "minimally defended" clause in what makes it to the OP. Most of those creatures where never officially re-submitted. I think we are safe to assume that most of those were such terrible fits that it wasn't worth to even minimally defended... but for all I know, lost amongst the chaff was a diamond in the rough. It's a matter of sheer numbers - last I counted, I believe the first page has somewhere north of 150 entries. I've seen large enough lists that that might be less than 1/100 of overall published monsters. Now, most, I agree, will be low-level encounter material, but with only 20-odd levels of encounters, even if the early levels are heavily biased in volume, that's still a lot of high-level monsters that we are missing.

On the other side of the balance, of course, we have the tireless Crusher, who was never all that interested in presenting the perfect candidate, instead opting to present better-than-average fits, usually 5 at a time, because they fit well enough and had something interesting about them. His efforts always makes me feel like he had combed through this or that source and given us best-of-the-crop; that he has admitted he's out of sources to plunder gives me confidence that we have a fairly decent selection.

But that's really the thing "fairly decent" isn't, can't be, and was never expected to be "full spectrum". It wasn't that long ago (in overall thread terms) that the Xenocrysth was proposed. It fit all the boxes (save size, but with such ridiculous large strength that after amending the sharp cut-off for a step increase) it made it to the FBS. So "on the other, other hand", yeah, there is a non-zero possibility that we have yet to find the one creature Rich had run in an adventure with his friends that he got from a third-party splatbook published only in Montana and that was never digitalized. How likely that feels has certainly gone down over the years, but it has never, nor will it ever, reach zero (before the Reveal).

Grey Wolf

[b_jonas]

I still think that either we haven't proposed the right creature, or someone has proposed it but hasn't defended it strongly enough to cause attention, so it's lost among all the other noise somewhere in the threads.

But yes, it might also just be a slaad or protean.

[halfeye]

Where would you even find other possible monsters. I imagine after 18 threads of discussion pretty much every monster in anything resembling officially published D&D material has been appraised.

If it's not something that's already on the list, it's something real obscure, like some weird regional folk monster or some homebrew that was circulated at a convention but never uploaded to the internet or something.

I don't believe it has to be a D&D monster, I think it has to be recognisable to at the very least a large minority of the public by species name, but not necessarily by image.

What is a goblin? there is the TES 4 Oblivion version, there is the version from Wildbow's "Pale", and they are very different (I do not think MiTD is a goblin, I'm just using them as an example of how much difference there can be between versions of things that seem to have the same type name).

[Doug Lampert]

Where would you even find other possible monsters. I imagine after 18 threads of discussion pretty much every monster in anything resembling officially published D&D material has been appraised.

If it's not something that's already on the list, it's something real obscure, like some weird regional folk monster or some homebrew that was circulated at a convention but never uploaded to the internet or something.

I see no reason to think it has to be a published D&D monster. It need not be a D&D monster at all. Carbosilicate Amorph strikes me as one of the better fits, and it's not from D&D.

I don't believe it has to be a D&D monster, I think it has to be recognisable to at the very least a large minority of the public by species name, but not necessarily by image.

What is a goblin? there is the TES 4 Oblivion version, there is the version from Wildbow's "Pale", and they are very different (I do not think MiTD is a goblin, I'm just using them as an example of how much difference there can be between versions of things that seem to have the same type name).

I also don't think it needs to be all that recognisable. Obscure is fine as long as it fits and exists outside this comic.

I might conceed that stats for SOME game or well known in SOME circles is likely, but if it fits either of those it's golden, and missing on both wouldn't disqualify something that was a good fit otherwise.

[Qwertystop]

I don't believe it has to be a D&D monster, I think it has to be recognisable to at the very least a large minority of the public by species name, but not necessarily by image.

What is a goblin? there is the TES 4 Oblivion version, there is the version from Wildbow's "Pale", and they are very different (I do not think MiTD is a goblin, I'm just using them as an example of how much difference there can be between versions of things that seem to have the same type name).

To me, this seems especially confusing - requiring them to be recognizable by name but not by traits, as you describe here, makes for an absurdly large range of possible traits for anything having a sufficiently old name. "Centaur" now includes these, for example: https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/71...s-adult-weight .

[Tubercular Ox]

To me, this seems especially confusing - requiring them to be recognizable by name but not by traits, as you describe here, makes for an absurdly large range of possible traits for anything having a sufficiently old name. "Centaur" now includes these, for example: https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/71...s-adult-weight .

Crusher tracks "Dragon" and "Deity" as candidates because people vote for them often enough to be mildly interesting to track them. So if there's a front runner for immediately recognizable solution, it's probably "Dragon". And there are plenty of body styles that people would recognize as a dragon despite it not being any of the other body styles. The black dragons, undead silver dragon, present-day and flashback Empress of Blood, deity, festival, and magazine dragon all have distinct body styles.

And then there's these guys, where we don't know if they're dragons but we recognize them as dragon informed.

So... maybe?

[Crusher]

I've been thinking about MitD's defenses, specifically the Tower scene but also when he meets Belkar and Haley, and completely no-sells their attempts to hurt him. We've long primarily assumed he accomplishes this through lots of DR, with DR10 really the bare minimum, and with a harder to get around rider than "magic" because we know Belkar had magic daggers and its fair to assume Miko's weapons were as well.

We've also usually vaguely acknowledged the idea that "in theory enough AC, HP, or Regen could explain it, too" without really getting into specifics. The occasional efforts we've made at looking into it assume it would have to be a LOT of HP/Regen for him to completely ignore it. High hundreds or even thousands of HP and, just picking a number, 25 hp/round regen, perhaps?

But even that feels a little unsatisfying. That'd make him *vastly* tougher than anyone else on Team Evil, and while that's probably at least partially true, we've seen his umbrella take visible damage (suggesting MitD was himself noticeably hurt) from stuff that doesn't completely annihilate Red Cloak or Xykon, and if he had 800+ hp you'd sort of expect that to be the case (or with 25hp/round regen he'd be completely recovered in less than a minute). Plus, even if 30 points of damage or whatever was quickly regenerated or a drop in the bucket of his HP pool, his pain tolerance hasn't seemed very impressive so you'd think he'd at least say "Ow" or something rather than completely ignoring it.

The additional candidate here is AC, and I think we've been giving short-shrift to the possibility of MitD having a really high AC. Its something we've all at least paid lip-service to, but have never really attempted to nail down. "How high is needed? I dunno, really high?" I suspect this is because it seemed kind of annoying and fiddly to do so. Can't 3E characters, when properly constructed, get weird stats? Couldn't there be a really wide range? Plus, couldn't they have just rolled a bunch of 1s or 20s? And in response, I say, "Isn't splitting hairs and overanalyzing things kind of the whole point?"

Plus, thanks to the Class and Level Geekery Thread we can get a pretty decent grasp of at least roughly how Belkar and Miko are constructed as characters, with decent bounds on what their attack bonuses might be and then we can back into what level of AC (flat-footed, because MitD doesn't seem to be trying to defend himself) would make it at least fairly plausible every attack would miss MitD.

I'm not a 3.5e expert, but lets take a quick stab. I don't remember exactly what level Belkar was when he attacked MitD, but lets use Level 15 just for fun. As a Ranger 14/Barbarian 1, he'd have a BAB of +14 and we know his STR bonus isn't higher than +3. He got his +5 dagger later, so we'll assume he was using his +4 dagger. None of his listed feats give him a bonus to hit, they just give him more attacks and reduce his penalty for dual wielding. Lets say he has some random feat or item or ability that exactly cancels out his penalty for dual-wielding just to cover bases. That gives him an attack bonus of +21. Meaning his initial main-hand attack is +21, his next attack is +16, I think he gets 3 main hand attacks, so the third would be +11. And his off-hand attacks would be around the neighborhood of his 2nd and 3rd main-hand attacks. I think. Really wide margin of error here and I've probably made multiple mistakes. I've asked for clarification in the Class and Level Geekery thread.

So, if Belkar gets 5 attacks (I dunno, I'm guessing), and the MitD has a flat-footed AC of 40 (just picking a high AC), Belkar will miss all 5 times ~73% of the time. Even with a mere AC of 30, Belkar has an 18% chance of missing all 5 times. A flat-footed AC of 35 is where Belkar missing all 5 times becomes a 50/50 proposition, and that doesn't even take into account MitD being in magical darkness which probably gives some sort of protection.

Miko probably wasn't higher than level 15 or so at the time, and we know less about her. But we know she was also dual-wielding and her stats weren't super-humanly high. Point being, her attack bonus was probably in the neighborhood of Belkar's. Certainly not dramatically higher and could have even been lower (like if she was using a +1 weapon for some reason). If we assume it was also about +21, then her chance of hitting was the same as Belkar's. Now, she *thought* she wasn't hurting MitD because of his high DR, rather than because she was missing him, but maybe she was wrong? If MitD is a Protean, hitting his boiling, shifting form with a weapon might feel pretty weird from what she was used to so maybe she mis-identified it plus she couldn't see what was going on anyway.

So, I suggest we consider whether a monster that seems generally tough and has a high enough flat-footed AC, but a DR that's either too low or too easily skipped, be something we should consider as answering the "MitD has good defenses" part of the tower scene. Maybe a 35 as a starting point? A flat-footed AC of 35 is nothing to sneeze at. Looking at he FBS list, the Glabrezu has a 27, the epic Slaads are 32 and 42, the ANB has a 20, the Protean has a 37, the Uvuudaum has a 38, the Xenocrysth is 33, and the Hunting Horror is probably around 20.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

MitD being in magical darkness which probably gives some sort of protection.

To anyone not capable of seeing through magical darkness (or with blindisght, or a few other ways of ignoring it), 20% chance to miss with every attack due to concealment.

So, I suggest we consider whether a monster that seems generally tough and has a high enough flat-footed AC, but a DR that's either too low or too easily skipped, be something we should consider as answering the "MitD has good defenses" part of the tower scene. Maybe a 35 as a starting point? A flat-footed AC of 35 is nothing to sneeze at. Looking at he FBS list, the Glabrezu has a 27, the epic Slaads are 32 and 42, the ANB has a 20, the Protean has a 37, the Uvuudaum has a 38, the Xenocrysth is 33, and the Hunting Horror is probably around 20.

I am not in a position to dispute your numbers but, as with strength, I'd rather round down (to, say, 30, if your numbers bear out) rather than suggest a high degree of confidence through two digits of precision.

GW

[Tubercular Ox]

The tricky bit is figuring out how Rich would feel about Miss chance and full attacks. Is Rich willing to assume that the 20% miss chance comes off the top and nullifies the highest to-hit attack? Or do we have to laboriously create an average effect for the miss chance on each hit? Hope I'm making sense.

A monster with a defensive posture can be in that posture since the Monster in the Dark is not attacking on either round in question. And by posture, I mean generically, not a key word for something.

There might be spells or abilities that nullify attacks. I once tried to find some in vanilla 3.5 but it was text-searching pdfs and such, hoping I had the right templating. Didn't find anything but results definitely not conclusive.

[Jasdoif]

So, if Belkar gets 5 attacks (I dunno, I'm guessing), and the MitD has a flat-footed AC of 40 (just picking a high AC), Belkar will miss all 5 times ~73% of the time.

At Ranger 11+, we'd be looking at six attacks (the starting one, another two iterative attacks for BAB, another one for using an off-hand weapon, another two for the off-hand weapon from Ranger combat style bonus feats)...and the odds of six d20 rolls all being under 20 (which is an automatic hit for an attack roll) is about 73.5% percent; meaning Belkar would have about a 26.5% chance of landing at least one hit against an arbitrarily high AC.

Now if you're trying to get a 50% hit chance here, that needs Belkar to hit on an 18 or 19; about 37.7% to get under 18 with all six, hence hits at least once 62.3% of the time (the exact percentages are different if you account for the miss chance from darkness, but it still works out to hitting on 18+). Which would mean MitD's AC is at most 18 points higher than Belkar's attack bonus...and with all your estimates (the corrections for BAB being +15 and Belkar's size bonus cancel out) puts the upper limit at 39...encompassing every flatfooted AC you listed except the black slaad's.

You can see why the use of DR to negate hits entirely, or regeneration to convert hits to nonlethal damage, is so common

[Tubercular Ox]

At Ranger 11+, we'd be looking at six attacks (the starting one, another two iterative attacks for BAB, another one for using an off-hand weapon, another two for the off-hand weapon from Ranger combat style bonus feats)...and the odds of six d20 rolls all being under 20 (which is an automatic hit for an attack roll) is about 73.5% percent; meaning Belkar would have about a 26.5% chance of landing at least one hit against an arbitrarily high AC.

Now if you're trying to get a 50% hit chance here, that needs Belkar to hit on an 18 or 19; about 37.7% to get under 18 with all six, hence hits at least once 62.3% of the time (the exact percentages are different if you account for the miss chance from darkness, but it still works out to hitting on 18+). Which would mean MitD's AC is at most 18 points higher than Belkar's attack bonus...and with all your estimates (the corrections for BAB being +15 and Belkar's size bonus cancel out) puts the upper limit at 39...encompassing every flatfooted AC you listed except the black slaad's.

You can see why the use of DR to negate hits entirely, or regeneration to convert hits to nonlethal damage, is so common

I'm a little dizzy for some reason. Does this account for iterative attacks being at lower BAB? You mentioned hitting on an 18, but that's only going to be for two hits, then it drops back to 20's.

[Jasdoif]

I'm a little dizzy for some reason. Does this account for iterative attacks being at lower BAB? You mentioned hitting on an 18, but that's only going to be for two hits, then it drops back to 20's.

Good point....

Spoiler: Well, let's see.

Show

0.85*0.85*0.95*0.95*0.95*0.95 ≈ 0.5885

So no, that'd be about 41% chance of hitting at least once; not exactly shabby but still not reaching 50/50. Alright, next step would be checking 17+....

0.8*0.8*0.95*0.95*0.95*0.95 ≈ 0.5213

Hmph. 16+?

0.75*0.75*0.95*0.95*0.95*0.95 ≈ 0.4582

There we go....Does that still hold with the miss chance?

0.8*0.8*0.96*0.96*0.96*0.96 ≈ 0.5436

No. Sheesh! 15+ with miss chance?

0.76*0.76*0.96*0.96*0.96*0.96 ≈ 0.4906

THERE.

So, correction, it'd need hitting on 15+ with the miss chance applying and not spacing off the iterative attack penalties...making the AC ceiling 36. Right below a couple contenders, exactly where their supporters would bring up the margin of error Grey_Wolf_c hinted at.

[Crusher]

At Ranger 11+, we'd be looking at six attacks (the starting one, another two iterative attacks for BAB, another one for using an off-hand weapon, another two for the off-hand weapon from Ranger combat style bonus feats)...and the odds of six d20 rolls all being under 20 (which is an automatic hit for an attack roll) is about 73.5% percent; meaning Belkar would have about a 26.5% chance of landing at least one hit against an arbitrarily high AC.

Now if you're trying to get a 50% hit chance here, that needs Belkar to hit on an 18 or 19; about 37.7% to get under 18 with all six, hence hits at least once 62.3% of the time (the exact percentages are different if you account for the miss chance from darkness, but it still works out to hitting on 18+). Which would mean MitD's AC is at most 18 points higher than Belkar's attack bonus...and with all your estimates (the corrections for BAB being +15 and Belkar's size bonus cancel out) puts the upper limit at 39...encompassing every flatfooted AC you listed except the black slaad's.

You can see why the use of DR to negate hits entirely, or regeneration to convert hits to nonlethal damage, is so common

I agree with your math (and I'm happy to work out the 20% concealment benefit on a per attack basis) and I'm not arguing you're wrong on how many attacks a Ranger of Belkar's level *can* make. I don't know. But its worth noting that Belkar, for whatever reason, only attempted 5 attacks (as did Miko. Thanks, Post #2!).

Also, the section on MitD's defenses already says "It could indicate piercing/slashing resistance, DR, high AC, high HP or a combination thereof." (2b - Defenses) so I'm not proposing we actually change the wording of the guidance of GW_c. More just that we follow what it actually says rather than just assuming the answer is DR (which, to be fair, is probably the best option).

Or... what if we discussed putting actual numbers in there. "DR10/(something other than magic or slashing or piercing) or a flatfooted AC of 30 (or 35 or whatever)" to put some specific guidelines.

[Tubercular Ox]

high HP

So just to support Crusher on this, this is the first I've noticed anyone suggest this. Yes, yes, it's in the intro, but we all already know it takes me a few reads of something to get it all.

Talk in the thread has always led me to believe that taking any damage at all is a no-no. So I trust Crusher when he says the guidance and how the thread follows it are a little different.

[Crusher]

Ok, so the off-hand attacks are all at -4 compared to the main hand attacks.

You're right. After looking into it he should have had 6 attacks. He was somewhere between level 12-14 at the time with 1 level of Barbarian, so he should have had at least 11 levels of Ranger.

[Crusher]

So, assuming a 20% concealment miss chance on each attack and a +21 attack bonus, the chance of missing all attacks for Belkar against AC35 is 53.7% with 5 attacks and 51.6% with 6 attacks. Some other ACs:

AC30 - 5/20.6% - 6/19.8%

AC32 - 5/33.6% - 6/32.3%

AC35 - 5/53.7% - 6/51.6%

AC37 - 5/67.9% - 6/65.2%

AC40 - 5/78.1% - 6/75.0%