Spawn in practice

[Yahzi]

I was having a conversation with Dervag, and he pointed out that monsters who have the spawn ability (for example, Shadows) have that power calculated into their Challenge Rating. So if you made Shadows that couldn't spawn, you'd have to reduce their CR a bit.

My question is: has anyone ever played in a game where a monster actually used its spawn power on the PCs - and it didn't result in TPK? How is it a Shadow is a EL3 encounter, but if it gets lucky and drops one of your party, the resulting two shadows is still considered a winnable fight?

Has this ever happened to anyone? Or is Spawn a power DMs only use on NPCs?

[Mewtarthio]

I think the logic is that a creature with Spawn powers requires the PCs to be more careful. If an ordinary monster kills a PC, you can raise him. If a creature with Create Spawn kills a PC, you have to deal with two at once, plus the PC ususally needs to be resurrected instead of raised.

[Yahzi]

If a creature with Create Spawn kills a PC, you have to deal with two at once.

Isn't that equivalent to a TPK?

I mean, if one of them could kill one of you despite the best efforts of your party, then how is two of them not going to kill all of you?

[Dan_Hemmens]

I think this is what I like to call the "burned on the outside, raw in the middle" school of game balance.

If a creature with Create Spawn doesn't kill a PC, it might as well not have the ability.

If a creature with Create Spawn does kill a PC, the party is probably screwed.

People have a nasty tendency to assume that you can get an accurate measurement for how powerful something is by multiplying Effectiveness by Frequency: a 1% chance of taking 1000 points of damage is the same as a 100% chance of taking 10 points of damage.

[Saph]

I've seen it happen once, and it didn't cause a TPK. Two PCs got killed and turned into spawn; one was killed by another PC, the second wasn't able to join the fight.

I like the ability. It's a great way to scare PCs, and it's also quite fun to have the 'dead' PCs switch sides and start playing for the opposing team. Means they don't have to sit out the combat. :P

- Saph