How can 3.5 run landscape sized monsters?

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:46 pm

"Winging it" does not make you a shitty MC. You need to get that assumption out of your head. You're only a shitty MC if you can't entertain your players. I'm not fan of "making shit up" but if it works than I say do it. Fighting a moving mountain definitely seems like a special case scenario and I'd treat it like a moving dungeon myself because that's would be a lot more unique than treating it like another creature that you just have to cast at until it dies.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:51 pm

Spike wrote:Again: Kratos fights INSIDE giant terrain monsters.

And what is Kratos but a ridiculously high level character?

Kratos is a level 3-11 Spartan Slave-warrior. No more. He's got a shaved head, a face tatto; that's a slave right there. Imagine a person from Sparta who was actually trained to fight from childhood, was well fed, and was actually healthy?

One that is obviously out of the loop when it comes to the powers that actual Spartans might have.

Kratos is a low level Spartan slave warrior; an actual Spartan, using that assumption, could look like Roland, Bear of the North. Someone who actually can look at giant monsters, and start chopping at them every round.

As for fighting creatures of that size..... I don't see a problem. 20th level characters should be busting out 200~ points of Damage Reduction bypass damage every round. An optimized damage dealer of magical, ranged, or melee type can seriously deal in the 1500's of damage every round. Super optimized builds can deal in excess of 2k damage every round.

The Kaiju creatures should be able to be dealt with as straight up combats; which have mini-missions attached which will make the overall encounter easier, or harder.

While cutting out a living mountain's muti-crystalline heart that is filled with a pulse of light is possible; it's the 'lower level' option for people in their level 10's or so.

The level 16-20's will seriously go toe to toe with this thing. Badly built ones; like say Zeus or Kord or Asmodeus, from Dieties and Demigods; and Book of Vile Darkness; will get mauled and have to fall back, even if they are CR 40 PHB Fighter 20/Barbarian 20 builds; or Asmodeus' not that tough CR 20-ish build.

Well built ones like Wish and Word will stride into the encounter and defeat their enemies with their overwhelming powergaming.

I honestly don't see a problem with all of those being possibilities.

Of course, diplomacy and non-violent resolution should also be options. MCs and players that fail to provide non-violent resolutions to major plot are mentally deficient in the highest degree.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:59 pm

Kratos is a level 3-11 Spartan Slave-warrior.

I'm pretty sure he has super strength and kills gods.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 8:10 pm

MGuy wrote:"Winging it" does not make you a shitty MC. You need to get that assumption out of your head. You're only a shitty MC if you can't entertain your players. I'm not fan of "making shit up" but if it works than I say do it. Fighting a moving mountain definitely seems like a special case scenario and I'd treat it like a moving dungeon myself because that's would be a lot more unique than treating it like another creature that you just have to cast at until it dies.

But you have to stay consistent. If you introduce a giant monster, you're right: it doesn't matter whether it showed up in your notes, or if you just made it up on the spot.
If instead your players interact with it using different systems than everything else, and they have to guess what these new systems are, then you're shitty.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 12:12 am

I agree that if they HAVE to guess then that would make you shitty. But it wouldn't take 2 minutes for me to let them know that this thing is too damn big for them to fight regularly.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 12:38 am

MGuy wrote:I agree that if they HAVE to guess then that would make you shitty. But it wouldn't take 2 minutes for me to let them know that this thing is too damn big for them to fight regularly.

Okay, and then what do they do after they know that all their class features, spells, and skills have nothing to do with this encounter?

Oh right, they just have to play Magic Tea Party DM Mind Reading.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 12:55 am

Kaelik wrote:
MGuy wrote:I agree that if they HAVE to guess then that would make you shitty. But it wouldn't take 2 minutes for me to let them know that this thing is too damn big for them to fight regularly.
Okay, and then what do they do after they know that all their class features, spells, and skills have nothing to do with this encounter?

Oh right, they just have to play Magic Tea Party DM Mind Reading.

How is "treating it as a dungeon" not utilize the player's abilities when the game [DUNGEONS and dragons] already assumes you'll be dungeon delving Kaelik...

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 1:05 am

MGuy wrote:How is "treating it as a dungeon" not utilize the player's abilities when the game [DUNGEONS and dragons] already assumes you'll be dungeon delving Kaelik...

Well, A) You Magic Tea Partied his immunity to everything ever.

B) Using a Monster as a Dungeon is not fighting it. It's using it as a Dungeon. Using Pandemonium as a dungeon is not fighting Pandemonium.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 1:08 am

I didn't say it was immune to anything. I could slap a needless amount of HD and huge ass saves on a MOUNTAIN for no reason or I could SKIP that needless shit and say bring the mountain down from the inside. And killing a mountain by destroying its core is achieving the same result as sitting back and casting at it until it falls.The goal in "fighting" it is to bring it down if you do THAT by dungeon delving to its core to kill it same fucking thing.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 2:40 am

"If you can't use Polymorph to trivialize everything ever, then the game sucks" is a terrible line of reasoning.

Treating the beastie as a massive dungeon/wilderness crawl is fantastic and should be encouraged. It's spectacular and high fantasy.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 3:08 am

mean_liar wrote:Treating the beastie as a massive dungeon/wilderness crawl is fantastic and should be encouraged. It's spectacular and high fantasy.

Thank you for your strawman.

Using the Monster as a Dungeon is not fighting the monster. I don't talk about how I'm going to go fight Pandemonium because I use it as a dungeon. Using something as a Dungeon is not fighting it.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:10 am

Kaelik... Which is better? Fighting a creature with shoulders that carry a mountain or going inside said mountainous creature on a little dungeon adventure to find its heart to kill it. You can go through its tons of HD and resultant sky high saves in hopes that you have a enough save or die spells to let luck kill it or actually just adventure inside the damn thing and fight things there before killing it. Which is better for the game?

BearsAreBrown · Post by **BearsAreBrown** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:30 am

When you put it like that the second one sure sounds better. Hmmm maybe that's why I asked the fucking question? I recognize that throwing SoDs at mountains is stupid and that's why I asked how to run it better.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:31 am

MGuy wrote:Kaelik... Which is better? Fighting a creature with shoulders that carry a mountain or going inside said mountainous creature on a little dungeon adventure to find its heart to kill it. You can go through its tons of HD and resultant sky high saves in hopes that you have a enough save or die spells to let luck kill it or actually just adventure inside the damn thing and fight things there before killing it. Which is better for the game?

Clearly it's more fun to cast finger of death until it fails a save and then go play Smash Bros.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:43 am

MGuy wrote:Kaelik... Which is better? Fighting a creature with shoulders that carry a mountain or going inside said mountainous creature on a little dungeon adventure to find its heart to kill it. You can go through its tons of HD and resultant sky high saves in hopes that you have a enough save or die spells to let luck kill it or actually just adventure inside the damn thing and fight things there before killing it. Which is better for the game?

Why does the monster have HD, HP and too high saves for it's CR? Why are you trying to fight a CR 213 monster? Why is that CR 213 monster so incompetent that it can't make a single attack roll? Why is it just "Like the Tarrasque, but more so" instead of interesting.

Why is the choice between something purposefully made boring and stupid to make the other choice look better, and something that has nothing at all to do with fighting the creature?

Could you have dungeons that happen to be monsters? Sure. But there is no reason why "To beat this monster, you have to adventure inside it, until you reach it's heart, because of course walking mountains have hearts, duh, everyone knows that, and then you punch it's heart. But don't worry, for some stupid reason it never tries to kill people who attempt to climb inside it to kill it." would be any more interesting than "Well, you see, this Dragon is invincible, unless you go to the Plane of Macguffins, and adventure through the swamp of Terrors and find the Macguffins Macguffin, and then as soon as you touch it, the Dragon dies and you win."

Those are both terrible concepts for the same reason, because those are both the same concept. The DM erects a penis extension that breaks all the normal rules, is completely invulnerable to everything, but inexplicably does nothing to harm or oppose the players, except whatever plot thing it's doing, and then sends them on a fetch quest that is only related by plot to the DM penis extension, and then they instantly beat the penis extension without ever facing it.

If you want to fight some giant monster, the way to have that happen is to actually fight the actual goddam monster. Whether it gets lots of actions, or has locational HP pools, or both, or has a series of abilities representing it's size and type, that's stuff you can actually figure out. But at no point does "not fighting the monster at all" become the best way to fight the monster.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:57 am

Kaelik... I'm only going to respond to the parts of your response that make sense. It has a lot of HP, HD, and high saves because its the size of a mountain. No one has mentioned CR thus far, so I don't know why you bring it up. The point of this thread is how creatures of this unbelievable size should be approached. For you to rant about how creatures like this shouldn't be used doesn't have anything to do with the thread. You still have not pointed out how killing it from the inside, or in better words for you "fighting" it from the inside is somehow not fighting it. Now make a point that is actually a good alternative for doing it in an uninteresting fashion (casting it to death which apparently is your favorite fashion) or shut up.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:31 am

MGuy wrote:Kaelik... I'm only going to respond to the parts of your response that make sense. It has a lot of HP, HD, and high saves because its the size of a mountain. No one has mentioned CR thus far, so I don't know why you bring it up. The point of this thread is how creatures of this unbelievable size should be approached. For you to rant about how creatures like this shouldn't be used doesn't have anything to do with the thread. You still have not pointed out how killing it from the inside, or in better words for you "fighting" it from the inside is somehow not fighting it. Now make a point that is actually a good alternative for doing it in an uninteresting fashion (casting it to death which apparently is your favorite fashion) or shut up.

MGuy, I know you are retarded, but even you are not that retarded.

Either the monster has too high saves and too much HP for it's CR. Or it's CR is too damn high. Either way, it's defenses are absurd, and it's offense is non existent. Being big does not mean you have good saves. Being high level means you have good saves.

Going on a dungeon crawl is not fighting the monster. This has already been explained.

There are a thousand ways to fight the monster, both interesting and not, but going on a Dungeon Crawl that doesn't involve actually fighting the Monster isn't one of them.

You are declaring that "casting it to death" is uninteresting. Why is casting one monster to death uninteresting, but casting a bunch to death in a Dungeon Crawl interesting?

It's not any different.

I don't have to explain every possible way of fighting the monster, and rank them, in order to point out that not fighting the monster is not fighting the monster.

Likewise, in an argument about the best way to wash the dishes, I don't need to talk about ways to wash the dishes to point out that bashing in kitten heads with a hammer is not washing the dishes.

I did point out three different ways you could model the encounter, and there is nothing stopping anyone from letting a mountain die from glass strike because it's just a construct. That's not any less interesting than any other battle that involves a construct.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:32 am

MGuy wrote:The point of this thread is how creatures of this unbelievable size should be approached.

I really think that Kaelik's point is:

"There is no way to do this in D&D 3.X that doesn't involve making up special rules for Mountain Monsters that don't violate normal rules for monsters. Making your PCs fight a giant Mountain Monster that is really a giant Fuck-You Puzzle Monster with only one real solution is not an 'epic battle,' it's DM wankery. You are bad and should feel bad."

Bolded for emphasis. I'm not entirely sure I agree 100%, but assuming I'm interpreting his argument correctly, it's at least a logical point. If you want the players to "fight a monster," the way to beat the monster should be "engage the monster in combat per the game's combat rules," not "pretend the monster is really a dungeon and go inside it to find its Plot-mandated Off Switch."

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:38 am

I realized what he was saying but the THREAD is about these kind of monsters. That's exactly what the thread is about. If you don't like that kind of monster, that kind of idea, why even post in the thread if you don't have a "better" idea?

Edit: @ Kaelik: You already KNOW I don't think casting a monster to death is fine.I've already expressed that several times that SoDs are "not fun". What's more is I didnt' say anything about "high" saves but I'd readily assume that HD you pull for a mountain, based on its size alone, would bring its saves (even if they are bad) to such an extreme level that one could not hope to overcome it. We're talking about literally fighting a creature so big it can carry an ecosystem on its back (isolated ecosystem but one nonetheless).

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:50 am

MGuy wrote:I realized what he was saying but the THREAD is about these kind of monsters. That's exactly what the thread is about. If you don't like that kind of monster, that kind of idea, why even post in the thread if you don't have a "better" idea?

The thread is about fighting giant monsters, not going on dungeon crawls to flip the off switch.

There are lots of made up rules that you can make that fit the theme.

You can give them different action systems, Maybe their very surface is a second symbiotic ecosystem with it's own action economy and HP totals.

Or maybe they just have the ability:

Big as Fuck (Ex) This Construct is cannot be subject to a spell that affects an area unless it affects all the squares occupied by the monster.

or other abilities, or more than one of the above.

I'm not even adverse to "inside the giant" quests, if the goal is to enter the cavernous worm to obtain the Staff of Power that was swallowed by it centuries ago.

The problem is that going on an adventure inside of something is not the same thing as fighting that thing, so you are in fact, talking about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual thread.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:59 am

You STILL haven't explained how going in it to kill it is NOT fighting it. I have asked the question many times and you've blatantly avoided answering it. Repeating the assertion that "going inside it is not fighting it" is not a credible explanation as to how its not. You've even ruined Archmage's assumption that you were saying "don't make shit up". How is it that going inside the creature and killing it from there is ANY different other than by concept from killing it outside. You use swords and magic to do both.

And you don't have to make a bunch of fiddly new rules to do it outside of giving the monster a weak point that kills it WITHOUT having to sink its HPs. You assert that I'm making it a puzzle monster because I believe its too damn big to not have a large probable amount of HD behind it but at no point do I say you can't fight it that way just that its fucking boring and uninteresting to do so considering what defenses a creature of this size is likely to have and that SoDing it is an anti climatic path to victory.

Plant some monsters or some anti personnel shit inside the damn thing and bam you have a full adventure that leads up to you killing the damn thing. I'm not even adverse to your "Critical Locations" Idea but that is effectively the same fucking thing as what I've already laid out cause you have to go on a little adventure around its body to find the critical locations and destroy them.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 6:00 am

MGuy wrote:Edit: @ Kaelik: You already KNOW I don't think casting a monster to death is fine.I've already expressed that several times that SoDs are "not fun".

Then you have no damn business posting in any thread about 3.5, so go the fuck away.

This is about how to do big ass monsters in 3.5. Not in MGuy's favorite imaginary world. You don't get to decide what's interesting or not. If it's standard for 3.5, then it should be fucking standard for big ass monsters in 3.5.

And if MGuy doesn't like it, he can go play in some other game and stop pretending that shit that has nothing to do with the actual topic is the real topic.

MGuy wrote:I'd readily assume that HD you pull for a mountain, based on its size alone, would bring its saves (even if they are bad) to such an extreme level that one could not hope to overcome it.

You'd be wrong. If the Mountain is of a high enough CR to warrant those HD, then it's too high of a CR to be a reasonable fight. If it's low enough CR to be a reasonable fight, then it wouldn't have that high saves.

The question was not "How can you fight monster that have infinity HD." It was "Fucking Big." Those two things are not related at all.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 6:02 am

Kaelik wrote:The problem is that going on an adventure inside of something is not the same thing as fighting that thing, so you are in fact, talking about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual thread.

You have a narrow view of "fighting", Kaelik. Perhaps too narrow to solve the problem.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 6:03 am

MGuy wrote:YI'm not even adverse to your "Critical Locations" Idea but that is effectively the same fucking thing as what I've already laid out cause you have to go on a little adventure around its body to find the critical locations and destroy them.

The rest of your shit is too stupid to bother, but this is too stupid to bother in a way that strawmans me so I'll address it.

WTF. I never said shit about critical locations. Critical locations is bullshit for the same damn reason little adventure mode is bullshit. It's not fighting the monster, it's doing tangentially related things for the purpose of convincing the DM you put in the work that he can kill the monster for you with his plot powers.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 6:11 am

Firstly Kaelik you are full of shit because you give the Critical Locations suggestion earlier.

If you want to fight some giant monster, the way to have that happen is to actually fight the actual goddam monster. Whether it gets lots of actions, or has locational HP pools, or both, or has a series of abilities representing it's size and type, that's stuff you can actually figure out. But at no point does "not fighting the monster at all" become the best way to fight the monster.

And I like how you refuse to address any of the questions I ask. You are deliberately skipping over them because you don't have any bullshit that even you find worthy enough to spout on them. You have not answered HOW killing something from the inside is "not fighting it" and you have not presented a less boring alternative than hacking away at the things HPs or sitting there and hoping it falls to a SoD spell.

I know you have a hard on for them but in the interest of making a "better" 3.5 game I'd rather not follow the trends that make 3.5 a worse game to play. You are also a hypocrite in that you have suggested several rules changes that aren't in DnD 3.5 yet admonish me for making a suggestion that you kill the thing from the inside. I could seriously echo your thing about not playing MGuy's fantasy world for every rules change you've suggested in this thread.