Tome Challenges

[Wiseman]

I've been looking through a lot of the homebrew on this site. There's all sorts of classes, feats, spells, etc. A lot of these drastically increase the power of players.

So I was reading the section on encounter creation in the dungeonscape sourcebook. There were some sample encounters in those books. I was looking them over, and realized that using most of the tome style homebrew would make these encounters trivial as they were designed for characters using official material. However, the basic concepts it presents on monster roles seems pretty solid.

My question is this. What do you think would make for an interesting challenge for a group of PCs using Tome style material? Come up with your own encounters, locations, monsters, dungeons, traps, heck even adventures. I'll add some of my own ideas too, eventually. Hope to see what you come up with!

[Kaelik]

The party enters a fortress made entirely of Thamium, or whatever the soul sucking black metal/rock is. For whatever reason, treasures, myths, sorties from the tower. Whatever.

They progress inside down a hallway that opens into a large room. They have to jump down the ledge 50ft to reach the floor and advance to then next hallway. On the ground, a thin stream of water trickles along until it goes down that hallway.

In that hallway is a Shaboath, CR 10, from Lords of Madness. Basically a water construct created by Aboleth slime in water. It pretends to be part of the water, hidden as well by the Aboleth's permanent image. Once enough people move close enough to the hallway, the Shaboath pulls a lever, which opens the ceiling in the last chamber, pouring tons of fucking water from a chamber above, hopefully washing some of the people down the chamber.

Then the Shaboath uses wall of ice to separate the chamber behind from the hallway if anyone is in it.

The Shaboath then comes out and begins combat with anyone in the hallway who wasn't washed all the way down. The Aboleth uses all it's abilities to do whatever it wants, but basically fights anyone left in the original room in the now total water, being an aboleth, because that is what it is.

EL 10.5/11

At then end of the hallway with the Shaboath is a giant hole and also a giant cylinder going up.

People washed down can fall down the hallway, people going up face a Beholder that AMFs the entire top of the hole, so you have to non magically ascend in the perfectly smooth surfaces, because your magical flight will randomly stop. The Beholder waits until people are just below his AMF, and then stops supporting the weight of a giant cylinder exactly the size that can fall through the hole, driving people down, also it has more rocks to throw with telekinesis next time they come up.

EL 13.

At the bottom of the trench that people might get washed down are two 7 headed Pyrohydras and a Dybbuk (CR 8, Fiendish Codex) who is hidden in the floor. Basically, they kill Hydras with anything besides head cutting offs, the Dybbuk just possesses the corpse and goes right back to fighting. Since no one actually fights Hydras by cutting heads off, this can go on for a while.

EL 11.

You can make whatever Tome modifications you want to the monsters if you think they need it, or you can just not, because they are pretty tough as is.

The main premise is that the PCs will probably be split between the Aboleth, the Shaboath, and the Dybbuk, so those are lower EL, where the Beholder is going to be fought by the whole party. You could put a level 10-11 party against them, and tell them it is their fault for getting split up. and have the ELs work out for one day of fighting with just one more encounter of whatever you want.

[squirrelloid]

Tomes improve players because the classes they are improving are awful. The Tome series balance point is Cleric/Druid/Wizard.

This means that you should be able to just use the monster CRs to generate a proper EL, and the party should be able to deal with it. Of course, you might need to ramp up the ELs of your encounters as level increases, but if you put monsters in a proper habitat they'll generally be okay. Remember, most of the time the PCs are attacking monsters in their homes - they should have traps and structural features that benefit them, as appropriate to their abilities.

The following is a suitable EL3 encounter.

You hear chanting beyond some curtains strung across the cave at a narrow point. Your draconic isn’t very good, but you’re pretty sure they’re offering praises to their dark god. Praises and the pretty serving wench they’d captured. That just isn’t okay - who was going to serve you beer if the kobolds killed her?

When you push through the curtain you see a small group of kobolds bowed before an altar. In front of it, a kobold in some sort of fancy regalia is holding the trussed wench up by her hair, a dagger to her throat. Well, if there’s something you like more than saving the day, it’s saving the day when the hapless victim is easy to look at... and will bring you beer after. Never forget the beer.

EL 3 (CRs 1 + 8 x ¼)

8 small Kobold Warriors (CR ¼)

1 small Kobold Sorceror (CR 1)
Spells (4 | 3): 0th (DC 12): ghost sound, daze, acid splash, mage hand
1st (DC 13): silent image, colorspray

The sorceror has expended 1 0th-level and 1 1st-level spell slot on ghost sound and silent image prior to the player entering the room, and these have been deducted from his spells per day.

A pressure plate just past the curtain seals the tunnel behind you. Consider the tunnel to end 15’ behind the farthest back PC.

The room extends 40’ from the cave and 25’ to either side. This gives us a grid of 5’ squares 11 across (1-11 from left to right) and 8 deep (A-H from where the cave comes in to the altar). Hanging banners cover the side walls (treat as being in A1-H1 and A11-H11, and in H5-7). The ceiling is 20’ high at A6 and slopes downward to 10’ at H6.

The altar is a medium-sized rough-hewn stone structure located in G6. Moving through it requires a jump check that clears 3’ height and travels at least 10’ horizontally, or you can spend a move action to clamber on top of it.

There is an opening *above* the entrance.

The kobolds in front of the altar are mostly illusions. Illusory Kobolds can be found in F7, F3, F6, E5, E4, E6. Kobolds in F5 and F4 are real, and will attack when an illusory kobold is attacked. The kobold leader and captive are also illusory. Attacking an illusory kobold grants a will save against the effect.

The kobold sorceror is hiding behind the altar in H6 (Partial Cover, Spot DC 15, full concealment with illusion in the way). He prefers to use colorspray or daze, and does not particularly care about catching a stray ally or two. He waits to drop the silent image until the character attacks a non-illusory kobold. There is a tunnel suitable for small creatures behind the banner in H6, and the illusionist will retreat down it if he feels endangered.

4 kobolds are concealed behind banners (Spot DC 17), in A1, A4, H1, and H3. The last two are in the opening above the entrance. They also wait until an illusory kobold is attacked, and prefer to fight with ranged weapons. A3 and H3 also have tunnels hidden behind their banners (suitable for a small creature - medium creatures need to squeeze) and kobolds will retreat if the fight turns against them, or use hit-and-run tactics if pursued.

Traps: Any medium-sized or larger creature entering the B or G files triggers a pressure plate which makes a single arrow attack (+10 to hit, 1d8/x3). Each file can only be triggered once.
-There are caltrops in A5, A6, and A7.
-Pursuing kobolds down small passageways is also not very smart, and there’s a 50% chance for a CR1 trap every 50’.

The captive wench is in an alcove 30’ down the passage behind the altar, and the sorceror will coup de grace her if he is fleeing and thinks he has time.

And honestly, there could probably be more traps.[/spoiler]

[Ice9]

To be technical though, that's not a CR 3, that's a CR 3 + a bunch of traps, which have their own CR. The illusions and caltrops are fair game, but when you give kobolds a bunch of traps that hit way better than the kobolds themselves have a chance to (the arrow traps and random hallway traps), then it's no longer just the kobolds that you're fighting. Not that you shouldn't use the traps, I'd just bump up the CR accordingly.

IME, you probably do need to bump up the CR a bit for Tome stuff. I'm using some house-rules that are only a limited bump towards the Tomes, and it still results in a party where by 9th level, several of the characters need significantly stronger things (or super-ideal circumstances) to challenge them.

[Red_Rob]

Tomes improve players because the classes they are improving are awful. The Tome series balance point is Cleric/Druid/Wizard.

This means that you should be able to just use the monster CRs to generate a proper EL, and the party should be able to deal with it.

Actually, I tended to find that due to inter-party synergies and the ability of some Tome classes to steamroller certain types of encounters you do need to up the EL to provide a proper challenge. Particularly with published scenarios, which are obviously balanced against an average party. In particular, sending 4 EL = APL encounters one at a time at a Tome party won't make them break a sweat. At least one of the party will have abilities that let them wipe the floor with the opponent and the party will breeze past it.

The party enters a fortress made entirely of Thamium, or whatever the soul sucking black metal/rock is.

Thinaun? Also, several of those encounters sound like they are slanted towards emphasising the monsters key abilities. Doesn't the DMG suggest you increase the EL in those cases? Either way, those are some nasty encounters that all use the basic rule of "don't let the PC's dictate the terms of the encounter". Which is a good rule of thumb.

So I was reading the section on encounter creation in the dungeonscape sourcebook. There were some sample encounters in those books. I was looking them over, and realized that using most of the tome style homebrew would make these encounters trivial as they were designed for characters using official material.

Could you go into these a little? I'm interested in what you saw as making the encounters trivial, and what abilities the PC's would have that made it so.

[Username17]

So I was reading the section on encounter creation in the dungeonscape sourcebook. There were some sample encounters in those books. I was looking them over, and realized that using most of the tome style homebrew would make these encounters trivial as they were designed for characters using official material. However, the basic concepts it presents on monster roles seems pretty solid.

Actually, a lot of those are trivial because they were very poorly designed. For starters, you have shit like the Traps. A supposedly CR 14 trap has a search DC of 34 and a disable DC of 29. A 14th level Rogue has 17 ranks of Search and Disable Device and also has Skill Mastery. Using even low level equipment (eyes of minute seeing and masterwork thieves' tools for example), a Rogue would be able to detect and disable that trap automatically without even rolling dice. But if you wanted to just wade through it you totally could, because it only does 8d6 of cold damage with a reflex save for half and it only hits a 10 foot area. So even if you somehow got to 14th level without having a Rogue (or equivalent) in the party, you're still basically going to laugh outright at the 28 points of damage on a failed save (itself hardly guaranteed considering that you're high enough level to be wearing a +5 cloak of resistance). And you can carve the trap itself up with reach weapons once you discover it the "hard" way. That thing is a fucking joke. It's a joke at 10th level, it's a joke at 8th level. And it's supposed to be in your way at fourteenth fucking level.

Another major issue is that the 3e CR system doesn't scale properly to large numbers of low level bullshit. Two CR 5s is pretty close to a CR 7, but four CR 3s is fucking pathetic compared to a CR 7. Mostly this has to do with how defenses scale on a d20: That the higher your defenses are relative to the attack, the more relative benefit you get from each further increase in your defense. Against an opponent with a +4 to-hit, getting a +1 to AC makes you last 10% longer if you had an AC of 15 and 100% longer if you had an AC of 23. Enemies two levels lower are reasonable encounters when they come in double the numbers, but enemies four levels lower are not reasonable encounters when they come in only four times the normal numbers. Eight times the enemies at six levels lower isn't even funny - those guys can't do shit and are likely held off by simple GTFO abilities.

Another major issue is that fighters suck. And NPC fighters suck even more, because it takes a lot of fucking work to minmax out a fighter that isn't completely useless and the standard "roll out an NPC in two minutes" plan just isn't going to give you a reasonable challenge at any level. Even NPC Wizards usually aren't that scary, because it's actually more work to get even a full caster up and running than is normally worth putting into an NPC.

Bottom line: there are some pretty severe problems with the CR guidelines and really a lot of the presented challenges are laughably easy even for core only pregen characters. Which is not to say that there aren't monsters that are going to break you in half unless you're powergaming, metagaming, or praying for DM intervention like mad - because there totally are. There are CR 9 monsters that cast 9th level spells. But when Traps, Groups, and NPCs all default to "amazingly and comically underpowered as opposition", it tends to get kind of noticeable.

-Username17

[Aryxbez]

Funnily enough, this is a thread I've been looking for, something I've wondered before myself on this matter. Albeit perhaps not as blatant on the first part, all the same, I welcome seeing more of this.

Similar to the main poster, I too, have discovered that monsters at 13th+ seem to be more relatable to like fighters, in that their numbers tend to suck for what they want to do. As Tome Characters numbers are superior, making the odds rather unequal for even equal level opposition (better AC/saves/attack and like). Even when you up the EL by a few points (3-4?) as per Red_Rob's suggestion in the first link I gave, they either have similar numbers, or still otherwise inferior. Sad, considering those monsters are "supposed" to be threats for something several levels higher than them. Seems to show to me, that you don't really don't "need" Wizard-level classes in D&D, to battle encounters at high levels, optimizing at a Rogue-level of balance, seems like it would be good enough.

Though, considering Rogues supposed to be appropriate to CR system full on, and wizard level "exceeds" that, I guess it kind makes sense their numbers are full-on superior in every way?

Frank, since CR guidelines are a problem, is there any way to step around it, or alternative, to make encounter building mostly work?

[Kaelik]

Thinaun? Also, several of those encounters sound like they are slanted towards emphasising the monsters key abilities. Doesn't the DMG suggest you increase the EL in those cases? Either way, those are some nasty encounters that all use the basic rule of "don't let the PC's dictate the terms of the encounter". Which is a good rule of thumb.

No, that is literally the exact opposite of how it works.

You should lower the EL of encounters if you aren't going to use their abilities.

Beholders can disintegrate in order to create a huge chunk of the ceiling to drop on people. If you refuse to have Beholders consider that option... lower the EL. Beholders can use their eye vision to prevent magical flyers from reaching them, if you refuse to consider that option, lower the EL.

Dubbyak's are incorporeal and can possess magical beasts, if you don't have them possess magical beasts and use their incorpreality, lower the EL.

Aboleths are swimming fish, if you want them to fight on land, then you goddam lower the EL.

[Red_Rob]

I was thinking more about fighting a troll in a closet. Your example of a beholder at the top of a smooth cylinder supporting a block with telekinesis I would class as going beyond "letting the monster use its abilities", for example. I would say this is a situation where "circumstances give the opponents a distinct advantage" to use the DMG's wording.

Not that this is out of place in a Tome game, just to clarify that this is not an average EL13 encounter as I would envision it.

[Kaelik]

I was thinking more about fighting a troll in a closet. Your example of a beholder at the top of a smooth cylinder supporting a block with telekinesis I would class as going beyond "letting the monster use its abilities", for example. I would say this is a situation where "circumstances give the opponents a distinct advantage" to use the DMG's wording.

Not that this is out of place in a Tome game, just to clarify that this is not an average EL13 encounter as I would envision it.

And I am saying you are completely wrong. How did the smooth cylinder get there? Disintegrate. The Beholder disintegrated the entire tunnel up, floated to the top, and then disintegrated the area around a cylinder which it supports with it's telekinesis (it does that when it sees people coming up the cylinder).

So, no it isn't an average EL 13 encounter as you imagine it, because you imagine Beholders not using their disintegrate and telekinesis abilities as they very much can.

[Red_Rob]

If what you are postulating is true, let's say you roll on the wandering monster table and get "Beholder". A Beholder rounds the corner and sees the party as they spy it, and both roll for initiative. What is the EL of this encounter? It is obviously a lot easier than the one you described, and yet according to you is still EL13. This seems nonsensical.

If the enemy is given time, advance warning and free reign to set up a situation where it's powers are accentuated then the EL should increase. Its effectively the difference between 5 goblins spotted at encounter range and 5 goblins waiting in ambush with time to drink potions and cast buffs.

I'm not saying they were bad encounters or anything, just that the EL should be increased due to advantageous terrain / circumstances for the monsters. Which ties in with what we've been saying that you need to up the EL by a few points when running games for Tome characters.

[Username17]

Meeting the monsters in their expected environments is part of the expected encounter that their CR is supposedly based on. For many monsters, it doesn't really matter - a Mind Flayer in the jungle is pretty much the same as a Mind Flayer in a cave. But for many monsters it matters a lot. A Roper or an Assassin Vine in an open space are equal parts blatantly obvious and extremely non-threatening at almost any level.

If an Umber Hulk or Purple Worm can't burrow through the side of the tunnel you're walking through and attack the party in a tight space, their EL should drop a lot. The whole "you can't fly away and drop rocks on the monster until it flees or dies" is very much part of the CR estimates for those creatures.

Monsters can of course be in situations which juice them up beyond expectations - Undead aren't traditionally written up under the assumption that the fight will be held on the Negative Energy Plane or anything crazy like that. But most monsters have fairly advantageous terrain defined into their standard encounter. Ambush monsters are just sort of assumed to fight you in an area where their camouflage works, for example.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

If what you are postulating is true, let's say you roll on the wandering monster table and get "Beholder". A Beholder rounds the corner and sees the party as they spy it, and both roll for initiative. What is the EL of this encounter? It is obviously a lot easier than the one you described, and yet according to you is still EL13. This seems nonsensical.

No, according to me, you just described a Beholder that doesn't use it's abilities, and is therefore, not EL 13. If you roll on a random monster table and have a monster just be in existent without taking the precautions that monsters of that type would take, then you are not using all its abilities, and it should have a lower EL.

If the enemy is given time, advance warning and free reign to set up a situation where it's powers are accentuated then the EL should increase. Its effectively the difference between 5 goblins spotted at encounter range and 5 goblins waiting in ambush with time to drink potions and cast buffs.

Monsters should always have time when they are living in an area, and they should have advance warning when their abilities give them advance warning.

When you invade a Kobold Den you don't get to complain that the EL should go up because they have tunnels that aren't big enough for you. They are Kobolds, being small is part of their CR, and being attacked in a warren is also part of their CR.

I'm not saying they were bad encounters or anything, just that the EL should be increased due to advantageous terrain / circumstances for the monsters. Which ties in with what we've been saying that you need to up the EL by a few points when running games for Tome characters.

And I am saying that you are still fucking wrong, you lying sack of shit. When a Beholder lives in a cave complex, and the Beholder uses its disintegrate to create tunnels for itself, and the Beholder sees enemies coming, it uses its disintegrate to drop a big rock on them, it is not a higher EL than a Beholder, because Beholders can totally fucking do all that shit by using their abilities at EL 13, and nothing about having the time to set up a tunnel in its home makes it a higher EL, and nothing about seeing enemies coming up the tunnel makes it a higher EL.

[Red_Rob]

Kaelik, not every encounter takes place in a monster's lair that it has set up to be a perfect deathtrap for adventurers and waits in all day in case someone happens to come along. Sometimes there are wilderness encounters, or players sneak into places without alerting the inhabitants. Saying that every time the monsters aren't in the perfect position to ambush the PC's they are not using their abilities is pretty extreme.

Page 39 of the DMG gives examples of xp amendments for times when the "circumstances give the character's opponents a distinct advantage". If you don't think that having a Beholder at the top of a "perfectly smooth" shaft with a giant cylinder suspended in position just waiting for the party is an advantageous circumstance, what the hell would qualify?

Okay, having read up more closely I can see that some of the terms I've been throwing around are wrong. The EL of the encounter is never modified, so that was misleading to say. Weird aside - I hadn't realised that EL is never actually used in xp calculations at all, and everything is based on CR. So meeting 4 Ogres in a group gives the same xp as fighting those 4 Ogres one at a time, which seems odd. Why did they bother giving all these complicated calculations for EL based on multiple monsters and then just give out xp based on the CR of the monsters anyway? Regardless, what I should have said is that the xp award would be increased. My bad.

Still, I think you are being disingenuous trying to conflate meeting monsters in their natural terrain with having them in custom designed deathtraps. I get that a Roper is supposed to be met in a cave full of stalactites, not an open field, it's right there in the monster description. That doesn't mean that every Roper should also be encountered across a lava filled pit it can drag players into, and if it isn't then it "isn't using it's abilities" and should be worth less xp. I even agree that setting monsters in ambushes that emphasise their abilities can make for more interesting encounters. I just think you need to be honest when you do this that you are making the encounter harder and should account for that.

[squirrelloid]

To be technical though, that's not a CR 3, that's a CR 3 + a bunch of traps, which have their own CR. The illusions and caltrops are fair game, but when you give kobolds a bunch of traps that hit way better than the kobolds themselves have a chance to (the arrow traps and random hallway traps), then it's no longer just the kobolds that you're fighting. Not that you shouldn't use the traps, I'd just bump up the CR accordingly.

IME, you probably do need to bump up the CR a bit for Tome stuff. I'm using some house-rules that are only a limited bump towards the Tomes, and it still results in a party where by 9th level, several of the characters need significantly stronger things (or super-ideal circumstances) to challenge them.

Kobolds have a racial +2 on Craft (Trapmaking). Simple CR1 traps are stuff they can just *make*. Like a necromancer cleric with undead that he's entitled to based on his class features, kobolds should just get traps when encountered in their lair. It's what they do.

Edit: when you have a party of all wizards, druids, and clerics - do you up the ELs? I mean, when i was part of a rotating DM group, non-Tome non-caster, we had to up ELs by level ~9, because the characters were crazy optimized. And that was without casters. That's not a TOME effect, that's an optimization effect.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik, not every encounter takes place in a monster's lair that it has set up to be a perfect deathtrap for adventurers and waits in all day in case someone happens to come along. Sometimes there are wilderness encounters, or players sneak into places without alerting the inhabitants. Saying that every time the monsters aren't in the perfect position to ambush the PC's they are not using their abilities is pretty extreme.

Which is why I am not saying that. But you are saying that every time a monster is given more time in its home than PCs, that it raises the difficulty. And that is completely full of shit.

If the PCs can sneak up on the Beholder in his lair, then they can sneak up on him, but if they can't, he probably drops a big fucking slab on them. And under absolutely no circumstances does the Beholder being in the lair it prepared against intruders increase the difficulty above the expected average.

for times when the "circumstances give the character's opponents a distinct advantage". If you don't think that having a Beholder at the top of a "perfectly smooth" shaft with a giant cylinder suspended in position just waiting for the party is an advantageous circumstance, what the hell would qualify?

Any time there are circumstances that the monster cannot create itself with it's own abilities and no help from anyone else.

Seriously, why is that tunnel perfectly smooth? Because it was created by the Beholder's disintegrate eye. Why is there a giant Cylinder that it can drop? Because the Beholder created the cylinder in the cieling with its disintegrate.

When you run into an Aboleth with Permanent Images in places, that doesn't make the encounter harder than a standard Aboleth, because Aboleths can make Permanent Images. When you run into a Beholder who disintegrated a tunnel and a block, that is not harder than a standard beholder, because standard Beholders can disintegrate things.

Still, I think you are being disingenuous trying to conflate meeting monsters in their natural terrain with having them in custom designed deathtraps.

And I think you are being disingenuous in calling a beholder using it's disintegrate at will to build a lair that defends it against the most simplistic attacks as a "custom death trap." A beholder's natural terrain is a cave. Anything he can do in 10 rounds in a cave complex is not a "custom death trap."

I get that a Roper is supposed to be met in a cave full of stalactites, not an open field, it's right there in the monster description. That doesn't mean that every Roper should also be encountered across a lava filled pit it can drag players into, and if it isn't then it "isn't using it's abilities" and should be worth less xp.

A Roper does not have the ability to summon a lava flow. A Beholder does have the ability to disintegrate a tunnel up and then disintegrate a cylinder to drop.

I just think you need to be honest when you do this that you are making the encounter harder and should account for that.

And you need to be honest that a beholder at the top of a tunnel is only "harder" than what you expect because you personally are too stupid to think of Beholders using their disintegrate in an intelligent way, and not because the fucking MM doesn't specifically say that beholders use their fucking disintegrate to tunnel through caves creating their own paths.

Therefore, a beholder which disintegrates a tunnel, and then drops a rock down the tunnel is not harder than the MM Beholder, because it is the MM Beholder doing exactly what the MM beholder is supposed to do.

[Red_Rob]

If you don't think that having a Beholder at the top of a "perfectly smooth" shaft with a giant cylinder suspended in position just waiting for the party is an advantageous circumstance, what the hell would qualify?

Any time there are circumstances that the monster cannot create itself with it's own abilities and no help from anyone else.

Okay, that's a clear definition I can agree on. After all, an Invisible Stalker doesn't give extra xp for being invisible, it's an expected part of fighting the monster. I guess I'm just dubious how much thought the creators of these monsters put into how their powers would be used to set up situations prior to the encounter.

But you are saying that every time a monster is given more time in its home than PCs, that it raises the difficulty. And that is completely full of shit.

See, here is where you lose me. Firstly, if the monster is given advance warning and time to prepare of course the encounter is going to be more difficult. That is obviously true, not "full of shit". I guess you are saying that the CR takes into account these preparations, and therefore you shouldn't consider the fight harder than it "should" be, but that doesn't make sense either. As I said before, you can meet a monster in a variety of circumstances. A Beholder could quite reasonably be encountered whilst attacking an enemy, out hunting, or in it's lair. Whilst in it's lair it could be surprised, or have time to prepare. Saying that only when in it's lair and with time to prepare is it's CR appropriate doesn't seem to gel with the descriptions of Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels in the MM or DMG. At no time does it suggest this, which given D&D's long association with Wandering Monster tables and random encounters would be something I would have thought they would have mentioned.

I guess you would say that without giving the monster time to prepare the encounter should be classed as "easy" and provide less xp. Which I guess is just a different way of looking at the same thing? So I guess we just had different assumptions about what situation constitutes the "normal" CR of a monster.

[ishy]

So if I try to sneak up on a beholder, and I fail my stealth check, the encounter should be classed as 'hard' and provide more xp.
And if I make my stealth check it should be classed 'easy' and provide less xp?

[violence in the media]

At then end of the hallway with the Shaboath is a giant hole and also a giant cylinder going up.

People washed down can fall down the hallway, people going up face a Beholder that AMFs the entire top of the hole, so you have to non magically ascend in the perfectly smooth surfaces, because your magical flight will randomly stop. The Beholder waits until people are just below his AMF, and then stops supporting the weight of a giant cylinder exactly the size that can fall through the hole, driving people down, also it has more rocks to throw with telekinesis next time they come up.

EL 13.

How would this play out? I don't have the beholder info with me, but a 375 lb TK-able stone isn't that big. I'm assuming the cylinder is going to be significantly larger and heavier than that. A 5' cube of granite weighs a little over 10 tons, so do we just throw down 100d6 of damage according to the falling object rules? So, how much damage is it going to do? What is the Strength DC to stop it while climbing the shaft? What happens to characters that fail all pertinent rolls and wind up squished at the bottom of the shaft under the cylinder? Is the intention that anyone not able to blink/dimension door/turn to mist/disintegrate the cylinder/etc. is just turned into jelly?

I like the scenario, I'm just at a loss for appropriate mechanics to govern the situation.

[Kaelik]

How would this play out? I don't have the beholder info with me, but a 375 lb TK-able stone isn't that big. I'm assuming the cylinder is going to be significantly larger and heavier than that. A 5' cube of granite weighs a little over 10 tons, so do we just throw down 100d6 of damage according to the falling object rules? So, how much damage is it going to do? What is the Strength DC to stop it while climbing the shaft? What happens to characters that fail all pertinent rolls and wind up squished at the bottom of the shaft under the cylinder? Is the intention that anyone not able to blink/dimension door/turn to mist/disintegrate the cylinder/etc. is just turned into jelly?

I like the scenario, I'm just at a loss for appropriate mechanics to govern the situation.

Well, you can do two different things. You can either drop something the Beholder was holding with TK, or you can drop something that it carved out over a bunch of rounds, and then just broke the end of it with disintegrate on the last round. That can be something of up to arbitrary size.

I recommend avoiding the arbitrary size thing unless you are sure your entire party can handle it. I use the 375lbs limitation of telekinesis as a level appropriate limitation in most cases.

That being said, the drop can basically be a narrow disk if you need it to be to hit everything in the hole.

To me, there is no Strength DC to stop it. If your character is climbing the wall with a climb speed or in any other way that doesn't require them to use their hands, they cn just catch it, and if they can hold 375 pounds as heavy load, they can just keep climbing up holding it. It they are climbing with their hands, or they can't hold the object, they might get knocked down and take a bunch of falling damage.

Anyone who catches it takes the falling object damage. There are other ways around it besides teleport, because it hits you and you fall down with it, you don't take damage until you hit the ground, so just roll off the side when it gets back to the beginning of the tunnel.

See, here is where you lose me. Firstly, if the monster is given advance warning and time to prepare of course the encounter is going to be more difficult. That is obviously true, not "full of shit". I guess you are saying that the CR takes into account these preparations, and therefore you shouldn't consider the fight harder than it "should" be, but that doesn't make sense either. As I said before, you can meet a monster in a variety of circumstances. A Beholder could quite reasonably be encountered whilst attacking an enemy, out hunting, or in it's lair. Whilst in it's lair it could be surprised, or have time to prepare. Saying that only when in it's lair and with time to prepare is it's CR appropriate doesn't seem to gel with the descriptions of Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels in the MM or DMG. At no time does it suggest this, which given D&D's long association with Wandering Monster tables and random encounters would be something I would have thought they would have mentioned.

Okay, your problem is that you think any of these numbers apply to one specific thing.

So let me explain it this way: Go look up the encounter chart. Look at the single monster column.

An EL 10 encounter could consist of:

A single CR 9 Bone Devil,
A single CR 10 Beblith, or
A single CR 11 Barbed Devil.

All of those are a valid EL 10 encounter. Both the CR 9 and CR 11 have a non zero non 100 percent chance of cloning themselves, and they remain a valid EL 10 regardless of whether they succeed or fail. The fact that running into a Beholder in one place might be harder than another does not mean that they are not both identically EL 13 encounters, because the range of EL 13 is pretty damn wide.

I guess you would say that without giving the monster time to prepare the encounter should be classed as "easy" and provide less xp. Which I guess is just a different way of looking at the same thing? So I guess we just had different assumptions about what situation constitutes the "normal" CR of a monster.

Sometimes Monsters have time to prepare. Sometimes they do not. To a large degree, that will be based on the monsters abilities. Devils have See in Darkness, so they often know about the party before the party knows about them. Dragons have blindsight to a long range, so they often know about the party first.

Beholders have a spot modifier and the ability to channel encounters, so they absolutely can use those abilities to give them advance warning of approaching enemies. Whether or not a monster gets advance warning should be determined by its abilities, but monsters should most often, even and especially when "wandering" be in their home field.

Wandering monsters are monsters that are in their home terrain, and maybe not directly in their lair, but they shouldn't be far from it, and if they feel like it is warranted, they should retreat to their lair.

[Wiseman]

And I am saying that you are still fucking wrong, you lying sack of shit. When a Beholder lives in a cave complex, and the Beholder uses its disintegrate to create tunnels for itself, and the Beholder sees enemies coming, it uses its disintegrate to drop a big rock on them, it is not a higher EL than a Beholder, because Beholders can totally fucking do all that shit by using their abilities at EL 13, and nothing about having the time to set up a tunnel in its home makes it a higher EL, and nothing about seeing enemies coming up the tunnel makes it a higher EL.

I agree with what Kaelik says. My only concern is that the designers didn't consider such options when assigning CR.

[Kaelik]

I agree with what Kaelik says. My only concern is that the designers didn't consider such options when assigning CR.

That is a silly concern to have. They didn't consider that players would use Gate to make the BBEG take a time out while the beat his face in. They didn't consider players using Rope Trick to rest in relative safety at early levels.

I'm not sure I would believe they considered players using Planar Binding ever at all.

Yeah, they also didn't consider that incorporeal enemies can hide in the floor, or that Beholders can drop obscenely large rocks on people down a tunnel, but frankly, I stopped caring about what the designers considered as soon as I started playing Tome games (actually well before then, but since we are literally talking about a Tome game, I'm using that as an signifier for why we damn well do not care about the designers.)

[Wiseman]

So the best thing is to do away entirely with the CR system? Or does it have any merits at all? (I'm guessing at least it's okay for approximating what's good for an encounter.)

(I already did away with XP after realizing that my players leveled up after only four hilariously easy encounters and we were only halfway through the quest.)

[Kaelik]

So the best thing is to do away entirely with the CR system? Or does it have any merits at all? (I'm guessing at least it's okay for approximating what's good for an encounter.)

What? How the fuck did you get do away with CR from that?

The designers made mistakes. So fucking what, that doesn't men you should just light the entire PHB on fire because Gate and Planar Binding are spells, why should you light the entire MM/DMG on fire because monsters can do more than what the designers expected, just like players?

[Wiseman]

I meant that in the sense of CR"x" is worth so much XP at level "y". I decided to handle advancement in my game by the method of leveling up every time an plot arc or whatever had been completed.

Edit: "Entirely" probably wasn't the best word for it...