De canistro textrinum

[Stubbazubba]

Why don't you basketweavers explain what it is about CR 3 Vrocks that's so wonderful that your willing to defend it so vigorously over the internet?

The entire reason we went off on CR 3 Vrocks in the first place is so that low-op or low-level parties can still access a thematic variety of adventures which includes Evil Planes and all the material that would entail.

D&D Core has no setting, and no set campaign or narrative. It's just a toolbox to make your own. The stats and abilities of a MM Vrock are arbitrary and based on the designers' own setting and campaign, which is usually not what people play at their own tables. DMs are not bound to play the game by Core only, they are allowed to homebrew monsters for their homebrew campaign. The fact that anyone is seriously challenging that is astonishing.

Let's reverse the question; what's so horrific about CR 3 Vrocks that you supposedly more mature hard-mode guys get your nerd-rage on over it? Is adjusting a purely meta-game expectation really that difficult or damaging? Are you saying you will not play in a homebrew campaign unless you can look over the DM's homebrew monsters first so you can still meta-game? Is CR 3 Vrock anything but a meta-game concern for you?

[K]

Why don't you explain why exactly you should be able to boost the CR, but not lower it, when the rules offer opportunities for both?

Why are you house ruling "you can't have a vrock as a CR3 encounter"?

No one is objecting to lowering CR within the fucking rules. We've been over this.

But as previously established, you can't make a Vrock CR 3 within the rules, because: 1) EL is different than CR. 2) You can't make an EL 3 encounter with a Vrock either, no matter how many negative levels you give it, because it still has the same spores, Mirror Image at will, SR 17, DR 10/Good, and resistance 10/Immunity.

Except for the rules in Savage Species that specifically has a level progression for Vrocks, right? You'd have to ignore those rules entirely if you want to say that there is no way to make a CR 3 Vrock in the 3.X rules.

And ignore the admittedly bad rules for calculating CR for DM-made monsters in the Monster Manual that totally allow you to move monsters up and down the CR scale.

Of course, the SS rules also are for the more powerful 3.0 Vrocks that have better and different spell-likes, but I guess it doesn't matter. The fact that those Vrocks are slightly different from your personal definition of a Vrock means that they aren't "real Vrocks" regardless of the designer intent.

[Kaelik]

Let's reverse the question; what's so horrific about CR 3 Vrocks that you supposedly more mature hard-mode guys get your nerd-rage on over it? Is adjusting a purely meta-game expectation really that difficult or damaging? Are you saying you will not play in a homebrew campaign unless you can look over the DM's homebrew monsters first so you can still meta-game? Is CR 3 Vrock anything but a meta-game concern for you?

See this. Why can literally not a single fucking person on team CR 3 Vrock get off this metagaming horseshit?

We have explained several fucking times over how there are lots of non metagame effects of changing Vrocks. if you want to make completely hombrew CR 3 whatevers, you can make as many of those as you fucking want (provided you okay it with your players ahead of time) without changing the setting, but when you take established parts of the setting, like Vrocks, and change them, then you are changing the setting out from under the PCs, and making their choices not sane.

[K]

See this. Why can literally not a single fucking person on team CR 3 Vrock get off this metagaming horseshit?

Because the "choices" you keep talking about are entirely choices based on metagame knowledge.

Yes, you can't make sane metagame choices about a monster unless you know lots of facts about it. You won't know to use certain protection spells, prepare for certain kinds of damage, or use certain kinds of attacks. You won't know the default CR of the stock MM version if the DM hasn't changed a bit (like choosing different feats, giving different magic items or equipment, or otherwise changing because of things that happened in the adventure like getting spells cast on them or taking damage).

If there are any other choices that aren't purely metagame, no one has mentioned them. The only non-metagame knowledge that "Vrock" tells people is "iconic bird-man demon of DnD" and anything related to the actual adventure like "the traveler told us that Vrocks attacked that sorcerer... these Vrocks might be the same ones."

Seriously, what other non-metagame information is someone getting when they hear "Vrock?"

[Foxwarrior]

A Vrock is an 8 foot tall teleporting monster that can throw things with its mind, summon a small army of dretches, and weather an almost infinite hail of arrows fired by normal people. Three of them can annihilate a small army with 18 seconds of dancing.

[K]

A Vrock is an 8 foot tall teleporting monster that can throw things with its mind, summon a small army of dretches, and weather an almost infinite hail of arrows fired by normal people. Three of them can annihilate a small army with 18 seconds of dancing.

So that's five metagame pieces of knowledge and a single partial piece that's not.

What's your point? Are you saying that the only important things about a Vrock are the metagame bits?

[Foxwarrior]

Are you saying "the things a creature can do to the setting or the inhabitants thereof" is metagame knowledge? If so, then I completely understand why you'd think it's all about metagaming.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

A Vrock is an 8 foot tall teleporting monster that can throw things with its mind, summon a small army of dretches, and weather an almost infinite hail of arrows fired by normal people. Three of them can annihilate a small army with 18 seconds of dancing.

A ninth level human wizard can do all that too. Are you suggesting that humans should not exist below ninth level?

[Foxwarrior]

A Vrock is an 8 foot tall teleporting monster that can throw things with its mind, summon a small army of dretches, and weather an almost infinite hail of arrows fired by normal people. Three of them can annihilate a small army with 18 seconds of dancing.

A ninth level human wizard can do all that too. Are you suggesting that humans should not exist below ninth level?

Making a CR 3 "Ninth Level Wizard" would be really confusing.

[tussock]

Right. A Vrock is supposed to be tough, in small numbers, where we define that as things you need to be mid level or higher to sword, even though they may have a glass jaw once you get past their immunities and mook-killing abilities.

They're a true demon. Type I. Elite "paratrooper" status soldiers in the blood war. CR 3 is an elite hobbit, an elite goblin, a minor officer in a hobgoblin band, villiage sheriff. CR 3 demons are food for the real demons. It's the wrong time to be facing a true demon, go kill some more ogres first.

That's not meta-game, it's what people expect when you sit down to play some D&D, it's how the shared world works. Unless you're using Savage Species, where irredeemably evil monsters that are explicitly spawned into full-grown status after graduating their past forms through acts of constant Evil and Chaos are instead treated as appropriate for players from 1st level, because GIANT FROG.


tldr: Something has to be tougher than me at low level, a lot of things really, so I can become good enough to kill them. To do otherwise is disempowering. A treadmill. By diminishing the pool of clearly mid-level monsters, you cut down the mile-posts on the journey to awesome. Players will not so clearly see how far they have travelled.

tldr2: baby vrocks are bad, m'kay.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

A Vrock is an 8 foot tall teleporting monster that can throw things with its mind, summon a small army of dretches, and weather an almost infinite hail of arrows fired by normal people. Three of them can annihilate a small army with 18 seconds of dancing.

A ninth level human wizard can do all that too. Are you suggesting that humans should not exist below ninth level?

Making a CR 3 "Ninth Level Wizard" would be really confusing.

A CR3 version of a "Ninth Level Wizard" is a Third level wizard.

[K]

Are you saying "the things a creature can do to the setting or the inhabitants thereof" is metagame knowledge? If so, then I completely understand why you'd think it's all about metagaming.

Lists of combat abilities are metagame knowledge because they give an instant advantage to players in combat when they know them. It's also metagame because it comes without any checks or abilities on the part of the PC and is derived from the player's knowledge of the relevant books.

For example, the players knowing that three Vrocks take 18 seconds to do a big AoE is a major piece of metagame knowledge and will lead to players making sure that Vrocks don't get into gangs of three. Knowing that information from just the description of "vulture-man demons" is the other part of metagame knowledge.

The people who seem to be most offended at CR 3 Vrocks seem most concerned that their characters are not going to have instant advantage on monsters by having foreknowledge of their combat tactics because they won't instantly know the best tactics to use against them, or they might use tactics based on an entry in the MM that turn out to be bad tactics because the DM is not using that entry.

[Foxwarrior]

A ninth level human wizard can do all that too. Are you suggesting that humans should not exist below ninth level?

Making a CR 3 "Ninth Level Wizard" would be really confusing.

A CR3 version of a "Ninth Level Wizard" is a Third level wizard.

And a CR3 Demon is a Dretch with extra HD. Were you going somewhere with this?

Edit: Sorry for being so flippant, but the progression from a 3rd level Wizard to a 9th level Wizard is not really more obvious than the progression from a Dretch to a Vrock, if you don't get to read the Wizard rules and only hear a smattering of anecdotes about what they've done.

[K]

They're a true demon. Type I.

Using 1st edition Demon classifications to objectively determine power is metagaming. It's not just metagaming, it's grognard metagaming.

Third edition and later posits a universe where monsters can be individuals with varying abilities.

[Foxwarrior]

Are you saying "the things a creature can do to the setting or the inhabitants thereof" is metagame knowledge? If so, then I completely understand why you'd think it's all about metagaming.

Lists of combat abilities are metagame knowledge because they give an instant advantage to players in combat when they know them. It's also metagame because it comes without any checks or abilities on the part of the PC and is derived from the player's knowledge of the relevant books.

For example, the players knowing that three Vrocks take 18 seconds to do a big AoE is a major piece of metagame knowledge and will lead to players making sure that Vrocks don't get into gangs of three. Knowing that information from just the description of "vulture-man demons" is the other part of metagame knowledge.

The people who seem to be most offended at CR 3 Vrocks seem most concerned that their characters are not going to have instant advantage on monsters by having foreknowledge of their combat tactics because they won't instantly know the best tactics to use against them, or they might use tactics based on an entry in the MM that turn out to be bad tactics because the DM is not using that entry.

Okay, so it's metagame knowledge because it's written down in a game book, and because it's relevant to combat. If the AoE made beautiful flowers instead, would it no longer be metagame knowledge?

If only the DM knows what Vrocks are, is it metagaming for him to include as major characters in his campaign: "A triad of Vrocks, which teleport into rooms where important meetings are taking place and dance, in order to annihilate the leadership of every civilization on the material plane, bringing in a new reign of chaos"?

Things can be true whether or not you know them, you know.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

And a CR3 Demon is a Dretch with extra HD. Were you going somewhere with this?

Look. If you planned the villain of your campaign to be a ninth level wizard, and suddenly finding yourself having to spring the ending four levels early for some reason (Maybe your group has to fold or the party figures out a way to skip a big chunk of the adventure), no one would think you were coddling the party if you put on the table a CR5 version of the same guy instead. It's the same goddamned thing as if you find a monster you think is really cool but is way beyond the party's pay grade and working it into something with the same flavor but a much less lethal powerset.

[Fuchs]

You can't make an EL 3 encounter with a Vrock either, no matter how many negative levels you give it, because it still has the same spores, Mirror Image at will, SR 17, DR 10/Good, and resistance 10/Immunity.

Uh uh. You're telling me I cannot place a cr9 vrock in such circumstances that the encounter is level 3?

Spores are killed by bless, a level 1 spell. Align weapon is a level 2 spell - a few scrolls of those are not really that hard to get to the party. SR and the resistances don't prevent it from being hacked to death by aligned weapons. Mirror image is not really a spell that's unsuited for level 3, being a second level spell.

So, yeah, I can make the encounter level 3.

[Fuchs]

tldr: Something has to be tougher than me at low level, a lot of things really, so I can become good enough to kill them. To do otherwise is disempowering. A treadmill. By diminishing the pool of clearly mid-level monsters, you cut down the mile-posts on the journey to awesome. Players will not so clearly see how far they have travelled.

If you're not going farther anyway, what use are mile-posts you're not going to see?

[Kaelik]

You can't make an EL 3 encounter with a Vrock either, no matter how many negative levels you give it, because it still has the same spores, Mirror Image at will, SR 17, DR 10/Good, and resistance 10/Immunity.

Uh uh. You're telling me I cannot place a cr9 vrock in such circumstances that the encounter is level 3?

Spores are killed by bless, a level 1 spell. Align weapon is a level 2 spell - a few scrolls of those are not really that hard to get to the party. SR and the resistances don't prevent it from being hacked to death by aligned weapons. Mirror image is not really a spell that's unsuited for level 3, being a second level spell.

So, yeah, I can make the encounter level 3.

"If I give my PCs 800% WBL at level 3, then they can totally deal with this encounter, and it therefore becomes EL 3."

Or in the alternative: "If I give my 5 more levels at level 3, then they can totally deal with this encounter, and it therefore becomes EL 3."

Also, Mirror Image is fine for a Wizard at level 3, because a Wizard doesn't have anything good to do with it. A Vrock uses Mirror Image for time to use more Spores, which kill people. And again, bless kills spores, and that is great, but even if people did prepare Bless, or you gave them a bunch of scrolls of it, it could just keep using spores until they run out of bless scrolls.

[Foxwarrior]

And a CR3 Demon is a Dretch with extra HD. Were you going somewhere with this?

Look. If you planned the villain of your campaign to be a ninth level wizard, and suddenly finding yourself having to spring the ending four levels early for some reason (Maybe your group has to fold or the party figures out a way to skip a big chunk of the adventure), no one would think you were coddling the party if you put on the table a CR5 version of the same guy instead. It's the same goddamned thing as if you find a monster you think is really cool but is way beyond the party's pay grade and working it into something with the same flavor but a much less lethal powerset.

I suppose that wanting your main antagonists to be beatable by the party at whatever level they're currently at is a noble goal. Personally, I tend to keep my villains leveling up at about the same rate as the players for this exact reason.

The Quantum Difficulty approach is certainly an option, I suppose, but every time the players interact with a character, they gather data about it that you might not remember they noticed. If you scale your 9th level Wizard down to 5th level, you'd better hope the players don't remember how every other NPC relevant to the plot had been dominated by the Wizard at one time or another. If the players don't interact with your character, there's no longer any strong reason to preserve a particular flavor, and you are free to choose a different one that's more suited to the party's level.

[Stubbazubba]

Okay, so it's metagame knowledge because it's written down in a game book, and because it's relevant to combat. If the AoE made beautiful flowers instead, would it no longer be metagame knowledge?

No, do you even understand what meta-game refers to? Metagame knowledge is knowledge you gain from outside the rules, as in, the only reason you know the AoE's effect - be it death or flowers - is because you as a player remember seeing it in the monster's entry in the MM; your character does not have that knowledge, but you have him act on it regardless.

If only the DM knows what Vrocks are, is it metagaming for him to include as major characters in his campaign: "A triad of Vrocks, which teleport into rooms where important meetings are taking place and dance, in order to annihilate the leadership of every civilization on the material plane, bringing in a new reign of chaos"?

Absolutely not, the DM can't really meta-game at the setting design level. If, however, he has an enemy exploit the party's weaknesses, which the DM knows but which the enemy couldn't know himself, that's metagame knowledge, and using it is 'metagaming.'

Things can be true whether or not you know them, you know.

But regardless, the way we act is based on what we know*, not just what is true. So when characters don't know or have any reason to suspect something, it doesn't influence their decisions, regardless of its truth. If the DM is the only one who's seen the MM and the party fights a Vrock who never uses some of it's abilities in the fight, it is still true that the Vrock had those abilities, but the players will not act on those truths when they fight the next one.

*Technically it's based on what we suspect/suppose more often than what we know, but I'm folding those into a subjective version of 'knowing.'

[Stubbazubba]

We have explained several fucking times over how there are lots of non metagame effects of changing Vrocks.

No, you have explained several times that if you change Vrocks then your metagame assumptions are dashed, like what level gods are, what abilities they have, and barghests and whatever else you've brought up. But the setting being changed is only not metagame if your character had a perfect knowledge of the setting before the change, and since we're talking about a denizen of the Lower Planes, he has no knowledge of it at level 3. Do you have anything besides "changing the setting changes the setting!", because at level 3 the vast majority of setting knowledge is still metagame knowledge.

but when you take established parts of the setting, like Vrocks, and change them, then you are changing the setting out from under the PCs, and making their choices not sane.

Unless Vrocks have already been exhaustively studied by a character in the party, then Vrocks are not an established part of the setting. I agree, if the PCs have been fighting CR 9 Vrocks for the entire campaign and then find a CR 3 Vrock, then you've changed the setting (barely, I might add), but in a campaign where the party has yet to come across a Vrock (as most level 3 parties probably fall into), there are no established Vrocks yet, therefore, introducing a CR 3 Vrock by definition changes nothing about the setting, and certainly doesn't change a single PC choice, since none of their choices have ever involved Vrocks to this point.

Once again, besides this metagame setting assumptions strawman, what are all of your really non-metagame issues, Kaelik?

[ModelCitizen]

That's not meta-game, it's what people expect when you sit down to play some D&D, it's how the shared world works. Unless you're using Savage Species, where irredeemably evil monsters that are explicitly spawned into full-grown status after graduating their past forms through acts of constant Evil and Chaos are instead treated as appropriate for players from 1st level, because GIANT FROG.

Yeah, about Savage Species: that's one of like three books that the 3e community has more or less agreed to pretend were never printed (the other two being ELH and Deities & Demigods). Part of the reason no one likes that book is that they didn't want rules for playing shit like 1 HD fire giants.

Oh, and I thought K was "abandoning" this thread.

[ModelCitizen]

Stubbazubba, worrying about the player's enjoyment of the game instead of the character's isn't metagaming. It's good game design and good DMing practice. Stop repeating K's red herrings.

[Mistborn]

The entire reason we went off on CR 3 Vrocks in the first place is so that low-op or low-level parties can still access a thematic variety of adventures which includes Evil Planes and all the material that would entail.

No fuck you that's not a good reason at all. Low-op parties should either seek out challenges they can defeat or die repeatedly to things that they can't. If they want to punch at their ECL or higher they should stop basketweaving. I've have explained many times how corrosive coddling basketweavers is to the game.

Also if you want to have a high level adventure just fucking start the party at high level. Why is this so hard?

Let's reverse the question; what's so horrific about CR 3 Vrocks that you supposedly more mature hard-mode guys get your nerd-rage on over it? Is adjusting a purely meta-game expectation really that difficult or damaging? Are you saying you will not play in a homebrew campaign unless you can look over the DM's homebrew monsters first so you can still meta-game? Is CR 3 Vrock anything but a meta-game concern for you?

Again fuck you. Fuck all of you basketweavers. No one ever brought up metagaming stop strawmanning. The word Vrock means something in D&D, Vrocks are the elite vanguard of the hordes of the Abyss. It warps the fucking setting when the legions of the Abyss have been downsized to the point that they are no longer a problem for the village militia.