The main problem is not CR itself, but the fact that many published monsters are under or over CRed. Many of the monsters in the MM have CRs that don't match up with the CR calculation table in the DMG. All of my homebrew monsters' CR were calculated using that table, so if you were trying to make a level-appropriate combat encounter with one of them, it should be relatively easy to do so by looking at the monster's Challenge Rating.
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However, there are some folks out ther including those who insist that CR must be strictly followed and meticulously calculated that are of the opinion that any DM like myself who would stoop to such a low-down, filthy technique such as that is a dirty cheater and we should either voluntarily turn in our DMGs, or at the very least that we should voluntarily wash the stain of our crimes and dishonor from the surface of the earth with blood through honorable seppuku. You know, on accounta how inherently, abysmally subhuman we must be as individuals to even consider such an action, let alone to actually do it.
I'm not necessarily great at "hotfixing" abilities. Again as someone who knows older D&D versions better than 5e even still, months into it... there is a high chance my attempted hot fix is what I think the ability used to do, rather than what it actually does now, and I will not get the result I want.
CR helps me get into the ballpark. Then I look at and potentially modify actual abilities from there.
The players have no idea how many HP a monster had when it started the battle, only how much damage it took by the end of it. If a monster has an ability that can be used N times between rests, they have no idea what N was, or if that particular monster started that specific encounter on that exact day with N uses remaining, or N-1. They only know how many times the monster used that ability during that encounter. A DM can hotfix pretty much anything, the trick is being subtle and maintaining a poker face.
Very true. See my post above. Many a time if the players get the majority of first attacks, then can down or really change the complexion of a fight before the monster even attacks. Adding HP on the fly is something I do a lot. That being said, I would prefer not having to do that, hence my notion of all monsters having LA's to mitigate the need to Hot Fix.
Oh yeah, I think they keep stuff like that over in the same isle with the world peace, right in between the shelf with the end of world hunger and the floorstand display for the upcoming Beatles reunion world tour with all four original members. You know, that isle that’s just labeled with the picture of the guy just pointing and laughing at you because your request was so hil-arious.
Considering the sheer variability of combinations between Race, Class, and Subclass alone it becomes obvious how.... improbable that would be to achieve. I mean, when two players can use the exact same rules and one player could create a character like this:
Then add to that all of the optional rules that are available and trying to compensate for all of those with absolutely no way of knowing which optional rules and how many may or may jot be used at any given table. The system just became even more far fetched. Add the swingines of a 1d20 system and it moves right on into that “nigh-ludicrous” level. Then consider that this system would have to be managed by human DMs with
levels of experience potentially ranging from “50+ years” to “less than a day”
some may be Math geniuses able to calculate pi out to the 37 decimal place... in Roman Numerals, and others might struggle to figure a 20% tip at a restaurant without an app on their phone
and that some may able to rattle off the full definition and etymology of any word in any version of the English language spoken on every continent from memory, and another might not even be able to pronounce the words definition or etymology
Do you honestly figure it at all possible for anyone to create a system that meets all of the following criteria:
As absolute, and objectively balanced as you would like.
Robust and detailed enough to stand up against all of the potential degrees of variation in party composition from “optimized” to “beer and pretzels.”
Streamlined enough to fit in with “The Design Philosophy of 5e.”
Simple and easy enough yo use that the DM who just started today, sucks at math, and don’t read too gud will be able to use it.
And not dumbed down to the point that the person who DMed for the group that purchased the very first three book set ever sold, can rattle off any math the game requires, and has mastered every iteration of the language in which the game is written won’t feel condescended to.
Especially since the same game company that wrote a system capable of creating both of those characters I posted above is the same company we have to relying on to design the type of system that would have to fulfill all of those criteria.
I honestly think they tried really, really hard to nail something right along the lines of what you describe and meeting all of those criteria that I listed, and what came out was CR. In the face of all that is stacked against the possibility of WotC creating a system for encounter balance, I think the “kinda-sorta in the general vicinity... ish” of CR was probably about the best we could expect from them on the subject.
Not sure what you are railing against. What I am saying is giving all monsters LA's even's out the vagaries of Initiative. You know it, any experienced DM knows it. Initiative rolls can make or break an encounter before it even gets rolling, especially if one side or the other are glass cannons. Sure, adding HP, especially on the fly, can smooth that out quite a bit, but if WOTC actually overhauled every monster to have some form of LA's, well, I have stated what I want to in that regard.
I also recognize that asking new DM's to start fooling with adding LA's and then adjudicating what the new CR's are is a fool's errand. Hence my wish for WOTC to do it. Think of it. WOTC could create a new revenue stream by issuing a new monster manual/ Volo's/ Mord's with each monster being an "enhanced" version of an existing one or a brand new creature.
Saying that every monster needs legendary actions (so they can act outside of initiative order) is tantamount to saying that the initiative system and action economy are fundamentally broken.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
However, there are some folks out ther including those who insist that CR must be strictly followed and meticulously calculated that are of the opinion that any DM like myself who would stoop to such a low-down, filthy technique such as that is a dirty cheater and we should either voluntarily turn in our DMGs, or at the very least that we should voluntarily wash the stain of our crimes and dishonor from the surface of the earth with blood through honorable seppuku. You know, on accounta how inherently, abysmally subhuman we must be as individuals to even consider such an action, let alone to actually do it.
Hmm..sounds kinda harsh.
It was harsh when someone actually once YELLED at me that I was horrible person and the worst DM ever and should go kill myself for admitting that I had adjusting HP mid battle.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Lots of other games have achieved the ability to balance things to that a power level of X from the PCs corresponds roughly equivalently to a power level of Y for their opponents. There is way more variability in how Champions characters are created, for example, but you can be fairly sure, due to how the game is balanced, that one 250 point character is roughly equivalent to another 250 point character.
Hahaha. I haven't created characters in the most recent version of Champions, but that was most certainly not true in any prior edition, where 250 point characters ranged from 'competent normal person' to 'universe destroyer'.
As far as CR goes, monster CR worked pretty well in D&D 4th edition, but was way more standardized than 5th edition.
Hahaha. I haven't created characters in the most recent version of Champions, but that was most certainly not true in any prior edition, where 250 point characters ranged from 'competent normal person' to 'universe destroyer'
Depends on the GM. As long as you don't allow (or create yourself) abusive characters, 250 points is pretty much 250 pts.
The point remains, I never had any trouble judging power levels between Champions NPCs and PCs. I don't recall any times when a battle was significantly harder or easier than I expected once I learned how to play the game.
Saying that every monster needs legendary actions (so they can act outside of initiative order) is tantamount to saying that the initiative system and action economy are fundamentally broken.
To put it simply, yeah, I do believe that the Initiative and Action Economy systems ARE broken, at least within the context of solo monsters/ NPC's against a party. In groups on both sides, different story.
To put it simply, yeah, I do believe that the Initiative and Action Economy systems ARE broken, at least within the context of solo monsters/ NPC's against a party. In groups on both sides, different story.
Do you feel it's always been this unbalanced to have group-vs-1 for D&D, or is this something you think is new or exacerbated in 5e?
Just curious.
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Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Saying that every monster needs legendary actions (so they can act outside of initiative order) is tantamount to saying that the initiative system and action economy are fundamentally broken.
To put it simply, yeah, I do believe that the Initiative and Action Economy systems ARE broken, at least within the context of solo monsters/ NPC's against a party. In groups on both sides, different story.
The initiative system, and the design for short fights, makes for swingier combat. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste.
Having one action for the monster, vs 5 actions for the PCs, is fine as long as (a) the monster's action is sufficiently high value, and (b) you don't have action denial mixed in. The problem is that action denial abilities have value that's proportional to the value of the actions they deny, so if you give the solo monster a single high value action, stun/paralyze/etc becomes disproportionately powerful. Bosses in CRPGs and MMOs often solve this by being immune, but completely invalidating a play style isn't great.
To put it simply, yeah, I do believe that the Initiative and Action Economy systems ARE broken, at least within the context of solo monsters/ NPC's against a party. In groups on both sides, different story.
Do you feel it's always been this unbalanced to have group-vs-1 for D&D, or is this something you think is new or exacerbated in 5e?
Just curious.
This has been a growing feeling over the past 6 months or so in 5e. Now, that is essentially the same thing throughout almost any combat game like D&D, but it has come to the forefront recently.
My current game I am running is closing in on the highest level I have run before in a 5e setting. Group is at 7th level. (I also play in a game where our chars are 9th, and another where we are 12th.) Prior to Covid I was running a table of 6, and they trashed a lot of stuff outside of their weight class because of action economy. (I use KFC for getting a rough idea about difficulty levels, then tinker based on my experience with the group). Thanks to Covid, that group is now 3, with a couple NPC's that are tagging around as escape valves the players can activate and play if I do something stupid by underestimating the firepower of what I am throwing at them.
What I have seen, and this is no real surprise, is that most char's offensive prowess increases at a higher rate than their defensive abilities and HP. They players are not exactly glass cannons, but if I roll high Initiative for a solo monster in encounter, that monster can really do a number on at the very least one party member. Conversely, if that same monster goes last, the players can trash it. I mentioned earlier where the group last week wiped out a CR8 monster (which had 3 attacks per turn), and the monster did minimal damage before they killed it. It would have been dead before it had not even attacked in the 2nd turn if I had not fudged the HP on the fly. Conversely, 3 sessions before I had the group go up against a pair of CR 3 Assassin Vines, and the Vines get Surprise. One of the players ended up in Death Saves, and a second one in trouble.
Bottom line, I am seeing that whatever side can get their attacks off first, or the bulk of their potential damage off first, wins. If the monster can unleash a ton of damage first, the players have to go on defensive tactics (Grave Cleric is casting some kind of HP boost spell, versus casting Blight), which alters the encounter, dragging it out.
So basically, if I had say that CR8 Corpse Flower flinging out tentacles as LA's, or absorbing corpses as an LA, I would have not been hot fixing the HP. (BTW, the Grave Cleric played it extremely well by doing the max damage of 64 with Blight, which was half the entire HP (127) of the Corpse Flower). Now, some of that is on me, for underestimating the capabilities of my players. But LA's for solo monsters help cover up mistakes like I made, or once again, smooth out the vagaries of the Initiative.
Having one action for the monster, vs 5 actions for the PCs, is fine as long as (a) the monster's action is sufficiently high value, and (b) you don't have action denial mixed in. The problem is that action denial abilities have value that's proportional to the value of the actions they deny, so if you give the solo monster a single high value action, stun/paralyze/etc becomes disproportionately powerful. Bosses in CRPGs and MMOs often solve this by being immune, but completely invalidating a play style isn't great.
Yes this is the reason for Legendary Saves as well (where the monster can choose to succeed rather than fail X number of times per battle). The Legendary Save mechanic has seemed like a patch job to me... for this exact reason. Because the players coming in and doing a save-or-suck right out of the gate against the BBEG and he fails it, ends the battle in one shot, which is boring for everyone. So by giving the monster a small # of Legendary Saves, you can prevent a one-round KO of a boss monster. Of course we are back to Vince's solution which is to make (most?) solo monsters Legendary (thus getting the saves as well as Legendary Actions).
But again this brings up your last point which is that taking away a player's main ability is pretty lousy for that player. If the character burns her only level 5 slot on Hold Monster and the monster rolls a 3 but then "chooses to succeed anyway" that is a complete waste of the biggest action she can take, and there was literally no way for her to make it go her way. Which also sucks.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
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the group last week wiped out a CR8 monster (which had 3 attacks per turn), and the monster did minimal damage before they killed it
Your level 7s did that? My level 5s did that to a hydra, also CR8, which gets 5 attacks/turn by default. It never did get all 5 attacks, because they cut off one of its heads before it got to go, and they did fire damage to it so it was unable to regenerate. I don't think they did the fire damage on purpose, it's just that fire is the sorcerer's go-to for several attack spells (fireball, burning hands, etc). I thought it was going to be a tough fight but only one of them took serious HP damage, and nobody went down.
And as you say, the Hydrda rolled lousy initiative and went last or second-last (can't remember now).
But again this brings up your last point which is that taking away a player's main ability is pretty lousy for that player. If the character burns her only level 5 slot on Hold Monster and the monster rolls a 3 but then "chooses to succeed anyway" that is a complete waste of the biggest action she can take, and there was literally no way for her to make it go her way. Which also sucks.
Well, it has the value that you forced the BBEG to burn a limited resource, but it's probably better to have reduced effect instead of no effect. It also doesn't deal with non-legendary solo monsters.
On some of the fights being reported, that's not action economy, that's encounters per day. A party of level 7s is supposed to trash a CR 8 monster, with some resources being spent; it's only a Medium encounter. An actual interesting fight starts at Deadly (about CR 12).
That's a problem, but not as much with the CR system as with the encounter system.
Well, it has the value that you forced the BBEG to burn a limited resource, but it's probably better to have reduced effect instead of no effect.
Right, and the player probably even knows that. But it still feels sucky for the player who burned a level 5 slot and could have thrown out something that was just damage-dealy and not save-based instead, for that higher level slot. Reduced effect would probably be better, at least making the player feel like the high level slot did something.
That's a problem, but not as much with the CR system as with the encounter system.
I think there are a lot of implicit assumptions made in both the CR and encounter system and what we are seeing here is that very often the situation at the table violates one or more of those assumptions, leading to battles being overwhelmingly hard or mind-numbingly easy when the DM did not intend them to be.
I sometimes wonder what led them to make these assumptions... especially the one about 6-8 encounters/day. I have no idea where they came up with that -- it certainly doesn't seem to be based on surveys of how players actually run a game, because from everything I have seen most tables run significantly less per day than this (I think the last I saw was an average of 3-4).
I don't have a problem with making very hard or easy encounters for my players when I do it on purpose. But I do find it unpleasant, as a DM, to be surprised by an encounter being way harder than I wanted it to be. Luckily this hasn't happened much yet (usually it goes the other way), but still.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
the group last week wiped out a CR8 monster (which had 3 attacks per turn), and the monster did minimal damage before they killed it
Your level 7s did that? My level 5s did that to a hydra, also CR8, which gets 5 attacks/turn by default. It never did get all 5 attacks, because they cut off one of its heads before it got to go, and they did fire damage to it so it was unable to regenerate. I don't think they did the fire damage on purpose, it's just that fire is the sorcerer's go-to for several attack spells (fireball, burning hands, etc). I thought it was going to be a tough fight but only one of them took serious HP damage, and nobody went down.
And as you say, the Hydrda rolled lousy initiative and went last or second-last (can't remember now).
The CR8 fight was much my fault. The Corpse Flower actually went first, but I had the group in a swamp with a mist that severely limited normal vision. The Corpse Flower has Blindsight to 120, so should have had a tactical advantage. But it is a melee (10 foot range) monster. So I have it move and Dash to get close. So the effect was the Corpse Flower went last. Actually, one of the players on the start of his turn was within 10 feet, so the player was actually affected by the equivalent of an LA (Stench of Death), but made his save. That Ranger did about 12 or 15 damage then the Cleric went second with Blight, and bam, that original 127 was around 50. The Wizard then weighed in, I think one of the NPC's hit...well, you get the picture.
I had planned on ejecting Zombies, but I was immediately on the defensive, and instead absorbing them for HP.
Would the encounter have been radically different if I had managed some kind of tactic that allowed the Corpse Flower to laying out damage at the beginning or even in the middle of the fight? I am sure the result would have been the same, but the players would have been more challenged.
Having one action for the monster, vs 5 actions for the PCs, is fine as long as (a) the monster's action is sufficiently high value, and (b) you don't have action denial mixed in. The problem is that action denial abilities have value that's proportional to the value of the actions they deny, so if you give the solo monster a single high value action, stun/paralyze/etc becomes disproportionately powerful. Bosses in CRPGs and MMOs often solve this by being immune, but completely invalidating a play style isn't great.
Yes this is the reason for Legendary Saves as well (where the monster can choose to succeed rather than fail X number of times per battle). The Legendary Save mechanic has seemed like a patch job to me... for this exact reason. Because the players coming in and doing a save-or-suck right out of the gate against the BBEG and he fails it, ends the battle in one shot, which is boring for everyone. So by giving the monster a small # of Legendary Saves, you can prevent a one-round KO of a boss monster. Of course we are back to Vince's solution which is to make (most?) solo monsters Legendary (thus getting the saves as well as Legendary Actions).
But again this brings up your last point which is that taking away a player's main ability is pretty lousy for that player. If the character burns her only level 5 slot on Hold Monster and the monster rolls a 3 but then "chooses to succeed anyway" that is a complete waste of the biggest action she can take, and there was literally no way for her to make it go her way. Which also sucks.
BTW, I am not suggesting that all solo based monsters get Legendary Saves. Some form of LA's, yes, but I consider LS's as something special.
Well, it has the value that you forced the BBEG to burn a limited resource, but it's probably better to have reduced effect instead of no effect.
Right, and the player probably even knows that. But it still feels sucky for the player who burned a level 5 slot and could have thrown out something that was just damage-dealy and not save-based instead, for that higher level slot. Reduced effect would probably be better, at least making the player feel like the high level slot did something.
That's a problem, but not as much with the CR system as with the encounter system.
I think there are a lot of implicit assumptions made in both the CR and encounter system and what we are seeing here is that very often the situation at the table violates one or more of those assumptions, leading to battles being overwhelmingly hard or mind-numbingly easy when the DM did not intend them to be.
I sometimes wonder what led them to make these assumptions... especially the one about 6-8 encounters/day. I have no idea where they came up with that -- it certainly doesn't seem to be based on surveys of how players actually run a game, because from everything I have seen most tables run significantly less per day than this (I think the last I saw was an average of 3-4).
I don't have a problem with making very hard or easy encounters for my players when I do it on purpose. But I do find it unpleasant, as a DM, to be surprised by an encounter being way harder than I wanted it to be. Luckily this hasn't happened much yet (usually it goes the other way), but still.
With reference to surprises, after that CR8 encounter, I had the guys run up against a CR 1/2 Swarm of Insects. Because the Swarm actually can occupy the same space as a player, the result that more damage was dealt to a single player (there as some collateral damage from an area effect spell) than the Corpse Flower ended up doing.
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The main problem is not CR itself, but the fact that many published monsters are under or over CRed. Many of the monsters in the MM have CRs that don't match up with the CR calculation table in the DMG. All of my homebrew monsters' CR were calculated using that table, so if you were trying to make a level-appropriate combat encounter with one of them, it should be relatively easy to do so by looking at the monster's Challenge Rating.
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Hmm..sounds kinda harsh.
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Not sure what you are railing against. What I am saying is giving all monsters LA's even's out the vagaries of Initiative. You know it, any experienced DM knows it. Initiative rolls can make or break an encounter before it even gets rolling, especially if one side or the other are glass cannons. Sure, adding HP, especially on the fly, can smooth that out quite a bit, but if WOTC actually overhauled every monster to have some form of LA's, well, I have stated what I want to in that regard.
I also recognize that asking new DM's to start fooling with adding LA's and then adjudicating what the new CR's are is a fool's errand. Hence my wish for WOTC to do it. Think of it. WOTC could create a new revenue stream by issuing a new monster manual/ Volo's/ Mord's with each monster being an "enhanced" version of an existing one or a brand new creature.
Saying that every monster needs legendary actions (so they can act outside of initiative order) is tantamount to saying that the initiative system and action economy are fundamentally broken.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
It was harsh when someone actually once YELLED at me that I was horrible person and the worst DM ever and should go kill myself for admitting that I had adjusting HP mid battle.
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Hahaha. I haven't created characters in the most recent version of Champions, but that was most certainly not true in any prior edition, where 250 point characters ranged from 'competent normal person' to 'universe destroyer'.
As far as CR goes, monster CR worked pretty well in D&D 4th edition, but was way more standardized than 5th edition.
Depends on the GM. As long as you don't allow (or create yourself) abusive characters, 250 points is pretty much 250 pts.
The point remains, I never had any trouble judging power levels between Champions NPCs and PCs. I don't recall any times when a battle was significantly harder or easier than I expected once I learned how to play the game.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
"As long as you balance based on things other than points, it's balanced".
To put it simply, yeah, I do believe that the Initiative and Action Economy systems ARE broken, at least within the context of solo monsters/ NPC's against a party. In groups on both sides, different story.
Do you feel it's always been this unbalanced to have group-vs-1 for D&D, or is this something you think is new or exacerbated in 5e?
Just curious.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The initiative system, and the design for short fights, makes for swingier combat. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste.
Having one action for the monster, vs 5 actions for the PCs, is fine as long as (a) the monster's action is sufficiently high value, and (b) you don't have action denial mixed in. The problem is that action denial abilities have value that's proportional to the value of the actions they deny, so if you give the solo monster a single high value action, stun/paralyze/etc becomes disproportionately powerful. Bosses in CRPGs and MMOs often solve this by being immune, but completely invalidating a play style isn't great.
This has been a growing feeling over the past 6 months or so in 5e. Now, that is essentially the same thing throughout almost any combat game like D&D, but it has come to the forefront recently.
My current game I am running is closing in on the highest level I have run before in a 5e setting. Group is at 7th level. (I also play in a game where our chars are 9th, and another where we are 12th.) Prior to Covid I was running a table of 6, and they trashed a lot of stuff outside of their weight class because of action economy. (I use KFC for getting a rough idea about difficulty levels, then tinker based on my experience with the group). Thanks to Covid, that group is now 3, with a couple NPC's that are tagging around as escape valves the players can activate and play if I do something stupid by underestimating the firepower of what I am throwing at them.
What I have seen, and this is no real surprise, is that most char's offensive prowess increases at a higher rate than their defensive abilities and HP. They players are not exactly glass cannons, but if I roll high Initiative for a solo monster in encounter, that monster can really do a number on at the very least one party member. Conversely, if that same monster goes last, the players can trash it. I mentioned earlier where the group last week wiped out a CR8 monster (which had 3 attacks per turn), and the monster did minimal damage before they killed it. It would have been dead before it had not even attacked in the 2nd turn if I had not fudged the HP on the fly. Conversely, 3 sessions before I had the group go up against a pair of CR 3 Assassin Vines, and the Vines get Surprise. One of the players ended up in Death Saves, and a second one in trouble.
Bottom line, I am seeing that whatever side can get their attacks off first, or the bulk of their potential damage off first, wins. If the monster can unleash a ton of damage first, the players have to go on defensive tactics (Grave Cleric is casting some kind of HP boost spell, versus casting Blight), which alters the encounter, dragging it out.
So basically, if I had say that CR8 Corpse Flower flinging out tentacles as LA's, or absorbing corpses as an LA, I would have not been hot fixing the HP. (BTW, the Grave Cleric played it extremely well by doing the max damage of 64 with Blight, which was half the entire HP (127) of the Corpse Flower). Now, some of that is on me, for underestimating the capabilities of my players. But LA's for solo monsters help cover up mistakes like I made, or once again, smooth out the vagaries of the Initiative.
Yes this is the reason for Legendary Saves as well (where the monster can choose to succeed rather than fail X number of times per battle). The Legendary Save mechanic has seemed like a patch job to me... for this exact reason. Because the players coming in and doing a save-or-suck right out of the gate against the BBEG and he fails it, ends the battle in one shot, which is boring for everyone. So by giving the monster a small # of Legendary Saves, you can prevent a one-round KO of a boss monster. Of course we are back to Vince's solution which is to make (most?) solo monsters Legendary (thus getting the saves as well as Legendary Actions).
But again this brings up your last point which is that taking away a player's main ability is pretty lousy for that player. If the character burns her only level 5 slot on Hold Monster and the monster rolls a 3 but then "chooses to succeed anyway" that is a complete waste of the biggest action she can take, and there was literally no way for her to make it go her way. Which also sucks.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Your level 7s did that? My level 5s did that to a hydra, also CR8, which gets 5 attacks/turn by default. It never did get all 5 attacks, because they cut off one of its heads before it got to go, and they did fire damage to it so it was unable to regenerate. I don't think they did the fire damage on purpose, it's just that fire is the sorcerer's go-to for several attack spells (fireball, burning hands, etc). I thought it was going to be a tough fight but only one of them took serious HP damage, and nobody went down.
And as you say, the Hydrda rolled lousy initiative and went last or second-last (can't remember now).
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Well, it has the value that you forced the BBEG to burn a limited resource, but it's probably better to have reduced effect instead of no effect. It also doesn't deal with non-legendary solo monsters.
On some of the fights being reported, that's not action economy, that's encounters per day. A party of level 7s is supposed to trash a CR 8 monster, with some resources being spent; it's only a Medium encounter. An actual interesting fight starts at Deadly (about CR 12).
That's a problem, but not as much with the CR system as with the encounter system.
Right, and the player probably even knows that. But it still feels sucky for the player who burned a level 5 slot and could have thrown out something that was just damage-dealy and not save-based instead, for that higher level slot. Reduced effect would probably be better, at least making the player feel like the high level slot did something.
I think there are a lot of implicit assumptions made in both the CR and encounter system and what we are seeing here is that very often the situation at the table violates one or more of those assumptions, leading to battles being overwhelmingly hard or mind-numbingly easy when the DM did not intend them to be.
I sometimes wonder what led them to make these assumptions... especially the one about 6-8 encounters/day. I have no idea where they came up with that -- it certainly doesn't seem to be based on surveys of how players actually run a game, because from everything I have seen most tables run significantly less per day than this (I think the last I saw was an average of 3-4).
I don't have a problem with making very hard or easy encounters for my players when I do it on purpose. But I do find it unpleasant, as a DM, to be surprised by an encounter being way harder than I wanted it to be. Luckily this hasn't happened much yet (usually it goes the other way), but still.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The CR8 fight was much my fault. The Corpse Flower actually went first, but I had the group in a swamp with a mist that severely limited normal vision. The Corpse Flower has Blindsight to 120, so should have had a tactical advantage. But it is a melee (10 foot range) monster. So I have it move and Dash to get close. So the effect was the Corpse Flower went last. Actually, one of the players on the start of his turn was within 10 feet, so the player was actually affected by the equivalent of an LA (Stench of Death), but made his save. That Ranger did about 12 or 15 damage then the Cleric went second with Blight, and bam, that original 127 was around 50. The Wizard then weighed in, I think one of the NPC's hit...well, you get the picture.
I had planned on ejecting Zombies, but I was immediately on the defensive, and instead absorbing them for HP.
Would the encounter have been radically different if I had managed some kind of tactic that allowed the Corpse Flower to laying out damage at the beginning or even in the middle of the fight? I am sure the result would have been the same, but the players would have been more challenged.
BTW, I am not suggesting that all solo based monsters get Legendary Saves. Some form of LA's, yes, but I consider LS's as something special.
Generic humanoids are good for lower level encounters and better humanoids should be custom made by DMs
With reference to surprises, after that CR8 encounter, I had the guys run up against a CR 1/2 Swarm of Insects. Because the Swarm actually can occupy the same space as a player, the result that more damage was dealt to a single player (there as some collateral damage from an area effect spell) than the Corpse Flower ended up doing.