Re: session re****t

On Jan 23, 7:11 am, tussock <s...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> DougL wrote:
> > ([...] but then someone defended the CR of the 3.5 5-headed hydra
> > as CR 4 as reasonable too.)     

> Hey now! That was me, as it happens. I see it may well be a play
> style thing; Hydras are the easiest thing in the world to defeat, as
> long as you don't have any compulsion to try and kill them with
> unoptimised characters.

Someguy was maintaining they could actually kill it without serious
risk and posted far more to the thread than you did. You simply claimed
it was easily avoidable and that avoiding it could count as a win. The
thing works fine as a "you have to avoid this" style encounter at level
4, but IMAO that makes it higher than CR4. "I defeat" and "I run away"
aren't always synonymous and when they are that's a negative EL
adjustment IMAO.

I note that I was one of the few people agreeing with you that evading
an encounter still gave XP. But in general that XP is likely to be
ad-hocced down (whether or not they kill it if the fight is avoidable
IMC), and the PCs should be able to KILL a monster of equal CR if for
instance once every year or so it sneaks out of it's bog and kills a
herdsman or two so the village needs it to be killed. And they should
be able to kill it in its natural habitat. Fat chance with the Hydra.

>      Plus, I got brassed off that those arguing it was too deadly were
> adding +2 EL or more with encounter assumptions, making it the
> equivilent of a CR 6. Begging the question and all that.

>      The Planetar? It's just plain bad monster design. If it wants 17th
> level casting it's got to be CR 17+ and have the HD and stats to sup****t
> that. Plus, summons can't possibly be balanced using CR or HD.

HD are hopeless. They simply don't correspond to actual power in any
meaningful way. Pity that's the one the authors chose for planar ally
and planar binding. Requires that those spells be nerfed for a
reasonable world.

ECL is the only way to go with the present rules, which disallows
summoning of anything without a listed LA. Yet another reason for my
claim that 4.0 should give EVERYTHING an LA even if it can't possibly
be a PC.

DougL