What's up with some of the Monster CRs?

[Philos]

Are there some errors in the CRs of some of the monsters?

I noticed what now seems like some inconsistencies (at least to me) concerning some of the CRs (Challanging Rating isn't it) assigned to some of the monsters in ToEE. Back in a random encounter with some Owlbears. There were 2 Owlbears in this encounter and my characters were level 5. After whacking them for about 110 hit points each I see the XP total in the dialog box and I am stunned at how low it is. I check the log book and they have CR, as I recall, of something like a 3. If I am quoting the guidebook correctly means that a party of (5 or 6) 3rd level characters are the approriate group to be challanged by one of these monsters. These owl bears could hit for some sizable damage and with 3 attacks per round and a lot of hit points I would think they would be higher than that. I was also surprised because in the old PnP D&D owl bears were 5+ or 6 HD monster. These were like 10 12sided HD, BIG surprise. I've gotten more experience and far less "challenge" from packs of bugbears who are also CR 3 I think maybe 4. I wrote off the owl bear encounter as a fluke.
What finally tripped my trigger was my fight with **spoiler** Two werewolves on level 2 of the Temple dungeon who also had a CR rating of a measely "3". The fight took 45 minutes and although none of my characters was severely hurt it was ridiculously difficult for a 7th level party to kill two supposedly CR 3 creatures. They netted each party member 105 XP. **spoiler** They had 139 hit points each, a naturally AC of 25 (29 with dex bonus) , AND a damage resistence of 10,meaning that 10 was subtracted from any damage done per hit. My Paladin with his +2 longsword and 18 strength was averaging 2 or 3 points of damage a shot when he could manage to hit the thing which was about 1 time in 3. In the log book they were listed as 12 HD but had a CR of only 3!!! To again compare to PnP D&D, a werewolf there was only a 4+ HD monster with an AC of around 4 or 5 (14 or 15 in 3.5 rules), what a change!!! A third level party would never have stood a chance with these things.

Is this something corrected by some of the mods/updates?

[Lord Plothos]

You have some legitimate gripes here:

For one thing, owlbears are supposed to be CR4 with 5d10+25 HP in 3.5. That's a maximum of 75. I don't know what damage they were doing to you, but they should have a full attack of 1d6+5, 1d6+5, and 1d8+2.
On the other hand, they can "advance" to 15 HD (huge), but the CR is supposed to be adjusted when you advance creatures like this. So there is definitely something wrong there.

As for the werewolves, they are tough. The key is silver. If you have silver weapons, they're pretty easy, which is why there are so many silver arrows floating around. You can use magic on them too. Still, they represent a big challenge and a 3rd level party will have a tough time with them. By all rights, the CR should be higher.

On the other hand, a single troll is CR5, but in ToEE a 4th level party can take out 3 of them at once without losing a single member of the team. You see, part of the difficulty lies in the ineptitude of AI. A DM controlling 3 trolls is going to slaughter a 3rd level party (and a normal 3rd level party isn't going to have such nice gear as the typical ToEE one does). So, to make the game hard enough, the designers seem to have compensated for poor AI by ramping up the HP, damage, AC, etc. of many monsters. This helps straight-up brawler type enemies more than spellcasters, and this is why low CR meleers like Owlbears are tougher than they should be but high-level wizards like Shenshock are weaker than they should be. (And this is what spurred Livonya to work on the AI, giving special attention to the AI of spellcasters.)

So, while you may feel slighted by the owlbears, there are places where you get more than you deserve. Think the 10th level rogue in the trading post. You'll get a ton of experience for killing him, and he's not hard because he stands there and fights you like a barbarian would, which a 10th level rogue would never do. He'd tumble past you to the door and disappear in the night, then come find you in the Wench while you're sleeping.

Anyway, it's just the (necessary?) failing of video game versus live DM at the end of the day. Stuff mostly balances out in the end.

[Philos]

Thanks

I concur that developers have certain challenges in bringing PnP to life within the confines of a game and agree with you that they have to make "some" adjustments. But truly, they way overdid it and overcompensated with the **spoiler** werewolves, maybe they had a fondness for them. My fighter mage is my archer (high dex) and had a pile of silver arrows. But with the werewolves in melee there's the -4 shooting into melee penalty so it effectively made the beasts AC 33. He had about a 10 % chance of hitting them even counting the prayer spell that was running. My mage used both her remaining fireballs, an icestorm, and a couple of magic missles. With their high dex the werewolves naturally saved and took half damage from the storm and fireballs. She at best did about 30 percent of the damage they suffered. I also thought magic weapons had the same effect as silvered ones so I was quite taken aback by the +2 longsword doing damage like a dagger. Are there even any silver weapons available other than the arrows? So a creature that has an armored AC of 29 (counting dex) plus damage reduction of 10 AND 139 hit points equals CR3, what were they smoking?!?. And these alterations for a mere werewolf, 4+ HD AC 15 monster! I may be thinking old school D&D here, but that's just absurd!! They should have changed what the monster was rather than that. Even with some of the great stuff you get early on in ToEE I really doubt a 3rd level party could do much to hurt this duo. much less kill them. I realize things balance out as a whole but this one is just not right!!

[Lord Plothos]

Agreed. That's pretty much the one place that's just over the top. I tend to not have too much trouble with them, because I use cleaver that do triple on a crit and holy weapons to get an addition +2d6, and I usually get flanking with a rogue/fighter for another 2d6. If I can, I try to get those bonuses in the same place with at least another fire or frost added, so I get something like 1d8+str+2d6+2d6+1d6 =av 22+str. So with a good strength I get 26-28 on average, without a crit. Losing 10 of that sucks, but it's not as bad as losing 10 out of 12 or something. Then a crit with a cleaver can do anywhere from 40-140, depending on enhancements. Losing 10 there ain't a biggie. Anyway, by the time you get there, you'll be higher than 3rd level, and the challenge isn't too terribly beyond where you should be at that point, so the real gripe is that you get so little from it. And, again, the experience balances out overall, so it doesn't really bother me that much. I don't find myself missing experience in this game. The big deal for me would be if these guys were in the moathouse or somewhere a 3rd level party might actually be. That would be inexcusable. Still, I concur that making them CR3 is stupid. There's really no rationale for it at all.

[Philos]

If That's the Worst

Thanks for the ear,

Just needed to vent. If I've seen the worst example in the game then I can handle the rest. I was worried that some of the stuff still to come that should be good for XP would be tanked that badly as well.

Thinking back I seem to remember that my fighter/rogue was doing the best damage as well. I had him in a spot where he could sneak attack (backstab) either of them depending on which presented the best opportunity each round. Still took me nearly 45 minutes to finish the fight.

The cleaver you speak of, is that one found down the hall in the Air Temple "kitchen". I remember finding one but not where and I may have sold it Otis. Had no pluses that I can remember, so I figured it wouldn't be able to hit some of the monsters I was yet to meet.

I did realize that those two would not be faced by a 3rd level party, I was just trying to emphasize how ridiculous their CR was.

[Lord Plothos]

Wow, 45 minutes! You must be careful!

I'm soloing with a monk right now and he was able to take the ww's down with just his unarmed attacks (though he does have +6 str gloves and the +5 unarmed attack ammy). He was also level 10 at the time. Anyway, that's the worst thing I can think of in the game in terms of not getting exp for the challenge.

Spoiler alert:

One cleaver is in the hands of Fruella in Hommlet (but you have to marry her and get her killed to get it, since she won't leave your party or give it up; you can get her to join and take it with the humble npc patch, but she still won't leave your party short of dying). There is another in the air temple kitchen and a third in the upper right corner in the hands of another female bugbear in a small room with a chest just off a big room with a ton of buggies in it. Those are the three in the game. Each is +1 and keen, though identifying it won't say so. (You'll see it glowing in the buggy's hand, though.) They count as handaxes for purposes of weapon focus (and monk usage), but do 1d10 with a 17-20/x3 crit range. Plus, they're magic, so they can get things like flaming burst and holy added on. They're not light, though, so double-wielding two cleavers will result in penalties (I recommend one cleaver and one handaxe to get weapon focus to work with both). But be warned: they can make the game too easy!

[Philos]

Wasn't all that careful really

I was engaged toe to claw with those 2 most of the fight.
Fortunately my paladin, fighter, and fighter/rogue have decent AC's and had a couple of buff spells running so they were hard for the bad guys to hit. But the fight kept going round after round because I simply wasn't hitting them or doing 2 or 3 pts of damage when I did. I had my cleric cast prayer at the start of the fight and it ran out before fight was done. All three of the above were 7th level, the paladin had an 18 strength buffed to 22 by a bull strength spell, had the +2 sword, and would hit about 1 time for every 3 or 4 shots. When he did hit it was for an average of 2 or 3 points. Many times when he "hit" the damage roll must have been real low because it said hits, does 0 points of damage. This was in my recollection the absolute most frustrating fight of any of the computer RPG's I have.

[Lord Plothos]

Hmm, with a 22 str, you should get a +6 to damage, with another +2 from the sword's enhancement, so a roll of 1 or 2 on the 1d8 should yield a 0, with a -10 damage reduction. By that point, I've usually added at least a fire or something to most of my weapons. Adding just a 1d6 would make you have to roll 1 on the 1d8 and 1 on the 1d6 to get a 0, with a potential damage of 12 and an average damage of 6, compared to an average of 2.5, max of 6 without. It's pretty cheap to make things +3 as well, so you'd hit a bit more and get another +1 on top of that.
Crafting rocks.

[Lord Plothos]

Spoiler:

Beware the yellow mold on the third level and the galeb duhr in the earth node: -15 damage reduction! A single fireball will kill the mold, but the duhr also have magic resistance and a ton of hp. Definitely add some enhancements before taking them on!

[Philos]

Definitely need to try the crafting skill more

I hadn't really put crafting to much use so far other than a couple of wands. I can see now that I definitely need to put that to better use now. From what you wrote it appears I can buff the +2 sword up to +3 and add other stuff, yes? So far I had just used the stuff as I found it.

[Lord Plothos]

Yeah, crafting results in MUCH better weaponry. Just watch your money and be careful not to make things TOO easy on yourself.

+2 longsword with an 18 strength = 1d8+6 = 10.5 average
+3 longsword with fire, frost, holy, and shock = 1d8+7+1d6+1d6+1d6+2d6 = 29 average against evil creatures.

Almost triple. Plus you can keen it to get more crits and get bursts to make the crits more deadly. Cleavers can get upwards of 140 damage on a crit... and that's a one-handed weapon!

[Philos]

Interesting Possible Combos

Some good food for thought there. My cleric is the one with the skills (I wanted to create a Holy "whatever" for my paladin. Will have to play around a bit, test a few combinations.

Thanks

[Lord Plothos]

Just thought of a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. When crafting, according to 3.5 you should only have 10 total enchacement points on a weapon. Each + to the weapon counts as one, and various other enchancements like keen, flaming, etc. have various values (from 1 to 3). Technically, you should not be able to add enhancements totalling more than 10, but ToEE lets you do it. What's more, when you do, for some reason you seem to GAIN money and experience, and a fair amount of it. Beware, if you don't want to cheat. You may even want to check the rules for what the stuff should cost and use the console to set your experience to the right amount. (Also, the money you get comes in the form of cp, so you'll have a ton of it.)

2. When totalling the damage for an attack, ToEE rolls the base damage and then adds the fixed additions for strength, weapon enchancement, bard songs, etc., and then add the variable bonuses for things like holy, sneak attack, fire, etc. The thing is, the game seems to only allow for four such rolls. That is, if you have a holy, flaming, shock, frost weapon and you sneak attack with it, you'll only get the benefit of four of these rolls. Sometimes the better rolls get bumped for the worse ones, so it's sometimes better to go with fewer enhancements. The best weapon would probably be holy with the three bursts, and none of the non-burst elemental enhancements, as they may get in the way of burst damage on a crit and you'll be getting four rolls already without them. Did that all make sense? Just a weird detail about ToEE.

[Mulligan]

[QUOTE=Lord Plothos]Just thought of a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. When crafting, according to 3.5 you should only have 10 total enchacement points on a weapon. Each + to the weapon counts as one, and various other enchancements like keen, flaming, etc. have various values (from 1 to 3). Technically, you should not be able to add enhancements totalling more than 10, but ToEE lets you do it. What's more, when you do, for some reason you seem to GAIN money and experience, and a fair amount of it. Beware, if you don't want to cheat. You may even want to check the rules for what the stuff should cost and use the console to set your experience to the right amount. (Also, the money you get comes in the form of cp, so you'll have a ton of it.)

2. When totalling the damage for an attack, ToEE rolls the base damage and then adds the fixed additions for strength, weapon enchancement, bard songs, etc., and then add the variable bonuses for things like holy, sneak attack, fire, etc. The thing is, the game seems to only allow for four such rolls. That is, if you have a holy, flaming, shock, frost weapon and you sneak attack with it, you'll only get the benefit of four of these rolls. Sometimes the better rolls get bumped for the worse ones, so it's sometimes better to go with fewer enhancements. The best weapon would probably be holy with the three bursts, and none of the non-burst elemental enhancements, as they may get in the way of burst damage on a crit and you'll be getting four rolls already without them. Did that all make sense? Just a weird detail about ToEE.[/QUOTE]

I don't agree with you here, Lord..

In my experience, and with the rulebook for d&d ver. 3.5 sideby, i've never managed to put more than 10 enchantments on a weapon.

I've runned the game a couple of times and learned (with the ver 3.5 book ) that most encantments that effect alignment or soul (evil/good) are +2, effects that increase damage by +1d6 are +1, and those that add +2d6 are + 2. The higer ones that may add +2d10 on a crit. are also +2. I could never add a double "fire" enchantment on a blade, i.e. +1d6 fire & +2d6 fire bonus. Double bonus of the same type doesent stack i.e ver. 3.5. rules.

Sneak attack does apply, ergo 3 levels of rouge for every fighter. When i play i always have the "combat info" open, and sneak always applies unless monsters are immune to the effect...some of the though ones have Uncanny Dodge included, and those nasty Bugbears also have a high Tumble skill, so you won't get as many AAO's as expected.

From what i see in this thread, my first guess is the difference the variuos patches and fan-made patches applies to the game. I've never tested the lvl 10+ dll. from Co8, i normally run with patch 2 + standard Co8.

-

Please correct me if i'm wrong, i'm growing old after all

[Lord Plothos]

Well, I'm having a bit of trouble seeing where you think we disagree, but whatever. In 3.5 having a flaming burst weapon makes it a flaming weapon, so making it flaming "again" wouldn't stack, you're right. However, in ToEE, they do stack. Having a flaming, flaming burst longsword will add 1d6 twice on a normal hit and 1d6 + 1d10 on a crit. You can make a sword +3, then add the three elemental effects for +3 more, then add the three burst effects for +6 more, then add holy for another +2, and if you want throw on keen and mighty cleaving for another +2. Then there's axiomatic, etc.. Anyway, it's possible in ToEE to make weapons that simply can't work in real 3.5.

Not sure what you meant to say about sneak attacks. You'll get them with a rogue if you hit a flatfooted guy, attack while invisible, or when you're flanking, assuming no immunity, and this counts as one of your four rolls. Thus, for a weapon for a rogue, it may even be better to have only three damage-adding enhancements, though I think the sneak damage pretty much always goes first. I haven't looked into what gets rolled first, and there may be a way to further idealize your crafting, but by this point you're powerful enough so I haven't bothered.

[Mulligan]

Well i guess i'm wrong about this then, but one thing is for sure :

I once made +2 wpn and added lots of elemental bonuses to it, and could never make it +3....

Maybe the order in which you enchant the blade has an effect ?

Even after all this time theres still lots of things to explore, i just have to try again

Evil, meet sword, sword, meet Evil

[silverdragon72]

.

ok try to bring some light in this discussion:

1. you need to add all "+" effects 1st - so you can't upgrade from +2 to +3 if you already have another effect.

2. there seems to be a bug concerning costs for upgrading items (gold & EXP). There are 2 ways possible:

a) you take all enhancements at once - this way it's getting super expensive or

b) you take one after the other for much lower costs!

3. you are limited to 6 or 7 effects - you can't add all!

4. there is another bug that if you add to many effects at once (and it's getting to expensive this way) you even get money!

5. you are not limited to 4 rolls!


...don't know if anything was changed with the later patches - but this way it works with the 1st Atari and Co8 patch AFAIR!

.

[Lord Plothos]

Hmm, I've checked the 4 roll thing pretty thoroughly with my patch 2 and temple.zip setup, and I'm pretty sure. My rogue would get rolls for all four enhancements when he didn't sneak and when he got a roll for sneak damage, he got only three of the enhancements. If it doesn't work that way for other setups, I'm glad to hear it, but that's how it works for me.

You're right about adding the +3 before the other stuff, too.

I've had the error where I was given money and experience for a single enhancement (and for every additional enchancement afterwards), so I had kinda concluded it was because I was over the limit. It definitely doesn't have to be a several-at-once thing, again for my setup anyway.

[Lord Plothos]

Just double-checked, and I think I was right, again at least for my setup.
I made a cleaver +3 shock, holy, flaming burst, shocking burst, icy burst, at which point it wouldn't let me add more (though this is still way over the limit of 10 enhancement points).

I added each enhancement seperately. Through flaming burst, cost and everything were normal, but adding shocking and icy bursts, I gained gold and exp. Because the cleavers are keen, this is consistent with the cost getting messed up as soon as you exceed 10 enhancement points, as shocking burst would have made it 11 (3 +1 for keen +2 for holy +1 for shock +2 for flaming burst +2 for shocking burst = 11)

I then took the weapon on the road with my rogue.

Against a crayfish, which will not take holy damage, being neutral, a normal hit did:
1d10+8+3 (base) +1d6 +1d6 +1d6 +1d6
I take it this is base plus the shock, and the shock, frost, and flame from the three bursts.

Against that same crayfish while flanking, a normal hit did:
1d10+8+3 (base) +4d6 +1d6 +1d6 +1d6
My sneak damage is +4d6, so I take it this is sneak plus three of the four elemental enhancements I got credit for last time.

Against the crayfish, a critical hit with no sneak did:
1d10+8+3 (base) +1d6 +2d10 +2d10 +2d10
I take it this is shock plus the three bursts.

Against a hobgoblin, which will take holy damage, a sneak attack did:
1d10+8+3 (base) +4d6 +1d6 +2d6 +1d6
Which I take to be sneak plus holy plus only two of my four elemental enhancements.

If there's another explanation than you being limited to only four rolls, I'd like to hear it.

Conjecture: The person(s) coding the crafting of weapons made a mistake and at one point allowed more than the legal limit to be added to a weapon, but since the cost is based on the number of enhancement points, they coded the cost in such a way that if that number was exceeded (which should have been impossible), weird things would result.

Further conjecture: the 4 roll limit may be due to either the designers thinking you wouldn't get such strong weapons, or that you wouldn't need them and shouldn't have things so easy. It may also be that they believed there were fewer enhancements possible on weapons than it turns out there are, and so thought only 4 slots for rolls would be needed. But that's all just guesswork. Whatever the reason, 4 rolls does appear to be the limit.

[Philos]

This thread has sure taken a turn

Monster CR ratings to crafting weapons. But in keeping with this new direction, I read Silver Dragon's general info sticky and his item about crafting weapons. The ToEE guidebook is really lacking on the whole process. Maybe there could be a sticky that explains more of the technical nuts and bolts of doing it with some examples.