Recommendation needed: Buffing monsters until they can be worked on

[Watcher]

Hey folks,

Sorry if this has been asked before, I haven't been on the boards much lately. Having playtested Burnt Offerings with the later Alpha and now Beta..

Monsters seem to lose their punch. Not as tough as they used to be.

I'm not complaining. I know they'll be worked on when the time comes.

IN THE MEANTIME... What are list of suggestions for keeping monsters at the level of challenge they're intended to be? More hit points? Anything else?

Also, what about grapplers? I spoke with Jason and Gencon, and we discussed that low level grappling monsters seem to have lost their edge, and he was mulling over long term ideas on how to give them that edge without making them over-powering like they can be in 3.5.

Any thoughts?

[Vigil]

For monsters, I've been doing very quick and dirty updates. If a monster has more than 9 hit dice, I add toughness. If it has more than 13, I add improved initiative. If it has 19 or more hit dice, I add a save booster (great fortitude, iron will or lightning reflexes). I then recalculate hit point totals (hit die upgrades for certain class levels and the toughness feat), figure the CMB, and good to go. I know skills are off, but they're close enough.

[tergiver]

I've been giving everyone (including monsters) +6 hit points, and trying to give quick bonus feats to bad guys. Usually Toughness, Dodge, Improved Critical, or Improved Natural Armor.

If you have more time, here's the table I cooked up for my game about how many extra feats to give bad guys when converting:

1st-4th= no change
5th= +1 feat
6th= no change
7th-10th= +1 feat
11th= +2 feat
12th= +1 feat
13th-16th = +2 feat
17th= +3 feat
18th= +2 feat
19th= +3 feat

The low-level grapplers tend to be sneaky - why not give them a bonus to CMB if they have the initiative? Call it Grappling Charge, give it to them as a bonus feat, and say it's +4 to grapple checks in exchange for -4 to AC if the grapple attempt is made at the end of a charge.

You could also just bump up the monsters quietly by giving them a +2 to attack & damage.

[Set]

When the players are ahead of the curve, I just give everything max hit points.

Sometimes I make other tweaks, such as advancing beasties a bit (adding a size increase can really beef up most animals!), and there are sub-tweaks to that, such as advancing caster level on beasties with magical powers to better suit their advanced state.

[Crusader of Logic]

If they need the buff, giving them better feats than the suboptimal defaults, changing skills around, and so forth works very well to both give them more, and let them make the most of what they have. Consider for example a Vrock. It has a Telekinesis at will SLA (among other things). Telekinesis can among other things be used to do maneuvers, but this requires you to concentrate which is normally a Standard action. Obviously, doing nothing else but attempting to trip once in a round is folly, but if you remove two skill points from something, and give them the Swift Concentration skill trick they can now do a maneuver at Long range every single round for the Swift action they don't need anyways, thereby freeing them to full attack prone enemies and such, or use their other SLAs, or any number of other things. Having more options makes them more dangerous. This works with any and every ability that requires Concentration to maintain, that's just one specific example.

I'd hold off from actually buffing the enemies until the low end character types are actually improved though, otherwise you will just make them lunch meat for the monsters.

[primemover003]

Crusader of Logic wrote:

If they need the buff, giving them better feats than the suboptimal defaults, changing skills around, and so forth works very well to both give them more, and let them make the most of what they have. Consider for example a Vrock. It has a Telekinesis at will SLA (among other things). Telekinesis can among other things be used to do maneuvers, but this requires you to concentrate which is normally a Standard action. Obviously, doing nothing else but attempting to trip once in a round is folly, but if you remove two skill points from something, and give them the Swift Concentration skill trick they can now do a maneuver at Long range every single round for the Swift action they don't need anyways, thereby freeing them to full attack prone enemies and such, or use their other SLAs, or any number of other things. Having more options makes them more dangerous. This works with any and every ability that requires Concentration to maintain, that's just one specific example.

I'd have to go back and look at Swift Concentration, but unless stated otherwise you can only use a skill trick once per encounter barring feats or class abilities that allow you more uses.

[Crusader of Logic]

Once an encounter or once a minute. Telekinesis will last one battle, it's 1 round a level after all.