Yeah, so I was just reading my way through What Lies in Dust in preparation for some bushwhacking, and I came across an encounter that was:
1 Shadow (CR 3)
hp 19
3 Shadows with the Young template (CR 2 ea.)
hp 13
[[It seems like the hp decrease is a mis-rule since they don't get hp off CON]]
So I grab my bestiary, look up Young (-1CR)... it's -4 STR, -4 CON, -2 NAC, +4 DEX, and a size decrease. That's all good, but shadows don't have STR, CON, NAC, and I don't think you can trip them or anything, so the size decrease doesn't penalize them.
In short, a shadow gets get +3 to hit (+1 size, +2 DEX), +3 AC (same), and +2 init. And their CR decreases by 1.
Well. The good fix is to use the quick rules as it was intended (-2 attack, -2 hp/HD, +2 init & dex skills). The bad fix (which I'm going to do) is to up the CR by 1 and make it a nasty DEVIL-shadow. I'm pretty much not worried about my players taking on the devil shadow because there's a harder encounter in sixfold trial which involved many more shadows in their case.
I'm sort of posting this as a "myfix" and I'm sort of posting this because I often (very often) misread rules. Is there something I'm missing about this? As far as I remember, shadows get CHA to hp, and DEX to hit, so all Young does is make them more effective and give less xp.
EDIT: should this go on the rules board instead?
I statted them up too, basically the same way. It did help the AC and init (may have missed the +to hit (don't have notes with me)), but it did also lower their damage dice. A regular shadow does d6 STR damage on an attack vs. the young doing a d4 though.
This does seem to be one of examples where a blanket template doesn't always fit every mob the same. I actually liked the change up, and had me thinking of what I could do to some of the other mobs with a template build.
Creative Director
|
We should have probably been a bit more clear in how the simple templates are intended to be used, honestly.
When you see us use simple templates in an adventure like that... it's almost ALWAYS because we didn't have room to totally rebuild the stats and put in a full stat block. This was certainly the case here, compounded by the fact that we had to put in more than one shadow and lots of full-strength shadows would have been a FAR too difficult encounter.
So we used the "young simple template" to sort of cheat the word-space issue. The faded shadows are not MEANT to be rebuilt using the Rebuild rules with the Young simple template, for the obvious reason that doing so actually increases their power quite a bit. BUT! If you use the quick rules for the simple template, which is what we did, the simple template works quite well at making the shadows less powerful by reducing their saves and hit points, making the adjustments to the base shadow stat block on the fly. If you really WANT to rebuild the stat block, in this case you should probably do so by simply reducing the shadow's total Hit Dice down to 1 HD and reducing ALL of its stats by 2.
A similar problem happens if you put the Advanced Template on an animal. If you just use the quick rules, the new version becomes merely a tougher version of the animal. But if you use the Rebuild rules, suddenly the Advanced animal has an Intelligence score of 6. Which means it can understand languages. Which is not really the point of the simple template.
Basically, the concept of the simple templates are so new that there were some complications when you use the rebuild rules. I'm gonna try to get some of the above into the 2nd printing of the Bestiary to help folks use the simple templates better, but when you apply them it's important to keep some common sense applied as well and if the Rebuild rules result in something that the simple template isn't really trying to do, you should make adjustments as appropriate.
...but it did also lower their damage dice. A regular shadow does d6 STR damage on an attack vs. the young doing a d4 though.
AHH, yes that actually seems to make quite a bit of difference. Although, I have never rolled above a 3 on a Shadow's STR dmg... GAH.
Basically, the concept of the simple templates are so new that there were some complications when you use the rebuild rules.
Cool, cool. Good to know. I thought perhaps it was just an oversight, but the quickbuild rules make it rather appropriate. In that case, I shouldn't lower its attack die or anything, or rather--- do stat mods intelligently.
|
Creative Director
|
Another option is the Lesser Shadow from the Tome of Horrors, Revisited...if I recall correctly.
It does 2 STR damage each hit instead of 1d6, which makes TPKs from lesser shadows less likely.
I actually considered using those, but the combination of no room for a full stat block and (if I remember correctly) the stats for lesser shadows being a bit wonky and needing a fair amount of reworking put me off that tack.