How exactly is the summoner ambushing the party with such precise timing?
There's one problem with this encounter as written (beyond the obvious): Summoned creatures can't use their innate teleportation abilities.
A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities. Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them. Creatures summoned using this spell cannot use spells or spell-like abilities that duplicate spells with expensive material components (such as wish).
Besides, DM's should take the encounter's actual difficulty into account when determining its challenge rating, rather than go strictly by the numbers. This is essentially an encounter with 13 Babaus, not an encounter with 1 Summoner.
The scenario brings up a valid question. How far is too far when designing an encounter? All I'll say is this, killing pc's is easy, but that shouldn't be the DMs goal. Providing a challenge and having fun, that should be the goal.
As for "Any other nice encounter suggestions tweaking CR number?" Equipping the badguys with exactly the right equipment (using your metagame knowledge of the characters) can skew CR numbers.
Yes. Your point being?
That it is possible to exploit the CR rules, cramming more-than-adequate oomph into an encounter? With the bonus effect that your players will feel cheated when you say, with a sh1t-eating grin 'Hey, this was only a CRxxx encounter, you should've been able to beat that one without breking a sweat'?
So, what else is new?
"Master summoner, starting Cha 20 with stat increase and items 26, level 9. So CR8. He manages to ambush the party, so about CR10."
Its actually CR 11.... 9 level character +1 for wealth +1 for using the ambush (or home field advantage)...The Master Summoner not using the NPC wealth chart should have its CR increased by 1 (page 398 Core Book)..
Its not CR... its ECL...
Also 13 demons ( CR 6?) adds up to a ECL 14+.. not including the SUmmoner.... which means this is an Epic challenge..
While I believe the OP is intending to show how the CR can sometimes be off (and it can).. its more important to use ECL
EDIT... it seems Pathfinder uses APL instead of ECL.. but still the same thing...
Unless the party has 8+ members... or lots of Protection from Evil spells... its gonna be a messy fight... although the 10th level party with a Paladin would just go to town on those Demons ... heck my 7th level Paladin has an AC of 27 (before Smite Evil)
13 CR 6 babaus plus Summoner level 9 CR 8 total CR is 36,000 exp. So it
CR 13+ not CR 14.
If monster is there and the PC no action to stop it. Then they get exp for it.
NPC bad guy with leadership has cohort and many followers. If you fight him and his minons you get exp for all of it not just the leader.
NPC cleric level 10 no buffs up CR 9 fight.
Same NPC cleric level 10 with ten around buffing.
Divne Favor, Bless, Bull Strenght, Bears Endurance, Owls Wisdom, Eagle Spendor, Protection From Engery, Prayer, Greater Magic Weapon, Magic Vessment. Not the same fight. 1 CR 9, 2 CR 1, 4 CR 2, 4 CR 3, Total exp 12,800 CR 11.
Point being GM is art and science. You as the gm have the whole universe to throw at the party.(and many more if you want) Play fair... or play by your self.
This is just a post to show the limits of the CR system, right?
No one actually believes that this is a CR 10 encounter, right?
Unfortunately, I'm led to believe someone actually does think it's a CR 10 encounter, since someone made the ridiculously weak argument that if a wizard casts fireball 10 times, it doesn't change the CR.
Actually, CR is for a reasonable challenge coming from a given creature encountered in mostly neutral conditions, not uber-prepared ambushes.
A Goblin who prepared ten CR 4 traps is no more a CR 1/3 encounter.
A Large Fire Elemental encountered in the core of a volcano, where the PCs take 3d10 fire damage each round is no more a CR 5 encounter.
And so on.
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Personally I would say that the means the summoner used to get his attack buddies does not change the fact that the extra attackers would increase the CR of this encounter. The same goes for an enchanter who uses dominate monster on a nearby creature and then teleports to attack the party, it'd still be counted towards the CR of the encounter.
Summoning them during said fight would be a whole different thing. But if he brings them before hand regardless of the means used it should add up.
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Dunno; we've joked about the 9th level Master summoner (CR: 8) that summons d4+2 lantern archons (Cha 18, augment summons... Buck naked lawful neutral summoner of Asmodeus) 11 times (he has superior and extra summons). So about 53 balls of light appear, shooting 2 rays each for d6 a shot every round. Yes master summoning is sick on both sides if you want all eggs in 1 basket; to make it more fair, have a Master Summoner 9/Mute Oracle of Nature 1 sneaking around invisibly and silently summoning d4+2 of these archons every round.
Or just give a wizard a wand with 1 charge of summoner monster 9 (way under the cost requirement for a 5th level wizard... Looking at about 2430 GP). So the CR 4 summons up d3 Elder air elementals to eat the 6th level party.
@Are
Nope, when the wizards manages to cast 10 fireballs the encounter does not turn into a CR like having 10 fireball traps at once.You see this also from Paizo APs the monsters summoned do not give XP.
Summoned creatures are not counted against a summoner NPC's CR, thus do not award XP, because it is assumed he will be summoning them during combat, one-at-a-time, on the fly.
Any circumvention of this normal use of the ability or spell, for instance by preparing an encounter with all of the summoned creatures already on-site for the duration, is designing a totally different kind of encounter from that.
For instance, in Tomb of Horrors (both original AD&D and 3.5 updated versions), there are traps that summon demons to fight the PCs. The 3.5 version lists the EL/CR and awards XP for these creatures. They do not count against the CR/XP of the Lich who created the tomb, because they are pre-scouted, pre-planned encounters put in place outside of a combat situation.
You have a lot of technicalities in play here. You are twisting the text of these rules to justify a very bad plan. But you are totally ignoring the spirit and intent of those rules.
13 CR 6 babaus plus SummonerPoint being GM is art and science. You as the gm have the whole universe to throw at the party.(and many more if you want) Play fair... or play by your self.This however, I do agree with. CR is a guideline, if you make a fight especially challenging, by allowing the NPC to nova, by granting him extra time to prepare, ambush, whatever, you're increasing the challenge of the fight, bump its CR.That is the point of my post... If NPC is Buffed then more exp cause it more chalening fight there for higher CR.
You as GM have to look at the bigger picture not just RAW. Wealth of NPC, Distance, terrian, weather, vision, ect... All effect the fight making it harder or easier. You as GM have judge the and award EXP
accordingly.Would think level 20 wizard but naked with no spell prepared and 6 hp and sicken, shacken, and prone is CR 19.... by the "RAW" it is...You have to use your brain.
Again GM is art not just a science.
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13 Babaus is not CR10, it's more like CR13and a half. throw in an extra Babau alongside the summoner, and you have a CR14 encounter before factoring the ambush. in other words, CR15 encounter. don't cheat the PCs out of the XP they deserved by using some loophole.
PC wealth shouldn't counts towards a creature's CR, because a PC is just going to loot that extra treasure anyway. the enhanced treasure itself is a sufficient reward for facing an overequipped opponent.
i'm sure we can argue the encounter should be one CR less than normal because the demons are summoned, and thus cannot use thier teleportation, cannot harm anyone under the effects of the protection from alignment line, and can be removed by a simple use of dispel magic. this could buy off the ambush and thus make it a CR 14 encounter.
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Sorry but I am not familiar with master summoner. Is that why these creatures are lasting minutes rather than rounds?
edit. Ok finally found why. Just part of summoner.
Alright then. Babau's are CR6 while the party is 10th. Sounds like a tough fight but protection from evil can make it trivial if they are using natural attacks. Keep in mind that a character with protection from evil can attack one creature and sacrifice the protection from bodily contact for only that creature. They could then ignore the other babau's until they are ready to engage them.
I could see a 10th level party easily beating this encounter if they don't panic.
Sorry but I am not familiar with master summoner. Is that why these creatures are lasting minutes rather than rounds?
No, the minutes rather than rounds is a feature of the "summon monster" spell-like ability found in the regular Summoner class, but only one instance of the SLA can be active at a time.
The Master Summoner archetype allows the Summoner to have multiple instances of the SLA active at a time.
The babus can't teleport or summon other monsters. Summon monster only lasts 1 round/level, so while they can come in waves, they won't stay too long. A clever party that knows what they are up against will cast protection from evil/good/chaos/law and be immune to the summoned creatures. Really, if you are aware of the rules, the 9th level summoner will not do too well. Of course, axiomatic anklyosaurs are always interesting... It would be hard to ambush a person with axiomatic anklyosaurs though. They are kind of big and noticeable.
I'm pretty sure the encounter is leveraging the summoner's ability to summon things for 1 minute/level while the eidolon is not present.
How is this anything other than a CR 10 encounter?
Let's say the tables are turned. PC's carefully research their enemies via divination, then the Summoner summons many Demons and ambushes the 5 Lvl 8 NPCs. Would the DM say "Ah, sorry, you cleverly ambushed them playing cards, so your CR 12 encounter is only worth a CR 6."?
The encounter is already at +2 due to ambush, what's an ambush worth?
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There's a serious flaw in your argument: ALL creatures count for purposes of the encounter.
Step 2—Determine CR: Challenge Rating (or CR) is a convenient number used to indicate the relative danger presented by a monster, trap, hazard, or other encounter—the higher the CR, the more dangerous the encounter. Refer to Table: Encounter Design to determine the Challenge Rating your group should face, depending on the difficulty of the challenge you want and the group's APL.
Step 3—Build the Encounter: Determine the total XP award for the encounter by looking it up by its CR on Table: Experience Point Awards. This gives you an “XP budget” for the encounter. Every creature, trap, and hazard is worth an amount of XP determined by its CR, as noted on Table: Experience Point Awards. To build your encounter, simply add creatures, traps, and hazards whose combined XP does not exceed the total XP budget for your encounter. It's easiest to add the highest CR challenges to the encounter first, filling out the remaining total with lesser challenges.
There is nothing there saying summoned creatures don't count, in fact, there is a specific sentence in that (made bold for simplicity's sake) shuts this down so fast and hard, that it would count as assault in some states.
@carn: Depends on the buffs in question, how they affect the character, how many, and how long they run. The AP has the XP for just the druid, anything he summons up, if defeated by the players before the spell runs out, then they would get the xp for the summons as well.
A lot of this is heavily dependent on the GMs judgment, which can be a very bad place to put it sometimes. I would say: if the buffs make you roughly as powerful as you would be, baseline, a level higher (not including spells for obvious reasons), then your CR should increase, this doesn't affect APL, because the higher CR ratings expect certain degrees of augmentation. I'd have to take a good look at the Summoner class to say whether or not it did, depending on class (especially paladins) it probably would.
I've played in games wherein the GM basically treated it as a competition against the players, I was regularly the deciding factor in one of those games, and in the other I had built something to make AM BARBARIAN proud, that character got kicked out at the end of the first session. This was before the GM gave up and started taking the player builds and added to them, because he wasn't as good at character building as some of us are.
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Hmmm, carn might be right about summoned creatures not granting any XP; especially if summoned via a class feature. I can't recall where I've read it, but it seems to be the case in Paizo's adventures as well.
However, I don't think this encounter is fair -- most GMs would probably disapprove of any PCs trying this same trick on villains. At least give them a fair warning that a major battle is coming up...
Frankly if my part is having any problems with a primarily melee cr 6 +12 to hit target at level 10 in any amount of numbers I'd be surprised. My current level 7 character has about 28 ac (without buffing more than a round), and can quite happily dance about murdering barbaus for a good 70 minutes before having a problem.
Well according to the aps written by paizo buffs do not add to cr of an encounter. Most encounters already include buffed stats and the. Cr doesn't change. However the situation described would be done as 2 separate encounters one with babaus and one with the summoner (who most likely would bail when his plan fails) that's how I think they'd handle this situation. YMMV.
@Carn: I'm going to use Batman for this, because he's actually a really good example. Batman is normally a CR 8 encounter, right out of the box, he's a dangerous melee combatant, who has a bunch of tools, that give him something of an edge, but he isn't superhuman. However: you give Batman enough preparation time and he can defeat the gods themselves.
Yes, it depends on all of that stuff, because if they have a bunch of minor spells like aid, resistance, expeditious retreat, etc. then he's not going to be a higher CR. Now, if he's running Divine Power, Righteous might, and all of the Bull's Strength-type buffs, plus some of those really nasty paladin buffs, then yes they affect the CR.
The Summoned Babuas aren't that hard as thier abilities are restricted. They can't summon/conjure other Demons. They can't use Teleport or Planar travel. They can't use any spell or spell like ability that has high cost component.
What really makes a Babau dangerous is it's ability to summon another Babau to flank with for sneak attack. The at will teleport is what allows them to set up those flanking situations. Take those both away and that CR 6 Babau isn't that tough.
As for summoning, the durations is 1 round per level. So this isn't something you can set up for an ambush ahead of time. You can summon 1 babau per round and they stick around for 9 rounds. Not something you can do to set up an ambush. As well since they don't stick around that long you won't have all 9 out at once.
This really is a CR 9 encounter based on the Summoner who is Level 9 and has PC stats vs the Heroic Array and has PC wealth to get stat boosting item. A stat boosting item is 4000 gp for the lowest and the NPC at 9th has only 1000 GP to spend in that category.
For APL 10 group this encounter is easy. It's CR 9 which is APL -1 and should be easy. There's tons of ways beat this encounter with minimal expenditure of resources.
This is more than an ambush, its a confluence of (as yet unexplained) circumstances that let the summoner cast round after round after round without being seen or heard by the party.
Does no one read the classes or the thread before commenting any more? Summoner's summons last 1 min / level.
I was even looking for that on PRD but just missed it, you are right.
Still irrelevant though. Babaus are mooks against APL 10 party. I have APL 10 group in the King Maker AP, they'd hardly be challenged by this encounter. In the group the Two Weapon wielding Paladin would be dropping two Babau a round on while not using smite because the ranger would be setting up the kills with his bow. It might go the reverse but 2 arrows in two babaus and the Two handed Sword blow on each and the sword has the holy property, Paladin ability. The cleric would be channeling to keep hit points up and has the feat to hit outsiders with the channel. So damaging the babuas but healing the group. A sorcerer would be blasting with fire spells but SR might pose a problem. The rogue would probably go after the summoner as he has the lowest AC and low hit points, the babuas could be threat to him. Against the others the Babaus would need to roll at 16 or higher on D20 to hit.
Darkness might help them but the cleric, ranger and sorcerer have no issue with darkness.
This would a cake walk of an encounter.
But that's the whole point you decide on CR on a case by case basis based on how tough the fight is for the party, that is why being ambushed makes a difference at all. If you see the party had a super tough fight on their hands and even with intelligent play and normal rolls they only barely avoid a TPK then you bump the CR up a few notches or if somehow they just roflstomp the demons and then TP and club the summoner down with ease then you count it as the lower CR.Is the point of this argument to show that you can dick over your players as a DM?The point is now, how to handle CR wise preparation activity of the enemies, which is espcially relevant in ambush situations with some caster types, e.g. a lev 11 druid could also summon some 4 creatures before jumping at the PCs. The PCs might not notice, that the 4 creatures last just 6-10 rounds and can be dispelled, especially if these 4 creatures are similar to druid animal companion.
Other casters might have their own ideas, how to spend those free rounds. And even non-casters could drink some potions and so on.
Favorable circumstance can affect the CR. I'd say an Ambush is one of those situations.
That's nothing. Skezriax will wipe the floor with that encounter faster than you can say superiorinitiativeandperception massholdmonsterquickenedempoweredwalloffire.
And Skezriax is CR 5 and does not rely on summons.
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As any encounter, this one can be either very challenging or not depending upon the makeup of the party.
As several people have mentioned, there are ways to deal with summoned monsters such as protection from evil, dispel magic etc. If these are not available to the party then they will find it very difficult.
Thats not unusual for an out of the ordinary encounter that suprises the characters. (look at some of the big damage melee hitters such as remorhaz at cr7 or trolls at CR5, as an epic encounter you may meet a troll at level 2 and if it hits with both claws the least damage it will do is 21 points...)
The second point, as also raised above is the CR system for NPC's. This is especially difficult for NPC class levels and monsters... I recently made up some Ogrekin dwarven warriors that were 4th level and CR3. I think that compaired with the recommended monster stats, they were way above CR3 (AC 22, average damage was 22 hit points). There were 4 of them for a CR7 encounter. However, as pure melee critters, they were easily defeated with spells. Had the party slugged it out with them it would have been a much harder call, especially if they had suprised the party and slaughtered the magus before be could cast a spell...
CR is a guide, some things are obviously not going to be a balanced challenge for your party.
Despite not being able to teleport, summon monster spells have a short range and the summons wink out of existence if they leave that range.
Where did you get that idea?