Why couldn't the drider swim? What was its skill modifier?
I'd reduce the CR, considering you put an enemy next to something that could effectively one-shot it. (It's like putting a sword that one-shot-kills dragons right next to a dragon. Whether you meant for it to be used that way or not, it wasn't a very effective encounter setup.)
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I would award full XP. I enjoy it when my players make use of their surroundings and not just their attack bonuses and foes to overcome enemies and obstacles.
I don't know that I'd reduce the XP payout, but I would certainly look into UltimaGabe's questions. Just because you can't think of a way for it to swim offhand doesn't mean that it can't. The relevant skill roll should have been attempted as Swim can be used untrained.
it should be able to swim, but assuming it was lava I still wouldn't ad hoc lower the exp.
The PC got lucky, wether it was trough a few natural 20s or taking advantage of something you overlooked. (well it still took tought to realize the advantage)
Next time you know better and you can lower the CR.
Be happy you've got players who can think beyond "I attack it with my weapon".
I agree with Richard -- you shouldn't punish your players for pushing an enemy off a cliff instead of stabbing him to death with swords.
It's not like the drider is a fire elemental. It's an elf attached to a bug. I wouldn't give it, like, a massive racial bonus to swim checks, but I'd give it a chance. It doesn't have to be the world champion at 100m backstroke, it just has to get to the shore.
As far as the encounter goes, I'd award full XP. Monsters aren't just sacks of XP that magically gets transferred to anyone responsible for their death or defeat and their associates, but the PCs essentially defeated the monster in combat, even if they got an assist from lethally hazardous terrain. As long as that sort of thing doesn't happen too often, I think it's chill to just award full XP. (And if that sort of thing -does- happen too often, design fewer encounters with lethal terrain features or have enemies stand further away from them.)
To the people that think I should lower the CR, do you raise the CR if a badguy uses terrain, like archers beyond a river or a troll beyond a narrow pass so he can fight one on one?
If the advantage is big enough. So saith the rules:
Favorable Terrain for the PCs: An encounter against a monster that's out of its favored element (like a yeti encountered in a sweltering cave with lava, or an enormous dragon encountered in a tiny room) gives the PCs an advantage. Build the encounter as normal, but when you award experience for the encounter, do so as if the encounter were one CR lower than its actual CR.
Unfavorable Terrain for the PCs: Monsters are designed with the assumption that they are encountered in their favored terrain—encountering a water-breathing aboleth in an underwater area does not increase the CR for that encounter, even though none of the PCs breathe water. If, on the other hand, the terrain impacts the encounter significantly (such as an encounter against a creature with blindsight in an area that suppresses all light), you can, at your option, increase the effective XP award as if the encounter's CR were one higher.
I agree with Richard -- you shouldn't punish your players for pushing an enemy off a cliff instead of stabbing him to death with swords.
I'd like to add my aproval of awarding full xp. Players who use unorthadox techniques or ideas should not be punished by it.
Player 1 "I want to attempt to bullrush the drider off the cliff"
Player 2 "Dude dont do that... we will only get half xp!"
Player 1 "O yeah I forgot... I run up and punch it"
Do you want that?
I don't think the encounter should get less XP because the players were creative in defeating it- I think it should receive less XP either because 1. the encounter wasn't as difficult as the moster's CR due to favorable environmental conditions (such as a Dragon hanging out next to an Insta-Kill Dragon Slayer Sword Dispenser) or 2. because the DM made the monster weaker than it was meant to be (prohibiting a Drider from swimming- which is akin to building an encounter of casters and the refusing/forgetting to do anything but melee).
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Granted there's a size difference, but spiders can swim. Hell, some even dive underwater and eat fish. I wouldn't think it a stretch to imagine a magical amalgamation of spider and elf to retain some swimming ability. Maybe they just startled the critter, and he'll be back in a few moments. With some minions.
Good lord! Let the Monk have SOMETHING! He's had nothing but bad news for the last few weeks... ;)
He used a typically subpar tactic, somehow beat the CMD with his M.A.D. skills, and it just happened to pay off?
Let the man have his moment of glory!
I strongly disagree with lowering the xp for the encounter. The river isnt really an advantage or disadvantage, it is neutral in this case untill someone uses it. Terrain that hinders a monster is something like a dragon stuck in a narrow corridor (cant fly around), or difficult terrain that keeps a big stompy monster from getting to a mobile party.
Like was said, you dont want your players to abandon more interesting and creative options for fear of losing xp if they dont just slug it out with a monster.
Ultima, if I lower the CR because of the river, but then the spider somehow paralyzed the monk and throws him in the river, is the CR still low because it could go the other way, or is the CR only low when the PCs are winning?
The river isn't the issue, nor is whether the PCs are winning or losing the issue. A CR is assigned before the battle even begins, judging by the capability of the monster(s) in question. If a creature is capable of paralyzing a target, that's accounted for in the creature's CR (raising it). If the creature is vulnerable to a particular source, or you make it vulnerable to a particular source, the CR should be adjusted accordingly.
If you've already made your decision then you've already made your decision- but if you make a judgment call that makes the encounter less difficult than it should be, then you shouldn't give the full reward for overcoming that. I played in an adventure once where the DM threw us up against a Balor (we were around level 10), and then had a Deus Ex Machina kill the Balor for us, yet he still gave us full XP. It wasn't fun even in the least.
Regarding the XP for disabling the drider.
I concur with the people calling for full XP... and I'll say that I prrefer to give BONUS XP for any monster that is defeated in ways other than 'HP brought to zero' or 'failed a save'. I'd prefer a game in which my players are given incentives to think outside the box than one in which the most efficient way to gain XP is to grind down foes.
Regarding 'shoudl the Drider go belly up'...
I think there are many ways to resolve this, and belly-up driders are certainly one way to do it, especially if armored. However, maybe the drider can skate across the surface like a water spider, or maybe he's especially buoyant, or maybe he's got a grappling hook and can save himself...
Letting the party do cool things doesn't mean your drider can't pull out a surprising feature... just make sure that when you make calls like this, you stay consistent, and again, try to reward PCs for clever thinking.
Ultima, fair enough. So does getting full xp make it less fun, does the bad guy not having knowledge of the monk's movement ability make it less fun, or do individual creatures have to live a certain number of rounds for it to be fun?
Well, the point I was referring to is getting credit for something you didn't deserve. (Although I do personally think that battles that end too quickly are less fun as well, but that's a different issue.) Your players may not agree- and they may feel that winning a battle through non-conventional means is more fun than anything.
Indy got full XP for shooting the one guy. He didn't get less because 'it was too easy'.
But let's say Indy's gun does 10 damage, and the guy has 40 HP, but the DM allowed him to be killed in one shot for whatever reason. Would that be the same situation?
Because that's what happened here. A PC bull rushed the monster into the river, which the DM ruled was effectively an insta-kill, even though, by RAW, it should have at least been able to try to swim back to shore.
The issue was NOT that the encounter was too easy, it was that it was ended by a DM call rather than playing it out per the rules.
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If a NPC has a negative Climb mod and is hanging off a cliff, do I need to roll to see if he survives, or can I just say 'he falls'?
If the party is facing off against a horde of 1st-2nd level thugs, and have killed the last twenty without a scratch, do I need to play out the next five rooms full? Or can I just say 'you slaughter them, what do you do next'?
If a NPC has a negative Climb mod and is hanging off a cliff, do I need to roll to see if he survives, or can I just say 'he falls'?
If the party is facing off against a horde of 1st-2nd level thugs, and have killed the last twenty without a scratch, do I need to play out the next five rooms full? Or can I just say 'you slaughter them, what do you do next'?
Again, that's not what's going on here. I can quote hypothetical situations all I want too, but it won't add to the discussion.
It isn't? Howso?
Because:
In my game last night, the monk used his tiger claw technique to bull rush a dryder (spider centaur) into a river. I ruled that it rolled belly up in the water and floated down stream, because I couldn't figure out how it could swim.
Emphasis mine. It's possible that the river in question was too fast for the drider to have swam to safety, but that was never brought up in the original post or in the discussion thus far (and certainly would have been a relevant item to bring up) so for you to assert that it IS the case is an assumption.
I certainly wouldn't reward bonus XP. It's been years since I've considered "identify obvious terrain hazard, relocate enemies to obvious terrain hazard" to be an example of "clever tactics". It's almost impossible in my experience to get PCs to not attempt to make use of obvious terrain hazards for their own benefit, even if it's arguably less efficient to do so. Spend six rounds trying to shove the monster into a lava hole instead of just killing it? You can't talk a lot of players out of that plan.
So because the DM handwaved it, it's not like those other situations where the DM handwaved it?
In spite of your hyperbole, yes. If the DM handwaves the encounter because he wrongly assumes the monster is dead, it should reward less experience than if the DM handwaves it because the monster actually is dead. It's unlikely that a DM would notice such a situation, however, but that doesn't mean it's any less valid.
Something that bugs me about the "lower the XP" argument is that OK, let's say you reduce the XP in this case for the river one-shot thing.
Your players take their time crossing the difficult terrain, engage and attack the monster making no use of the bullrush-river tactic...what now? They get less XP for not knowing you wanted them to bullrush the drider into a river?
I like the way the monk used his class abilities to maximum potential - the way players should ^_^
So your objection is that the DM did not follow the rules all the way to determine that death/defeat was all but assured?
No, although I do commend your constant attempts to boil my statements down so far that the meaning is lost.
My objection is that the DM wasn't running a CR 7 Drider- he was running a homebrew creature that is identical to a Drider except it's effectively killed by falling into running water. And, when building his encounter, he placed the Drider next to running water. Much like how hindering terrain and environmental effects should be taken into account when assigning a CR (or EL- is that used in Pathfinder?) to a particular encounter, this homebrew creature, while in most cases a CR 7, should probably have its CR reduced due to the fact that it's placed so close to its weakness (similar to having an encounter with a White Dragon standing next to the edge of a volcano).
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I think a better way of handling this is for the Drider to return and hunt down the party, striking when they're vulnerable. The Monk was cool and one shoted the encounter, many cheers were had, but they didn't actually kill their enemy.
Lose ends come back to haunt.
See, this is why I skip the whole monster = XP thing. The PCs are presumably on a quest. When they complete an important part of the quest, they level. Now its irrelevant how they killed the drider, just that it is dead and they are closer to completing the mission.
My .02.
If you go around arranging a high CR critter to be easier because of some gimp thing in the environment or whatever then that creature should be worth fewer xp than otherwise because you intentionally gimped it.
However, if the PC's get lucky or do something creative that happens to involve the environment (drowning the drider, in this case) then thats just how the cookie crumbles. Its really no different than using stone to mud on a cave ceiling. You didn't design a high CR creature to be easier, your PC was just creative.
I wouldn't go back after the fact and say "dang that river made it way too easy, i'm going to lower the XP on that". Why? Because the PC made a creative useful decision that made the fight easier. The river wasn't the only way to kill the guy.
Flip the coin over:
A bunch of goblins who you expect to be a push over turn out to be fairly rough for the PC's due to you randomly giving them spears instead of swords and there being a little height advantage. Do you go back afterwards and say "gee, those were tougher than I intended- I'm going to award them more xp for it". You could- but I'm betting most don't.
The PC's did a goodie. Let 'em get full XP.
-S
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In my game last night, the monk used his tiger claw technique to bull rush a dryder (spider centaur) into a river. I ruled that it rolled belly up in the water and floated down stream, because I couldn't figure out how it could swim.
Did you remember to increase the Bull Rush DC to account for the drider's 8 legs?
Was this a magical videogame river with no gradual depth from shore? Or was the Drider moved like 20-30' back?
Every river I've seen had a part near the shore which you can wade through. Go to large size and that's even wider area.
It's true that this became an "ice monster poised on the edge of a volcano" encounter. Such a thing would count as a reduced CR to me.
- enemy with DM-given weakness to immediate terrain.
- terrain is 100% effective, exaggerated beyond the norm, to exploit above weakness.
All that's missing is the neon sign.