generally good ideas
i also recommend
pooling the mooks' treasure to distribute among the mooks as you please
liberal use of consumables to get around the lack of ability to afford permanent items
partially charged wands with less than 5 charges go a long way
cheap armor and weapons go a long way. who the heck wants that many masterwork glaives?
a decent UMD makes a good mook too.
give your mooks obscure exotic weapons the martial guy doesn't want to spend the feat on to showcase the fancy stuff you can do with those weapons
Warriors make better mooks than fighters, you get twice the number of levels for the same challenge rating.
aid another is nasty, as are mooks that can buff themselves as free actions. such as barbarians and inquisitors.
prebuffing always helps
Dotting for useful information. This topic will be really useful for when I start DMing for a new Rise of the Runelords campaign on Wednesday.
One mean combo is rat men with there same square/flanking ability and the team work feats that make flanking deadly (bonus becomes +4 and second gives d6 sneak that is stackable) especially on say 3rd lvl warriors. So before stat mods it is a +7 to hit with extra d6 of damage with whatever they are using. Fun intelligent class based monster monster to fill sewers with! Good mook too! Especially if they get the drop on the party, people going to die!
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Summoned fiendish creatures can be very powerful against good aligned parties. Smite Good can hurt!
Traps are mooks. They just don't move around much.
Always ensure your mooks have at least enough hp that they can survive a single hit from the BSF. Making him take a full round, or a second action, changes things... A LOT.
Terrain is a mook. You just have to decide up front where to position him.
A mook's life is not worthless. It has enormous value in the action economy. Make sure you trade it for the right price.
WILL SAVES! Don't let your mook become your enemy's asset!
Poison, Disease, Curse, and Bleed. Make your enemies pay for swatting aside that mook!
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Mook archers who are in a difficult to access location that use ready vs spellcasting. If you want to be really nasty, give them the deflect arrows feat.
Edit: Also: Use Teamwork Feats! Outflank or Precise Strike for melee mooks. Swap Places to get mooks out of flanking positions. Shield Wall for a fighter block. Make a boss goblin a cavalier on a goblin dog and give all his riders coordinated charge.
A mook that dispells haste
Using the spell slow automaticly dispels haste without a level check.
2 levels of human flowing monk allows for Viscous stomp
2 levels of fighter allow for greater trip
Still need to add in 2 more BAB but that can be down with warrior
Crane wing would be nice to add on top of this.A PC that attacks this dude gets tripped/sickened/1 AoO/flatfooted. An adjacent body can AoO as well and if you add 2 more monk levels you they can both use reposition on you.
Why do you need flowing monk? can't you take combat reflexes as a monk bonus feat and you get improved unarmed strike as a class feature to get viscious stomp at level 1? but you will need someone else to do the tripping but a grease spell works.
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@Lumiere. The warrior class will not double you available levels, it will just add 1. Still sometime and extra BAB is better then class features.
according to the bestiary
an NPC class counts as half a CR instead of a full CR.
so a 4th level warrior, is CR2
and a 10th level warrior, is CR 5.
the reason why, is because NPC classes are never Key, regardless of race or total base CR.
i'd trust a book on monsters about using NPC classes as opponents more than the CRB.
It's 'vicious', folks. Sorry, I hate to be a spelling prude, but 'Viscous Stomp' means a stomp that is all... gooey.
But what if an ooze takes the feat ???
@Lumiere. The warrior class will not double you available levels, it will just add 1. Still sometime and extra BAB is better then class features.according to the bestiary
an NPC class counts as half a CR instead of a full CR.
so a 4th level warrior, is CR2
and a 10th level warrior, is CR 5.
the reason why, is because NPC classes are never Key, regardless of race or total base CR.
i'd trust a book on monsters about using NPC classes as opponents more than the CRB.
I prefer the Bestiary way too.
I am asking again. What is the best way to make a CR 5 Mook who is good at grappling? It is okay to neen 1st to third level spell support that he can not provide himself.
I would say a 4th level Unarmed Fighter/1st level Barbarian (Vanilla or Archetype of choice). Take Snapping Turtle, Improved Grapple, Snapping Turtle Clutch and then whatever you choose after that. This guy will have at least a +9 Grapple (while raging), more if you focus feats and items to increase it.
@Lumiere
The Every NPC that I can find that uses NPC classes just lowers the CR by 1 and does not half it.Slow will be great to have on mooks.
So if you could have 5 5th level spell casters cast buffs on you you for 3 rounds, what spells would you have them use? 2 rounds? 1 round?
that would be the CRB way you mentioned, i mentioned the bestiary way, which makes more sense and is another rules legal option.
either one works, but i think the bestiary way takes priority because the bestiary is a book on opponents designed to be slain, and because NPC classes are so useless otherwise.
i'd rather trust a book designed for designing opponents than a book designed for creating player characters for calculating the CR of an opponent.
Some thing to think about too is treasure. Unless you feel like going exactly by the book in that a goon can only have XXX go worth of gear, because the chart say so, goons can use the treasure of the dungeon.
Lets say you have 10 zombies spread out across some cave chambers in groups of 3, 4 and 3. The groups of 3 zombies are a CR 3 threat, while the group of 4 is a CR 4 threat.
Lets say we have a group of 4 4th level PCs on medium. That makes 2 'Easy' encounters an 1 average encounter. Each group of 3 zombies is worth 800 XP, while the group of 4 is worth 1,200 XP. They also are worth money. The zombies up the 'treasure' of the dungeon by 800 gp for each group of 3, and 1,150 gp for the group of 4.
Now, Zombies don't actually have treasure, so they won't have anything on them, but that treasure is supposed to show up somewhere else in the dungeon. So we have 2,750 gp to play around with. The treasure tables actually tend to reward more than the Wealth By Levels table recommend, because it's assumed that some of the treasure is consumables that is used by either the creatures or party. So you can use some of the treasure to upgrade Mooks above and beyond the treasure that is recommended for them, as long as the dungeons over-all treasure hoard stays mostly the same.
So one could give the mooks some Alchemist Fire using the Zombie treasure, that they can use on the party to up their threat rating. Or give them some masterwork gear, even magic items.
Traps function much the same way. If you have a trap in the dungeon, the treasure for that trap should show up somewhere else too. Maybe in someone else's hands.
The 1/2 level method is used when adding classes to creatures with existing hd. Its limited to only doubling the monster's cr. For example, a green hag is cr 5. A hag with 5 fighter levels, is cr 10, a hag with 10 warrior levels is also cr 10, however, a hag with 11 warrior levels is now cr 11. Giving her pc wealth bumps cr by 1.
Knight Magenta speaks truth.
@Lumiere. The warrior class will not double you available levels, it will just add 1. Still sometime and extra BAB is better then class features.according to the bestiary
an NPC class counts as half a CR instead of a full CR.
so a 4th level warrior, is CR2
and a 10th level warrior, is CR 5.
the reason why, is because NPC classes are never Key, regardless of race or total base CR.
i'd trust a book on monsters about using NPC classes as opponents more than the CRB.
Pretty sure, it is NPC counts as 1/2 till reaches RHD (or after 1 if no RHD).
Unless is another change in PF from 3.5.I see it is a change: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monster-advancement
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Lumiere's point is that the specific of "NPC classes are never considered key" overrules the general rule of "[add up to HD levels] at which point they are considered key", which by itself makes sense since the sentence about NPC's is written a few sentences after the sentence on when to determine if it's key or not.
"Table: Monsters with Class Levels gives general guidelines regarding which core classes add directly to a monster's abilities based on its role (see Monsters by Role). Classes that are marked “key” generally add 1 to a creature's CR for each level added. Classes marked with a “—” increase a creature's CR by 1 for every 2 class levels added until the number of levels added are equal to (or exceed) the creature's original CR, at which point they are treated as “key” levels (adding 1 to the creature's CR for each level added). Creatures that fall into multiple roles treat a class as key if either of its roles treat the class as key. Note that levels in NPC classes are never considered key."
(my bolding)
Basically it's a case of specific overrides general, but what is more specific isn't 100% clear. Reading just the bestiary, the placement implies Lumiere's interpretation is the most reasonable IMO, but the NPC Gallery, AP's and similar show it using the core rulebook method.
That said, more often than not I find the bestiary rule applied as Lumiere interprets it to be much closer to the actual challenge it presents than the CRB; A level 10 warrior is NOT equal to a level 9 fighter. Much closer to a level 6 fighter, IME.
Mooks ought to have teamwork feats!
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When I design mooks, be it final battle or even party vs. a squad of enemies, I hyper-optimize their stats and abilities for a single focus which in most cases - get 1 hit in. This includes switching around stat arrays of Dex and Str (ranged mook vs. melee mook) and investing as much stat,ability, feat and item into pulling off their one trick. If they are going to serve as blockers I don't worry about optimizing AC as much as getting them more hit points - that way they survive a single attack routine and have a chance to strike that round or the second round. Unless they are low CR creatures with bad AC, then I focus on the AC bump vs. hp, since there is greater room to grow (up until the 20ish range).
Here is a sample of a defense upgraded Orc Warrior from the Bestiary:
XP 135
Orc warrior 1
CE Medium humanoid
Init +0; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception –1
DEFENSE
AC 18, touch 11, flat-footed 17 (+5 armor, +1 dex,+2 shield)
hp 6 (1d10+1)
Fort +3, Ref +1, Will –1
Defensive Abilities ferocity
Weakness light sensitivity
OFFENSE
Speed 20 ft.
Melee falchion +5 (1d8+3,19–20)
Ranged javelin +2 (1d6+3)
STATISTICS
Str 16, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 8, Cha 6
Base Atk +1; CMB +4; CMD 14
Feats Weapon Focus (longsword)
Skills Intimidate +2
Languages Common, Orc
SQ weapon familiarity
Equipment Scale mail, Heavy Steel Shield, 4 javelins, Longsword, 5 gp
So I reduced the STR by 1 (Base str of 12 instead of 13) and playing around with the point buy, I shifted that to his Dex. I ditched the falchion, in favor of more gold: so he gets better AC while still keeping the same chances to hit, he's just doing less damage. He's also slightly better at ranged due to his Dex increase.
I can use the extra cash from the falchion sale to buy some caltrops and some rope and make him part of an Orcish slaver party,
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On the issue of NPC classes you guys are forgetting one thing - starting CR.
So a level 1 warrior is 1/3 CR, level 2, 1/2 CR and a level 3 is 1 CR. Then from each point thereafter it gets +1 CR increment (not necessarily a full CR) = +1 Level.
You are mixing up assigning NPC vs. PC class levels to an existing NPC vs. one built from the ground up and the low level, baseline starting 1/3 CR rule at level 1 for NPC classes.
So a 10th level warrior is CR 8
5th level warrior is CR 3
3rd level warrior is CR 1
2nd level warrior is CR 1/2
1st level warrior is CR 1/3
Auxmaulous: No, that's not what we're discussing with NPC classes. Basically, there is the CRB way that is also used in the AP's etc, but there's an alternative interpretation possible from the Bestiary, leading to the CR of an NPC to be 1/2 it's levels (plus if there's any racial hit dice).
Some people, like me, find this alternate interpretation to give results far closer to the actual abilities of the character; for example, by CRB a level 9 fighter is CR8 and a level 10 warrior is CR8. Clearly the fighter will be much stronger. With the alternate interpretation, a level 10 warrior is CR 5 - like a level 6 fighter. A level 6 fighter and a level 10 warrior are comparable in power, I think. That's why some prefer to use that interpretation.
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Auxmaulous: No, that's not what we're discussing with NPC classes. Basically, there is the CRB way that is also used in the AP's etc, but there's an alternative interpretation possible from the Bestiary, leading to the CR of an NPC to be 1/2 it's levels (plus if there's any racial hit dice).
Some people, like me, find this alternate interpretation to give results far closer to the actual abilities of the character; for example, by CRB a level 9 fighter is CR8 and a level 10 warrior is CR8. Clearly the fighter will be much stronger. With the alternate interpretation, a level 10 warrior is CR 5 - like a level 6 fighter. A level 6 fighter and a level 10 warrior are comparable in power, I think. That's why some prefer to use that interpretation.
What specific listing or ruling are you basing this off of though? My understanding is that for humanoid characters you sub out the very fist class level instead of using racial HD, so that by logic should follow the CR 1/3 at level 1 rule, etc.
Or are you going by the actual values as reference on page 291 of the bestiary (chart 1-1)?
The bestiary does list NPC classes as counting as half, but that is when you are adding NPC class levels to an existing creature with levels or racial HD. I don't think that rule applies from building a NPC, using NPC class levels from level 1.
Making a comparison from the NPC codex to the 1-1 chart, I can see how most people would think that a 10th level warrior is closer to a CR 5 challenge vs. a CR 8 one.
I don't agree with the CRB/Bestiary assessment I just listed, but I think 1/2 level = CR is just a little too low.
A quick note on goon-squad tactics: aside from Aid Another (for themselves and their bosses) and flanking, it can boost their effectiveness if they all act on the same count. Many GMs already roll one initiative for all goons of the same type, but if you're the sort who provides individual enemies with initiative rolls no matter how minor they are, consider having them all delay to wait for the slowest one and act en masse.
Remember all those movies/TV shows where the goons attack the hero one or two at a time while the rest hang back, practicing threatening-looking tai chi but not actually doing anything? All those goons are dead; that should tell you how well their strategy worked. It's better for four goons striking together to "waste some damage" to render their enemy unconscious than it is for them to come in one at a time, giving the healer a chance to interrupt their barrage.
As an aside, PCs subject to this tactic will discover new uses for entangle, grease, stone call and even silent image - preventing goon coordination should be kept in mind.
This is why in old X-Men comics or Arnold Schwarzenegger movies the big strong hero gets covered in like 30 mooks, only to emerge a frame later from under the swarm exploding out of it with the bad guys flying everywhere! That's a great trope that gets ignored a lot these days.
If each mook adds +2 to the grapple with Aid Another and a primary mook in the group starts off with a +3 CMB for a CR3 encounter for example, you end up with a single Grapple check of +9 on the Fighter type in the group. Throw in a couple ranged attackers for an extra CR on the fight and now you've got a very doable dead fighter scenario on your hands. At level one this fight is a TPK; at level 3-4 it's still a hassle. By level 6 this fight is worthless.
Another note for parties not optimized for CMD or AoO's: Tiny sized mooks. You can plow 8 of them on a single medium PC and cover them in gnats dealing a couple pts of damage each round. Finally, alchemy. Mooks don't have to die in a round or stand in charge lanes and such, they don't even need to be spellcasters. Give mooks thunderstones as debuffs and smokesticks to manage the battlefield. Soon enough those mooks last a couple rounds and a simple CR3 fight becomes a blood-nado for the PCs...
One level of alchemist for your mooks. If they get a round to buff they all chug their mutagens. As a side benefit you don't have to worry about your pcs complaining that they're drinking the loot.
EDIT: Actually, any mook with 11 Int can now do plenty of buffing while still not drinking the loot.
Okay for some concrete NPC's. We generally play at low levels, so most of the mooks I design are for low level. I've got a bunch but they're not on a computer, but this is one I've used and reused. It's very formidable in my games at least, and one should be careful not to apply them to heavily against the lowest-level parties, especially if they have environmental advantage (without that they are kinda weak).
Hobgoblin Harassers
These elite hobgoblin skirmishers are often found as roaming mercenaries. They're experts at ambushes and assassinations, but are also employed in larger battles to take out key enemies and spread confusion. They are educated, at least by hobgoblin standards, and use this to their advantage when possible.
Hobgoblin ranger (guide) 2
LE Medium humanoid (goblinoid)
Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +6
DEFENSE
AC 17, touch 13, flat-footed 14 (+4 armor, +3 Dex)
hp 19 (2d10+4)
Fort +5, Ref +6, Will +1
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft.
Melee glaive +4 (1d10+3/19+)
Ranged composite (+2) longbow +4 (1d8+4/19+) or Alchemical +5T or Net +1T
Special Attacks: Rangers Focus 1/day (+2 attack/damage)
STATISTICS
Str 14, Dex 17, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8
Base Atk +2; CMB +4; CMD 17
Feats Improved initiative, deadly aim (included above).
Skills Perception +6, Stealth +12, Acrobatics +5, Swim +6, Survival +6, Spellcraft +4, Knowledge (Nature) +4, Knowledge (Arcana) +1; Racial Modifiers +4 Stealth
Languages Common, Goblin
Gear: Composite (+2) longbow, glaive, chain shirt, net, alchemist's fire, either a thunderstone and a smokestick or a tanglefoot bag
Tactic: When employed against the PC's, as the name suggests they act as harassers and magekillers. They usually try to engage from some distance and very spread out, and instantly target the weakest member. If they have reason to believe someone is a spellcaster and not very heavily armored, they go for that character, activating Ranger's Focus. Half attacks immediately, half readies actions to shoot if the character tries to cast a spell.
If possible, they also try hindering the PC's through throwing thunderstones and alchemist's fires (especially at casters, and _especially_ at armored casters).
While they have glaives, they try to avoid melee unless enemies are prevented from attacking them back (entangled) and if forced into melee they gang up on someone as well as they can.
The bestiary does list NPC classes as counting as half, but that is when you are adding NPC class levels to an existing creature with levels or racial HD. I don't think that rule applies from building a NPC, using NPC class levels from level 1.
Well, it seems weird that a bugbear warrior 10 should be lower CR than a human warrior 10, right?
Still, CR is a tool, not a rule; even if the interpretation had had no support or mention at all in the books if someone had told me "if you go 1/2 level = CR on NPC classes it makes more sense than the official method" I'd still been like "Hmm, yeah, you're right :3" and started using that anyway. But of course that's just me, and YMMV :)
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The bestiary does list NPC classes as counting as half, but that is when you are adding NPC class levels to an existing creature with levels or racial HD. I don't think that rule applies from building a NPC, using NPC class levels from level 1.Well, it seems weird that a bugbear warrior 10 should be lower CR than a human warrior 10, right?
Still, CR is a tool, not a rule; even if the interpretation had had no support or mention at all in the books if someone had told me "if you go 1/2 level = CR on NPC classes it makes more sense than the official method" I'd still been like "Hmm, yeah, you're right :3" and started using that anyway. But of course that's just me, and YMMV :)
I think under the current rules the 10th level Bugbear warrior would be CR 10.
Base CR 2, +3 levels of warrior up to racial HD (3, which are not substituted) = +1 CR makes him CR 3 (he gets 1 level of warrior for free since its not a full CR bump) and then you add in the other remaining 7 levels of warrior (+7) making him CR 10. A 10th level human warrior under these rules would be CR 8.I agree with you 100% that CR is a tool - I actually don't follow it as written, I just thought people were being hardcore here since this was advice and not houserules.
I actually have halfway point CR creatures and values (like a CR 5.5 creature) and some other CR mutations so I'm in the camp that the DM in question needs to use what he thinks works best or makes the most sense balance wise.
Again, it's a case of specific vs general. First they state that "once level reaches CR, count additional levels as Key". Three sentences later they state "NPC class levels are never considered Key". Which one is more specific and overrides the other is a matter of interpretation, but it's not a big deal. :3
But the advice forum isn't nearly as RAWyRAW as the rules forum, and even there the CR guidelines are guidelines. And thank the gods for that! :)