So, here's my thing: I've never run or played combat against a creature larger than Huge. But, as far as I can tell from the RAW, combat against larger creatures ends up being kind of anti-climactic. I imagine four humans fighting a Great Red Wyrm and it just seems kinda silly. They're either all hacking at its ankles or flying around it like sparrows pecking at a tiger.
BUT, like I said, I've never actually played or run combat against something like that before, so I'm looking for advice and suggestions. How do you run combat against massive monsters?
I actually meant more along the lines of actually hitting the dragon. How do you flavor that part of the fight? Do your PCs climb on it and such, or do they just gather around the mini and poke it with sharp sticks?
This illustration, for example. How would you describe Valeros, with his sword that is barely as big as one of the giant's teeth, slaying the giant?
I appreciate the suggestion on building the encounter (the molten gold pit trap sounds absolutely awesome), but I'm more interested in how it plays out. How do the PCs kill these Gargantuan and Colossal beasts? Do they ready actions to strike at limbs when the monster attacks? Do they climb it and stick a spear in its eye? Do they cause a rock slide and bury it in rubble?
I'm really looking for anything other than, "They chip away at its hit points until it's dead."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So you're looking at a 'Shadow of the Collossus' solution? Honestly this never came up when I'm playing a martial so I'd like to ask too. A larger than huge creature seems like something you either shouldn't be able to or want to full attack. Realistically simply swinging a sword at something that can step on you seems insane so how the heck do melee martials combat gargantuan creatures? Just full attack it's toe?
Ha! Exactly lol.
I'd like to add that I'll definitely take third party solutions if a first party one doesn't exist.
Getting enlarged to size Large and fighting a Gargantuan creature isn't so bad, that's like being normal and fighting something Huge, but it doesn't really help with Colossal creatures. It's a house cat fighting a tiger, rather than a sparrow or a rat fighting a tiger. Do your players tend to attempt attacks against limbs when the creatures attack? That brings to mind the dragon fight from Sleeping Beauty. It seems like a good option to me, though more options would be nice. What about humanoid creatures, like the Rune Giant? No natural attacks there . . .
Ah! So do you, Thomas Long 175, make use of called shots for fights against those massive creatures? This is the kind of specific example I'm looking for.
Martials need those butt harpoons from Attack on Titan.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
What constitutes an attck at higher levels where these things are encountered. Im hearing lots of folks stating that "they just hack at the toes".
These are high level martials dealing fantastic damge. Who's to say that the "attack roll" was made by attacking the foot or leg. What's to say it didn't involve leaping off the bent knee of the creature as it tried to crush the fighter and then slashing at its now reachable underbelly. Whats to say the first attack dint slice the tendon of the foreleg, causing the beast to stumble so its neck was momentarily exposed to a low strike for the second attack which happened to make a critical.
Remember that a round of attacks is actually six seconds and represents an entire dance of parry, riposte and other moves in order for just one "attack roll".
How they cause the damage is completely in the purview of the player. As long as their description is not trying to provide them advantage through repositioning or avoiding AoO's then that should be more than enough to work out how they killed the gargantuan and bigger bad guys.
Cheers
What constitutes an attck at higher levels where these things are encountered. Im hearing lots of folks stating that "they just hack at the toes".
These are high level martials dealing fantastic damge. Who's to say that the "attack roll" was made by attacking the foot or leg. What's to say it didn't involve leaping off the bent knee of the creature as it tried to crush the fighter and then slashing at its now reachable underbelly. Whats to say the first attack dint slice the tendon of the foreleg, causing the beast to stumble so its neck was momentarily exposed to a low strike for the second attack which happened to make a critical.
Remember that a round of attacks is actually six seconds and represents an entire dance of parry, riposte and other moves in order for just one "attack roll".
How they cause the damage is completely in the purview of the player. As long as their description is not trying to provide them advantage through repositioning or avoiding AoO's then that should be more than enough to work out how they killed the gargantuan and bigger bad guys.
Cheers
I'm entirely of this opinion. Well put.
|
Think of dwarven giant fighting tactics. The axe was used to sever the tendons behind the knee while the hammer destroyed the kneecap. The giant falls to the ground and is swarmed by dwarves.
In this case HP damage might be less than a measure of physical toughness but more a case of tactical points to defeat a monster. In other words the majority of the actual damage comes later but the earlier damage has more of an impact on setting it up.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
When dealing with high-level martials, it gets easy to just dismiss the kind of damage being tossed out, because the enemies usually escalate with the relative strength of the party. That means that it took 3 strikes from the fighter to bring down the hobgoblin back in the day, and now that he's good and mid-level it takes 3 strikes for him to down the hill giant. Eh, no biggie, nothing has really changed. You'd be wrong. The reason this is not evident, is because there are no rules for collateral damage in most martial situations. If you try to imagine the kind of skill and the kind of force being used by high-level martials, then downing the hugest monsters in the book, suddenly doesn't become as hard to imagine.
A while ago me and 2 of my players, who are new to the hobby, talked about this very thing, and I decided a few sessions ago, to show them what exactly a high-level martials' power amounted to. So during a fight, the party's paladin stepped up to an enemy, swung 4 times(he was hasted), hit once, then missed the three following strikes. So I asked the Paladin if he'd object to me giving some side-effects to his attacks to highlight a point and he was fine with it. I asked him to roll damage for the 3 rolls he'd missed and once he was done I applied said damage...to the object that had been directly behind the monster he'd missed. The object in question was an old, but fairly large 2 ft diameter stone-collumn (DR8 360hp reduced by half because of old age and wear), and the dear paladin reduced it to 0 hp, destroying the collumn.
So I described how his first slash bit deep in his opponent, who then dodged for his life, intent on not getting hit again, with each missing strike taking chunks out of the collumn behind said enemy, until the third strike splintered the entire thing in an explosion of rockshards and dust and made a small section of the ceiling collapse.
With that sort of power behind their swings, where a high-level martial can litterally punch through a solid oak-wood door with little to no effort, unarmed, drunk and disinterested at that, then I for one, don't have a hard time imagining titanic monsters falling to them.
So you hit the rune-giant 3 times? Well, perhaps the first strike hit the thing in the leg... hit it so damn hard, the force shakes the dust off the nearby building, with the poor rune-giant immediately losing balance, and dropping to a knee to regain its footing, letting you get a strike in at the arm and belly, both of which hit with equal force, sending the thing staggering back from it's hunched position with such force it not only stands back up, it damn near topples backwards, as it regains its posture, grabs its frigate-sized greatsword firmly, and swings back at you.
Naturally this is just one possible take on how to do it, but I hope it at least helps to see how it -can- narratively work.
-Nearyn
|
I actually meant more along the lines of actually hitting the dragon. How do you flavor that part of the fight? Do your PCs climb on it and such, or do they just gather around the mini and poke it with sharp sticks?
In actual high level game-play?
The dragon has a 6-12 second life span. It will either fail a saving throw or the first melee to full attack turns it into pate.
Terrain. Seriously look at the example pic. Valeros is standing son stairs that have him level with the giant's abdomen. At the end of the day, its all designing the encounter, and allowing things to be a bit cinematic, if your players even care all that much about how it happened specifically rather than the fact that it did.
|
I always give creatures larger than large the bonus hp held by constructs (and I double it on them) Because I think simply by virtue of being freaking enouroud they should be rather hard to killWhich is normally already reflected in them being tough critters with lots of hps.
Giving them a larger pool of hp also pushes things in the caster's favor. Take them down in ways that don't require digging through that large pool of hp.
except as another poster said a fighter'd kill it anyway 12 seconds into getting into melee with it, archers, and espically gunslingers even faster, and a lot of them have SR or are immune to mind altering stuff or even magic in general
Think of dwarven giant fighting tactics. The axe was used to sever the tendons behind the knee while the hammer destroyed the kneecap. The giant falls to the ground and is swarmed by dwarves.
In this case HP damage might be less than a measure of physical toughness but more a case of tactical points to defeat a monster. In other words the majority of the actual damage comes later but the earlier damage has more of an impact on setting it up.
I agree, a dwarf fighter with full attack can do some serious damage if the character is willing to take the dragon's hits..l