Hello,
in DnD 5.0 its very comfortable for the gamemaster and its more realistic that even low CR monsters can be a real threat for high level players. But we don't want to give up the whole range of the Pathfinder and DnD 3.5 material. So I'm searching for variant rules, house rules or "mass-templates" to make low CR monsters more dangerous for high level players - or strong power level players in general. We are an experienced Pathfinder and DnD role playing group (since 9 years), so I'm not in the search for general hints, like "use the intelligenge of your NPCs", "use terrain features", "let your NPCs / monsters work together (Teamplay)" etc.
Do you have some suggestions? Thank you in anticipation.
PS: Sorry for my bad English (; I'm a little bit out of practice...
Im not sure I understand your question.
Are you saying for example, making goblins stay dangerous?
If you like pathfinder, check out e6/e8 rules variant.
You can also add things to monsters like levels of fighter, gear like weapons on magic items with charges or even just advanced templates.
Sometimes more of the same weaker monster also poses a threat.
I had a party of 7th level PCs TPkd by inadvertently wandering into a goblin warren and getting too cocky because they were weak monsters.
The Inquisitor was literally wrestled to the ground and smothered by a mob of goblins she intimidated into a frightened stampede. The problem was she was in the only exit, so they freaked and ran past, over her…. wrestled to death by a swarm of goblins! lol.
Starfinder Superscriber
I'm not terribly familiar with D&D/5e, but I did play a bunch of 4e for a while. While overall it wasn't my system of choice, there was one very nice mechanic in there, "minions", which were creatures that were easy to kill, but that could still potentially hit PCs. They were also mechanically simple to keep track of, so the GM could throw huge numbers of them at the PCs. Individually not at threat, in groups they were.
The problem with low CR monsters isn't so much that they go down fast-- with lots of numbers, it takes time to "swat the flies". The problem is that they can't hit the types of ACs and defences that higher level PCs will have, so they're just no threat. Minions solved that by giving them just 1hp, but still high attack bonuses.
Fortunately, Jason Bulmahn has brought something like the concept to Pathfinder with Rule 0: Underlings. (Yes, the Paizo lead designer also has third-party products. You have to love how open Paizo's policies are with respect to supporting third-party stuff.) They're not quite as simple as D&D/4e minions, but almost. And, they're a good way to bring "lots of simple foes" to an encounter alongside a big bad.
I'm not sure how 5th edition works their monsters, because I never read any of that material. You could raise the CR on weaker monsters to make them challenging, by giving them templates and/or raising hit dice.
I myself never found a solution to this very problem (which prompted me to try and write my own ruleset) as it makes high level play very time consuming.
A level 20 fighter or wizard or indeed any character should still find himself challenged by a horde of 100 or more orcs. No character should be invulnerable.
Yet the pathfinder/3.5 rules by their very nature makes high level character impossible to beat by low level characters. Short of rolling a natural 20 it is impossible for an orc to hit a high level character because in order to challenge the high level monsters, a high level character has to have a certain amount of magic gear (without which he becomes inneffectual).
So in order to challenge the character with low level creatures you must increase the abilities and level of the creatures.
By adding templates or class levels to the orc it increases the complexity and workload of the DM in planning the creature, let alone running the creature. And so every single encounter becomes a long and painful slog for the DM to plan and implement and carefully balance every single creature involved.
The only way i found to solve the problem and make creatures of any level present some challenge to the PC's is to remove level based progression of secondary statistics (BAB, saves, etc) and that takes a lot of work to implement.
Good luck finding a solution, if you do manage it then please let us know.
My own personal solution was to rewrite the ruleset completely. Its a work in progress but it works for me.
Dazzlerdal wrote: A level 20 fighter or wizard or indeed any character should still find himself challenged by a horde of 100 or more orcs. No character should be invulnerable. I'm sure some people would be cool with that, but I wouldn't like that too much. Your characters at that level can kill giant monsters and take on god-like immortals on their own, so having their life threatened by a group of 100+ orcs rubs me the wrong way.
I haven't tried it, but how about using the Troop rules to turn large numbers of weak creatures into effectively small numbers of more powerful units.
I prefer a bit of realism in my games (realism in a fantasy setting might seem a bit misplaced but if there is no danger then there is no thrill).
One man versus a horde of orcs should equal one dead man. The number of dead orcs varies according to his skill/level but in the end the orcs can simply pull him off his horse rip his armour off and throttle him to death.
Nobody wants to be killed by a lowly orc, and if the fighter managed to funnel the orcs into a narrow pass where their number advantage is nullified, or he brought along a few of his friends (an archer, a mage, a cleric) then yes they should be able to bring down the horde together. But alone, one very stupid man that charges into a horde (even a horde of lowly orcs) should be a very dead stupid man at the end of it.
Wizards run out of spells, archers run out of arrows, fighters run out of hit points, you can't keep fighting forever like some psychotic energiser bunny.
There needs to be a balance (for me anyway) in the rules between being threatened by massive numbers of low level monsters and being threatened by individual high level monsters.
At least thats how i feel about it. I look at it from the DMs point of view and i want to be able to fill a castle with level 1 orcs (admittedly armed with quality chainmail and swords and shield as opposed to leather armour and an axe) and then have the characters finish off coming face to face with the higher level boss who hired the orcs. At the moment the orcs are wasted effort and little more than chaff because they cannot scratch anything above level 10, so i have to fill the castle with minotaurs and then they face off against the boss. The minotaurs require more work to stat and equip and run so i would have preferred to stick with the ordinary orc.
1) Check out the Monstrous Codex. it provides monsters with class levels and appropriate abilities.
2) Tactics s the key. i know it doesn't sound like much when your monsters only hit on a natural 20, but tactics is only partially about hitting.
2a) Dragon Mountain, a massive D&D 2E module for 17th+ level characters featured kobolds as the primary adversaries. No levels, mostly, just kobolds. The module discussed their tactics:
1) Spread out. Mobs of monsters do not stay n small clumps to be fireballed.
2) Ranged weapons. Closing for melee just means being vulnerable, and hard to run away.
3) Hit and Run. instead of trying to take out the heroes in one fight, hit 'em, wound 'em, make them use spell slots, and then bugger out.
4) Hit the party while it's resting. Prevent the spell-casters from regaining spells. Rush in, fire arrows, make a lot of noise, and run away. Repeat every half hour or so.
5) Use creative attacks. A stink bomb won't do damage, but it will prevent rest.
6) Use those magic items. A First-level kobold sorcerer can use a wand of fireballs as well as anyone.
7) Use the terrain. 100 goblins sniping from cover will damage a party. And when they flee before the party can launch an effective counter-attack, the party knows that they're going to be back.
9) Work the party's psychology. Have the monsters observe how they interact, then launch appropriate attacks. The barbarian always charges into combat? Dig a punji stick trap, camoflage it, and put a couple of monsters on the far side.
The monsters know their limitations against the PC's: Play them smarter.
My solution to that would just have the characters not reach 20 or even 15 and just use lower levels, instead of adjusting the powerlevel of high level characters to become more realistic. It's not like 20th level characters are only meant to be very skillful, they are meant to be freakishly superhuman.
The troop subtype which thejeff linked to looks pretty cool. It is basically a lot like making a Swarm out of Small or Medium creatures. There was a similar concept in 3.5 as well, and I once used swarms of goblins pretty effectively in a battle for 15th level PCs. They were actually fairly dangerous to the few PCs who couldn't fly.
Another thing you can do if you're a cruel DM is give the monsters abilities which make them more threatening. True Strike makes even low level monsters pretty likely to hit, so a few Magus levels could make a big difference. Splash weapons and other touch attacks could also be very dangerous. If a goblin throws a flask of alchemist's fire that's a nuisance. If 20 goblins throw 20 of them that could be downright deadly.
Ranged weapons can make mooks dangerous, especially when they got a high level bard or other support helping them out.
Giving monsters class levels can bump up their CR, too.
Starfinder Superscriber
Really, check out Underlings. It allows you to make hordes of minion types that are threatening, but that remain simple to keep track of.
100 orcs vs a 20th level wizard? depend of the kind of wizards. The kind of wizards I play with wouldn't even break a sweat due their optimization. I estimate they would kill all the 100 orcs in 3 to 5 rounds.
100 orcs vs a fighter...now that might be interesting just because of how long it would take for him to mow down the orcs. They risk rolling natural 20 more often while he is swinging at them.
Anyway Low CR monsters in general take advantage of their numbers or some specific tactic or unique things that they can do.
never forget Aid another.
9 Goblins jump a guy. 8 Goblins roll to hit AC 10. Each success grants +2 to goblin #9. Goblin #9 ends up with +16 to hit
now if he is just stabbing people he's still not much of a threat but what if he's taking that +16 to hit for a Bull Rush that pushes the PC into a trap or a pit or off a cliff.
Course unless you give them some of the Maneuver feats you also need to sacrifice a few Goblins to use up any AOO the PC might have but Goblins are used to that sort of thing.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
The reason why low-level mooks can threaten high level PCs is not just because of the qualities of the monsters themselves but also because of some general mechanical assumptions that are very different from PF
a) the concept of "bounded accuracy", basically things like bonuses and AC don't scale nearly so much or so quickly. Normally, characters ability scores are capped at 20. The most probable equivalent to this bounded accuracy concept would be e6 in PF/3.X.
2) Many of the encounter ending spell effects have been seriously nerfed
3) possessing many high level magic items (or at least to the degree PF does) is not an assumption of the system.
4) encounters allow for more creatures in a given encounter.
So changing the rules to make mooks challenging will require changing the rules beyond just the stats for the mooks themselves.
Dazzlerdal wrote: I myself never found a solution to this very problem (which prompted me to try and write my own ruleset) as it makes high level play very time consuming.
A level 20 fighter or wizard or indeed any character should still find himself challenged by a horde of 100 or more orcs. No character should be invulnerable.
Yet the pathfinder/3.5 rules by their very nature makes high level character impossible to beat by low level characters. Short of rolling a natural 20 it is impossible for an orc to hit a high level character because in order to challenge the high level monsters, a high level character has to have a certain amount of magic gear (without which he becomes inneffectual).
Thats exact the problem I tried to describe (a little bit more abstract ^^). It costs to much time and means a heavy workload at higher levels to design challenging encounters. Low level monsters (even with templates) are never a threat for our group, even as a real mass of monsters. The problem is even more difficult because all players of our group like to build really strong characters.
Our last encounter as an example (vs. a gestalt level 7 Group, 5 players): Two Illithids (with some additional really nasty special abilities), 5 Bugbears, 2 Umbal Hulks, 1 Ogre Mage, 1 Dark Stalker (12 HD, Cleric / Healer) and 1 Level 7 Orc Fighter - all improved with much better stats, some of them with additional bonus actions and templates etc. I really thought the players would be captured, but they won the fight - although the players were trapped and even the terrain features were a disadvantage for them. But even without gestalt our groups are very very strong...
This problem will be more and more difficult on higher levels. As DM (just as our other DMs) I want a solution to make it easier to design a challenging encounter and to make even low CR monsters a little bit more dangerous - at least if they come in masses. In DnD 5.0 this problem doesnt exist. Even low CR monsters and NPCs can hit a player with a much higher level, so they stay to be threats. As a player you have to be more carful not to underestimate weak monsters or make the mistake to ignore them.
By the way: Thanks for your posts! I didn't read them all yet but I stay on the ball.
As an aside Jerael I am attempting to change the rules so that low level mooks (love that name, I must write it down somewhere) are still capable of challenging high level characters in greater numbers without over complicating the game.
Unfortunately it has meant I have changed the rules so much that it couldn't really be considered pathfinder anymore. However I'm trying to keep the flavour of pathfinder in where I can.
They are in this thread if you are interested. It would also be nice to see if you think I have solved the problem or not (however it is a completely new rule system so I don't blame you if you don't fancy reading a new rule set just for a single issue).
3.x is generally poorly designed to let low-level monsters challenge higher level creatures. Sure, optimization and tactics can make up for some, but there is a limit. I call this a feature, not a bug. If you want to run a game where a bunch of straight level 1 goblins can still be a viable (if lesser) threat for 20th level PCs, you're better off using another system than trying to make it work in these.
Still, one house rule I've come up with to speed up combat and make wussier enemies a little more useful is an improved Aid Another:
AA requires no roll and works with ranged weapons as well.
That way a bunch of weenie creatures with bows or slings can still deal a little damage to PCs on rolls other than a nat 20, or they can tank up a designated striker. It's not an immense boost but it speeds up combat and makes them slightly more useful, especially if they have a couple of higher level commanders to bolster.
The downside of this is that PCs with hirelings/followers can use it too, if you want.
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