CR readvisement?

[AtlasSniperman]

I have a monster that's ended up being recurring in my campaign, that's ripped the hell out of my pc's every time he's shown up. He's suppose to be CR 3, but has been far more dangerous every time and I was wondering if anyone could advise on what his CR actually was now that he's finally dead;

CR1 guard(NPC statblock) with the Broken Soul template.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/broken-soul-cr -2/
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/npc-1/guard-human-warrior-3/

//reposted since the other was posted to wrong location

[doomman47]

It's a cr 3 creature, may I ask in what way were they struggling with beating him and at what level you 1st introduced him?

[AtlasSniperman]

doomman47 wrote:

It's a cr 3 creature, may I ask in what way were they struggling with beating him and at what level you 1st introduced him?

Introduced him at party level 4

DR 5/-
many energy resistances

and ability drain(Str, Con, Cha) and damage(Dex) + fort save vs convulsion fits

They had real trouble stopping him at any point and did the most damage by dropping him down an 80ft pittrap.

[doomman47]

AtlasSniperman wrote:

doomman47 wrote:

It's a cr 3 creature, may I ask in what way were they struggling with beating him and at what level you 1st introduced him?

Introduced him at party level 4

DR 5/-
many energy resistances

and ability drain(Str, Con, Cha) and damage(Dex) + fort save vs convulsion fits

They had real trouble stopping him at any point and did the most damage by dropping him down an 80ft pittrap.

Sounds like your party is just not well put together and doesn't have some one who can heavy hit, a decently build barbarian or 2h fighter would demolish that in 1-2 rounds by themselves, were as if a party who primarily uses twf or low level spells would have some difficulty getting past it but since you said that it was a reoccurring enemy after the 1st time they met the casters should have prepped more useful spells for when they were going to deal with him again. So while this was a cr 3 creature you may have to throw them some lower cr stuff or avoid throwing to many things with dr at them.

[supervillan]

That mass ability drain gaze is horrendous. I would avoid anything that causes ability drain at lower levels. That's permanent ability reduction that needs Restoration spells to fix, and this monster can afflict the whole party at once with three stat drains.

I think the gaze attack makes the template disproportionately difficult at lower CRs, but if you applied it to a monster of a higher base CR (say in the 5-7 range) it might be less so. But be especially wary of applying this template to a creature with a high Charisma score, as that would make the saves vs its special attacks even harder.

[Azothath]

the broken soul template is a strong one for CR +2 AND you've applied it to a CR 1 creature. That is going to magnify the difference.

The PCs can get around it by limiting the encounter duration and using effective attacks. They should also retreat if they cannot defeat a monster. If they run up against a big baddie some research and investigation might be in order on how to defeat it. So better strategy and tactics is in order.

[avr]

Applying a template which adds abilities to a low CR creature can cause problems. The limited abilities of the creature suddenly become unimportant. This'd be about CR 5 IMO. It can still be beaten easily by high damage attacks, and someone in the party should be able to do those.

I also think something which does ability drain shouldn't be encountered unless there's some means available to the party to remove that. In the absence of handy friendly NPCs that means about 7th-8th level. You'd probably apply the template to a higher level NPC in that case of course.