How is it possible that werewolves, who have a dammage reduction 10 against most weapons except what, silver and holy, AC 25, HD 12 with over 170 hp each, have a CR of 3? I got crap experience for those 2. I think I've seen a couple more cases like that, specially with bugbears who sometimes seem to have a trillion hp, but in the logbook still appear with crap CR's, which of course means less XP. Is there any way to fix some of these CR's to actually make sense?
I asked a similar question some time ago, but never got a response. Also, where did the 13HD, 80+HP GreaterTempleBugbears come from? Are they part of 3.5, or unique to the game? I also complained about the treasure but was basically told to quit whinning and shut up.
haha...well, I dont complain about the treasure but...also, what about when for example, you kill your friends in the temple. I mean like joining one of the temples, fire for example, then walking up to the trolls and killing them? It seems to me like you get less experience cuz I killed the Hydra and troll and got 10 xp. Then I killed Ooghlrist (I think that's how its spelled) and his troll friend and also got 10 xp.
I find that, while some fights give you crap even though they're hard, there are plenty of easy fights that give you lots of xp and/or loot. It all evens out in the end, so I don't worry about it when a tough fight lands me nothing. Treasure especially is kinda meant to work this way, if you read the 3.5 DMG on the subject. You're supposed to have around a certain amount by the time you gain a level, but you might fight nothing but mindless animals and jellies who have no loot, so the DM has you fall down a hole into an old barrow with a magic sword inside (apologies to Conan). As long as you're getting the amount you're supposed to overall, doesn't matter WHEN exactly you get it.
...and all those uber bugbears and such were beefed up by Troika to make the game more challenging...as opposed to making the inhabitants defend their homes in a more thoughtful and intelligent way. That would have taken a lot more effort.
Aaah, crafting intelligent encounters... I'm looking forward to that! I am an old AD&D man myself, so take what I say with an ocean of salt, but my understanding is the bugbears are sorta being treated like PC's - they have feats and such (eg improved trip I would say from their behaviour, and cleave among other things) and class levels that account for such things - some have a few levels of rogue, some have a few levels barbarian - and then lotsa HPs consistent with their class levels. So they get their initial HD + their level HD too. I think. And 3.5, as I understand, allows for all this. Though undoubtedly Troika have indeed taken some liberties (ie doubling HP etc) to make it all more "challenging". :yawn:
yeah some do, some don't though while fixing the HD I noticed that some ogres have 4 or 5 HD and cleric levels, ogres only have 2 racial HD. Ogre magi have 5 (I think) but they also have regeneration 2hp/round. I think some extra work is needed to eliminate these extra racial HD in favour of Class HD (and the extra skill points and feats) cleaver use of feats, skills and spells will increase the difficulty of the encounter.
Extra hp doesn't save them anyways, just means it takes them a little longer to go down. Either way, no complains here about most creatures...it's just I found the werewolves and juggernauts to be worth way too little considering their HD and mad defenses...
Hehe... I think this bugbear likes to cook because he's in a kitchen, so...let's give him 3 levels of identify seasoning, and let him use pepper as a weapon...it would be like a dust of sneezing & choking...then he'll rush into melee with a cleaver!
S.E, since you ask my opinion, you're right. As many monsters (like galheb dhur or whatever), Werewolves have a too low CR compared to their general stats, but the rule for creating werewolves is this: take a NPC with or without class levels, add damage reduction 10/silver (silver weapons should be common but not in ToEE) and add to the NPC everything that is comming from the beast from wich he takes licantropy, then increases CR of X. So, if you take a 5th level warrior that is CR 5 that has been infected by a wereWOLF, you'll have to see what are skill points and extra HDs from wolves and add them to the warrior levels, then increase the NPC's ability scores of a number equal to wolf's ability scores -10. So, if the NPC had STR 16 and the wolf had STR 13, the NPC will have STR 19. As far as I may remember, in ToEE, the werewolves only have extra HDs, no class levels even if they look as cursed humanoids and a wrong CR and stats. This is one of the many things that I would like to fix.
