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Old 02-21-2018, 08:05 AM   #1
Kromm
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Default Difficult monsters

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Originally Posted by Tom H. View Post

However, I think at some point it would be cool to start a thread or threads discussing strategies to fight some of the difficult monsters in Monsters.
If you're making lists (and yes, my divisions are arbitrary . . .):

Some monsters are obviously bad news and call for good straight-up combat tactics:
  • dragon: Plain-vanilla dragons can be shot in the eye, but spellcasting ones with Missile Shield are bad news, and a flying dragon can strike with impunity. The largest can kill with a single hit even through the strongest armor.
  • electric jelly: No vital areas, large DR, lots of HP, and multiple armor-piercing attacks that can stun . . . and also harmful if attacked. Oh, and far too fast to avoid, and capable of flight. Probably more dangerous than a dragon.
  • lich: It all depends on the spells, but no vital areas and the IQ to stack the deck means that any well-designed encounter will favor the lich.
  • mindwarper: Lots of attacks, parries, and DR, plus Magic Resistance. Terror can mean the whole party starts stunned. Regeneration means even a solid hit might not "take." And even smarter and better at stacking the deck than a lich.
  • specter: Essentially a cheap way for the GM to kill the party: "You're paralyzed with Terror and none of you has a weapon that can hurt it. Now it will drain you of life."
  • watcher at the edge of time: Always acts first, and lots. Almost impossible to run from. Not terribly hard to kill, but defends well . . . "I shoot it in the eye" is difficult when it can just blink out of the way. Also very magic-resistant.
Other monsters are much more dangerous than they look, most often because they require foresight and planning to engage:
  • as-Sharak: Huge cone attacks that can take out the party that bunches up too closely (especially the jala and prithvi varieties, which inflict potent status effects). Supernatural Durability guarantees a long, hard fight.
  • doomchild: Fast and almost impossible to keep out of close combat. Easy to kill, which is the worst possible thing because then it blows up and injures everybody. One is no issue . . . a horde can be a death sentence.
  • eye of death: Hovers 20 yards away and causes harm. Dodges arrows extremely well. Non-flying parties are in trouble.
  • gray pudding: Lots of HT and HP, no vital areas, and big damage make any pudding somewhat dangerous. The hidden danger here is that if you can't kill it fast enough, it can just disappear a pinned victim, "no saving throw."
  • ice wyrm: Huge cone attack that can paralyze the party that bunches up too closely. Lacks vital areas and has a "minimum buy-in" in the form of ice armor that must be chipped away. With SM +5, "just cast a save-or-suck spell" is far less of an option.
  • peshkali: Not very boss-like unless the entire party is forced into melee. In that situation, this thing is a death machine. Supernatural Durability guarantees a long, hard fight.
And yet others are easily avoided by savvy delvers but become lethal in specialized circumstances:
  • crushroom: Slow and low-DX, but if it gets you, it will kill you in a turn or two with its ST 40 Constriction Attack.
  • Demon from Between the Stars: Nothing very special . . . save for in the dark, where it can strike almost with impunity and heal injury from lucky hits.
  • gryphon: Outdoors with room to swoop, it can zoom in, inflict damage, and get out of range repeatedly. A group without archers or cover can be pecked to bits.
  • horrid skull: If it's visible, it's dog meat. If it's hidden, it can slowly destroy an entire party . . . especially if its hiding place is also defended by zombies.
  • humongous spider: Another "nothing very special, except." In this case, "except if the delvers stumble into ST 19 webs."
  • jelly: Pathetically slow and low-DX, but if it gets you, engulf is a near death sentence. Very deadly if it falls on you or you fall on it. Absorptive ones are much, much worse . . . one with flight, magic, etc. becomes a true boss.
  • psychic wailer fungus: If difficult to reach and/or protected by toxic spores and/or huge and tough, quite capable of slowly killing an entire party.
  • undead slime: A joke monster . . . except in cramped quarters, where it can deal repeated high-damage crushing attacks while remaining close to impossible to kill.
  • water elemental: Drown attack is very, very dangerous but easy to avoid. Except in the water, where this monster can kill just about anyone.
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Old 02-21-2018, 10:34 AM   #2
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

I've been working on a blog post that's related to this. I'll try to get part 1 out today.
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Old 02-21-2018, 03:32 PM   #3
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
If you're making lists (and yes, my divisions are arbitrary . . .):
I have some experience with some of these, both as a GM and a player:
* Dragons: You can shoot a magic-using one in the eye with a meteoric iron arrow. Then it breathes fire on the scout, who falls over and focuses on not burning to death while the Knight chops the dragon to pieces. Our delvers had to run from one with room to fly; 90% of our restock money was spent on focusing on ways to deal with this particular threat.

* spheres of madness (Kromm missed these): Armor, flight, high strength, multiple attacks, grappling, magic resistance, no vital bits. These things are bad news, nearly as nasty as an electric jelly. Unlike an electric jelly, they are not clearly lone boss monsters, so delvers might face 2 or more at time. Four of them nearly ended a band of experienced delvers in my F2F game.

* doomchild: I once sent a small horde of doomchildren to surrounded a delving band in a cramped tunnel. The swashbuckler confidently cut two of them up with his sabers, and the resulting fragmentation chain reaction knocked him unconscious and nearly killed the thief. If your entire band has DR 5+, they're not too bad, but anyone with DR3 or lower armor is in for a bad time.

* eye of death: I've seen archers outshoot these guys multiple times, but it's always very tense. From the GM's perspective, starting a fight by inflicting multiple nigh-irresistable, armor ignoring attacks puts the terror into the players.

* peshkali: I've seen two fights against these. First one got surrounded and dismembered. Second one managed to get behind one of Bruno's wizards, and stabbed her about 7 times. The wizard did not survive.

* crushroom: 3 of these feature very prominently in the 3rd or 4th session of my first online DF game. The PCs won, but two of them dropped unconscious in the process and the crushrooms were nicknamed tofu-thulus. As more experienced players in a F2F game, 4 of us cut down 2 of them without difficulty.

* horrid skull: hit and run tactics, or absurdly high HP, are good ways to fight them. The two times I've run into them I've found them manageable, even with all the zombies in the way. They do require very good tactics, though.

* undead slime: these are great area denial monsters. Even if the delvers don't have to fight them in an enclosed space, the sight of one often means the delvers will reroute (because what if there's a pit trap and you suddenly have to fight it in an enclosed space?)
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Old 02-21-2018, 03:46 PM   #4
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

here's what I wrote
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Old 02-21-2018, 04:01 PM   #5
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

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Originally Posted by mlangsdorf View Post
I have some experience with some of these, both as a GM and a player:
* Dragons: You can shoot a magic-using one in the eye with a meteoric iron arrow.
Assuming the scout is capable of meaningfully punching through DR. Most players who play scouts tend to stay fairly low ST so you're looking at something like 1d+5 in damage. On a good roll, this can punch through a large dragon's DR, which is as good on the eye as anywhere else. A bodkin arrow can certainly help here, but you're still looking at an average of 3-4 damage making it through DR, and even with the x4, the dragon doesn't take a major wound.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mlangsdorf View Post
* horrid skull: hit and run tactics, or absurdly high HP, are good ways to fight them. The two times I've run into them I've found them manageable, even with all the zombies in the way. They do require very good tactics, though.

Hit and run only works on a horrid skull if the area they're in is open for running. I locked my players in a room with one. If I'd put zombies in the way, or put the skull in a harder to reach area, the party would have been in real danger.
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Old 02-21-2018, 10:20 PM   #6
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
. . .
And yet others are easily avoided by savvy delvers but become lethal in specialized circumstances:
. . .
  • jelly: Pathetically slow and low-DX, but if it gets you, engulf is a near death sentence. Very deadly if it falls on you or you fall on it. Absorptive ones are much, much worse . . . one with flight, magic, etc. becomes a true boss.
When I was originally analyzing the Jelly threat, I had a crazy potential solution.

The delvers could all explore the dungeon tethered to each other by lengths of rope. Then when the unsuspecting party member gets ambushed and engulfed by a jelly, the allies could leverage their strength via Pulling Your Weight (Exploits, pg. 21) to overcome the ST 25 needed to break the victim free.

(Note that trying to grab the victim directly (no rope) exposes each assistant to the jelly's virulent paralysis.)

But some parties may have trouble garnering enough strength even with the cooperation.

And of course, there's still the absurdity and hazard of exploring a dungeon all tethered together.


FYI, here is a reference to the topic of my original dilemma.
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Originally Posted by Tom H. View Post
. . .
For example, looking at a Jelly, I don't see how somebody who becomes engulfed would really escape.
. . .
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Old 02-22-2018, 12:44 AM   #7
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

Are Jellies vulnerable to knockback? If so, what effect does that have on their engulfed victims?
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Old 02-22-2018, 05:47 AM   #8
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom H. View Post
The delvers could all explore the dungeon tethered to each other by lengths of rope. Then when the unsuspecting party member gets ambushed and engulfed by a jelly, the allies could leverage their strength via Pulling Your Weight (Exploits, pg. 21) to overcome the ST 25 needed to break the victim free.

(Note that trying to grab the victim directly (no rope) exposes each assistant to the jelly's virulent paralysis.)

But some parties may have trouble garnering enough strength even with the cooperation.

And of course, there's still the absurdity and hazard of exploring a dungeon all tethered together.
Oh, the infamous “Chain links” strategy!
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Old 02-22-2018, 07:10 AM   #9
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

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Originally Posted by Colarmel View Post

Are Jellies vulnerable to knockback? If so, what effect does that have on their engulfed victims?
Knockback works as well on a jelly as on anything, but becomes less of an option if the jelly is big and strong. Knocking back a ST 15 jelly is doable for a ST 17+ person with a heavy swung crushing weapon; knocking back a ST 25, 35, or 50 one is probably a lost cause.

There's also the problem that while the jelly subtracts DR 2 and then divides all penetrating damage by 4, victims get only the DR 2. So whacking a ST 15 jelly for the 13 points of crushing damage needed to cause knockback means it'll lose (13 - 2)/4 = 3 HP, while there's a 9 or less chance of the victim taking 13 - 2 = 11 damage, which is worse for those with less than DR 8 than it is for the monster.

Those engulfed are effectively carried along with the jelly, as they're actually inside it. So the knockback won't knock the jelly off its victim.
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Old 02-22-2018, 08:03 AM   #10
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Default Re: Difficult monsters

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom H. View Post
When I was originally analyzing the Jelly threat, I had a crazy potential solution.

The delvers could all explore the dungeon tethered to each other by lengths of rope. Then when the unsuspecting party member gets ambushed and engulfed by a jelly, the allies could leverage their strength via Pulling Your Weight (Exploits, pg. 21) to overcome the ST 25 needed to break the victim free.

(Note that trying to grab the victim directly (no rope) exposes each assistant to the jelly's virulent paralysis.)

But some parties may have trouble garnering enough strength even with the cooperation.

And of course, there's still the absurdity and hazard of exploring a dungeon all tethered together.
It doesn't strike me as all that absurd. Real world spelunkers/cavers and climbers frequently tether themselves together to deal with hazards like one of them losing their grip, rock slides and so forth.

Delvers are effectively spelunkers or cavers who also expect to fight monsters.
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