Goblins IX: For that, you shall DIE!

[Aquillion]

They were only incoherent by current ideas of balance and fairness, not in and of themselves. Its a glass cannon. Current ideas dont like glass cannons, and thats the real objection as far as I can tell, but they have their place especially in old-school play and Thunt is more old-school than not. People seem to be too stuck on the idea that if its a critter they've encountered they must be able to kill it. And, usually, not only kill it but kill it using only 1/4 of their daily resources. It should not be so to the point that people take it for granted.

The problem is, he has a CR listed.

CRs aren't random meaningless numbers. You can't just say "well, I want this dungeon to be extra-tough, so I'm going to make this monster tougher than it's CR indicates." That's pointless. If you want your dungeon to be extra tough, you put in a monster with a higher CR than you normally would; but the sole point of a CR is to accurately tell you how dangerous a monster is.

Having a monster that's more dangerous than its CR indicates is just a mistake.

Also, there were some other bizarre things about its first write-up. One thing I recall -- which Thunt did fix -- was the insanely high save on its dissolving touch; the problem was that it was impossible for anyone of a level that its CR said was appropriate to ever make the save, even with everything poured into your save. That's just a weird way to do it. If you want it to be impossible to resist, just say so! It's awkward to have a roll where any result from 1-20 is always going to be a failure.

I mean, it's not a big deal; who cares at this point. Balancing monsters is hard. But anyway, ideally, that's why CR should be accurate, because that's what makes the game easy to run and play for DMs, so they don't have to waste huge amounts of time on each monster determining how dangerous it is.

[Felius]

Being fair, some canon monsters also had issue with CR, specially dragons from what I recall, although even then it wasn't as bad as the finger horror. I think the main issue with his monster though is that he claimed it be fully rules legal. If he had admitted it was not all that good mechanics wise I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have created this whole outcry.

[Jayngfet]

The problem is, he has a CR listed.

CRs aren't random meaningless numbers. You can't just say "well, I want this dungeon to be extra-tough, so I'm going to make this monster tougher than it's CR indicates." That's pointless. If you want your dungeon to be extra tough, you put in a monster with a higher CR than you normally would; but the sole point of a CR is to accurately tell you how dangerous a monster is.

Having a monster that's more dangerous than its CR indicates is just a mistake.

Also, there were some other bizarre things about its first write-up. One thing I recall -- which Thunt did fix -- was the insanely high save on its dissolving touch; the problem was that it was impossible for anyone of a level that its CR said was appropriate to ever make the save, even with everything poured into your save. That's just a weird way to do it. If you want it to be impossible to resist, just say so! It's awkward to have a roll where any result from 1-20 is always going to be a failure.

I mean, it's not a big deal; who cares at this point. Balancing monsters is hard. But anyway, ideally, that's why CR should be accurate, because that's what makes the game easy to run and play for DMs, so they don't have to waste huge amounts of time on each monster determining how dangerous it is.

This guy's more or less correct. I mean besides, messing with CR is just cheating your players anyway. I mean if I took a first level orcish warrior and maxed out his HP at 8, then gave him an orc double axe instead of a falchion, then swapped his starting feat from Alertness to Toughness, then he's still technically a CR 1/2 first level NPC class monster.

It's just now he's got double HP, averages double damage, and has a chance to take out even a first level fighter or paladin in one non-crit attack. And for their troubles the party gets the same amount of XP and loot as they would have anyways. It's rules legal but it sucks for players if you're making them fight enemies with double the attack power and rewarding them with the old amounts.

[Killer Angel]

I am Tul. I do not run.

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bad choice, Tul...

[Spuddles]

That is exactly the reason THunt gave when he got around to giving one, and that's not the problem. The problem was that this, and all of the rest of the dozen or so discrepancies, were not explained in any way in the stat page itself. The math didn't add up in a whole bunch of places, and there was nothing to indicate that it was all intentional beyond faith in the author's infallibility.

If you really want to see the train wreck of a discussion thread on the issue, here it is. Note that what I linked is the second thread on the topic, started after the first one got lost to a server crash (I think). Before it was lost, the first thread contained a post (which I admit was rudely worded) from me listing a bunch of one-liners about what was "wrong", an extremely rudely worded response from THunt giving explanations for each and every one of them, and comments from a bunch of other people very similar to many of those in the second thread.

Wow. What a train wreck of a thread.

I find it sort of confusing that the narrativist argument combines both "we only care about telling a story" and "who cares if a DC 29 fort save is impossible to make for a level 3 party." How can you have a good narrative when the DM rolls dice and 1d4 of you die?

edit
This isn't to raise a dead horse or anything, just musing on contradictions in narrativist attitudes....

[Puschkin]

Tul was a great character. Maybe a little underused

What I am wondering, though:
Every time we see the Viper Clan, they suffer heavy losses. Their true strength must be special feats like "advanced fertility" and "quickened adulthood" ... seriously, they are the strongest of all goblins, right? But apparently also the bravest/dumbest. If you are at the bottom of the food chain, you'd better run more often. Instead they pick unnecessary fights at any given opportunity. They burn through their soldiers faster than CTU through their agents in 24 hours.

[Stegyre]

Every time we see the Viper Clan, they suffer heavy losses.

I thought they'd done quite well against the invading hobgoblins, didn't they? And Duv, in particular, showed herself to be a formidable fighter.

[LoneStarNorth]

Every time we see the Viper Clan, they suffer heavy losses. Their true strength must be special feats like "advanced fertility" and "quickened adulthood" ...

They seem to have lost as many warriors to those hobgoblins as the Cryptic Fall lost to Minmax, Forgath, and the drow. And even after that, AND Biscuit's rampage, you can still see there are hundreds of them around to watch Duv's little ceremony. And if they do things at all like the Cryptic Fall does, they have another village somewhere full of noncombatants besides.

They're evidently holding on to enough land to feed and house all these goblins. That IS a sign of a powerful clan, even if their individual warriors are still pretty unimpressive by D&D standards.

[VariaVespasa]

I find it sort of confusing that the narrativist argument combines both "we only care about telling a story" and "who cares if a DC 29 fort save is impossible to make for a level 3 party." How can you have a good narrative when the DM rolls dice and 1d4 of you die?

The thing is its not supposed to be fought straight up. You're supposed to find some way to deal with it that doesnt involve face-to-face melee, which is sometimes tactics, more often brains or something enabled by brains. Narratives often feature critters like that. Smaug forinstance, as an obvious example. CR 7,894 dragon vs a CR 15 town, a lvl 20 ranger and a lvl 6 rogue. Or an unarmed Luke vs the rancor. X-wings vs the death star. Arnie vs the predator. And so on. And yet, narrative! The point being that the DM only rolls that d4 for deaths if you dont try to outsmart the situation.

[Jayngfet]

The thing is its not supposed to be fought straight up. You're supposed to find some way to deal with it that doesnt involve face-to-face melee, which is sometimes tactics, more often brains or something enabled by brains. Narratives often feature critters like that. Smaug forinstance, as an obvious example. CR 7,894 dragon vs a CR 15 town, a lvl 20 ranger and a lvl 6 rogue. Or an unarmed Luke vs the rancor. X-wings vs the death star. Arnie vs the predator. And so on. And yet, narrative! The point being that the DM only rolls that d4 for deaths if you dont try to outsmart the situation.

This is a good point. I mean a good DM will still give you experience either way, since it still takes thought and effort to avoid an encounter.

[The Linker]

The problem is, you don't know it has these horrible dangerous overpowered killing attacks until it hits you. You have no way of knowing it's a gigantic glass cannon before the fight starts. Unless the DM lets you know through old journals or other kinds of warnings. It could be neat, but only if the party is aware that their objective is to kill it without ever being touched. Otherwise the party's introduction to the fight concept is "one of you has died".

[Killer Angel]

Um, can anyone tell who killed Tul? Was it Biscuit or the switchbeast? I'm thinking Biscuit but his arms look sort of positioned wrong, or maybe just obscured, for that.

Biscuit axed Tul out of the air and then threw his axe at a straggler.

Curiously, my very first impression was the opposite: the switchbeast killed Tul mid air and the shredded corpse landed near biscuit, that was going to throw the axe at the other fleeing goblin.
It seems strange to me that biscuit would risk to remind the switchbeast that he's still around, by killing Tul the beast's current target.

But, judging from the 6th panel, it really appears that was Biscuit the one who killed Tul.

[Gez]

Tul dodged the beast's attack.

I'm going to bet he was right. He would have successfully killed the beast. If he hadn't been stopped by an angry orc.

[VariaVespasa]

The problem is, you don't know it has these horrible dangerous overpowered killing attacks until it hits you. You have no way of knowing it's a gigantic glass cannon before the fight starts. Unless the DM lets you know through old journals or other kinds of warnings. It could be neat, but only if the party is aware that their objective is to kill it without ever being touched. Otherwise the party's introduction to the fight concept is "one of you has died".

You mean nobody in your party took dungeoneering (or whatever lore skill tells you about monsters), not even the skill-monkey scout? Players like power and knowledge IS power. Someone should point that out to them...

Plus a decent DM may, as you say, drop hints that caution is advised. Remains, scrawled bloody messages, Redshirt etc.

[hajo]

You mean nobody in your party took dungeoneering (or whatever lore skill tells you about monsters)

While knowledge/lore is always a good idea, that does not work well with rare/unique monsters.
Mr. Fingers and the Switchbeast are pretty much unique/homebrewed.

[Killer Angel]

While knowledge this is always a good idea, that does not work well with rare/unique monsters.
Mr. Fingers and the Switchbeast are pretty much unique/homebrewed.

That, and anyway, the infos you can obtain are usually limited.

[Starbuck_II]

If you really want to see the train wreck of a discussion thread on the issue, here it is. Note that what I linked is the second thread on the topic, started after the first one got lost to a server crash (I think). Before it was lost, the first thread contained a post (which I admit was rudely worded) from me listing a bunch of one-liners about what was "wrong", an extremely rudely worded response from THunt giving explanations for each and every one of them, and comments from a bunch of other people very similar to many of those in the second thread.

Yeah, you mentioned how to fix it nicely but you got them angry (your earlier lazy comment was issue even if you apologized).

This was their reason for being jerks:
"Douglas' post harshed our vibe. We got pissed off at him, and instead of just dropping it he kept insisting he was right instead of taking the rules-lawyering elsewhere. THAT's why we ganged up on him. We weren't just defending THunt; we were defending our right to go unmolested, because we didn't have a problem with the stats. I never asked him to LEAVE; only to take this thing elsewhere. If he had shown the same kind of understanding of why we got mad and apologized, we would have welcomed him back to the forum with open arms just as we did with Rez. In fact, if he did it right now we would... or if he simply brought something ELSE to talk about. We rarely hold grudges here, except for genuine trolls."

I don't get his "harshed their vibe" or what "take this thing elsewhere, but I don't mean leave" means though.
Their vibe must be non-rules as they were angered over rule mechanics being followed.

[Androgeus]

Otherwise the party's introduction to the fight concept is "one of you has died".

which is kinda what happened in the story

[Sholos]

which is kinda what happened in the story

Which works in a story. Players tend not to like randomly dieing.

[Androgeus]

Which works in a story. Players tend not to like randomly dieing.

Yhea, I was going to put something about a fair DM would give some warning that it could do 1 hit kills, but was far too lazy to type one more sentence.

[Killer Angel]

Which works in a story.

And also readers tend not to be satisfied, when their favourite character(s) die...
(I'm looking at you, George RR Martin)

[Aldreck]

New strip is up

[Radar]

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Dies truly developed during the dungeon crawl and Biscuit is still all out of bubblegum. The delayed falling of decapitated body was a nice touch.

[Giggling Ghast]

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Oh, Grem is not going to like that.

[RMS Oceanic]

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However this turns out, although I'm 85% certain they won't actually die, I have serious respect for DH.

I guess it's easier to die for your principles when you've died already.

[Jayngfet]

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Yeah, because ordering the execution of the guy you were trying to buddy up to less than thirty seconds ago is a real nice way to endear yourself to the others right next to him.-

[TheEmerged]

/fanboy squeeling

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Dies, my good goblin, you just had a grow up moment. Methinks you may have just deserved becoming chief.

[RMS Oceanic]

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Yeah, because ordering the execution of the guy you were trying to buddy up to less than thirty seconds ago is a real nice way to endear yourself to the others right next to him.-

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It's more like "Boy that's a nice healthy living body you've got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it, wink wink."

[VariaVespasa]

That, and anyway, the infos you can obtain are usually limited.

Actually I would consider that a failing of how the knowledge skills are run by most dms and indeed even by the source books. Most of them are AMAZINGLY cheap in their payoffs for those skills, to the point that theyre almost useless, either providing meaningless trivia or stuff that everyone knows anyway. DC 20 knowledge check- Trolls regenerate? Ooh, thank you so very much! :P Its partly a human nature problem- Many DMs enjoy the anticipation of whatever surprises their critters have in store for the players and resent/resist the idea of losing that to a knowledge roll. But human nature or cheap rules notwithstanding, that *really* should be fixed, and I'd strongly urge every DM to be more generous with the results of knowledge checks in general.

However, by the RAW Mr Fingers abilities/weaknesses knowledge check has a DC of 13 or 14 (10 + HD), so... And homebrew he may be but the knowledge check is specific to that world and thus covers world-specific homebrew along with everything else. Unique isnt really an issue either- its the unique stuff people tend to remember and talk about more, after all. For example I bet most people know more about unicorns than they do about hippos and unicorns dont even exist, thats how rare they are.

[Draconi Redfir]

Completely unrelated to the strip, but last night i was watching the livestream, and aparently Thunt is going to take his fiancé's last name rather then her take his.

"Hunt" means nothing to him evidently