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Issues With Dungeons&Dragons: A Comprehensive CRT

@Dragon I'm not planning to ignore it. Like I said, since that particular version of Burning Hands is so absurdly higher and we're not sure it functions correctly, At least 9-B, possibly 9-A works.

@Qawsedf Basically Dragon has made a calc for 4e Burning Hands that has the volume at several thousand times higher than what we currently have for any other burning hands on the premise that the blast can cover a 25x25x25 area.
 
alright that was a misunderstanding on my end. I am sorry. though to be fair. 4e is kind of ridiculous when it comes to some low level stuff. like half-elves, and warlocks being able to get a MFTL+ attack at level 1.
 
Dragonstitch said:
alright that was a misunderstanding on my end. I am sorry. though to be fair. 4e is kind of ridiculous when it comes to some low level stuff. like half-elves, and warlocks being able to get a MFTL+ attack at level 1.
Click to expand...
******* what?
 
I am intrigued.
 
I think I brought it up in one of the early Composite adventure threads, Where the level 1 at will spell Dire radiance , and the level 3 power Delban's Deadly Attentio where deemed to be at least SoL, possibly MFTL+. Though the level 3 power is from an elder evil's attack.

Edit: okay I found the thread I brought it up in. It was D&D Adventurer WIP Blog Pt. II
 
Okay the low end of the calc has been accepted. If everyone is okay I'll impliment the following changes

  • CR 1-4: 9-B (Burning Hands) or At least 9-B
  • CR 5-8: 9-A (Fireball)
  • CR 9-12: High 8-C (Dawn)
  • CR 13-19: Low 7-B (Legendary Dragons)
  • CR 20: At least Low 7-B, possibly 6-C (Imix/Elemental Lords)
  • CR 21-24: 6-C/At least 6-C
  • CR 25+: Low 6-B, likely 6-B (if notably above Father such as the Abominations)
 
I'm alright with that scaling as of now.

I'll remake this into another CRT about the regional effects bit since it obviously needs more looking into
 
okay so I ended up finding another 1st level 4e spell fountain of flame which makes a spinning pillar of fire in an area burst 1 with in 10 of the user.

I think this might end up being better spell to use instead 4e Burning Hands since it seems a lot clearer on what it is.
 
Also note that Elder Evils become High 6B with prep time.
 
Also figured I'd post this, since I completely forgot to, before.

Regional effects are 100% from a legendary creature's own power, and them not actively controlling them does not mean it's entirely unrelated to the monster's own strength. Lair actions allow more interaction with this "ambient magic", but it's not the only way.

Some examples:

  • As a an action, an aboleth can use its magic to create illusory copies of itself. This is a regional effect. (Monster Manual, pg 14)
  • Two of the legendary bronze dragon's three regional effects are active, not passive. This includes altering the weather in a 6-mile radius around its lair and setting up illusory sounds. (Monster Manual, pg 109)
  • One of the legendary gold dragon's regional effects is that it can actively establish telepathic connection to things that are sleeping or in a trance within its region. (Monster Manual, pg 115)
  • Just like the legendary bronze dragon, two of the legendary silver dragon's three regional effects are active. Just like the bronze dragon, it can change the weather. It can also spend time to make clouds and fog as hard as stone, forming them into solid objects. (Monster Manual, pg 118)
  • The kraken, much like the previous two metallic dragons, can consciously alter the weather as a regional effect. (Monster Manual, pg 197)
  • A more unusual case, but a storm giant quintessant literally is the storm that surrounds its lair. All regional effects are caused directly by the giant. (Volo's Guide to Monsters, pg 151)
  • Just like the dragons and kraken, the ki-rin can actively alter weather as a regional effect. In its case, this and the majority of its other effects end immediately should it be killed. (Volo's Guide to Monsters, pg 164)
  • The morkoth can mess with the water in its lair with a thought, as well as suppress entrance to its lair. (Volo's Guide to Monsters, pg 178)
There are probably some more, but these are the ones I am most familiar with.


While lair actions allow a creature to harness the "ambient magic" of its lair, this is normally for more immediate or combat-centric reasons. It does not mean it is the only way it has access to this magic, or that the magic that causes regional effects in the first place is not its own. Many monsters demonstrate conscious, active influence over certain regional effects.
 
So to restate is everyone else fine with my suggested downgrades? So far only Xulrev has commented on it.
 
In 3E the weakest Elemental Prince is CR 21 and the CR 20 dudes are largely above Legendary Dragons.
 
@Azathoth

Your argument iterates to 'since a couple select regional effects have limited active factors, all of them must be active'.

That's a direct Association Fallacy, and doesn't really prove the weather is an active, controllable effect, and therefore is not the dragons' direct power.

It also does not dismiss the fact it takes times for the weather to build and cease; if the weather was the dragon's own power and magic, the dragon would be capable of emitting that storm everywhere it goes. They provably do and can not.

It's fallacious to scale them to the calcs as such, and inaccurate for wiki purposes.
 
I had no idea that was a thing; that's precisely what it is and the exact categorization that would be accurate for such an ability. Thank you for the information!
 
@Xulrev

I think you misread part of my comment. Notice how I pretty clearly stated that some did not actively control these effects, while others did.

"Regional effects are 100% from a legendary creature's own power, and them not actively controlling them does not mean it's entirely unrelated to the monster's own strength."

"Many monsters demonstrate conscious, active influence over certain regional effects."

Nowhere in this comment did I ever say "all regional effects are active". You are pulling something from the comment that isn't there.

I am replying to a comment in which you stated, "Considering the book itself outright states that Lair Actions and Regional Effects are disparate things, with legendary creatures only being able to interact with their Lair's ambient power via Lair Actions, yeah it's easily proven Bambu.", as it is an untrue statement. You claimed that absolute that legendary creatures can only interact with their lair's power via Lair Actions, and I posted those examples to show you that is objectively not the case, and that there are regional effects with active components.

Whether this is Environmental Destruction or a flat tier is unrelated to the point I was trying to make, which is that this is pretty explicitly from the creatures own power, and can be interacted with outside of Lair Actions, in some cases. Thus, it should still be on the pages, in some way.
 
Well, determining if they qualify for Environmental Destruction would be asking if they had any way to weaponize all the energy of their regional effects to harm a human-sized being, or if there was any reason to say another ability they had that can directly harm characters has all the energy of their regional effect.

I honestly think most storm feats on the site are Environmental Destruction and not feats for harming other biggaton characters in the same range, as there's always a small jump in logic that's taken to scale the storms to their direct AP. "It's consistent," I'll hear, or the burden of proof is shifted and people ask "you're telling me their ultimate attack is weaker than a weather spell?!" when they conveniently forget how weather isn't even effective at damaging individuals who aren't stupid big or above Tier 10.

I feel like Xulrev's comments on the regional effects and their sources make it appear like they aren't meaningfully connected to how the dragons would normally try to harm their enemies.
 
Ah apologies then Azathoth and yes the point is valid that some creatures have a pseudo lair effect via regional effects.

But yes Dargoo hits the nail on the head for my argumentation.
 
Their regional effects are directly related to their magical potency.
 
Apology completely accepted. Lord knows I've had moments like that, before.

A dragon's regional effects and a dragon's breath attack both have the same source (the dragon's inherent magic), but I think that's about it, so yes in these cases I believe it could be considered environmental destruction, which can do some pretty crazy things in D&D (large enough quantities of demons basically have planetary to planar environmental destruction if they stay in one place for long enough, and ******* gnolls have Tier 7 environmental destruction).

Don't really have a dog in that particular race and will let you guys decide if it should fully scale or not. Though I can bring in some more low-mid level AP feats, for when we readjust things.
 
Mr. Bambu said:
Their regional effects are directly related to their magical potency.
Click to expand...
As in, they actively use magic to fuel their regional effects, or just that there's a correlation between the strength of regional effects and magical attacks?
 
See Azzy's comment for full details. Tornado hit town a few days ago so my laptop is AWOL till it gets fixed to run properly.
 
B-b-b-b-bump.

While the dragon effects are a current issue still, everyone's good with the new CR scaling I suggested correct?
 
Absolutely good to go ahead on the rest of it.

I think maybe more staff input is necessary on the dragon effects?
 
Bump. Since everyone else has accepted it I'll start the changes now.
 
Just posting that I'm going through and fixing all the ones left as just "Low 6-B" to "At least Low 6-B, possibly 6-B" to fit the agreed rating
 
..Small bump, maybe semi-unrelated but it seemed a good place for it, but in the most recent Drizzt book (Boundless, pub. 9/10/2019),

[<a href="#">Collapse</a>] Boundless Spoilers
Drizzt has a feat of doing a spinning circle kick into a balor's face. Drizzt recently trained with Grandmaster Kane of the Monastery of Yellow Roses in Damara, and has monk abilities now--and so his kick, where previously the balor wouldn't have noticed at all, was able to snap the fiend's head back, and send it staggering backward a step with its eyes unfocused and its tongue lolling out of its mouth.
Is that something that could be quantified?
 
Might support two keys or a possibly higher rating. But Balors are not not solid 6-C anymore.
 
What CR are Balors in 5e actually? Coz that could support them for 6-C if they're >18.
 
So yeah that's solid 6-C, since the 6-C feat comes from the Archomentals in 5e, who are CR 18 to 20. Imix himself did the feat and he's CR 19 as well.

So that should be a 6-C feat for Drizzt.
 
I don't know if random demons being weaker than Elemental Princes in every other edition to only suddenly get more powerful makes sense context wise. I'm good with a new key though.
 
But they didn't suddenly get more powerful.

Balors are CR 19 in 5e and CR 20 in 3.5e, it's just 5e Archomentals are lower CR when they did the feat.
 
I do not know if this would be useful to justify the 6-C rating. but it turns out the 4e Balor is only 1 CR away from the At Low 6-B, possibly 6-B rating.
 
In 4e Balors are CR 27 and Pit Fiends CR 26, compared to Imix's CR 32. While they may be above Father Llymic (though I dunno), that's not a solid justifcation in of itself since we scale EEs higher than their CRs imply.
 
True, and checking the strongest 4e Balor, and Pit Friend, both showing up in e3 prince of undeath. Those 2 look to be outside of the normal levels of their respective races so they can't be used to scale.
 
So my Wikia stopped working for several hours.

Anyways, 4e probably isn't the best measuring stick for anything but 4e since it is so wildly different. That said my point stands, Balors and Pit Fiends have their CR relatively set in stone for both 3.5e and 5e. In 5e, they are above or comparable to Archomentals, in 3.5e they aren't far below.
 
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