Possible D&D Monster scaling by CR?

[EliminatorVenom]

I was looking at some feats and spells, and from what I've gathered, even level 1 characters can do some Wall-level stuff with spells. I'll try to make some kind of list someday.

 

[RageComment]

The DM doesn't really count. They could say anything, that is house rules. The fact of the matter is that a Kraken in 5e cannot 1-shot kill an adult Elephant. Which makes it difficult to view it as City Level.

Not to mention D&D is Medieval fantasy, so cities are still made of stone/brick which isn't the same as buildings with steel beams for framework. I am pretty sure a rampaging elephant is town level, when your buildings are made of sticks and straw in a village.

 

[RageComment]

I was looking at some feats and spells, and from what I've gathered, even level 1 characters can do some Wall-level stuff with spells. I'll try to make some kind of list someday.

What feats and spells were you looking at? Because to my knowledge, Wall level is pretty high level for D&D characters. At least in D&D 3.5 the weakest walls had 90 hp, so it wasn't until level 10+ that you started being able to even 1-shot them with spells.

 

[Serpent_of_the_Internet_97]

@EliminatorVenom

Makes sense to me, I'm actually already in this mindset as even without any buffs or spells, some of the races of adventurers already have superhuman capabilites due to their biography and depiction alone, and considering that all of the races are treated equal, they can all scale.

 

[Serpent_of_the_Internet_97]

@Rage Comment

Its debatable that the Kraken would be able to destroy steel sculptures yes, but considering that it destroies said stone cities passivelly in order find land to nest. I would think the Kraken has a fair chance of destroying an actual city from the real world.

My best guess as to why the Kraken can't one shot an elephant is because of the stats that were given to the 2 creatures. However, the Kraken page was made with the lore, minus the speed, in mind, not the games stats, as the game stats are meant to make the game itself fair to the players, not the lore. Hope that covers my view.

 

[RageComment]

Then why not make a key for it, in game, and from Lore?

Because Players interact with the game version, not the lore version. You don't really see any D&D spells or feats that say "You can survive being nuked"

 

[DerpCity]

Even still, is there an instance in the lore or a book that the Kraken completely and utterly destroys a city all at once just by existing/passively? If not, I concur with RageComment in the fact that that should definately be considered something that it does over time.

 

[Jesterofgames]

@RageComment Technically One of the higher level spells Was calculated at Town to country level IIRC

 

[EliminatorVenom]

@Rage

You are looking from purely D&D mechanics-wise. I am looking at how said feats and powers would work in real life.

 

[RageComment]

@RageComment Technically One of the higher level spells Was calculated at Town to country level IIRC

That calculation was done pretty poorly and used a lot of arbitrary values. The calcer pulled numbers from thin air, like the caster level of 39, and assuming that the spell was a burst, as well as assuming it could be dodged even though in the spells own description there is no saving throw just automatic damage. Not to mention it is a ritual with casting time 24, and he claims it is completely casual. It requires the sacrifice of an artifact to complete.

He also assumes it is equivilent to vaporizing stone even by using the in-game damage values, without using the in-game damage values for the durability of stone.

That calculation really needs to be discarded.

 

[RageComment]

@Rage
You are looking from purely D&D mechanics-wise. I am looking at how said feats and powers would work in real life.

While I am looking at things more mechanically. Claiming your view is how they "would work" in real life, is a bit of assumption and "headcanon" like. We cannot assume things like that.

When we have a CR 13 Beholder at Wall Level... we cannot reasonably say that within a few levels, the other Monsters jump to City or Planet level.

That said, I do agree that the characters, do quickly leave Peak human and reach Wall Level, Just that they remain in Wall Level for the majority of the game (at least in 3.5). It has been calculated on various forums that Level 5 in 3.5 is Peak Human.

6 - 15 are about Wall Level, 16+ is Small Building to much higher with more complicated stacking of feats and spell combinations.

Lore-wise it wasn't until 21+ that you get access to Epic magic, and then you could do crazy things. But Epic Spells are often Rituals with huge casting times (days to years) can should be noted as such.

 

[DerpCity]

If I'm honest, I feel CR would be a poor system for scaling monsters for our purposes. CR is supposed to tell you the average level a party of 4 should have when fighting a single member of the creature in question, and that alone opens up a big can of worms of what exactly the reason is. IIRC, a Satyr in 3.5 have a variable challenge rating that depends on whether or not they're holding a magical instrument that makes anyone who hears it dance, bringing its challenging from 1 to 5. Obviously its not because he's stronger, its because he's got an object that would incapacitate the majority of the party, so a first level party may not have the tools to handle it. Same with the Illithid, which I'm pretty sure are depicted as being relatively weak/fragile physically, but having potent psionic attacks that, again, can incapacitate your party.

 

[Serpent_of_the_Internet_97]

@DerpCity I don't recall any lore that specifies this tbph, though the thing that indicates to me why the Kraken wipes out cities with not needing to do it over time is how the paragraph is worded. the fact it basically says "It destroys cities and towns along the way " indicates that the kraken sees the city as nothing more then a natural thing that it has to bypass, not a challenge or even a obstacle, just at most an annoyance. Though since this is personal perspective, I will lean in to it being an outlier if its concluded to be so.

 

[DerpCity]

I'm not seeing how that implies it would destroy a city in one shot. A building level character wouldn't have much destroying a city filled with what would be at best wall level characters either, and thats being generous considering wall level characters can stomp other wall level characters and still do heavy enough damage to buildings to probably demolish them with well placed strikes.

 

[Serpent_of_the_Internet_97]

A building level character would have to put a lot of effort into destroying a city, even if they do it with no problem. The kraken seems to be depicted as if it can destroy a city with little effort and little problem.

 

[RageComment]

A Building level character means they can in one blow, fragment an a building. A big Monster plowing over buildings and leaving a trail of destruction is quite casual. One whip of it's many tentacles smashing up streets, roads, walls, carts and the like... and it has 10 of these flailing around? Within a few minutes it could ruin an entire section of a town and in less than an hour the entire city would be a wasteland.

And then scribes would write about how whole cities vanish in its wake. How many medieval tier humans could mount any sort of defense against a mobile building destroyer? Keep in Mind Modern tanks are only Small Building, and that thing could (with proper ammo) raze whole villages.

 

[Serpent_of_the_Internet_97]

Well none of them, except for adventurers with enough prep time and magic that can negate durability such as Death Magic, which those who face the kraken are.....? (I'm gonna guess I missed your point)

 

[RageComment]

My point is just, people on the wiki seem to underestimate just how powerful things are. People call Wall Level Weak, when high end Wall level literally rips through solid metal and stone. Something that threatens the entire planet could literally just be Town Level.

I mean what would humanity do against a human who can throw punches like the nukes uses on japan?

Even though its only town level, we would call that the most frightening creature on the planet.

 

[Serpent_of_the_Internet_97]

We would yes, but to the world it inhabits, probably not. People usually judge a character based on the verse it is in, and since verses usually have something much stronger then a wall level or town level depending on verse. its easy to see why people would say that a wall or town level would be "weak". I agree with you, though I can understand why people would think wall level to be "weak"

 

[EliminatorVenom]

Oh yes, looking back at this, I can explain why the calc allowed the usage of HP mechanics, while disregarding the rest.

The HP of a cubic centimeter of rock showed how much it would be needed to destroy it, for example. However, if we literally applied the HP mechanic to, say, a planet, according to this, it'd be ridiculously easy to bust a planet. With a simple calc, applying the planet HP divided by the wall HP (122.880 : 90 = 1365,33... times the difference), we can clearly see that HP isn't meant to be taken linearly, but exponentially.

While we can use HP-per-cubic-centimeter of material to justify destruction, it is highly inconsistent to apply it to a whole thing. Otherwise, we may have planets that are just a little bit over 1365 times tougher than a stone wall.

 

[DerpCity]

Is that thing a canon D&D golem? If so, that thing definitely needs a page.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

To be completely honest, I am not really sure. But even if it isn't, I can provide several other examples of non-linear HP.

 

[Zeromaru_X]

That thing is from a licensed 3pp, not from a WotC one. However, it was done using the legal rules from the 3.x OGL. So, dunno if you can count it as canon.

There is, however, a canon WotC dragon that can eat whole planets with just a chomp (the Quasar Dragon, one of those ridiculous monsters from 2nd Edition).

 

[Serpent_of_the_Internet_97]

Yeah, the golem page comes from this, which is at most a seperate cannon.

Though the Cannon Versio are still said to be the crushed essence of dead stars, and can manipulate gravity passivelly, and weigh 800,000 billion tons

Edit: Neither of the pages are cannon, was a mistake of mine.

 

[RageComment]

It is non-canon and fanmade. It was never released by WotC.

 

[RageComment]

To be completely honest, I am not really sure. But even if it isn't, I can provide several other examples of non-linear HP.

HP does have some non-linear occurences, if you look at monsters that are larger than 1 square, they only take damage from AOE once, rather than once for every square they are in.

Also larger monsters tend to not have as much HP as they should if their volume was taken into consideration.

A Giant that is 10 x 10 x 10 should have 8x the volume as a normal creature that is 5 x 5 x 5, but Ogres and the like don't automatically have 8x hp, nor do Huge creatures have x64 and so forth.

But At the same time, HP is linear because attacks do the same damage. It takes the same amount of swings to take out 10 mobs with 15 hp as one mob with 150 hp, assuming no damage reduction and you hit each time. HP is a really odd game mechanics so it cannot be used directly to say 1 hp = x number of joules. However you can compare things.

in 3.5 an Elephant had CR 7 and 104 hp

in 5e an Elephant has CR 4 and 76 hp

Both of these Values are higher than the damage their respective Tarrasques deal in a single Claw. 3.5 (1d12+8) 5e (4d8+10). Meaning the Tarrasque (which does get like 5-6 attacks and can kill a full grown elephant in a single round) does not 1-shot Elephants.

 

[DerpCity]

@Serpent The supposedly canon version you listed there says at the bottom of the page that its Homebrew, aka its not canon. Its a shame, that golem seemed really cool.

 

[Serpent_of_the_Internet_97]

@DerpCity Didn't notice that, honest mistake of my mine. Though like you said, would've been really cool, espicially if it were to get a page.

 

[RageComment]

Personally I always hated that Golem, because it lists planets as having 128,880 hp... when Stone Solid stone has 900 per 10' x 10' x 5' Wall. Or a Masonry Wall which is 90 hp for a 10' x 10' x 1' section. Meaning that a Castle or mountain have way more Hp than that fanmade planet hp amount. A Planet should have...

Volume of Earth is about 1,097,509,500,000,000,000,000 cubic meters.

10' x 10' x 5' is 500 cubic feet is 14.1584233 cubic meters

Meaning the Earth if approximated to have the density of stone, would be equal to 77,516,364,410,435,447,286 Unworked Stone wall sections each with 900 hp... meaning...

69,764,727,969,391,902,557,398 hp or 70 sextillion hp. Yet some fan decided 128,880 sounded reasonable.

 

[DerpCity]

I feel thats a kind of awkward reason to dislike the golem itself, but alright.

 

[RageComment]

Sorry, I more dislike the stats of the Golem, not the idea of an uber powerful golem carved from a dead Star. That part is okay, I just wish the stats reflected how powerful it would be. It would literally deal Sextillions of damage and Kill things like planets just by being near them. It could darn near solo any statted god ever.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

So Weekly's doing some calcs I requested, and thus far even Level 1 spells are pretty high Wall-level to Small Building-level, and he didn't even calc all the spells.

 

[RageComment]

Those Calculations don't actually look half bad. Which is surprising given the nature of how vague the wording in D&D is sometimes.

As long as people remember that characters who survive these spells are not tanking the entirety of the energy (if the AOE is a 20 foot sphere, you are only tanking a 5 foot cube of the attack or so) then things should be very reasonable to use.

Also non-combat spells, like create/destroy water should be noted that they aren't used on people.