The Shoosuva
Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 2:14 pm
I've been reviewing the Shoosuva. The d20 SRD doesn't have rules for building monsters from scratch, but it does have rules for improving them.
The biggest assumption we had wrong was with regards to hit dice and challenge rating. The ratio of HD to CR is determined by hit dice, and for undead, that ratio is 4 HD to 1 CR. For an 18 HD undead creature such as the shoosuvas, that gives them a base CR of 4.5. Hit dice drives skills, feats and saves, thus giving them surprisingly good scores (but all the weakenesses of undead)
They also have the extraplaner subtype, which is not the same as them having the *outsider* type (the "outsider" type has a HD/CR ratio of 2 HD to 1 CR). The SRD is silent on what effect a subtype has on CR.
Special abilities up the CR as well. I'm not sure exactly how it all builds out -- CR 8 still seems too low -- but CR 10 may be more in the ballpark given what the SRD says about undead hit die and CR.
I've posted to the Maure Castle forums about this, so we'll see what others have to say on the matter.
The biggest assumption we had wrong was with regards to hit dice and challenge rating. The ratio of HD to CR is determined by hit dice, and for undead, that ratio is 4 HD to 1 CR. For an 18 HD undead creature such as the shoosuvas, that gives them a base CR of 4.5. Hit dice drives skills, feats and saves, thus giving them surprisingly good scores (but all the weakenesses of undead)
They also have the extraplaner subtype, which is not the same as them having the *outsider* type (the "outsider" type has a HD/CR ratio of 2 HD to 1 CR). The SRD is silent on what effect a subtype has on CR.
Special abilities up the CR as well. I'm not sure exactly how it all builds out -- CR 8 still seems too low -- but CR 10 may be more in the ballpark given what the SRD says about undead hit die and CR.
I've posted to the Maure Castle forums about this, so we'll see what others have to say on the matter.
