< With the speed and temerity of a swooping falcon, you fire a steel-tipped pulzone at a silver-tipped mature forest gryphon. A silver-tipped mature forest gryphon attempts to evade, only slightly avoiding the blow. The pulzone lands a powerful strike that pierces clean through the abdomen and out the back (Shiskabob!).
The steel-tipped pulzone lodges itself savagely into the mature forest gryphon!
A silver-tipped mature forest gryphon collapses into a lifeless mound of fur and feathers.
[You're solidly balanced]
[Roundtime 1 sec.]

You see a silver-tipped mature forest gryphon, which is dead.
The mature forest gryphon has faint scuffing to the head, tiny scratches to the neck, a severely swollen and deeply bruised right arm compounded by a broken right arm with gaping holes, a severely swollen and deeply bruised right leg with odd protrusions under the skin compounded by a broken right leg with gaping holes, minor swelling and bruising around the left leg compounded by cuts and bruises about the left leg, minor swelling and bruising around the right hand compounded by cuts and bruises about the right hand, a severely swollen and deeply bruised left hand with bones protruding out from the skin compounded by deep slashes across the left hand, faint scuffing to the chest, a severely bloated and discolored abdomen appears oddly rearranged compounded by a completely destroyed abdomen with nearly all flesh and bone torn away revealing a gaping hole.
There is a steel-tipped pulzone buried completely into its abdomen, a steel-tipped pulzone deeply lodged in its right hind leg.
It is wearing nothing!
It is carrying nothing!

IT TOOK FOREVER... 221 ranks is definitely not enough to hunt these things, but this particular fella decided to wander out of his usual hangout and into the baby gryphon area, presumably to protect the little guys.

---

The pulzone lands a powerful strike that pokes the steel-tipped pulzone into the gryphon's rear end (more embarrassing than painful!).
The steel-tipped pulzone lodges itself shallowly into the forest gryphon!

It's typical of what happens when you can remove most/all of the defensive penalties. As your defense goes up, your offense can go down and sometimes going down can be so far below the normal range that it seems a miraculous feat. This is essentially why backtraining (without any sort of extra boosting, even) is inherently easier, allowing you to do things with your backtraining skills that you obviously weren't doing with your at-level stuff at the same ranks.

In such situations, many critters in DR are revealed as pretty fragile glass cannons (and many more are not, heh) even though in a normal situation they might still easily rip you apart in three shots.

DISCLAIMER: THIS POSTER IS NOT A MEMBER OF STAFF AND HIS INFORMATION IS/MIGHT BE WRONG.