[Creature, MitP] Thief of Time

[DEMONhunter]

Forsaken Golem
Large Construct
Hit Dice: 6d10+30 (63 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 40ft (8 squares)
Armor Class: 18 (-1 size, +1 Dex, +8 Natural) Touch 9 Flat-Footed 17
Base Attack/Grapple: (+3/+11)
Attack: Slam +7 melee (1d10+4 plus Withering Touch)
Full Attack: 2 slams +7 melee (1d10+4 plus Withering Touch)
Space/Reach: 10ft/10ft
Special Attacks: Withering Touch
Special Qualities: Construct Traits, Damage Reduction 10 vs adamantine and bludgeoning, Brittle Body, Blindness
Saves: +2 Fort, +3 Ref, +2 Will
Abilities: Strength 19, Dexterity 12, Constitution -, Intelligence -, Wisdom 11, Charisma 1
Skills: -
Feats: -
Environment: Preferably caves, cold temperature
Organization: Solitary or pair
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 6-10 HD (large), 11-20 (huge)
Level Adjustment: -

This creature appears to be a vaguely humanoid mass of sharp deep purple and black crystals and gemstones, surrouned and filled with a swirling darkness which completely obscures it’s head. It’s presence causes a chill within you.

A Forsaken Golem is a construct formed from carved stone and human blood. It obeys the instructions of it’s master and is escpecially suited to killing and incapitating. The stone it was carved from turns deep purple and crystalline, and the swirling blackness that surrounds it like a tattered cloak causes the jagged structure to absorb light.
A Forsaken golem is about 8 foot tall and weighs arond 600 pounds It speaks no language, though can emit a sort of hiss as it moves.

Combat
Forsaken golems usually patrol a set route. Upon finding intruders, it will attempt to return them to their master by weakening them with their withering touch. This will leave them too weak to resist whatever they have palnned for them.
Withering Touch: Whenever a living creature comes into contact with a golem, they must suceed on a DC 13 fortitude save or advance an age category over the next few seconds. If the contact is as a result of a sucessful grapple check on the part of the golem, or a sucessful one on the part of an attacker, the Dc increases to 18. Whether the save is passed or not, the skin and any hair/ fur that was directly touched by the golem turns pale and grey. The save is Con based. It can repress or resume this ability at will.
Brittle body: Bludgeoning damage deal an extra 1 point of damage per die when it wounds the golem. This damage negates it’s damage reduction.
Blindness/Blindsense: These golems are completely blind. However, they have blind sense out to 40ft, and also a +2 racial bonus on listen checks.

CONSTRUCTION
In monetary terms, a Forsaken Golem is relatively cheap to build. It requires a block of hard stone, such as granite, weighing 2750 pounds or more worth 4500gp to acquire. Assembling the body requires a DC 18 craft (stonemasonry) check. In addition to this, it requires at least a gallon of humanoid blood to be poured over it. The blood must not come from the person who constructed the golem.
While the golem is under construction, the builder must wear gloves or make a fortitude save each time the golem is touched to resist its Withering Touch.
CL 9th, darkness, animate object, enervation, caster must be at least 9th level, Price 20,000, Cost 9,500, +760xp

[asromta]

You should note touch and flat-footed AC

On what ability are the DCs on Withering Touch based?

[DEMONhunter]

Constitution.
I'll go back and write that in now.

[asromta]

Wouldn't the first DC be 13? (10+3(1/2HD)+0(con))

And its base AC and attack bonus seem 1 to high.

And what is the range of its Blindsense?

[fangthane]

This creature appears to be a vaguely humanoid mass of sharp deep purple

Is it Maiden Japan?

Sorry, I had to.

Brittle Body could stand to be clarified a bit with respect to the DR - does all bludgeoning OR adamantine get through, or just adamantine bludgeons? Does an 8-point morningstar bash do 0 points on its own but give a 1-point bonus which gets past DR?

DCs should strictly be 13 as Asromta calculated, and potentially 17 (applying a -4 penalty to rolls against effectively the same 13 DC) - generally you don't want to impose a save penalty or bonus bigger than 4.

I'd point out though that unless it hugs a mage, nobody's aging all that much (except for a string of low rolls of course). Average level 6 fighter, barb or cleric has a +5 bonus, a +2 stat and a +1 or +2 cloak for a total of +9 to the DC 13 save, +11 for a real HP factory and +13 for a raging barbarian HP factory (i.e. fail only on an ace)

Here's a question for you though; once its target is sufficiently aged, how does the golem refrain from aging it to dust? :)

And another - how does aging a cleric help? :) Or any caster, for that matter? :)

HD: should be 6d10+20 (large constructs get a +20 regardless of con) which yields a (53 hp) average.

Edit - Should it require the gloves for creation? Effects are generally considered part of the last-day loadup along with the actual ignition key, aren't they?

[DEMONhunter]

-does all bludgeoning OR adamantine get through, or just adamantine bludgeons? Does an 8-point morningstar bash do 0 points on its own but give a 1-point bonus which gets past DR?

That about sums it up;
Brittle body: Bludgeoning damage deal an extra 1 point of damage per die when it wounds the golem. This damage negates it’s damage reduction. (Emphasis mine)


Here's a question for you though; once its target is sufficiently aged, how does the golem refrain from aging it to dust?
Ok, a confession- I han't thought of that. I'll make it so it can repress the ability at will.


And another - how does aging a cleric help? Or any caster, for that matter?
Everyone dies of old age at some point. Unless they have the Lich template or something.


Should it require the gloves for creation? Effects are generally considered part of the last-day loadup along with the actual ignition key, aren't they?
I just wanted to emphasise the fact that it was dangerous to create. If you feel it makes it lengthy I can remove that.


DCs should strictly be 13 as Asromta calculated,
When I showed it to a more competant dm than me (he claims) he said it was too high a dc. Yours is what I got, so I'll change that back.


HD: should be 6d10+20 (large constructs get a +20 regardless of con) which yields a (53 hp) average.
For this, i have no excuse. I just messed up. :(

Thanks for the pointers Fangthane. :)

[fangthane]

Ahh, gotcha... in the interest of clarity I'd change where it says "This damage negates it’s damage reduction." to instead read "This extra damage bypasses the golem's normal damage reduction" :)

If you keep the word "its" you need to remove its apostrophe though :)
Good call on at-will suppression of the ability though; its master could become exceedingly vexed at the loss of prisoners ;)

As to casters, I know they can die (obviously) but unlike melee characters the instant age category thing could actually prove more beneficial than harmful in some circumstances :)

Your 'competent' DM probably doesn't do quite the same degree of stats on things and realise that it'll take a typical fighter between 3 and 5 saving throws to fail that, or a typical cleric 3 or 4 - and the further realisation that against level 5's it's only going to last long enough to probably only actually age people twice total. It's got a 50/50 chance of landing a hit every round (based on a 22 character AC) and roughly a 20-30% chance of aging that character per hit, so in the 5-8 rounds it survives (depending on rolls, equipment and spells) it's likely to age someone once, possibly twice, but not a lot more.

You tell your friend that it's not an instant-death effect so he can get stuffed ;)

Hmm, given that it reads "+30" I must have misremembered which size got what bonus HP for constructs, eh? :)

I guess I must be the oldest person in this thread, or someone would at least have groaned at the Maiden Japan joke...

[Leperflesh]

Actually, I think the instant aging is substantially worse than death, for a higher-level character. Death can be cured with the right spell, but as far as I know, nothing, not even a Wish, can recover age. It might be statistically beneficial for a spellcaster to get aged, but, realistically, NOBODY actually wants to lose a big chunk out of their natural lifespan, permanant-like.

I suggest either allowing the age loss to be recovered with a Restoration, or, up the DC and change it to some other similar affect (temporary or permanant ability score drain, accompanied by a withering visual affect, maybe?)

Otherwise, this is one of those situations where, most of the time, the affect is irrelevant because everyone saves, but maybe once or twice someone gets an unlucky roll, and suddenly it's way super-nasty permanant unrecoverable screwage on their character sheet.

-Lep