Fun with Living Spells!

[begooler]

Living Spell: MM3 and Eberron

I'm fond of including them in my encounters, and want to think of ways to build on them to keep them interesting as the PC's continue to fight them.

1) Other than just advancing it, what's a neat way to improve a living spell? Templates, etc. (It's type is ooze.)
2) Interesting spells or pairs of spells to create living spells out of.
3) Interesting encounters involving living spells. What other creatures to pair them with?

My PC's are ECL 8, but feel free to throw whatever ideas out there.

[Set]

A Living Lightning Bolt or Living Burning Hands, partnered up with a creature that benefits from electrical or fire effects, such as a Shambling Mound or an Iron Golem, can be a scary combination.

Note that someone with the Slime or Ooze domain can rebuke/command oozes, and Living Spells are oozes. None of the Eberron dieties actually grant those Domains, but the religious Adept option allows an Adept to choose one Domain, and could, in theory, pick Ooze or Slime, and gain the ability to rebuke/command Living Spells. Feats like Improved Turning, various magic items (Amulet of Turning) and perhaps even special holy symbols, might be able to up effective cleric level for the number of Living Spells that could be kept under control.

A Living Slow or Glitterdust or Web Spell that is accompanied by some form of incorporeal undead, like a shadow or wraith, or flying opportunist, whether it be a pack of stirges that take advantage of weakened pray, a swarm or carrion ravens, or even a will-o-wisp, could be a cruel encounter. The Swarm 'debuffs' the party, while the ranged or incorporeal attackers take advantage of that debuff to feed on prey that might otherwise be too dangerous for them.

[manyslayer]

Had fun with a living entangle accompanied by splinterwaifs. Entangle smacked the PCs, entangling them, and the splinterwaifs spit at them. Until the cleric dropped a bead from his necklace of fireballs. At his feet. Response to the other PCs about being blasted, "I knew you could take it and I could fix it later."

[Malbordeus]

living planeshift. :D

[Gelscressor]

2: Cloudkill. It doesn't get much better than that in large scale battles.

[Psyren]

living planeshift. :D

Does not work :smalltongue:

Living Gate - or even better, Living Reality Maelstrom - do work, and probably do what you're thinking.

[flabort]

While metamagic is pretty ****ed hard to apply to a living spell, upping the spell level through metamagic can have some nice effects (note: try to use metamagic that will actually have effect afterward, quickened will not improve base land speed!).
This can also be used to apply spells otherwise invalid. I cannot remember which metamagics to use, but it can allow for some pretty nasty spells.

Such as living Mindrape, which is normally unavailable without metamagic. :smalltongue:

[Eldan]

Would Invisible Spell work?

[begooler]

Had fun with a living entangle accompanied by splinterwaifs. Entangle smacked the PCs, entangling them, and the splinterwaifs spit at them. Until the cleric dropped a bead from his necklace of fireballs. At his feet. Response to the other PCs about being blasted, "I knew you could take it and I could fix it later."

Good idea. I just ran an encounter with splinterwaifs and living glitterdust and living distract assailant to help them get their sneak attack. This one sounds better though.


A Living Lightning Bolt or Living Burning Hands, partnered up with a creature that benefits from electrical or fire effects, such as a Shambling Mound or an Iron Golem, can be a scary combination.

Very nice...



Note that someone with the Slime or Ooze domain can rebuke/command oozes, and Living Spells are oozes. None of the Eberron dieties actually grant those Domains, but the religious Adept option allows an Adept to choose one Domain, and could, in theory, pick Ooze or Slime, and gain the ability to rebuke/command Living Spells. Feats like Improved Turning, various magic items (Amulet of Turning) and perhaps even special holy symbols, might be able to up effective cleric level for the number of Living Spells that could be kept under control.

At first I read this and thought, well, no one in the party has that domain so, that's irrelevant. But then I realized, an enemy cleric that could control living spells would be a great fight! Perhaps a servant of Jubilex. We're working with a lot of demons and demon lords in the campaign.

Thanks for the good ideas so far.

[Makiru]

The Sentry Ooze template in Dungeonscape is one of my personal favorites. Not only does it give the ooze an int of 2, it also bumps its charisma up by 10! As far as I remember, it's also only a CR+1 template, so have fun buffing those save DCs into the stratosphere!

[Darrin]

1) Other than just advancing it, what's a neat way to improve a living spell? Templates, etc. (It's type is ooze.)


I'm very fond of the Spellwarped template, usually on top of Sentry Ooze to give it an Int score if it doesn't already, but you have to change it's type to aberration/dragon/fey in between. Corrupted by the Abyss (in Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, 3.5 update to the Corrupted template from BoVD) works very well, as does Half-Dragon ("Why yes, the gelatinous cube *does* breathe fire!") or Half-Fey ("Don't ask. Unseelie + alcohol = very bad things.").

Skitterhaunt template (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/fw/fw20021123a) for turning vermin into oozes. That Damn Crab -> That Damn Ooze.



2) Interesting spells or pairs of spells to create living spells out of.


Living Spell archive. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/archeb/ls)

Ooze Management:

Engulfing terror, Drow of the Underdark p. 61. G.C. inda house (http://rustyandco.com/comic/37/).

Ooze puppet, Spell Compendium p. 150.

Awaken ooze, Dragon Magazine #304.



3) Interesting encounters involving living spells. What other creatures to pair them with?


Elite Opponents: Oozes (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/eo/20040521a)
Elite Opponents: Variant Gelatinous Cubes (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/eo/20060922a)
Random Encounter: Assassin Jelly (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20040916a)

The Zargon section of Elder Evils is sorta a mini-campaign with a heavy ooze theme.

Thrall of Juiblex 3 (Book of Vile Darkness p. 70) can summon green slime, grey oozes, ochre jellies, and gelatinous cubes at will.

[Eldan]

In the Arms and Equipment guide, I think, there is an amulet you can use to ride oozes.

How can this be abused with living spells?

[Darrin]

In the Arms and Equipment guide, I think, there is an amulet you can use to ride oozes.

How can this be abused with living spells?

Make sure the base spell has Range: Long, and your living spell starts with a 60' base speed.

If you can get the Spellwarped template on it (add Half-Dragon or Corrupted by the Abyss first), you can cast a bunch of low-level spells on it to give it a permanent speed increase of 5' x spell level. There's no duration listed for the Speed option of Spell Absorption (Su), so it's speed could be effectively infinite.

[Eldan]

Right, but: what spell can you ride in that makes you particularly strong? Living Ironguard? Living prismatic sphere? Living Resurrection?

[Achernar]

Well... this isn't exactly about optimization, but I ran an arc where living Animate Dead and Inflict Light Wounds began appearing in an area that (as the players would later find) had a breach to the negative energy plane active. The final fight was a skeletal ten-headed hydra covered in said oozes.

I do enjoy the idea of a Fiendish (therefore intelligent) Living Major Image/Greater Invisibility.