Orcwort?

[Tvtyrant]

I really like the idea behind the Orcwort and it's wortlings. A slow moving, evil tree that has monster fruit?? Amazing! However the tree is grossly over CR'd, and the wortlings are so weak that they could not benefit the tree at all.

Has anyone found a good use for the Orcwort, and are there any good fixes for them? I have a few ideas on them, but I want to see what others have done.

[Starbuck_II]

I really like the idea behind the Orcwort and it's wortlings. A slow moving, evil tree that has monster fruit?? Amazing! However the tree is grossly over CR'd, and the wortlings are so weak that they could not benefit the tree at all.

Has anyone found a good use for the Orcwort, and are there any good fixes for them? I have a few ideas on them, but I want to see what others have done.

Yeah, the wortlings are fodder for a party of level 5's.
A Orcwort is like the BBEG of a campaign, but it would work best in a town they care about. They must figure out how to kill the thing (they know fighting in melee would be suicide).

Scorched earth tactics blind wortlings so that seems a good way to surround your town. The can't see where there is no natural vegatation.

It can only send out 20 per week, this is good.
How to kll the Orcwort?
It has 10 ft speed:
Spring attack/ hit+run tactics: drawback, it uses entangle effect as a free action.
Archery only need to worry about wortlings.

[awa]

have the party be fairly low level but high enough that they can fight a group of wortlings and win.

The first part of the adventure have them fight groups of wortlings as they raid the town. after driving them off they discover the orcwort itself heading for town the party needs to defend a siege engine of some sort from waves of wortlings long enough for the siege weapon to kill the orcwort. if the siege weapon is destroyed they need to hope that the orcwort is badly injured and try and finish it off with some kind of clever plan like collapsing a burning building on it.

in this scenario the orcwort barely needs stats its a hazard not a monster. Note this scenario requires you altering how many wortlings an orcwort will have.

edit in regards to spring attack it may be slow but it has crazy reach and improved grab

[Eldan]

If you do it in the town, perhaps give the party an access to an alchemist's guild with a good supply of alchemist's fire? That should help them at lower levels.

[hex0]

You could have a cult of Orcs that worship the tree to back it up?

[Vamphyr]

I've always wanted to use an Orcwort against a party but never had the chance.

If you want to make it a challenge for higher level parties simply increase the number and the CR of the wortlings. Instead of just facing mindless orcs, the players are confronting a heavily armed and armored warband that has hive minded with the Orcwort itself.

You could also give the Orcwort actual sentience. Say if the city/town they call home has a resident wizard of power living there, in the past he may have cursed one of his students who attempted to corrupt the ways of magic and slay the wizard. This curse has caused the student to slowly transform into an Orcwort. Now, years later, he has amassed a strong enough army of minions and mastered enough arcane secrets to return to his former home and see the wizard kneel before his twisted form as a thrall.