[D&D 3.5] Exalted Whip (Monster Manual V)

[Amiria]

This Kuo-Toa (Monster Manual V, page 95) gives me a bit of a headache. Apart from 2 fewer HD this monster is in every way better than a normal 8th-level Kuo-Toa cleric (or even Cleric 5 / Sea Mother Whip1 3). Much better ability scores, better natural armor, damage reduction, lightning resistance and some nifty special abilities (Aquatic Escape, Aura of Aquatic Might, Strength in Numbers).

And its CR is 2 less (a normal 8th-level Kuo-Toa cleric is CR 9 if you count Cleric levels as non-associated levels).

Another comparison based on equal hit dice would be be an Exalted Whip with 2 levels of Sea Mother Whip (= 10 HD, virtually a 10th-level cleric on steroids, CR 9) vs. a normal Kuo-Toa Cleric 8 or Cleric 5 / Sea Mother Whip 3 (= 10 HD, 8th-level cleric, CR 9).

1) So is something wrong with the CR ? But whose ... I know that an 8th-level human cleric isn't really CR 8, and as a Kuo-Toa probably also not.

2) Under "Exalted Whips with Class levels" the first sentence begins with "Kuo-Toa exalted whips are elite, and they advance as clerics , ..."

Does that mean that the ability scores of the standard Exalted Whip (with no class levels) are based on the elite array (15, 14 13, 12, 11, 8) or are they based on the average (or standard) array (11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10) ?

1 = Sea Mother Whip is full casting prestige class from the Underdark sourcebook, the standard Exalted Whip meets all requirements.

[Amiria]

... * bumpitty bump *

[The Viscount]

Exalted whip also gives me a headache. It's a horrendous mess only made worse by the new-style statblock I am unaccustomed to reading. We must assume that it simply has ridiculous stat adjustments, as just using the elite array and adding on kuo toa adjustments doesn't add up. I suppose it could be that whips are supposed to have entirely different stat adjustments?
The DR and better natural armor are new, but the electricity resistance was already there.

CR is weird, but it has always been absurd. The Exalted whip should certainly be a CR above 8, as it for all intents and purposes is an 8th level cleric. As for the HD remark, the exalted whip has 10HD, the same number of HD a kuo toa cleric 8 would have. I don't understand why they didn't simply make it a kuo toa cleric 8. That would have made matters simpler.

Edit: the same problem seems to exist with arcane talent. Of the creatures presented with it, only the arkamoi is a newly created monster that couldn't have just been given a numer of wizard or sorcerer levels. The hobgoblins both have equal or 1 more HD than the number of wizard levels they could take.

The avoidance of simply taking class levels seems to be so they can explain giving them these special abilities. I don't understand it, because kuo toa clerics could channel lightning as early as MM1. Having casting as an (ex) ability just opens up door for abuse when the players raise the things as undead or wildshape into them

[Eldariel]

1) So is something wrong with the CR ? But whose ... I know that an 8th-level human cleric isn't really CR 8, and as a Kuo-Toa probably also not.

Well, Tier 1 casters played to their ability should certainly be up to their CR. 4 Human Cleric 8s should be at least the EL 12 the CR system would give them. Even a single Cleric 8 could probably make an 8th level party burn some resources (but then again, the system is horribly biased against uneven odds due to the potency of every single action and the relative difficulty of defending against every conceivable action you might face).

Overall, hard to say; a level 8 party can almost certainly clear 4 level 8 Clerics faced individually over a day unless the Clerics are far more optimized than the party, but 4 Clerics at once, which should constitute a 50/50 encounter (EL = APL+4), is probably even harder than that.


Ugh, just don't look at the CR too closely and it should work out fine. Go by the numbers instead.

[Amiria]

To be honest, I like the concept of the monster as something like a chosen cleric of Blibdoolpoolp ... although Aquatic Escape will seriously frustate player characters.

Maybe all that special stuff that sets it apart from a normal Kuo-Toa Cleric should have been packed into a template. That would at leat stop things like players polymorphing / shapechanging / wild shaping into them, wouldn't it ?

[Urpriest]

First of all, I don't agree with the blanket condemnation of the new monsters with casting. In general, they are meant to represent a creature dramatically modified from the original, and giving it large amounts of RHD does a fair job of representing that (as long as it is accompanied by other novel abilities anyway, which IIRC all the examples do). It also seems like a better way of representing this than a template, which would tend to retain too many traits of the base creature to represent a radical transformation. Basically, think about these guys as the Driders of their respective races (if generally thought of positively rather than negatively).

To weigh in on the one technical question here, the text says they are elite, which is merely descriptive, not that they have the elite array. The default Exalted Whip has the normal array, and that should be used to determine its stat adjustments. (Speaking of, I agree that it and the other MMV monsters being initially published with a DMGII style statblock was completely silly...the whole point of the DMGII statblocks is to condense information for quick combat use...putting it in the first appearance of a monster means you only ever know a summary of its capabilities, which is blatantly nonsensical. The only explanation is that WotC by this point had given up on the idea that monsters would ever be used for anything except being randomly looked up on the fly by DMs who run out of ideas).

PC-classed characters do indeed typically have lower actual difficulty than their CR would indicate, but I agree that 7 is a bit low for this guy. Still, it does at least somewhat line up with comparable caster monsters like the Nymph, so at least there's precedent I guess?

Incidentally, Sea Mother Whip is an awesome find...kind of a bad prestige class in its own right perhaps, but I always like finding monster PrCs. I should have expected no less from Underdark, land of the Kuo Toa Leviathan.