(Pathfinder) Making Crawling Hands Scarier

[Benthesquid]

Don't get me wrong, I love the flavor on them already, and as CR 1/2 undead, they work pretty well. But for one of the final encounters in an upcoming campaign, I'm planning on having my party go up against a hook-handed assassin, and his two Reanimated crawling hands.

The hands will each have a Silence spell cast on them from a scroll, to aid them in strangling guards without sounding the alarm, but I'm looking for a way to juice them up to be more powerful, while keeping them the same size and still more or less hand-shaped (the assassin might at some point strap them back to his arms).

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

[holywhippet]

Standard buffing spells like haste, bulls strength etc. should work.

In theory you could dip the fingernails in poison.

Could you put a magical ring on them?

[Benthesquid]

Standard buffing spells like haste, bulls strength etc. should work.

In theory you could dip the fingernails in poison.

Could you put a magical ring on them?

I'd wondered about that last one- I'd say they have exactly one Ring Slot, but at Int Two, it's an open question whether they're smart enough to use non-constant magic items.

[Thrair]

As has been said, there's lots of spells and assorted buffs you can use to ramp em up.

You could also homebrew them a bit. Possibly make them count as familiars, of a sort. (Which would give them health equal to half the boss's, among other things).

Either way, need more information to be able to judge what tools are available for beefing them up.

1) Party makeup. How many of them, and what classes.
2) Overall Optimization level, if known.
3) Party's expected level at time of encounter.
4) How difficult you want the fight.

That last one's especially important. If you're not willing to run the risk of a TPK occurring, the fight will have to be a lot easier, as you'll want to give the party a bigger margin for error/luck. Dice can be fickle. I've been in games where a generic buffer encounter meant to stall for time THRASHED the PCs, due to poor luck/amazing NPC rolls. Then the BBEG for the next arc rolled over in 2 rounds due to several nasty crits.)

[Benthesquid]

The size of the party and the optimization level are unclear (the two are related- some of the prospective players have considerably more system mastery than others). At the moment, I'd like to look at any assorted means to boost the Crawling Hands' power, and then fine tune it once I know exactly who'll be facing them.

[jguy]

You can give them that Advanced template. +4 to all stats and +2 natural armor. +1 CR. Should at least make them last a tad bit longer

[Spore]

You could give them all the wizard's hand spells:


Make one a permanent Spectral Hand SPELL rather than a physical hand (delivering heightened ghoul touches)
Make the other a template fest: Advanced Fiendish Giant Dire Crawling Hand

[3WhiteFox3]

Desecrate (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/desecrate) could be used to amp up the crawling hands. Your options are to have it already cast when they were created to give a +1 per Hit Die, or you could fight in an area already Desecrated to give them the statistic bonuses. You could combine the two options, or you could put an appropriately aligned alter/shrine/etc... in order to get the doubled bonuses.

[Novawurmson]

How about giving them each a level of Tetori (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/paizo---monk-archetypes/tetori) Monk for Improved Grapple (total of a +3 bonus to grapple)?

[Benthesquid]

How about giving them each a level of Tetori (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/paizo---monk-archetypes/tetori) Monk for Improved Grapple (total of a +3 bonus to grapple)?

I'd considered class levels, but I'd have to get their intelligence up to three first, wouldn't I? And Advanced doesn't affect the intelligence of creatures that start with less than three. I suppose I could add Hit Dice to it, as per the Monster Advancement rules, until it got an ability score increase, and then add class levels from there...

[Novawurmson]

I'd considered class levels, but I'd have to get their intelligence up to three first, wouldn't I? And Advanced doesn't affect the intelligence of creatures that start with less than three. I suppose I could add Hit Dice to it, as per the Monster Advancement rules, until it got an ability score increase, and then add class levels from there...

Or the advanced template, as noted above.

Edit: Nope.


Ability Scores +4 to all ability scores (except Int scores of 2 or less).