Planar Death Throes.... [Creature, MITPII]

[ilovefire]

All the planes are slowly, surely dieing. Even the prime material. But what happens when a plane starts the final swing into oblivion? It starts to manifest itself into the Prime Material, seeking escape (even planes wish to live). Most of the time, a plane can exude enough of itself in the prime material so that, when Planar Death occurs, the manifestations bleed back into the void where the plane once was. Sometimes this does not happen, and an entirely plane will be gone--forever. And the prime material? It leaks itself into pure oblivion, and when it's complete gone, the other planes rush in, eager to recreate the Prime Material in it's image. These manifestations of other planes onto the Prime Material, called merely Manifestations, can be dangerous for adventurers, and they can happen everywhere, and at random.

Manifestation
Size/Type: Fine Outsider (Swarm, Native, see text)
Hit Dice: 4d8 (22 HP)
Speed: Fly 20ft (Perfect)
Initiative: +5
Armor Class: 27 (10+5 DEX+8 Size +4 deflection), Flatfoot 22, Touch 27
Base Attack/Grapple: +4/-
Attack: Planar Swarm 1d6
Full Attack: Planar Swarm 1d6
Space/Reach: 20ft/0ft
Special Attacks: Spell-Like Abilities, Planar Portation
Special Qualities: DR 10/Magic
Saves: Fort +4, Ref +9, Will +6
Ability Scores: STR 2, DEX 20, CON 10, INT -, WIS 14, CHA 22
Skills: None
Feats: None
Environment: Material Plane
Organization: Single, Pair, Planar Rift (3-6), Planar Rip (6-10), Planar Tear (10-100)
CR: 5
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always True Neutral (Unless from an aligned plane, in which case they gain the alignment of the plane)
Advancement: 4-10 HD (Fine), 10-20 HD (Diminutive)

Subtype: Manifestations are the literal manifestation of a non-Material plane onto the prime material. They take on whatever subtype creatures naturally from the plane have (IE, a Manifestation from the Abyss gains the (Evil) and (Chaos) Subtypes.)

Planar Swarm: This functions as a normal Swarm attack, except it bypasses DR/magic, and if the Manifestation is from an elemental plane, deals damage of it’s element.

Planar Portation: Anyone inside the area of a Manifestation must make a will save DC 18 or be teleported to a random position inside the Manifestation’s parent plane. This ability takes a standard action to use. Upon dispersal of the manifestation, this ability automatical activates, and the surrounding squares are effected as well.

Spell-Like Abilities: Fireball at will, if it is from an elemental plane. It deals fire damage if it is from the Elemental Plane of Fire, ice if it is from Water, Electricity if it is from Air, and Acid if it is from Earth. It only effects creatures within the Manifestation’s space, and the manifestation is immune to this spell like ability. Reflex save DC 18 half.
1/day: Holy Word, Chaos Hammer, Dictum, or Blasphemy if the Manifestation is from an aligned plane, based on the alignment of the plane. Will save DC 18., caster level equal to HD

[Maldraugedhen]

Intriguing. This would seem to make the most sense if you assumed all planes were sentient, or, at the very least, capable of exerting a will--otherwise, this would just be a random side effect of a planar collapse.

What about collapsing dreamscapes or mindscapes (both would be pretty common occurrences...)? They would probably need an even weaker version of this swarm. And just to think about this for a moment--what actually happens according to planar physics when you whack one of these swarms into submission? It might make more sense to make them all have essentially infinite hit points (because whacking a hole in reality with a polearm isn't gonna shut it), and healing them restores the essence to their home plane. The DR is a good move towards that, but I think you might want to take it a bit further than DR 10 (a lucky unenchanted Greataxe roll could still damage it).

[ilovefire]

I imagine collapsing dreamscapes and mindscapes would have a very, very small manifestation, one that may cause minor magical phenomena at the most. But your second point... is a good one. Part of the reason I believe these should be destroyed would be plot-related (Say a bunch of devils travelling around the material plane while the Abyss is going through the final descent, trying to destory enough of it's essance to keep it from coming back). And yes, I was thinking of increasing the DR to DR 20/-, but I'd like to keep them fairly low CR. CR 7 at the most. And they ARE hard to hit: AC 27. In the playtest I ran, only the party tank (a barb) had a chance of hitting it with something other than a natural twenty. (But that was a level 4 party, because my first through was it being at CR 4, but it was a bit to hard.)

[Maldraugedhen]

Hmmm. 20 would be too high, I think. If you want to keep the CR around where it is, assuming you've generated that CR well, then I'd say cut their HP down, and boost the DR to DR 15/magic weapons and opposite aligned weapons, so if it's a bit of floating chaos, a law-aligned blade'll smooth it out, and if it's some random water, a fire blade'll dry it up.

[ilovefire]

Actually... I didn't realize this when I playtested it, but as a swarm of Fine creatures, it's immune to all weapon damage. That's probably enough even with it's comparative weakness for it to be CR 5, you think?

[Maldraugedhen]

Oh. Yeah, that'd do it.

[Lord Iames Osari]

Very interesting... very, very interesting. My only quibble is with the whole idea of planes themselves being sentient (well, that and the lack of bold and italics making it difficult to read), but nevertheless, I'll give it a yea.

[ilovefire]

Yes, I admit the whole sentient planes idea even rubbed me a bit wrong, but it makes sense in a way. I mean, reading the Fiendish Codex I, it sure came off to me that the Abyss, at least, has an agenda of it's own. Why wouldn't other planes?

[Lord Iames Osari]

Bump. Keep voting, people!

[DracoDei]

Should the Swarm attack also be aligned to the alignment(s) of the swarm?

[Zherog]

All the planes are slowly, surely dieing. Even the prime material. But what happens when a plane starts the final swing into oblivion? It starts to manifest itself into the Prime Material, seeking escape (even planes wish to live). Most of the time, a plane can exude enough of itself in the prime material so that, when Planar Death occurs, the manifestations bleed back into the void where the plane once was. Sometimes this does not happen, and an entirely plane will be gone--forever. And the prime material? It leaks itself into pure oblivion, and when it's complete gone, the other planes rush in, eager to recreate the Prime Material in it's image. These manifestations of other planes onto the Prime Material, called merely Manifestations, can be dangerous for adventurers, and they can happen everywhere, and at random.

Wow! What an interesting idea!

Some typo type stuff here, though.

You're inconsistent with your capitalization of "Prime Material." This is one format I'm not sure of, but looking in the SRD I see that the phrase "Material Plane" is always capitalized. Speaking of the SRD... it refers to it "Material Plane" and not "Prime Material." I don't know if the latter is WotC IP or not; to be safe, you could simply change all references to the former.

"Complete gone" should be "completely gone."

"It's" is the contraction of the words "it is." The possessive form does not have an apostrophe - "its" is the proper spelling of this form of the word.


Size/Type: Fine Outsider (Swarm, Native, see text)

Actually, I would think the "extraplanar" subtype makes more sense than the "native" subtype.


Hit Dice: 4d8 (22 HP)

The abbreviation "hp" should be lowercase. Also, I get 18 as the average value instead of 22. 4.5 X 4 = 18.



Armor Class: 27 (10+5 DEX+8 Size +4 deflection), Flatfoot 22, Touch 27

"Dex" should have just the first letter capitalized.

These should be in the order of "normal," then touch, then flat-footed. Also, not that "flat-footed" is a hyphenated word.


Space/Reach: 20ft/0ft

If they have a space of 20 ft, they're not Fine sized creatures.


Special Attacks: Spell-Like Abilities, Planar Portation

Alphabetical order for these.


Ability Scores: STR 2, DEX 20, CON 10, INT -, WIS 14, CHA 22

Only the first letter is capitalized.


Subtype: Manifestations are the literal manifestation of a non-Material plane onto the prime material. They take on whatever subtype creatures naturally from the plane have (IE, a Manifestation from the Abyss gains the (Evil) and (Chaos) Subtypes.)

Pedantic nit pick: Creature subtypes are enclosed in square brackets, not parens. So it should be "[Evil]" and "[Chaos]" for example.


Planar Portation: Anyone inside the area of a Manifestation must make a will save DC 18 or be teleported to a random position inside the Manifestation’s parent plane. This ability takes a standard action to use. Upon dispersal of the manifestation, this ability automatical activates, and the surrounding squares are effected as well.

Save names are always capitalized.

What ability mod of the creature is the save based upon? All saves are computed as 10 + 1/2 hit dice + some ability modifier. I'm guessing you used Charisma (which seems like a good choice). You need to mention that.

Special abilities and qualities all have a type: either Extraordinary (Ex), Supernatural (Su), or Spell-Like (Sp). The abbreviated name goes after the ability name; you don't have that here. This could be either Su or Sp.

Finally, on the format and clarity stuff, your first sentence makes it sound like it just happens. "Anyone inside ... must make a Will save." But later you say it's a standard action on the part of the creature. So that could use a bit of clarity.

On a balance comment: This seems too good to me for something a CR 5 critter can do. Fifth level characters are not likely to ever survive being shifted to a bunch of planes - any of the elemental planes, Negative Energy Plane, Positive Energy Plane, the Abyss, Hell, and so on. All of these are a death sentence to 5th level characters. Heck, they're likely a death sentence to 10th level characters. I think you really ought to reconsider this ability.


Spell-Like Abilities: Fireball at will, if it is from an elemental plane. It deals fire damage if it is from the Elemental Plane of Fire, ice if it is from Water, Electricity if it is from Air, and Acid if it is from Earth. It only effects creatures within the Manifestation’s space, and the manifestation is immune to this spell like ability. Reflex save DC 18 half.

Spell names are italicized.

Energy types are not capitalized (though planar names are).

What ability mod is the save DC based upon.

What caster level?

From a mechanics point of view, the feat Energy Substitution is actually part of the SRD. You could take advantage of that here; it wouldn't change anything mechanically, but would provide a smooth way to descibe how a fireball is doing ice damage.



1/day: Holy Word, Chaos Hammer, Dictum, or Blasphemy if the Manifestation is from an aligned plane, based on the alignment of the plane. Will save DC 18., caster level equal to HD

Again, spell names are italicized, and are not capitalized.

What ability mod is the DC based upon?

***

This is one of the most creative creatures I've seen in quite some time. I think the Planar Portation ability is too good for the CR, though. And if you take away that ability, I think (ironically) the CR is too high.

I don't think you're ever going to be able to balance a plane shift effect at will for a creature - especially if you want to maintain a low CR. My advice is to drop the ability; as a worst case, make the shift temporary (like, no more than 1 round). Alternatively, you could temporarily shift the target to one of the transitive planes. A 5th level PC could survive on the Astral, Ethereal or Shadow plane for quite some time, so you could make the shift send the target to one of those for a number of rounds equal to its hit dice.

Cheers!