So ... what CR for the magical minions? [What Price Immortality players stay out]

[Jack_Simth]

Hey all,

I'm running a game, and sooner or later the PCs are going to run across the disposable mooks that the BBEG manufactures (at the rate of five or ten day) to aid and guard his less disposable minions (which he has to breed). They're a series of spell effects, and I'm confident enough of the mook mechanics for the purposes of my gaming table (the final result might be considered houseruled, but I'm fine with that), but I'm having a hard time settling on what CR (and thus, XP value) to assign for the mooks. Note that the party is 12th level at the moment, and that they're all casters to some degree.


This towering stone automaton bears the likeness of an archaic, armored warrior. It moves with ponderous but inexorable steps.

N Large Construct
Init -1, Senses: Darkvision-60, -3 Perception
AC: 14, Touch 8, Flat-footed 14 (6 Natural, -1 Size, -1 Dex)
HP: 75 (NA hit dice)
Hardness-8, Immune: Construct Traits
Fort/Ref/Will: +0/-1/-3
Speed: 20 feet
2 Slams +2 (2d10+3)
Space 10 ft, Reach 10 ft
Str 16, Dex 8, Con -, Int -, Wis 5, Cha 5
Base Attack: +0, CMB: +7, CMD: 16
Special Qualities: Dispel Vulnerability, Death Throes


This white marble statue resembles a large feline, but its body and face are covered in decorative etchings and runes.

N Large Construct
Init -1, Senses: Darkvision-60, -3 Perception
AC: 14, Touch 8, Flat-footed 14 (6 Natural, -1 Size, -1 Dex)
HP: 75 (NA hit dice)
Hardness-8, Immune: Construct Traits
Fort/Ref/Will: +0/-1/-3
Speed: 40 feet
Bite +2 (1d8+3), 2 Claws +2 (1d6+3)
Space 10 ft, Reach 5 ft
Str 16, Dex 8, Con -, Int -, Wis 5, Cha 5
Base Attack: +0, CMB: +7, CMD: 16
Special Qualities: Dispel Vulnerability, Death Throes


This brass statue is sculpted in the shape of an angel with metal wings, and its halo takes the form of a burning crown.

N Medium Construct
Init +0, Senses: Darkvision-60, -3 Perception
AC: 15, Touch 10, Flat-footed 15 (5 Natural)
HP: 75 (NA hit dice)
Hardness-8, Immune: Construct Traits
Fort/Ref/Will: +0/+0/-3
Speed: 30 feet, Fly 60 (Average)
2 slams +2 (1d6+2), 2 wings -3 (1d4+1)
Space 5 ft, Reach 5 ft
Str 14, Dex 10, Con -, Int -, Wis 5, Cha 5
Base Attack: +0, CMB: +2, CMD: 12
Special Qualities: Dispel Vulnerability, Death Throes

Dispel Vulnerability: Ultimately, these creatures are just five-foot sections of a Wall of Stone spell under the effects of a Polymorph any Object spell of permanent duration. Under the effects of an antimagic field, dispel, disjuction, or some such, they are treated as 9th level spell effects at caster level 20. If the Polymorph any Object spell is successfully dispelled or suppressed, then the creature reverts back to a five-foot square of stone.

Death Throes: Before the Polymorph Any Object spell is applied, each of these creatures is a chunk of stone with a Symbol of Weakness spell attached. If the creature is destroyed (or dispelled in a way that does not also dispel the Symbol of Weakness - caster level 20), it reverts to a five foot square of stone, and the attached Symbol spell goes off (Fort DC 31, CL 20, 3d6 Str damage in a 60 foot radius).


Construction Steps:
1) Cast Wall of Stone (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/w/wall-of-stone) for base materials. Fold it over repeatedly to get a completely solid five-foot cube. Hardness 8, 5 inches thick, 75 HP.
2) Cast Stone Shape (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/stone-shape) to separate a five-foot square.
3) Cast Symbol of Weakness (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/symbolOfWeakness.html) on the block, set for when the Polymorph Any Object spell ends.
4) Cast Polymorph Any Object (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/p/polymorph-any-object) (heightened to 9th) on the block to turn it into the appropriate shape: A Stone Golem (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/golem/golem-stone), Taotieh (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/taotieh), or Angelic Guardian (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/angelic-guardian). For the Stone Golem and Taotieh, it's Kingdom (mineral), Class (stone), Int (-); for the Angelic Guardian, it's Kingdom (Mineral), Size (Medium), Int (-), so all three have a +9 Duration Factor and are Permanent.
4a) I settled on using Elemental Body (Earth Elemental) as the closest effect; Elemental Body III for the Large ones, Elemental Body II for the medium one. Removed Earth Glide, Int, Con; added Construct Traits
4b) I settled on "+0 across the board" for base saves, BAB, et cetera (no hit dice, just an object).


He then orders his mindless creation to obey the appropriate minion, and builds the next.

The BBEG is not going to be anywhere nearby the first several times these things are encountered, and they do not expend any permanent resources from the BBEG, so I'm not going to consider them part of the BBEG for purposes of CR.

But I need to see what CR they should count as for purposes of handing out XP. The Less Disposable Minions are much more straightforward.

[Debihuman]

There is no freaking way that you could legitimately make a golem with 900 hit points and not have it be less than CR 54. Please look at the Monster Creation rules.

If you want mooks, then don't give them ridiculous number of hit points. Mooks aren't supposed to be that tough to kill. Mooks are generally a mob of low-level and low hit point mobs, like Tucker's Kobolds (who are incidentally the best used mooks ever and if you haven't heard of them, I suggest you Google them and read exactly how they were used) to harry and wear down a party before hitting them with the BBEG.). Combat with mooks shouldn't be a long drawn out affair, unless you can make it interesting. Getting the party to waste all their ammunition is not going to make the battle with the BBEG memorable and if the party had any sense, they'd run away. What you are handing out is a TPK.

Debby

[Demonic Kitten]

While Debihuman is far more angry about it than I would have been, I do kinda have to agree that 900 HP seems high, for the power level shown here. I mean, the statues are very easy to kill, I could probably have a 10th level Wizard take one out in one or two rounds, but if they're running into these in groups of 5 to 10, that's harsh. Like, SUPER harsh. Taking 5 to 10 of these at once is nasty, unless you have a ton of disjunctions and greater dispel magics prepared, then it's a maximum of one spell per minion. Honestly, these things are a bit of a problem for party balance, as the best way to beat them without killing anybody is to basically tell the melee combatants to go sit in the corner and let the mages do the heavy lifting, as beating one of these to death will probably kill whoever does so due to Death Throws.

The ONLY reason I would label these things super high CR is the huge HP and the Death Throws (AKA: "Great, you killed it, here's a SoD/TPK") special quality you gave them; the rest of their stat block is weak, CR7-10 if encountered individually. Granted, these things are puzzle-bots, not real foes, but still. Based solely on the Death Throws special quality, they're CR15+. With the HP at the level you have them, they're almost guaranteed to get one party member down into the level where Symbol of Death will kill someone, and with a DC33 save on that spell, that's pretty much a guaranteed kill on anything 15th level or lower without a good Fort progression. So yeah, these are minimum CR of like 20, probably higher. While lots of HP in and of itself is not the big deal Debihuman is making it out to be, that Death Throws quality is terrifying, and I would never put it on anything pre-epic, myself.

TL;DR: nerf Death Throws and HP, and a remotely optimized party could take one at level 10 easy.

[Jack_Simth]

Well, two of the PC's have over the 150 HP mark, multiple party members have Pounce (at the moment), and death just means they have to find another host. Plus they're all casters. There's some unusual campaign rules involved; see my sig for details if you'd like.

The critters were what I saw as a logical consequence of being built by the BBEG with Wall of Stone (block up for HP - 5 foot cube), Stone Shape (to separate the cube from the adjoining stone), Symbol of Death (knows all Symbol spells, and he's known as The Conqueror for a reason), and Polymorph Any Object (so they're mobile). Idea being that when he goes to war, he's got a large number of these built up to throw at an opponent.

So for the metagame, a thinner wall for a base, and something more along the lines of Symbol of Weakness rather than Symbol of Death; maybe drop the Heighten Spell as well (down to DC 31, as it's 7th, and 3d6 Str damage rather than 9th and Death). At 5 inches thick (default Wall of Stone, cut into sections) it'd be... 75 hp. At two inches thick (double the area by halving the thickness), that'd be 30 hp. Does that make it a bit more reasonable?

[Debihuman]

Sorry for coming across far harsher than I meant to.

To challenge a CR 12th level party (and your groups sounds a bit over powered), I'd recommend aiming for CR 15 or so. Since this is only the first out three lines of defense (disposable mooks --> indispensable mooks --> BBEG), the party should have their work cut out for them. That doesn't necessarily mean you throw a TPK at them right off the bat.

The name "siege" golem also was a bit of a disappointment as there's no actual siege weaponry associated with this.

I see where you were going with the hit points on this, but it makes it lethal. Taking magically created stone and tuning it into a viable creature is tough. I'd say that the hit points would make this 158d10+30. (158 x 5.5= 869 +30 = 899, which is as close as I can ge)t. Hence my initial assessment. It's an absurd number of HD. And when you add the hardness 8 in, it's even more absurd. Exactly how long do you want combat to last?

Having a lot of hit points really unbalances the creature. It's all hit points and not much else, other then when it dies and possibly takes you with it. Do you use the massive damage rule (it's optional)?

Debby

[Mr.Moron]

How the world are these a TPK? They've got anemic melee-only attacks, and range in speed from "laughably slow" (golem) to, "I guess it could chase people until it gets stuck somehow (angel)". They've got terrible saves and so are vulnerable to any number of things that might slow them down.

Also with -3 perception scores, and no magic senses of any kind you can sort of just go around them with impunity.

They're somewhere between easy and trivial to deal with via any approach other than throwing damage at them in combat.

Seriously the solution to the golem is "Walk at leisurely pace in absolutely any direction besides directly towards it"

[Demonic Kitten]

Hmm. If you drop Death Throws to 3d6STR damage, you can probably give him more HP than that. STR damage can't kill, after all, merely burning party resources/time to fix the problem. I'd say you can go 150HP easily if you go that route, or 75 to 100 if you don't. Assuming roughly 10th level party (at least), this puts them in the range of "I Disintegrate the golem", which isn't bad (especially since it gets rid of the nasty symbol effect for killing it). 30HP seems very low, though, if you have full casters with 150+HP; even taking hardness into account, that low puts them into group kills with a Fireball spell. Note that this isn't bad, per se, just that it could make the players plow through them remarkably quickly.

So long as death isn't a massive penalty that will horridly piss off players, you should be OK. The player's personal enjoyment of the game should always be the highest priority, so make them fit a difficulty you think they'll enjoy. :smallsmile:

Also, one slight problem with the first golem that occurred to me: it only has a 20 foot move speed, and zero ranged attacks. Anything with a 30 foot move speed and any kind of access to opened space will never ever be hit by it. Granted, it does to the most damage of the three, but you might want to consider giving it some kind of...mobility surge that it can use to surprise your players with every so ofter. In closed spaces or combats with lots going on, this will be less of an issue, just felt I should mention it.

[Debihuman]

It's not that they do a lot of damage, it's that they can keep fighting long after the party has run out resources. It's a wall. The party can beat on it for ages unless they can deal tons of damage to it. It just makes for a long drawn-out combat. Put one in a corridor that means either the PCs use lots of resources to kill it (and then they have to deal with the death throes) or they retreat. Don't forget the OP wanted to sic several of these on the PCs at once, truly walling them in (sorry for the puns, couldn't resist).

Without the magic immunity as other golems, the party just uses resources or keeps their distance as mentioned earlier.Then again, there are several of them, so backing the PCs into a corner is a viable technique. A 12th level fireball does 10d6 of damage to everyone within range and being in a corridor when casting this is generally a bad idea. Even with the spell, each one would take a lot of fireball spells to take down. This is good if you are trying to get the party to waste resources.

Debby

[Mr.Moron]

It's not that they do a lot of damage, it's that they can keep fighting long after the party has run out resources. It's a wall. The party can beat on it for ages unless they can deal tons of damage to it. It just makes for a long drawn-out combat. Put one in a corridor that means either the PCs use lots of resources to kill it (and then they have to deal with the death throes) or they retreat. Don't forget the OP wanted to sic several of these on the PCs at once, truly walling them in (sorry for the puns, couldn't resist).

Debby

Why do the PCs have to kill them?
Thing is these things have tons of other easy solutions that don't involve dealing "tons of damage to it". They're nearly blind, can't make saves to save their lives (especially ref), their attacks are widely inaccurate.

They're difficult to deal with in one and exactly one situation: You try to bludgeon them to deal.

You can beat the cat & golem by digging a hole, doing a poor job of covering it up and then shooting at them from the other side.

[Jack_Simth]

spoiler for brevity...

Sorry for coming across far harsher than I meant to.
Meh. I've worked an incoming customer service line.


To challenge a CR 12th level party (and your groups sounds a bit over powered), I'd recommend aiming for CR 15 or so. Since this is only the first out three lines of defense (disposable mooks --> indispensable mooks --> BBEG), the party should have their work cut out for them. That doesn't necessarily mean you throw a TPK at them right off the bat.

The name "siege" golem also was a bit of a disappointment as there's no actual siege weaponry associated with this.

He calls them that because he uses them in warfare. No control limit, no maintenance, and he can make around 5/day without cutting into his personal defences (10/day, as he spends a lot of time on a self-made quick time plane...) so if he goes, say, 5 years between major conflicts, he's got around 18,000 of these things to throw at an opposing country (plus whatever was leftover from the last war).

In that context... he's got around as many of them as the average opposing army has footsoldiers. They do slightly more damage than the average footsoldier (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/npc-0/foot-soldier-human-warrior-1), although the AC and to-hit is slightly lower. The average footsoldier can't hurt them at range without a crit (Javelin caps at the critters' hardness). And, of course, when they're finally worn down... they're probably in the middle of a big group of enemies and breaking the thing that a symbol is on triggers it... which means there's now a sizeable hole in the enemy line (with the Symbol of Death, 900 HP version). If the enemy casters go at them... well, unless you make a deal with a few Pit Fiends for their at-will Fireballs for a few hours or something, Kang gets to pit his down-time resources against the opposing army's combat-time resources.

He is, though, currently investigating the party's character, so it does make sense that he wouldn't use the war version, and would toss weaker ones at them. Not folding the wall over itself for standard thickness and 75 hp, a debilitating Symbol rather than a lethal one... that makes sense enough in context for me to run with it.


I see where you were going with the hit points on this, but it makes it lethal. Taking magically created stone and tuning it into a viable creature is tough. I'd say that the hit points would make this 158d10+30. (158 x 5.5= 869 +30 = 899, which is as close as I can ge)t. Hence my initial assessment. It's an absurd number of HD.
If it had hit dice, sure. However, Polymorph Any Object doesn't give the object hit dice. Hence why I wrote it with the base saves and BAB as +0. Nonabilities give +0 modifiers whenever relevant (or at least they did in 3.5; I haven't seen a specfic Pathfinder definition for what the Strength score of '-' means no Shadows...


And when you add the hardness 8 in, it's even more absurd. Exactly how long do you want combat to last?
Also a good point.


Having a lot of hit points really unbalances the creature. It's all hit points and not much else, other then when it dies and possibly takes you with it. Do you use the massive damage rule (it's optional)?
Hasn't come up yet. Hmm. Probably not.


Hmm. If you drop Death Throws to 3d6STR damage, you can probably give him more HP than that. STR damage can't kill, after all, merely burning party resources/time to fix the problem. I'd say you can go 150HP easily if you go that route, or 75 to 100 if you don't. Assuming roughly 10th level party (at least), this puts them in the range of "I Disintegrate the golem", which isn't bad (especially since it gets rid of the nasty symbol effect for killing it).
Umm... destroying the surface upon which a Symbol is written explicitly triggers the Symbol in both 3.5 and Pathfinder.... part of the Symbol of Death write-up.

30HP seems very low, though, if you have full casters with 150+HP; even taking hardness into account, that low puts them into group kills with a Fireball spell. Note that this isn't bad, per se, just that it could make the players plow through them remarkably quickly.

So 75-ish HP, then, which fits with 'not folding the wall'. OK.


So long as death isn't a massive penalty that will horridly piss off players, you should be OK. The player's personal enjoyment of the game should always be the highest priority, so make them fit a difficulty you think they'll enjoy. :smallsmile:

Also, one slight problem with the first golem that occurred to me: it only has a 20 foot move speed, and zero ranged attacks. Anything with a 30 foot move speed and any kind of access to opened space will never ever be hit by it. Granted, it does to the most damage of the three, but you might want to consider giving it some kind of...mobility surge that it can use to surprise your players with every so ofter. In closed spaces or combats with lots going on, this will be less of an issue, just felt I should mention it.
You mean like the attending less-disposable minion casting Haste? Good call.

But really, they're intended for slightly different purposes. The golems have reach and thus get positioned defensively, the angels have flight and are sent after enemy ranged units or those manning castle walls, the cats you send at opposing footsoldiers.

How the world are these a TPK? They've got anemic melee-only attacks, and range in speed from "laughably slow" (golem) to, "I guess it could chase people until it gets stuck somehow (angel)". They've got terrible saves and so are vulnerable to any number of things that might slow them down.

For a while, yes. From Kang's perspective, they're disposable units for warfare, not really intended to be without supervision. When not at war... well, they double as particularly dumb labor.


Also with -3 perception scores, and no magic senses of any kind you can sort of just go around them with impunity.

Well, they do get darkvision, but right, they're not intended to be without supervision.


They're somewhere between easy and trivial to deal with via any approach other than throwing damage at them in combat.

Seriously the solution to the golem is "Walk at leisurely pace in absolutely any direction besides directly towards it"
... which is a little bit annoying when you've got one of them on either side of your actual target, who is pelting you with Fireballs and such.


It's not that they do a lot of damage, it's that they can keep fighting long after the party has run out resources. It's a wall. The party can beat on it for ages unless they can deal tons of damage to it. It just makes for a long drawn-out combat. Put one in a corridor that means either the PCs use lots of resources to kill it (and then they have to deal with the death throes) or they retreat. Don't forget the OP wanted to sic several of these on the PCs at once, truly walling them in (sorry for the puns, couldn't resist).
In general, they're there to soak hits from the opposition's heavy-hitters so that the harder to replace minions don't have to (and to handle mop-up of opposing mooks). So yes, them being walls is about right.



Without the magic immunity as other golems, the party just uses resources or keeps their distance as mentioned earlier.Then again, there are several of them, so backing the PCs into a corner is a viable technique. A 12th level fireball does 10d6 of damage to everyone within range and being in a corridor when casting this is generally a bad idea. Even with the spell, each one would take a lot of fireball spells to take down. This is good if you are trying to get the party to waste resources.

Debby

Which, you know, really is one of the things these are for - wasting resources of opposing armies.

Why do the PCs have to kill them?
Thing is these things have tons of other easy solutions that don't involve dealing "tons of damage to it". They're nearly blind, can't make saves to save their lives (especially ref), their attacks are widely inaccurate.

They're difficult to deal with in one and exactly one situation: You try to bludgeon them to deal.

You can beat the cat & golem by digging a hole, doing a poor job of covering it up and then shooting at them from the other side.
... and then the handler directs them around the hole while sending the angels around to flank.

So... general consensus seems to be to change the Symbol spell in use to Symbol of Weakness or some such, drop them to maybe 75 hp each. Great. Can-do. Not a problem at all. I'll edit shortly.

What CR should I say they are for purposes of XP?

[Mr.Moron]

spoiler for brevity...

Meh. I've worked an incoming customer service line.

He calls them that because he uses them in warfare. No control limit, no maintenance, and he can make around 5/day without cutting into his personal defences (10/day, as he spends a lot of time on a self-made quick time plane...) so if he goes, say, 5 years between major conflicts, he's got around 18,000 of these things to throw at an opposing country (plus whatever was leftover from the last war).

In that context... he's got around as many of them as the average opposing army has footsoldiers. They do slightly more damage than the average footsoldier (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/npc-0/foot-soldier-human-warrior-1), although the AC and to-hit is slightly lower. The average footsoldier can't hurt them at range without a crit (Javelin caps at the critters' hardness). And, of course, when they're finally worn down... they're probably in the middle of a big group of enemies and breaking the thing that a symbol is on triggers it... which means there's now a sizeable hole in the enemy line (with the Symbol of Death, 900 HP version). If the enemy casters go at them... well, unless you make a deal with a few Pit Fiends for their at-will Fireballs for a few hours or something, Kang gets to pit his down-time resources against the opposing army's combat-time resources.

He is, though, currently investigating the party's character, so it does make sense that he wouldn't use the war version, and would toss weaker ones at them. Not folding the wall over itself for standard thickness and 75 hp, a debilitating Symbol rather than a lethal one... that makes sense enough in context for me to run with it.

If it had hit dice, sure. However, Polymorph Any Object doesn't give the object hit dice. Hence why I wrote it with the base saves and BAB as +0. Nonabilities give +0 modifiers whenever relevant (or at least they did in 3.5; I haven't seen a specfic Pathfinder definition for what the Strength score of '-' means no Shadows...

Also a good point.
Hasn't come up yet. Hmm. Probably not.


Umm... destroying the surface upon which a Symbol is written explicitly triggers the Symbol in both 3.5 and Pathfinder.... part of the Symbol of Death write-up.

So 75-ish HP, then, which fits with 'not folding the wall'. OK.

You mean like the attending less-disposable minion casting Haste? Good call.

But really, they're intended for slightly different purposes. The golems have reach and thus get positioned defensively, the angels have flight and are sent after enemy ranged units or those manning castle walls, the cats you send at opposing footsoldiers.

For a while, yes. From Kang's perspective, they're disposable units for warfare, not really intended to be without supervision. When not at war... well, they double as particularly dumb labor.

Well, they do get darkvision, but right, they're not intended to be without supervision.

... which is a little bit annoying when you've got one of them on either side of your actual target, who is pelting you with Fireballs and such.


In general, they're there to soak hits from the opposition's heavy-hitters so that the harder to replace minions don't have to (and to handle mop-up of opposing mooks). So yes, them being walls is about right.


Which, you know, really is one of the things these are for - wasting resources of opposing armies.

... and then the handler directs them around the hole while sending the angels around to flank.

So... general consensus seems to be to change the Symbol spell in use to Symbol of Weakness or some such, drop them to maybe 75 hp each. Great. Can-do. Not a problem at all. I'll edit shortly.

What CR should I say they are for purposes of XP?

I was arguing that as-written, being a giant chunk of HP with limited abilities made them kind of a cool challenge. Something that can't really kill you quickly, but that you can't kill at all. You gotta think outside the box to get rid of them.

I mean I suppose they work as 75-hp caster-add ons, but it isn't as compelling. They should probably have some kind of ability to intercept attacks if that's their intended role. Otherwise you can still just ignore them and kill the caster, particularly with spells/ranged attacks.

[Jack_Simth]

I was arguing that as-written, being a giant chunk of HP with limited abilities made them kind of a cool challenge. Something that can't really kill you quickly, but that you can't kill at all. You gotta think outside the box to get rid of them.

If I do stick with the 900 hp / Symbol of Death Fort DC 33 option on destruction that I started with (otherwise identical to the current posted version): What CR do I assign them? I'd like to be reasonably fair on the XP I hand out.


I mean I suppose they work as 75-hp caster-add ons, but it isn't as compelling. They should probably have some kind of ability to intercept attacks if that's their intended role. Otherwise you can still just ignore them and kill the caster, particularly with spells/ranged attacks.The disposable minions don't need the ability to intercept such things.

See, the less disposable minions were built on the same rules the PC's use (other than the minionomancy bit, for obvious reasons), but are two levels *lower* (for now; the gap will widen as the party levels, but we're using the Slow progression) on the character side. Hand-built by me, the handler has a good shot of surviving a round or two of abuse, and will likely de-host one PC per charge (of the six PC's, there are two that are built sufficiently defensively to soak a full charge from a handler). The handler also has Disguise Self available as a 2/day spell-like, plus Wildshape. With the Perception on the handler for advanced warning, and the Disguise check on the handler, it's entirely probable that the handler will look exactly like one of the disposable minions when the party reaches them, at least to within the party's Perception checks. For the BBEG, if it comes to a fight... well, full version Seige critters plus veil, and a few of the less disposable minions acting in a disposable manner because they're totally loyal and PCs are posing a legitimate threat to the BBEG. Up until the Contingency kicks in, anyway.

The CR and XP for the handler is pretty straightforward. I'm not worried about being called unfair about that aspect. But I need a CR to assign to the spell effect minions, as (at least on the first few run-ins), the BBEG will be absent.