Ghost Angel: The Thing That should not be

[atadsp]

Hello,

I am DMing a game right now, and the players have just engaged an Astral Deva which has the ghost template applied (Its a long story, basiclly reality in the area where the Deva died is broken allowing things like her to become ghosts).

How should the Astral Deva fight the party?

We have an Lawful Evil warforged Fighter with some stealth abilities that's level 12
We have a neutral Good Dragon Shaman level 13
A Lawful Neutral monk with wings whose goal is to be the fastest there ever was level 13
A Neutral Good Artificer level 13
and a Stormcaster/druid level 13

The first attack is against the warforged, after that I want to know the most effect method by which to fight the party using what a Astral Deva with the ghost template could do. I have until next Saturday to plan the session. I want this to be a fight that is hard for them. They have enough gold on hand to resurrect two or three party members without liquidating assets (they haven't had a chance to use it yet.) I also want to know how the deva would fight and act.

[Crake]

Which ghost abilities did the astral deva get?

For a start, giving the astra deva the lifesense feat (libris mortis) will make sure the stealthy player cannot hide from him, as he will be radiating light. Alternatively, you could instead have the astral deva cast continual flame on some of his gear to achieve a similar purpose. In addition, giving the astral deva the planar touchstone feat for catalogues of enlightenment (inquisition domain) (planar handbook), along with the arcane mastery feat (complete arcane), this will allow him to use his at will dispel magic to perform targeted dispels on the players and, without fail, strip away all their buffs. It's spell resistance will protect it against practically anything the players have at their disposal unless it ignores spell resistance and can affect incorporeal creatures. Is the astral deva still an outsider despite the ghost template? Or is it an undead? Because if it's undead, its heal abilities will actually hurt it instead, though the savage species type pyramid seems to imply that if you could somehow apply ghost to an outsider, it would remain an outsider.

Start by trapping the players in a blade barrier, and give it flyby attack and it can zip in and out of the ground spamming holy smite on the party until all the non-good players are dead, and blinding the evil people in the process, taking time to heal itself while hidden in the ground as necessary and maintaining holy aura on itself to add further chances to blind the evil people and grant it extra defenses against the monk who will probably be trying to fly up to him and attack. Note that unless the monk has an actual enhancement on his fists through either a spell (which would be dispelled by the automatic at will dispel the deva has at his disposal) or a magic item, he cannot strike the ghost, even with his ki strike (magic), because that is purely for overcoming damage reduction, not striking incorporeal.