Formian Slave Trader

[Alistaroc]

I intend to have my players encounter a caravan of slavers next session, I was drawn to the Neogi from Lords of Madness. Their whole schtick is taking slaves! But, they're CR 3 or 4, and their only saving grace is their Umber Hulk slaves. While Ilithids seem more like the cold, calculating and ruthless slavelord type, they're more interested in eating brains rather than selling them.

The party is 7 level 11 characters. 5 or 6 Neogi Slavemasters with their Umber Hulks seems decent, but does anyone have ideas to make the Neogi themselves more... formidable?
OR
Does anyone know of any good slavemaster-type monsters?


EDIT: Slaves, templates, classes, etc that would make for some good Formian Taskmasters?

[Inevitability]

Class levels, templates, general monster advancement. Are you looking to advance them in a specific direction? What story purpose will the Neogi be fulfilling?

And Formians can actually be pretty good slavemasters. There's an entire subclass of their race dedicated to dominating other beings and using them for tasks you can't solve by sending unreasonable amounts of disposable drones at it.

[Alistaroc]

Class levels, templates, general monster advancement. Are you looking to advance them in a specific direction? What story purpose will the Neogi be fulfilling?

And Formians can actually be pretty good slavemasters. There's an entire subclass of their race dedicated to dominating other beings and using them for tasks you can't solve by sending unreasonable amounts of disposable drones at it.
Story-wise, the annoying elven military outpost the players are currently in is going to have dealings with said slavers, rather than driving them off, as "Holy and righteous servants of Pelor," should. Queue players burning the camp(most likely with glee), and pursuing the slavers(who just lined their purses quite comfortably)

Any specific classes or templates though?
And I will take a look at the Formians.

EDIT: Okay, Formians fit the bill perfectly. Slave-takers, with a wide variety, good Intelligence, and a nasty appearance.
Any suggestions on improving them? Specifically, increasing the DC of their Enslave ability for the Taskmasters.
And on that note, any good ideas for slaves? The book recommends CR 4 or under, but unless there's a good option to have several of at that level, I'll ignore that.

[Alistaroc]

Nothing? No suggestions?

[The Glyphstone]

Give them the Ability Focus feat, or boost their Charisma score with the Elite array. That's pretty much it.

[DrMotives]

Give them the Ability Focus feat, or boost their Charisma score with the Elite array. That's pretty much it.

Just about. Otherwise you could give them either general +charisma gear, or items customized to that ability (which would be useless to the PCs as treasure), or if you really wanted to you could homebrew a PrC to boost it, a master slaver of some sort.

[SangoProduction]

I intend to have my players encounter a caravan of slavers next session, I was drawn to the Neogi from Lords of Madness. Their whole schtick is taking slaves! But, they're CR 3 or 4, and their only saving grace is their Umber Hulk slaves. While Ilithids seem more like the cold, calculating and ruthless slavelord type, they're more interested in eating brains rather than selling them.

The party is 7 level 11 characters. 5 or 6 Neogi Slavemasters with their Umber Hulks seems decent, but does anyone have ideas to make the Neogi themselves more... formidable?
OR
Does anyone know of any good slavemaster-type monsters?


EDIT: Slaves, templates, classes, etc that would make for some good Formian Taskmasters?

Rogues are the sterotypical underworld workers. And they've got the skills to justify it. If you want to challenge the party, throw in some wizards/sorcerers (perhaps formians, or perhaps dominated slaves) in the back who will hinder the party as the fighters fight them off, and beat them down. Throw in a good troll too.

[AlanBruce]

As written, Taskmasters always have one dominated creature of CR 4. An squad of them would each have one such creature. Possible dominated slaves that would not challenge the party, but annoy them somewhat:

Any humanoid melee class with 4 levels. Ideally half orcs or orcs.

Bugbears with 2 levels of rogue tacked on.

Forest Trolls (MM3).

Tiefling wizard 4 (difficult to explain due to wizard's high will save, but doable for some arcane back up)

As for the taskmasters themselves, the elite array would work nicely. They get some ridiculously good mental modifiers and adding in sorcerer + a PrC to the leader would not be out of place.

Have some formian warriors to help the dominated slaves and remember:


Hive Mind (Ex): All formians within 50 miles of their queen are in constant communication. If one is aware of a particular danger, they all are. If one in a group is not flatfooted, none of them are. No formian in a group is considered flanked unless all of them are.


This is very important to consider, since you could have this encounter be within 50 miles of the queen, having the party use flatfooted and flanking bonuses useless against the formians (but not the slaves).

All in all, if the party is 11th level and there are seven, the party will steamroll over the encounter if they use the right mix of spells and action economy. You might want to hand waive either the CR limit of the slaves, add more slaves than those specified under its entry, or add a significant amount of class levels to the Taskmasker himself.

[SangoProduction]

Tiefling wizard 4 (difficult to explain due to wizard's high will save, but doable for some arcane back up)

Gold has and always will be (for the foreseeable future) a strong motivator.