A simple "how do you kill" exercise

[Jowgen]

The target is a medium sized outsider that has the following continuous benefits:

- It auto-succeeds on all saves
- It has total concealment from you at all times
- It benefits from freedom of movement
- It stands motionless in the center of a lesser globe of invulnerability
- It carries a random artifact with no noteable effect
- It has fast healing 5, 100 HP and 10 HD

This creature will not attack you or move from its position. Your goal is to kill this creature using only spells or special attacks in the most efficient manner possible; meaning in the shortest space of time while incurring the lowest amount of risk and expending as few character creation resources as possible.

There is no real point, I am just curious as to how people would choose to go about this. :smallsmile:

[Glimbur]

Heighten up Rain of Stones to get through the Globe, apply metamagic to make it deadly, cast repeatedly, kill. It does require knowing where to target the spells. I'm too lazy to do the metamagic optimization to determine # of spells needed.

[Necroticplague]

Human Eidolon 2. Feats: Corrupting touch, Enervating touch. Grope around until I figure out what square it's in, then slowly negative level it to death. While I'll probably whiff because of the 50% miss chance, I'll probably hit it the required 10 times to kill it before the 24 hours for the levels to wear off occur. Can speed it up by taking Bind-fight for my spare feat.

[nyjastul69]

Is there a WBL or level cap on the attackers? What type of effect is causing the concealment and freedom of movement? Are they items, spells, or some type of Sp, Su, Ex ability. Without knowing these answers, Mages Disjunction might be a good thing to start with.

[Jowgen]

@Glimbur: Do you mean hail of stone, the 1st level spell? If so, why that one?

@Necrotic plague: So we have a negative level death via repeated no-save low level touch attack. As it no saves or spell-level-equivalents are mentioned, it seems like this works and should kill the target in on-average 2 minutes. Only issue I see is the weirdness of the Ghostwalk rules for their Ghost-classes (i.e. may or may not require equal number of levels in non-ghost class.

@nyjastul69: There be no caps, but part of the goal is to go lower level. The effects are all Su, which may or may not be subject to disjunction depending on your reading. Either way, be ware Disjunction's artifact clause.

[Troacctid]

I'd kill it with HP damage by attacking into its square. I only need to deal an average of more than 5 damage per round to beat its fast healing. Since it's not fighting back, I have all the time in the world.

[Jowgen]

I'd kill it with HP damage by attacking into its square. I only need to deal an average of more than 5 damage per round to beat its fast healing. Since it's not fighting back, I have all the time in the world.

I am afraid the challenge is to do it using spells or special attacks.

[Crake]

I'd kill it with HP damage by attacking into its square. I only need to deal an average of more than 5 damage per round to beat its fast healing. Since it's not fighting back, I have all the time in the world.

To be fair, the point was efficiency, so all the time in the world isn't the point.

Some form of blind/touchsight/tremorsense or the like to bypass it's concealment (that blindfold that gives you blindsight for example) then just power attack with a scythe using surge of fortune and bless/curse weapon to autocrit for dead in one hit damage.

[Werephilosopher]

6,825 gp buys three scrolls of maximized hellfire. Make the UMD checks, and three turns, the guy's dead.

[ben-zayb]

20HD Half-Fiendish whatever, using Blasphemy

EDIT: Build takes minimal time due to a high HD newborn monster simply inheriting Blasphemy.

[Glimbur]

@Glimbur: Do you mean hail of stone, the 1st level spell? If so, why that one?


Hail of Stone is no save, no SR, no targeting, just plain damage to an area. And it starts at level 1, which is nice for metamagic. You would have to either dispel the lesser globe of invulnerability or heighten Hail of Stone to level 4 to get around it, but that's doable. This is clearly not the lowest level option, but it would work.

As far as build resources, you'd probably want Arcane Thesis: Hail of Stone, which is a little painful but the spell has other uses. Also a pile of metamagic feats, but those are generally nice anyway. I'm not sure what risk you want to minimize here; the creature doesn't attack. To do this more quickly, be high enough level to put more metamagic on Hail of Stone especially quicken. 5d4 twice a round would get us there reasonably quickly, though you have to be pretty high level to quicken a 4th level spell (or just dispel the globe, if possible).

You need to do enough damage per round to beat the fast healing, so CL of 3 or better should do it. A wand at CL 3 is one option, combined with a way to dispel the globe (several scrolls of dispel magic?) but a slow one. That works at whatever level you have the WBL to buy those, as well as a good way to activate them (wizard levels or UMD).

[HolyDraconus]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Power Word Kill?

[Troacctid]

I am afraid the challenge is to do it using spells or special attacks.

I'd use special attacks that deal HP damage. A martial adept would burn it down pretty fast.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Power Word Kill?

He's carrying an artifact, so Disjunction risks taking away your spellcasting.

[J-H]

A 5th-level cleric can Animate Dead and control up to 20HD of skeletons or zombies. The target has total concealment from me, but not from my summoned creatures, so they can beat it down. Even if it still has concealment from them, they can surround it and beat it down. I may want to animate halflings or other small creatures so that more can surround it at once.

Once created, the undead are monsters/entities, not spell effects, so the globe of invulnerability does not hinder them.


A 5th-level cleric or druid, or a 7th-level arcane caster, can also use Stone Shape to detach a chunk of the ceiling to fall on the target.

[HolyDraconus]

He's carrying an artifact, so Disjunction risks taking away your spellcasting.

No I dont. Hes carrying it. Meaning its attended. Meaning it uses his saves. Meaning it will not fail.

[Jowgen]

I meant to just observe and let the thread flow for a while, but there are 2 things that absolutely warrant commenting on.


6,825 gp buys three scrolls of maximized hellfire. Make the UMD checks, and three turns, the guy's dead.

Wow. Down to -10 exactly. That earns some serious cool points.

You'd either need the ability to cast 3 level 7 spells as an evil cleric with the diabolic domain (so level 14), or the gold for the scrolls plus the spell on your spell list (i.e. be evil cleric with the domain, although Touchstone for Catalogues of Enlightenment higher order use might suffice), or have the nessecary UMD modifier. How high that modifier for a 4+3 level spell scroll is I'm not sure though.


No I dont. Hes carrying it. Meaning its attended. Meaning it uses his saves. Meaning it will not fail.

That is a clever piece of rule-lawyering. I'm uncertain whether it holds up, but it absolutely is clever.

[AvatarVecna]

There's a lot of ways you could kill this guy, and lots of them are going to be miles more efficient than mine, but I'm going with this build: Bard 6/Spellsword 4/Sublime Chord 2/Incantatrix 8. Channel an "Extended Reverse Gravity" into your weapon, and strike at the target until you hit. The spell will discharge and, since it does not have a set area when channeled, will simply have them fall upward for the entirety of the spell's duration. With a CL of 22 (normally 18, 4 from Sublime Chord bardic music), that gives your target 44 rounds of "falling" up, and then 44 rounds of falling back down. Now he's going to be pretty sore when he hits the ground, so ready an action: when he hits the ground, cast Transmute Rock to Lava, in order to give the poor guy a nice hot bath. The odds of the ensuing 40d6 damage not killing the target hover somewhere around .25%, even given generous estimates for how long it takes him to become completely submerged...and that's assuming the original fall doesn't kill him, which it very well might.

It's not efficient by any means, but I like it.

EDIT: Alternatively, you could get enough metamagic reducers to make Persistent Reverse Gravity castable, and then convince your DM that RG counts as fixed range because you're channeling it through a non-reach melee weapon, making the range "fixed" at 5 ft, but this is pretty nitpicky.

[CrazyNoob]

Cleric 9 and a crystal mask of insight: hurl slime spell, three ranged touch him or his square and wait a few rounds.. Assuming he's doing nothing about it, Con damage will eventually kill him in about 3-4 rounds with no save.. Average 3 con per slime ball conjured, 9 con / round, 4 rounds 36 con..

[DarkSonic1337]

For a fun twist, can we kill this guy without doing damage or energy drain?

[Jowgen]

For a fun twist, can we kill this guy without doing damage or energy drain?

Sure. For semi-hard mode, slap on negative energy immunity a la Soulfire ASA and a continuously refreshing delay death spell via some auto-reset trap or something on him.

[Troacctid]

For a fun twist, can we kill this guy without doing damage or energy drain?

Cast Wall of Water on it. It succeeds on the Reflex save, but doesn't move out of the way, so it just stands there and drowns.

[Uncle Pine]

Since the creature only succeeds on all its saves but lacks any noticeable immunity and stands motionless, a 1st level fire gnome (ECL 2) can place a block of lava on top of it. Ignoring the damage from exposure that the subject suffers while the lava is being carried to it without submerging it (on average 2 damage/round after fast healing kicks in), the target will die in about 2 round (20d6-5 averages 65 damage). 4 rounds if magma is used instead of lava (10d6-5 averages 30 damage).
If it's ruled that you can't just gather lava and place it on top of other creatures, you should be able to slowly but steadily bull rush the target inside the nearest active volcano since it doesn't fight back and Freedom of Movement doesn't apply to bull rush attempts.

EDIT: Oh, you need to use a spell or special attack. Buy a scroll of Transmute Rock to Lava for 3,825 gp and use it, or Pazuzu it for free and then use it. This way, you don't even need to be a fire gnome and can pick a different race. Kobold, for example.


Cast Wall of Water on it. It succeeds on the Reflex save, but doesn't move out of the way, so it just stands there and drowns.
This depends on whether Jowgen consider a Constitution check "a save". But it does work by RAW, since ability checks are specifically not saving throws.

[bekeleven]

As a side note, I love how "or you could just make a deal with the devil" is just another part of the optimization toolbox these days.

[AnonymousPepper]

As a side note, I love how "or you could just make a deal with the devil" is just another part of the optimization toolbox these days.

These days? Bruh, it's been in ever since the first person figured out the power of Planar Binding. Which was probably approximately four hours after the release of the Player's Handbook for 3.0.

[TheNivMizzet]

Diplomacy check a pit fiend into going murderhobo on the mook, offering the artefact the guy holds in exchange.

[The Viscount]

For normal killing it, use Planar Binding on a Jovoc. If necessary use Scorpion's Sense to pinpoint the square of the target for positioning. Stand 35 or more feet away from the Jovoc, and target it with a spell dealing 220 points of damage or more, it doesn't really matter what. The Jovoc's aura of retribution means that half of this damage (due to successful save) is taken by the target, so it dies.

If we want to do harder version, rebuke a Voidwraith, then plant it next to the target where it will suffocate it given enough rounds.

[HolyDraconus]

That is a clever piece of rule-lawyering. I'm uncertain whether it holds up, but it absolutely is clever.

Im not the one that said he doesn't fail saves. I'm just exploiting it for a risk free maneuver

[avr]

A soulblade's Su ability to summon a mind blade; is that a special attack? If so hacking away is doable from the start.

If not, a dragonfire adept could roast it slowly but effectively from level 5 with Enduring Breath, assuming it doesn't have evasion.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I wanted to use Profession (Executioner), but that requires a grapple. However, (su) abilities are surpressed in an antimagic field, so anyone who can make a DC 18 P(Executioner) check, win a grapple, and activate a scroll of AMF (or use an antimagic torc) can kill this outsider, taking however many rounds it takes to pin them, plus one round to hang them.

[Uncle Pine]

I wanted to use Profession (Executioner), but that requires a grapple. However, (su) abilities are surpressed in an antimagic field, so anyone who can make a DC 18 P(Executioner) check, win a grapple, and activate a scroll of AMF (or use an antimagic torc) can kill this outsider, taking however many rounds it takes to pin them, plus one round to hang them.
No need to use an expensive scroll or antimagic torc (all items for which the WBL of a 1st level character doesn't suffice)! Pay 100 gp at your local alchemist store and buy a chaos flask. Then turn it into a Flux Slime. Although this risks to kill your target before you have a chance to roll Profession (Executioner).

[Hecuba]

Since they are immobile, wall of fire would be very efficient resource-wise, though not time-wise.

[ericgrau]

A lesser globe of invulnerability is visible, so I know where it is but I have a 50% miss chance. So I'll go with some kind of no save damage, not necessarily HP damage. I'm going to assume that the statement that it has concealment against me also means that it has concealment against others and not abuse that.

Method:
Augment summons, know abyssal
Summon howler x 3 (68.4+51.3+34.2 avg dmg including 50% miss chance) + wall of fire (19 avg dmg) + wait 1 round. Tell howler to attack center of faintly shimmering globe. Dead in 5 rounds on average. Wizard 8, conjuration or evocation specialist, int 18 or higher. Sorc 8 with 4 summons works in 5 rounds on average too but slightly less reliably. Less spells and more rounds also works.

I bet with a bit more damage optimization you could get more damage. At lower level you can use orb spells or some other ranged spell that creates a non-magical effect to bypass the globe. Con damage or negative levels are other possibilities.