Bebilith's Rend amor ability (Curse of Artaith players, shoo!)

[curious-puzzle]

*Ahem* Away with you, anyone who plays in the Curse of Artaith!

So what do people think that the Bebilith's Rend Armor ability should do to a Warforged?

Rend Armor (Ex)
If a bebilith hits with both claw attacks, it pulls apart any armor worn by its foe. This attack deals 4d6+18 points of damage to the opponent’s armor. Creatures not wearing armor are unaffected by this special attack. Armor reduced to 0 hit points is destroyed. Damaged armor may be repaired with a successful Craft (armorsmithing) check.

The simplest would be just to deal it as extra damage (so essentially just Rend). However, I'm not sure I like the idea of the ability in general. One home-brew suggestion I read instead was for each time the Bebilith lands an attack, it drops the armor bonus by 2. When the bonus hits 0, the armor is effectively destroyed until repaired.

Opinions?:smallbiggrin:

[Necroticplague]

Warforged can't wear armor. They ARE their armor. Note that their Composite Plating ability specifically uses language like "similar to the penalty for wearing light armor" and "spells and infusions that normally target armor....can be cast on the composite plating." This indicates that, while similar to light armor, a warforged's composite plating is not armor, and would thus be unaffected by this ability.

[curious-puzzle]

That is true...not as much fun as making it nastier towards Warforged, though. :smalltongue:

Did you have any thoughts on each hit reducing the armor bonus, rather than dealing the rend damage?

[The Viscount]

I think it would be all right if you treated the warforged's composite plating like armor for the purpose of this feat, so long as you use the rule of reducing armor bonus instead of doing damage to the armor.

I would emphatically suggest that you just reduce armor bonus instead of damaging armor for both warforged and for your non-warforged members instead of the listed ability. Just decide how long it takes to repair the armor from 0 armor bonus and what DC for the craft. I'd advise using something like the repairing warforged damage rules. Destroying PC items is cruel and unnecessary, and it encourages adversarial play.

[curious-puzzle]

cruel and unnecessary

Words I live by :smallbiggrin:

In all seriousness, though, I also don't want to wreck the PCs stuff just because I can. Especially in a game like mine where equipment and crafting is pretty sporadic...but I do want the Bebilith's ability to be something scary.

[Fizban]

The Bebilith is one of those monsters that serves a very specific purpose which should not be removed: scaring the crap out of players by damaging their armor. Armor has 5hp per point of AC bonus before magic, so heavy armor should almost always survive the first rending, at which point the players know what's up and gtfo. Except in order to do that it has to hit with both claw attacks, and it doesn't even have that great of an attack bonus. So it really is a monster that exists for the scare factor.

Assuming the rend is a threat however, there's a serious problem with having the rend reduce AC in that it makes the armor more vulnerable to future rend attacks, creating a possible death spiral. If it reduces AC then I would remove damage to the armor itself, but without that scare factor the monster loses most of it's purpose. Making individual claw hits reduce AC would make it into a support/grinder monster that gets more dangerous the longer you fight it, but the Bebilith isn't particularly tough either.

As for what it should do to Warforged, I wouldn't do anything special. Just take the damage or AC penalty same as the armor would, it doesn't make any sense to me that warforged (who can take a feat to be non-armored) would be so tied to their plating that they'd take extra penalties.

You were soliciting fiend ideas in the main thread. I think you used a Nycaloth already, those are usually my first suggestion. Have you tried a Dybbuk yet? Leave a nice big corpse laying around, it keeps standing up until they cut off the head, though it's no fun when your group automatically cuts the head off of everything (a good monster for parties that want to Animate Dead themselves). Ekolids probably can't harm them directly but the demon bugs have an apocalypse class create spawn ability that justifies dozens and dozens of them.

Not a demon or devil, but how about some Spawn of Jubilex? Very nice slime monsters at CR 6/10/14. Give them Brutal Throw to improve their ranged attacks and apply Slimy Infestation to the Sludge Form in addition to slams/slimeballs to keep it's threat level up. Best used as a single monster though, since multiple infestations probably don't stack. Bonus: as elementals there will be no sudden crit deaths. Extra bonus if you manage to get it some free attacks by pretending it's a water hazard they unleashed rather than a monster, or pull a ceiling drop in spite of their complete lack of hiding. Probably not the kind of stuff you were looking for, but I'm seeing a Depths style area where they run into some sort of dragon or other beast, get sideswiped by the SoJ while fighting it on a slope as a sluicegate opens, and then a Dybbuk reanimates the beast once they turn to fight the SoJ.

[curious-puzzle]

Doesn't really fit in the invasion, but I'm totally keeping your idea for the SOJ+monster+dybbuk in my back pocket. Thanks, Fizban!