Experience with Inevitables?

[SilverLeaf167]

For reference, here are the basic Inevitables on the SRD. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/inevitable.htm)

Who doesn't like the idea of a plane-shifting Terminator? Thing is, I'm curious about how people have actually used or seen them used in campaigns before. Their reasons for chasing people are pretty vague; what kind of promise do I have to break to get a Kolyarut after me? Is dealing with a Marut something of a rite of passage for every new lich (note to self: hell yes), and will they send a new one at regular intervals? How does anyone have the guts to resist the law when they could get a Zelekhut chasing them?

Now, obviously the conditions that call them to arms are intentionally vague and completely in the realm of DM fiat, but if there are any actual examples in the books, that'd be interesting too. :smallwink:

[DrMotives]

I've read very few published adventures, which is likely the best source of examples you want, but I do recall one Inevitable character in Elder Evils, who has a little bit of background written for it. Its name is Obligatum VII, a Kolyarut with class levels.

[Particle_Man]

Aside from the three inevitables in the SRD, what are ones are out there and what laws are they concerned with in particular?

Fwiw, the lawful incarnates and sapphire hierarchs in magic of incarnum have a slight association with inevitables in concept at least (the former can take on a soulmeld that looks a bit like an inevitable, and the latter are also concerned with opposing those who would break natural laws (like liches).

[Nettlekid]

Aside from the three inevitables in the SRD, what are ones are out there and what laws are they concerned with in particular?


The others are the Quarut and Varakhut from the Fiend Folio which guard the laws of time and guard against threats to deities respectively, and the Anhydrut from Sandstorm which guards the laws of the desert or something super stupid like that, no one likes that one.

My experience is that their flavor is amazing but their crunch doesn't come up to snuff, especially against any well-built (not even outright optimized) characters. The level is a little weird. Like, you aren't about to send a Kolyarut to interact with some hustler with a Three Card Monte routine in the local bazaar, but by the time you get to any PC who has access to planar phenomena then a Kolyarut isn't really threatening enough. I find they work best as NPCs who give quests and issue ultimatums, saying "There is a looming threat to *pertinent law*, and Mechanus requests your aid or else we will have to send our armies to eradicate the threat and this town with it." Things like that. I dunno. Like I said, kind of a weird area.

[torrasque666]

Aside from the three inevitables in the SRD, what are ones are out there and what laws are they concerned with in particular?
From the SRD:
Kolyarut: Oaths
Marut: Natural Lifespan
Zelekhut: Punishments

From the Fiend Folio:
Quarut: Time and Space
Varakhut: Gods

From Sandstorm:
Anhydrut: The all consuming waste (kinda-not-really an inevitable)

[Duke of Urrel]

For reference, here are the basic Inevitables on the SRD. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/inevitable.htm)

Who doesn't like the idea of a plane-shifting Terminator? Thing is, I'm curious about how people have actually used or seen them used in campaigns before. Their reasons for chasing people are pretty vague; what kind of promise do I have to break to get a Kolyarut after me? Is dealing with a Marut something of a rite of passage for every new lich (note to self: hell yes), and will they send a new one at regular intervals? How does anyone have the guts to resist the law when they could get a Zelekhut chasing them?

Now, obviously the conditions that call them to arms are intentionally vague and completely in the realm of DM fiat, but if there are any actual examples in the books, that'd be interesting too. :smallwink:


The others are the Quarut and Varakhut from the Fiend Folio which guard the laws of time and guard against threats to deities respectively, and the Anhydrut from Sandstorm which guards the laws of the desert or something super stupid like that, no one likes that one.

My experience is that their flavor is amazing but their crunch doesn't come up to snuff, especially against any well-built (not even outright optimized) characters. The level is a little weird. Like, you aren't about to send a Kolyarut to interact with some hustler with a Three Card Monte routine in the local bazaar, but by the time you get to any PC who has access to planar phenomena then a Kolyarut isn't really threatening enough. I find they work best as NPCs who give quests and issue ultimatums, saying "There is a looming threat to *pertinent law*, and Mechanus requests your aid or else we will have to send our armies to eradicate the threat and this town with it." Things like that. I dunno. Like I said, kind of a weird area.

If one inevitable fails, Mechanus can always send another one after it. I think an inevitable can serve as comic relief, or as a perpetual extra worry behind your back. Think of Scotland Yard Detective Fix who pursued Phileas Fogg all around the world in 80 days. Maybe an inevitable can turn up at odd or embarrassing moments, so that a player-character says: "YOU again... Why NOW?"

[Jowgen]

PHB II, the section on the necrotic cradle, has an inevitable of some kind guarding a place where the positive and negative energy planes overlap. There is an "Ecology of the Inevitable" article in Dragon 341 that you should find of interest. I've personally always rationalized the inevitables as follows.

There is a kind nigh-intangible but all-pervasive "law force" in the planes (it binds the planes together and all that), which basically reflects what kinds of laws govern a particular place. That is what the Knight of Tyr's Holy Judgement feat taps into. That is what the Catalogues of Enlightenment in Mechanus study. Whenever a law is broken, it sends a small ripple through the "law force", which is detectable by the creche forges on Mechanus that birth the Inevitables. Based on these ripples, the Forges run a Sherlock-level complex calculation at all times, through which they determine where in the multiverse it would be most advantageous to the maintainance of the "law force" to deploy the next Inevitable. The uneven structure of the Law force and the astronomically high number of variable the forges consider is the reason that some big law-breaks go strangely un-addressed while the occasional seemingly inconsequential transgression gets addressed.

The Desert-based Inevitables are a stupid bug that either some Desert-deity somehow managed to sneak into the forges' programming, or Orcus left behind as a joke.

[Particle_Man]

Are there any plane-touched descended from Axiomatics (the inventors of Inevitables)? Something like Aasimar or Tieflings?

edit: Scratch that the OP had a 3.5 question and I was thinking Pathfinder. Sorry!

[DrMotives]

Are there any plane-touched descended from Axiomatics (the inventors of Inevitables)? Something like Aasimar or Tieflings?

edit: Scratch that the OP had a 3.5 question and I was thinking Pathfinder. Sorry!

Never heard of any inventors of them, lore was either they were made by the gods directly (2e) or spontaneously by the plane (3.5). But there is a Dragon magazine with Axemi, Cansin, plus para-Genasi. Law, Chaos, & multi-element planetouched respectively.

[Fizban]

One of the cooler regions of the World's Largest Dungeon is the remnants of the garrison that guards the prison of fiends. An odd choice, but it's split between two factions: a group of guardinals, and a group of inevitables. One of them conscripts any intelligent creature it finds into service, as forced rehabilitation if they're the wrong alignment or just divinely mandated deputization if it "likes" you, and one of them patrols the halls to stamp out the remnants of undead that destroyed its twin (supposedly, none of them actually would have stood a chance against a Marut). I've run the section, but the PCs managed to avoid even seeing the inevitables face to face (walked right past all their rooms) and met the much friendlier guardinals first, which is enough to keep them from being forcibly conscripted.

[Marlowe]

Are there any plane-touched descended from Axiomatics (the inventors of Inevitables)? Something like Aasimar or Tieflings?

edit: Scratch that the OP had a 3.5 question and I was thinking Pathfinder. Sorry!

Ignoring the PF stuff; we have Mechanatrix (Fiend Folio) for biomechanically-themed Lawful Planetouched, and Zenthyri (PHII) for non-biomechanically-themed Lawful Planetouched. Neither have a known origin race.

[Bad Wolf]

The thing about Inevitables that they're constantly sent. If one doesn't succeed they'll send a slightly stronger one, and then another, and another, and another...until you're facing one with 20 levels of the Wreck Your Face class.

[Mehangel]

My experience is that their flavor is amazing but their crunch doesn't come up to snuff, especially against any well-built (not even outright optimized) characters. The level is a little weird. Like, you aren't about to send a Kolyarut to interact with some hustler with a Three Card Monte routine in the local bazaar, but by the time you get to any PC who has access to planar phenomena then a Kolyarut isn't really threatening enough. I find they work best as NPCs who give quests and issue ultimatums, saying "There is a looming threat to *pertinent law*, and Mechanus requests your aid or else we will have to send our armies to eradicate the threat and this town with it." Things like that. I dunno. Like I said, kind of a weird area.

I also found that while I absolutely love their fluff, mechanically they suck. Even sending inevitables whose CR is dramatically above the average level of an optimized party turned out to be a non-issue. And since inevitables keep coming, it just meant that the party soon had a reliable replenishing pool of xp for crafting. Hell, I am pretty sure that sending a Marut inevitable against the "common" Lich, let alone an optimized one will often result in the Marut losing the fight, and once a lich knows that inevitables are after him, he can with little effort make preparations for others.

[ngilop]

I went completely different on how Inevitables are run in my game world.

First off, i completely rejected the pact primeval nonesen that 3rd ed established as "semi-cannon' and instead went with the old 2nd ed Asmodues and Jazirian were law beings


The inevitables were created by the both of them (before their falling out) to uphold and enforce the 'laws' of the universe.

Granted inevitables are a bit weak, but considering that in my world 30% of all NPCs are 1st level while another 30% is 2nd or 3rd level these guys are a tad bigger and badder. They do not waste actions trying to correct the guy who said 'yeah i will feed your pet dog twice tuesday and once wednesday while you go for a buisness trip' and instead forgets to feed the dog the second time tuesday. He instead goes after the one who swears by his ancestors that he will see the blood of all orcs he meets on the edge of his blade then like totally saves an orc from a mob of angry folk.

[Bronk]

I also found that while I absolutely love their fluff, mechanically they suck. Even sending inevitables whose CR is dramatically above the average level of an optimized party turned out to be a non-issue. And since inevitables keep coming, it just meant that the party soon had a reliable replenishing pool of xp for crafting. Hell, I am pretty sure that sending a Marut inevitable against the "common" Lich, let alone an optimized one will often result in the Marut losing the fight, and once a lich knows that inevitables are after him, he can with little effort make preparations for others.

I think that as a DM, that's one of their best features!

In my game, a PC druid killed and impersonated an evil druid minion of a BBEG, used his identity to infiltrate their evil society, and ended up signing a number of loyalty documents under the assumed name which were more or less immediately defaulted upon.

I sent Kolyaruts after the party at inopportune times for ages, partly because that's what they do, partly to beef up a game session if it was light on action. The replacements got stronger and stronger, until finally the Creche-Forges were popping out inevitables with class levels... but still only one at a time.

The last straw came when the group was ambushed by a Kolyarut sorcerer that had summoned up a wee familiar, felt it was useless as a fleshy being, and 'upgraded it' to a construct. It was a slightly longer battle, but they took it down and adopted the ex-familiar, which was a reskinned 'Golden the Clockwork Cat'. The druid was pretty angry at the whole situation by this point, and vowed to finally stop these things for good. The group put their full resources into tracking down the Creche-Forge these things were coming from, and then figuring out how to get close without being detected through magical means, which was how they figured they'd been pegged in the first place.

After doing some extra research, finding all the things that have already been mentioned on the thread, including some extra stuff from the Afroakuma planar question threads, I decided to run the Creche-Forge, one of many, as a giant, two sided city straddling one of the really big cogs in Mechanus, as opposed to a robot or black box that popped out inevitables every so often. Inevitables are autonomous, but they get their first mission from somewhere... And according to Afroakuma, they get that from mysterious Forge Elders, who also somehow know if the job is left unfinished. I decided that the core of the factory would be home to a series of elders, lead by an Afroakuma's version of the Forge Elder - a sort of a powerful, colossal, quasi-mechanical-yet-incorporeal angelic being - That was the ultimate successor to the legacy of the aphanacts.

So! The city was enormous, but difficult to enter directly via stealth. It was basically an enormous, closed fortress, surrounded at a distance by a busy, somewhat disorganized ring of floating ships filled with huge shipments of metals and other supplies, complete with angry planar teamsters and bad traffic. A much more organized series of robotic ferries shuttled supplies back and forth from the Creche-Forge to the ring and back. They would inspect the shipments, load up, then zing at full speed through quickly opening and closing portholes in the sides of the fortress (lifted from 'The Time Ships' by Stephen Baxter).

The only other way in or out was a single, ornate area that looked like a fancy copy of a Prime Material Plane castle. Every few minutes, an inevitable would walk across the drawbridge, a fanfare would sound, some glitter would fly, and a few robots would cheer. Another inevitable would be off for it's first mission!

The group found that not only was the ornate entrance under constant surveillance, they couldn't force their way into the portholes without being noticed either. Since they also couldn't discover what schedule the port holes used to open and close, they stowed away in a shipment and hopped out when the coast was clear.

Once they got out of the loading dock undetected, they found the interior corridors to be filled with all sorts inevitables of various sorts not often seen as well as worker robots all zipping along on legs, tracks, and wheels at full speed, crisscrossing each other perfectly without colliding or, unfortunately, leaving much room for invisible PCs to maneuver without being run into or sliced to bits (as in that one Futurama episode, or Wall-E).

They managed to cling to the walls, and eventually get everyone flying overhead with a minimum of reflex saves. They soon discovered that not all was perfect inside... rather, disused portions of the structure were neglected, not cleaned, and often walled off and forgotten by the less than autonomous or intelligent cleaning bots. They managed to find a hidden door that proved to be a sealed off chamber that had been welded shut and painted over, so they broke in, fought some damaged constructs inside, hid the door with an illusion, and set up camp.

Here, I ran a solo dream world adventure where the party discovered the lay of the land, where they needed to go, and got to infiltrate a few dreams while they were at it. They learned that an inevitable's first orders were inscribed onto golden plates that made up parts of its body, and they learned that the information had been discovered by a specific elder.

They determined that they had two sub missions. First, they had to sneak into the area where the new kolyarut was being made and change the orders inscribed on the golden plates as they were being conveyed around the room by robot arms, before they were installed, which worked out pretty well as they flew around frantically scribing new orders while attempting to keep up their best penmanship. They decided it was simpler to change just enough of the details to sic the chain of inevitables on the BBEG!

Second, they had to find that Elder and make him forget about the original mission. They knew where he was, and they were able to raid his office and alter the remaining physical records (passing some inevitable construct repair stations on the way... some of them gained Kolyarut hands and Zelekhut Wings as grafts), but the Elder was currently in a main, cavernous, cylindrical, amphitheater-like room (similar to the Star Wars Galactic Senate room) filled with hundreds of other Elders around the edges, which was tough enough, but each one of them was constantly scrying and updating the colossal Forge Elder, who was floating in the center, slowly turning and communing with each elder in turn.

Mind-blanked, invisible, silenced, etc., the group made sure that they were out of sight until the Forge Elder's gaze had passed, then stealthed their way behind the Elder, invaded his mind, erased his memories, and replaced them with new ones implicating the BBEG (and covering the time gap they were currently creating), hoping that since they were loading him up with real infractions, the fact that they were replacement memories would go unnoticed if checked. They then got the heck out of there.

The end!

For them, for now. The constant stream of kolyaruts arriving to bother the BBEG with their increasing power and unpredictable timing has slowed down his evil plots, but continues to empower him and his minions....

[remetagross]

Dun Dun DUN! :elan:

Hey, very nice adventure you got there to your players, Bronk :)

I think that's a very good way of playing Inevitables: instead of making them the main focus of a session, make them pop out unexpectedly in the middle of a somewhat easy fight for the PCs with a completely different foe, since they have every reason for doing so.

[GreatDane]

My experience is that their flavor is amazing but their crunch doesn't come up to snuff, especially against any well-built (not even outright optimized) characters. The level is a little weird. Like, you aren't about to send a Kolyarut to interact with some hustler with a Three Card Monte routine in the local bazaar, but by the time you get to any PC who has access to planar phenomena then a Kolyarut isn't really threatening enough. I find they work best as NPCs who give quests and issue ultimatums, saying "There is a looming threat to *pertinent law*, and Mechanus requests your aid or else we will have to send our armies to eradicate the threat and this town with it."
I find this to be pretty spot-on in terms of the challenge inevitables pose. I think they work best before PCs get involved with planar shenanigans. Inevitables are Mechanus' arms and legs on other planes, and so are best encountered away from Mechanus, as hunters or authority figures.

I've used them as "eternal guardians" in one or two dungeons, usually where the dungeon exists to protect something that pertaining to an inevitable's bailiwick. Marut(s) guarding the tomb of a trapped lich or mummy would be a good example.

My favorite occasion to make use of an inevitable was in a campaign in which one of the characters was a swiftblade. A squad of quaruts (mentioned above) attacked the party during a time-sensitive mission, charging the swiftblade with "disrupting the fabric of time" with his excessive use of haste and innervated speed.

[Thurbane]

I've read very few published adventures, which is likely the best source of examples you want, but I do recall one Inevitable character in Elder Evils, who has a little bit of background written for it. Its name is Obligatum VII, a Kolyarut with class levels.

One of my favorite module NPCs...great back-story and personality write-up!

[Buufreak]

*snip*

This is freaking gold! Mind if I nab this for my world?

[Bronk]

This is freaking gold! Mind if I nab this for my world?

Sure! Join the Circle of Nab!

Also, thanks Remetagross!