Monsters that can be advanced well?

[danielxcutter]

That is, by class level. In short, I'm looking for monsters that get a huge power boost with the right class features, and make a formidable enemy for mid-to-high optimized players. I'm not looking for game-breakers, but remember that you can always introduce high-CR monsters as midbosses or even BBEGs.

For example, if a Succubus(or similar race with insane Charisma; such as Gloura) took levels in Blackguard, they'd gain access to Dark Blessing and Command Undead, which grants Charisma to saves and lots of rebuke attempts to burn on divine feats, respectively. Bard is also a powerful substitute; even without Sublime Chord her spells will have very high save DCs.

It doesn't have to be super creative, if that's too much of a pain. If it gets something that isn't easily replicated by the PCs - at least not for quite a few levels - and has good synergy with the creature's racial abilities, that's more than enough.

Just don't say something like "Storm Giant Barbarian" - yes, that's a very good idea, but hardly original, eh? "Storm Giant Warblade"? Better, though more specifics would be welcome and it's not too surprising. "Storm Giant Swordsage that specialized in Setting Sun throws"? Now we're talking.

Oh, remember the associated class level rules.

[Celestia]

I think a fire giant barbarian would work well.

[danielxcutter]

I think a fire giant barbarian would work well.

Umm... is that mildly tongue-in-cheek joking, or are you serious? :smallconfused:

[Celestia]

Umm... is that mildly tongue-in-cheek joking, or are you serious? :smallconfused:
Joking. :smalltongue:

[danielxcutter]

Joking. :smalltongue:

*sigh* Alright, next suggestion?:smallannoyed:

Oh, admittingly, if you manage to make something cool and powerful with the right feats/ACFs, it's still good enough even if you're going with a stereotypical choice such as, well, a fire giant barbarian.

[Inevitability]

Phaerimms, because any class level they take also improves their sorcerer-casting-but-better ability.

[danielxcutter]

Phaerimms, because any class level they take also improves their sorcerer-casting-but-better ability.

Hmm... I've never heard of those. Like, at all. Care to elaborate?

[Eldariel]

CR abuse or? To that end, advanced Gibbering Mouthers are incredible by HD, but class levels...

Choker Casters are obvious: two spells per turn on a low HD chassis.

Cloakers love the Elite Array from class levels for their Moan. Solid Charisma-based casters or stat-to-AC/saves stacking classes.

Obviously Gloura go great into Cha-based Warrior classes. Bard with Snowflake Wardance for instance. Further stacking works too.

Um, Beholder Beholder Mages and Illithid Illitgid Savants?

[danielxcutter]

CR abuse or? To that end, advanced Gibbering Mouthers are incredible by HD, but class levels...

Weren't Gibbering Mouthers insane or something?


Choker Casters are obvious: two spells per turn on a low HD chassis.

Whoa! Can the make the 9th level spell benchmark without Ur-Priest?


Cloakers love the Elite Array from class levels for their Moan. Solid Charisma-based casters or stat-to-AC/saves stacking classes.

Bard, then?


Obviously Gloura go great into Cha-based Warrior classes. Bard with Snowflake Wardance for instance. Further stacking works too.

They have very good Dex and Cha; and they don't have a huge LA or useless HD. They could actually be decent PCs.


Um, Beholder Beholder Mages and Illithid Illitgid Savants?

I was wondering when these would come up... :smallamused:

[Tiri]

Whoa! Can the make the 9th level spell benchmark without Ur-Priest?

Yes. Assuming the default 17 levels to 9th level spells and the usual associated/non-associated class rules, a choker with 17 levels of a base spellcasting class would be CR 17.

[Eldariel]

Weren't Gibbering Mouthers insane or something?

They at least play the part. Aberrations, go figure.


Whoa! Can the make the 9th level spell benchmark without Ur-Priest?

They have 3HD so easily. As monsters without native casting their caster levels are nonassociated making them able to get 20 caster levels by 20.


Bard, then?

Sorcs, Wilders, etc. are fine too.


They have very good Dex and Cha; and they don't have a huge LA or useless HD. They could actually be decent PCs.

Yes indeed. Monster rules make it even better though.

[AlanBruce]

A Durzagon with levels in wizard, using the elite array. They are found in the MM2 and are basically half fiend duergar with nice boosts to several stats, especially Intelligence.

That book gave it Enlarge Person (Self only) as a SLA, but given that they are Outsiders, swapping that for Alter Self isn't too out of place.

The books says their favored class is cleric, but they get no bonuses to Wisdom, penalties to Charisma and +4 to Intelligence, so wizard is usually your best bet. Add in major energy resistances, SR, DR x/magic (which at the level you fight one should be irrelevant, but still), natural attacks and a nasty poisoned beard (that hits automatically if you score 2 claw attacks on the same target) and some spells like Bloodwind and Wraithstrike and you got yourself a dangerous foe for a mid to high level party.

Add in regular duergar with the NPC warrior class to Enlarge themselves to act as meat shields while a few have rogue levels and use their invisibility SLA to get around unheard and deal sneak attack damage.

[Schattenbach]

Uvuudaum (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/uvuudaum.htm) Urpriest 10 ... with ECL 40 and 48 HD and a CR that's up to debate.

[Inevitability]

Hmm... I've never heard of those. Like, at all. Care to elaborate?

Basically, they're a group of monsters from Lost Empires of Faerun that advance in a fashion similar to dragons, with age categories and progressively increasing spellcasting. The latter ability is worded like this:


Spells: A phaerimm casts arcane spells as a sorcerer (caster level equals phaerimm's character level). Phaerimms use their sorcerer spells as if they were spell-like abilities, so they require no verbal, somatic, or material components.

So what's the definition of character level?


The total number of class levels you have in all your classes, plus any racial Hit Dice you have.

In other words, you could give the CR 1 Phaerimm Hatchling (1 RHD) a dozen levels of cleric, and you'd end up with a CR 13 creature that has 12th-level cleric casting and 13th-level sorcerer casting, in addition to the natural perks of being a Phaerimm such as perfect nonmagical flight, telepathy, and at-will Detect Magic. Also, any expensive material component that the sorcerer spells might need can be ignored, because they're treated as SLAs (which, incidentally, also makes Quicken SLA a viable option).

[ExLibrisMortis]

Spellhoarding loredrake steel dragons.

Unbodied - if you can handle LA +4.

Black ethergaunts can just about get Incantatrix 3 pre-epic.

[Morphic tide]

A Warlock Choker can be a nasty sniper, due to the mixture of at-wills and having extra actions. Other at-will classes are similarly enhanced, although a Psion/Crusader using one of the several infinite PP tricks can become a frankly insane grind because they have access to Psionic healing as well as Crusader stuff, with two actions per turn to pull it off in. Particularly given the feat that lets you expend PP for Manoeuvre refresh.

In general, Chokers advance well as boss monsters/elite mooks because they have a mitigation of the greatest thing that blocks having single big monsters. Action economy. That extra action each turn is big. Because it lets a Gish attack and cast/manifest in the same turn. Or get away with Full Attacking with a Gish-type action to assist setting up the Full Attack or making it stronger.

[Crake]

I'm quite fond of the succubus iaijutsu master 5, allowing +cha to each damage dice from iaijutsu focus. It takes a little finangling to get the succubus to be lawful, but that also lets you take monk with aescetic monk for cha to AC, as well as your choice of either blackguard, or paladin of tyranny for cha to saves

[danielxcutter]

Basically, they're a group of monsters from Lost Empires of Faerun that advance in a fashion similar to dragons, with age categories and progressively increasing spellcasting. The latter ability is worded like this:

So what's the definition of character level?

In other words, you could give the CR 1 Phaerimm Hatchling (1 RHD) a dozen levels of cleric, and you'd end up with a CR 13 creature that has 12th-level cleric casting and 13th-level sorcerer casting, in addition to the natural perks of being a Phaerimm such as perfect nonmagical flight, telepathy, and at-will Detect Magic. Also, any expensive material component that the sorcerer spells might need can be ignored, because they're treated as SLAs (which, incidentally, also makes Quicken SLA a viable option).

Oh come on. That's not even OP; that's a gestalt character in a non-gestalt game. RAW-wise possible and might be a good choice for an elite monster, but I'd hesitate to use these more than sparingly.


Spellhoarding loredrake steel dragons.

I remember Loredrake, but I don't remember what the other two parts are good at.


Unbodied - if you can handle LA +4.

Well, monsters use CR instead...


Black ethergaunts can just about get Incantatrix 3 pre-epic.

Incantatrix? Seriously?


A Warlock Choker can be a nasty sniper, due to the mixture of at-wills and having extra actions. Other at-will classes are similarly enhanced, although a Psion/Crusader using one of the several infinite PP tricks can become a frankly insane grind because they have access to Psionic healing as well as Crusader stuff, with two actions per turn to pull it off in. Particularly given the feat that lets you expend PP for Manoeuvre refresh.

I smell fondue. The Warlock one sounds nice, though.


In general, Chokers advance well as boss monsters/elite mooks because they have a mitigation of the greatest thing that blocks having single big monsters. Action economy. That extra action each turn is big. Because it lets a Gish attack and cast/manifest in the same turn. Or get away with Full Attacking with a Gish-type action to assist setting up the Full Attack or making it stronger.

Cool! That Int penalty's a bit of an annoyance, but otherwise it's cool. Any decent Int-boosting templates that could give one at least a 10 with elite stats?


I'm quite fond of the succubus iaijutsu master 5, allowing +cha to each damage dice from iaijutsu focus. It takes a little finangling to get the succubus to be lawful, but that also lets you take monk with aescetic monk for cha to AC, as well as your choice of either blackguard, or paladin of tyranny for cha to saves

Umm... fine, if the party isn't too squishy to get one-shotted.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I remember Loredrake, but I don't remember what the other two parts are good at.

Well, monsters use CR instead...

Incantatrix? Seriously?
1. Spellhoarding turns native sorcerer casting to wizard casting. Steel dragons are the strongest wyrmling.

2. Ah, yes. CR 5, so that's pretty neat.

3. It's a 16 HD/CR 17 monster with 17th-level wizard casting. What else are you going to fit in there? Not that persistomancy is all that useful to a boss monster, other than as an excuse for the buff spells (that you were going to use anyway, it's CR 20, come on) to be up whenever the party strikes. But you can Persist some cool terrain-altering spells to pimp your evil lair.

[Dunsparce]

A 3.5 module from Dragon Magazine had a Flumph Sorcerer as an NPC(The same article is also the only 3.0/3.5 source of a Flumph's stats)

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A Dragonwrought Kobold Dracolich Warrior 1 with two claws and a bite (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060420a) and two flaws for Epic Toughness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#epicToughness) twice is CR 1 with 72 hp, a paralyzing gaze, and all of its attacks inflict paralysis.

Not exactly class levels, but a Harpy Vampire is quite potent. At night its distant song lures villagers to their doom. Give it a few levels of Paladin of Tyranny/Slaughter for Cha synergy.

A Dragonkin is CR 3 with 7 HD, so eight nonassociated levels of Sorcerer is only +4.5 CR, which rounds to a total CR 7. That's a CR 7 with 15 HD and 8th level Sorcerer spellcasting, natural flight, high natural armor, decent physical attacks, etc.

Gloura at CR 14 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?342828-Damnable-PC-s-need-a-Blackguard-built-that-ll-teach-them-a-lesson!#6)

[Waker]

High charisma creatures like Succubi make great Bards or Sorcerers. Don't forget other classes that love charisma though. Marshal's minor aura grants Charisma to a whole lotta things, so now your party needs to focus fire on the Succubi captain whose rousing that demon horde to battle. Sorcerer is a great class of course, but what about Dread Necromancer? Outsiders and Undead? How could it go wrong?
Or how about something different, such as a Lizardfolk Swordsage focusing on Shadow Hand and Tiger Claw going into Scaled Horror (Savage Species) for a mean ambusher.

[Morphic tide]

I smell fondue. The Warlock one sounds nice, though.
There's a feat that lets you recover a Manoeuvre by expending PP equal to the Manoeuvre level. Yes, 9 PP for 9th level Manoeuvres is what it does. Infinite PP tricks can take the form of using Body Fuel and Strongheart Vestments, negating the ability damage of Body Fuel for PP equal to however many times you can get away with Body Fuel per round times however much ability damage you can negate with Strongheart Vestments. Or you can use Midnight Augmentation with Twin Bestow Power, which has its PP recharge rate doubled by the Choker's extra actions. Or both, getting a pile of PP to blow on Manoeuvre refresh and needing flaws to get enough feats for it to work out properly.


Cool! That Int penalty's a bit of an annoyance, but otherwise it's cool. Any decent Int-boosting templates that could give one at least a 10 with elite stats?
Well, you can go into Wisdom casters/manifesters if you want. Admittedly, there's no Wisdom full manifesters, As for templates, I don't know. Getting to positive Charisma then going Wilder or Sorcerer is probably your best pick for casting, as you need 2 less and Intelligence templates are extremely rare.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Admittedly, there's no Wisdom full manifesters,
Arcane casters*. There is a wisdom-based full manifester: the ardent.

[Telonius]

Have a look through some of the Villainous Competitions. Many of the builds are monster-based, and quite a lot of those are really powerful. (I know I won one of the early ones with a Phasm Umbral Disciple/Totemist/Warshaper (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19662145&postcount=66))

[martixy]

Does the tarrasque count? There's just so much to improve there, and yet it has glaring weaknesses that lower its threat significantly.

It means that as a monster you can take it anywhere from a mere curiosity to a holy-shiz powerhouse.

Also, MM3's Redcap and FF's Alkilith have unique advancement options(the latter being the only monster I've seen with a listed advancement spanning 5 size categories! Also, non-dispellable cloudkill you can't blow away!).