Orb of Dragonkind question

[Speeddemon87]

Hi, I'm likely to be running a campaign soon and I have a big villain planned that uses the Gold Orb of Dragonkind, has gathered a lot of dragons to serve in his army. They might have to fight dragons for a bit before getting near him, but they will fight him eventually and I'm wondering about how the AC and Saving throw replacement works. It seems to ignore any item effects from what he'd be carrying, but does it affect spells and the like? Like if he had Scintillating Scales cast on himself would that boost his touch AC like it would on an Ancient Gold dragon, or do nothing? Likewise, do his own Marshall auras effect his now altered Saving throws?

[tyckspoon]

Well, you're the GM, so if you want it to work differently you can, but the SRD text for the Orbs says

These values replace whatever values the character would otherwise have, whether they are better or worse. These values cannot be modified by any means short of ridding the character of the Orb.

Which seems pretty absolute to me. Look up the basic statblock for an Ancient Gold Dragon; those are the applicable save and AC numbers. They can't be changed as long as the character wants to benefit from the Orb. It doesn't say 'base saves' or anything else that suggests other bonuses can be applied.. on the plus side, that would also suggest the character can't suffer penalties or otherwise have his save and AC values lowered, even if he takes damage to the underlying abilities that would normally affect those (his Touch AC will still be absolutely terrible, however.)

[Speeddemon87]

I guess it is like that then. It looked that way but I was wondering if I had overlooked something. On the one hand it makes sense for it to not be boosted, because save for the whole touch AC thing he gets massive boosts (and he's paranoid enough that if there was a way to further power up his defenses he'd take it), but on the other hand it's going to lead to a somewhat boring encounter as the players will only target that weak spot since they can't even debuff him to try and affect him with other stuff. Maybe i will homebrew something to make it work slightly differently

[the_david]

Well, it's your game. You can make the Orbs of Dragonkind do anything you want to.