Holy Water, Batman! [3.5]

[Zaq]

Let's talk about holy water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#holyWater).


Holy Water

Holy water damages undead creatures and evil outsiders almost as if it were acid. A flask of holy water can be thrown as a splash weapon.

Treat this attack as a ranged touch attack with a range increment of 10 feet. A flask breaks if thrown against the body of a corporeal creature, but to use it against an incorporeal creature, you must open the flask and pour the holy water out onto the target. Thus, you can douse an incorporeal creature with holy water only if you are adjacent to it. Doing so is a ranged touch attack that does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

A direct hit by a flask of holy water deals 2d4 points of damage to an undead creature or an evil outsider. Each such creature within 5 feet of the point where the flask hits takes 1 point of damage from the splash.

Temples to good deities sell holy water at cost (making no profit).

I think I've seen holy water used in a real game approximately once. It's honestly really underwhelming. It only works against certain enemies (undead may be relatively common, but still), it doesn't do much more damage compared to acid (average 3.5 vs. average 5) and it actually does LESS than alchemist's fire (average 7 if target doesn't waste a turn putting out the flames vs. average 5).

More importantly, it's hella expensive (heavena expensive?) by the standards of low-level mundane gear, even compared to other offensive flask-style weapons. You can't afford much at level 1 or even level 2. If you do blow the budget on it, honestly, it's not likely to solve your problem by itself! Kobold or human commoner zombies have 16 HP each; a human warrior skeleton is somewhat better at 6 HP, but a wolf skeleton goes all the way up to 13 HP. In contrast, a direct hit from alchemist's fire is extremely likely to kill the sample goblin or orc in the MM1 (or at least to force 'em to lose a turn extinguishing the flame), and the alchemist's fire will also work on the zombies or skeletons. I could understand it having a very low-level niche of "expensive and narrow, but it will solve the problem it's made for," yet that's not what we've got on our hands.

The fact that it only works on undead or evil outsiders means that splash damage isn't likely to cause friendly fire, but I still don't think that's enough.

I do appreciate that we don't have any old 1e-style monsters that can only be damaged with holy water (or, more in keeping with 1e, monsters that inflict some kind of condition on you that is invariably fatal if you don't have immediate access to holy water), but it would be nice if there were something that it did do that made it really worth the effort against its chosen targets.

I will concede that it's possible that holy water could be a level 1 or level 2 party's best offense against a lemure (CR 1, 9 HP, DR 5/good or silver) or a dretch (CR 2, 13 HP, DR 5/cold iron or good), but anecdotally, I haven't seen that come up too much. (I mean, a lemure is mindless and can't really do much on its own, let alone get into places where level 1 parties would be tasked with killing it, right?) It's pretty much always undead because it's easier to justify undead showing up at low levels than it is to justify fiends showing up (without bringing in stuff that very quickly CRs out of hand). I guess it's not impossible. It's just outside of my personal realm of experience, so it doesn't feel like as strong an argument to me.

I suppose one could make a weak argument about being able to manually splash it on adjacent incorporeal undead before you've got a magic weapon, but for one, I actually forgot that you could even do that before I looked it up, and for two, you can afford an oil of magic weapon for the same cost as two vials of holy water, and if you're going to get up close and personal with an incorporeal undead anyway (gotta be adjacent to pour it on them!), that honestly seems like a better return on your investment (if for no other reason than that you're not completely hosed if you miss with the first attack roll or two).

I understand that it's a legacy item. Like, I get that much. And I'm kinda on the fence about this next part, but I guess I can see why you want to make it cost more than just a spell slot and prevent arbitrary stockpiling of it (if for no other reason than that we don't want literally every Good-aligned church to have acre-feet of the stuff just lying around). But I'm not satisfied with what we've got here, to be honest. It's not a bad concept, to be honest. It's thematically compelling, and it has the potential to be interesting. But the existing situation is very disappointing.

So what options do we have to make it less disappointing? I'm open to interesting RAW stuff as long as we're not diving into absurdist cheese, and I'm open to rules tweaks as well.

I'm aware of the priest's bullets and the holy water sprinkler in Libris Mortis and the sprayer in Arms and Equipment Guide; the LM items are uninspiring, but I suppose the sprayer at least potentially solves the "incorporeal undead" issue if you can figure out what the area actually is. If one has easy ways to plane shift into and out of Celestia, the first layer is mostly made up of an entire ocean of holy water, and as long as you're not greedily selling it for profit or otherwise using it in some nefarious way, it's not likely to anger the resident celestials too much if you were to bottle it and take it back to the Prime for use in vanquishing evildoers—that said, I'm not aware of any even slightly reasonable way to get access to plane shift at a level where holy water is still relevant. (The ur-epona trick doesn't work, much to my frustration.)

To be honest, there's part of me that feels like it wouldn't be that bad to just have it cost the spell slot and no extra gold; spell slots are enough of a limiting factor that we wouldn't just assume that every commoner was carrying forty vials of the stuff, but it means that it'd be easier to arm a low-level party against very specific spooky stuff. (If you were really afraid of the stockpiling issue, you could say that holy water created without gold cost only lasts for a few days rather than until used? Possibly unnecessary, but it's something.)

Overall, if introducing rules tweaks to improve the cost/benefit ratio, I might be more open to increasing the benefit rather than reducing the cost. What are some changes we could introduce that would make holy water have an actual purpose given that it's sufficiently expensive that a level 1 character can't afford more than a couple at the most, it's super limited in what you can target with it, and it's consumable? I feel like it should either do a lot of damage to undead, should debuff them in some way, or should have some other kind of benefit to make up for that pile of drawbacks. What's interesting, thematic, and fair?

[Lapak]

I like the way you're thinking. First homebrewish solutions that occur to me involve making them vulnerable in addition to the damaging effect:

- incorporeal undead who are sprinkled with holy water become corporeal and vulnerable to normal weapons for 1 round
- corporeal undead who are sprinkled with holy water suffer from a pseudo-turning effect and cannot attack the one who sprinkled them for 1 round

[zlefin]

brainstorming some buff ideas, since it seems like what you want.

1) in addition to damage, automatically tries to turn any undead at something like effective cleric level 2. (-2 effective cleric level for splash damage)

2) can also be drunk, in which case it functions as if it were a potion of bless (plus maybe a couple other minor extra effects, like the lvl 0 spells resistance and virtue)

3) any undead/evil outsider affected by it loses 5 points of DR for a few rounds

4) increase damage to 2d6 with the specific reason of matching the effects of the holy weapon ability.

5) makes incorporeal undead corporeal for one round

[Falontani]

It deals damage as if it were acid.

total immersion (such as into a vat of acid), which deals 10d6 points of damage per round
Alright! How do we optimize this?

[tyckspoon]

Honestly I think 'Good Churches have foot-acres worth of the stuff laying around' might actually be the intended idea. It's not great for adventurers, sure. But it's *excellent* for loading up a bunch of priest bullets and giving to peasants with slings when they have to defend against an undead raid or kitting out a city guard squad that may have to clear a Shadow or similar out of a mausoleum from time to time.

For making it more accessible to low-level adventurers: make an orison version of Bless Water. It turns CL# worth of water into Holy Water, but it only lasts.. let's say minute per level? 10 min/level? Short enough that you can't make a stockpile, long enough that you can prep up a supply if you know you're going to have to deal with the relevant subjects without having to spend combat turns creating and distributing it. Maybe create a cheap Magic Item Compendium-style item: Sacred Flask, 3/day Swift activation, causes the contents of the flask to act as Holy Water. Must be used for something within 1 round of activation or it turns back into normal liquid.

Create some additional uses for Holy Water: You can use it to bless people, areas, or objects with a sufficient Know: Religion check. The basic function is just pouring it over yourself and making an appropriately religious gesture. DC 10, so any normal person can do it with a Take 10. Creates a similar effect to Protection From Evil - the blessed person gets a +1 .. eh, let's say Sacred is in theme .. bonus to AC and saves versus effects caused by undead and evil outsiders. Blessing an area (more difficult but should be doable by a low-level character reliably - DC 15, maybe, anybody with max ranks in Know Religion and a modest Wis bonus can do it with a Take 10) provides the personal blessing effect to all within the area and discourages undead from entering. Uncontrolled unintelligent undead will not enter; unintelligent undead that are directly ordered to do so and intelligent undead must make a low DC Will save to enter the blessed area (evil outsiders are subject to the same restrictions, but can probably be expected to succeed the saves whereas basic skeletons and zombies and the such are much more likely to fail.)

Blessed objects are actively harmful to undead and evil outsiders and will inflict one point of damage on touch or one additional point of damage when used as a weapon against one. Blessed weapons are able to penetrate the special defenses of undead and evil outsiders; any Damage Reduction or miss chance is reduced by.. let's say 2 points/20%? A blessed weapon can strike an appropriate incorporeal subject as if it was magical; if it is already magical, it still enjoys the reduction in miss chance due to incorporeality.

Holy Water can also be used directly against an undead or evil outsider; a creature attacked in this fashion suffers similarly to being on fire (a small amount of damage over time) as well as the defensive reduction of being attacked by a blessed weapon - eg, its damage reduction and miss chance are reduced against all attackers, and any weapon may potentially strike an incorporeal being (possibly allow to stack with the blessed weapon effect, so miss chance in particular can really be dealt with if the party can burn enough holy water on it?) So it goes from "this is a really expensive way to do bad damage" to "now we have a chance to do something meaningful against it" - the dedicated solutions for these problems are still notably better, but holy water is helpful enough to be worth keeping in your kit.

[Efrate]

I've been known to keep a bit around for incorporeal undead and outsiders at low levels. You hit a shadow early or an imp or quasit they are hard to deal with.

Otherwise, as an embalming fluid with the prevention of corpses rising as undead is a reasonable usage, and cheaper for the common man/church than burying in consecrated ground.

[Aetis]

At our table, we ended up reducing the cost for Holy Water and made it very cheap.

[Goaty14]

It deals damage as if it were acid.

Alright! How do we optimize this?


If one has easy ways to plane shift into and out of Celestia, the first layer is mostly made up of an entire ocean of holy water, and as long as you're not greedily selling it for profit or otherwise using it in some nefarious way, it's not likely to anger the resident celestials too much if you were to bottle it and take it back to the Prime for use in vanquishing evildoers—that said, I'm not aware of any even slightly reasonable way to get access to plane shift at a level where holy water is still relevant. (The ur-epona trick doesn't work, much to my frustration.)

If you send them to Celestia (first layer, ofc), then...
1) They're not your problem anymore.
2) They're not YOUR problem anymore.
3) 20d6 (typeless?) damage/round. 10d6 on the rare chance the undead can swim or whatnot (most evil outsiders can outright teleport away, or even plane shift back, so doing this to them might not be the best idea).

...Then again, if we're using Plane Shift to deal damage via environmental hazards that just-so happen to include holy water, how much different is this than teleporting them to a lava lake on the plane of fire?