Eliminating A Pest Problem: Asking The Playground to Kill Somethings

[White Blade]

Alright, so I was thinking about templates and high-powered magical deviance for another thread and a set of malign ideas popped into my head. Suppose a fairy queen of difficult disposition were to gift mortals with her favorite stock of hunting cats to deal with pests, Magebred Shadow Half-Fey Cats to be precise and they breed true. Suppose that these cats were successfully able to propagate themselves into a few hundred and the fairy queen no longer cares what happens to them. What's the best way for a city to eliminate these new pests? I have no doubt it's quite doable but keep in mind that adventurers are expensive and the city would prefer to keep it lower level where possible. The cats do not seek out conflict with humanoids and generally only "emerge" into visibility after successfully Charming everyone present.

HP: 1/2d8 (2)
STATS: Str 5, Dex: 21, Con: 10, Int: 2, Wis: 14, Cha: 11
Speed: 60 ft., 120 Fly (Good)
AC: 19, Touch 15, Flatfooted 14
Attack: Melee +5 1d2-3
Special Qualities: Charm Person at will, Shadow Blend, Scent, Low Light Vision, Dark Vision 60 ft., Evasion, DR 5/Cold Iron
Skills: Move Silently +15, Spot +8, Listen +8
Feats: Alertnessb, Weapon Finesseb, Flyby Attack
CR: 2
Shadow Blend grants total concealment in non-daylight conditions. The cats can also use Hypnotism 1/day and Glitterdust/Faerie Fire 1/Day (one or the other, not both)

[Kayblis]

A level 1 Rogue with Darkstalker can go around town, hiding vigilante style and killing these pests one by one with sneak attacks. It has a pretty decent chance to beat their rolls(Strongheart Halfling for more mods) and can one-hit them most of the time without cold-iron weapons. They also don't have Hide listed.

[White Blade]

A level 1 Rogue with Darkstalker can go around town, hiding vigilante style and killing these pests one by one with sneak attacks. It has a pretty decent chance to beat their rolls(Strongheart Halfling for more mods) and can one-hit them most of the time without cold-iron weapons. They also don't have Hide listed.

How does the Rogue see them when they have total concealment? Quoth the SRD Hide Section: "Total cover or total concealment usually (but not always; see Special, below) obviates the need for a Hide check, since nothing can see you anyway." In the event that they're caught out in broad daylight somehow, their hide bonus is +16 (+4 Cat, +8 Tiny, +5 Dex).

[Jack_Simth]

Poisoned bait. Fey eat, and those things have a pretty low Fort save.

[Vizzerdrix]

Poisoned bait. Fey eat, and those things have a pretty low Fort save.

This, but I'd recommend using cold iron pellets or filings mixed into the bait. Shouldn't be too bad for non fey pets.

[Malroth]

Offer sacrifices of fish to our new feline overlords

[The Viscount]

Can the city be temporarily evacuated? If so, you can always "fumigate" using cloudkill.

[White Blade]

Offer sacrifices of fish to our new feline overlords
This is the response whenever they show up and nuke people with Charm Person, which is essentially the problem.

Can the city be temporarily evacuated? If so, you can always "fumigate" using cloudkill.
Cloudkill is way slower than the cats and it sinks (they have no trouble rising or hovering), so cloudkill isn't a particularly effective way of addressing the problem even if you spotted one of the cats.

Poisoned bait. Fey eat, and those things have a pretty low Fort save.
From a non-RAW perspective, this does seem to be the ideal choice, but are there any cheap poisons? Oil of Taggit is 75 GP per dose, causes unconsciousness. That's fine as far as it goes - Knock them unconscious and then coup de grace them. But are there other options that are cheaper?

[The Viscount]

I was assuming that the problem here is just cats flooding the streets, and you're doing a concerted effort from a team of people to coat the area rather than look for specific cats. You can make it invisible if you wish, for less detectable problems.
Then again this is exactly the sort of situation that will create ephemeral swarms, which are easily a worse problem.

An alternative strategy is the use of however many Marshal 2/Dragon Shaman 1 your town can afford, or a single Marshal 2 and however many Dragon Shaman 1 characters you can get. A single 3rd level or one of each will take care of any number of cats. There are any number of playable races that are not humanoids, say Warforged. For marshal aura pick hardy soldiers, for Dragon Shaman aura pick energy. They cannot be hurt by the cats and when attacked the 2 energy kills them. This is of course assuming that the cats can be sufficiently riled up to attack, which might not be what you want.

If we really want a cruel pied piper to solve our cat problem we can splurge on hiring the services of an 8th level binder. Again, pick your nonhumanoid race, there are plenty. This Binder selects DR as their pact bonus, again preventing themselves from being hurt by the cats. The binder chooses Balam as the first vestige for that sweet gaze attack. For the other one we'll choose Chupoclops so we know of the presence of cats in the surrounding area. Then our binder just kind of hangs out and the cats fall to Balam's gaze.

There's always the old 2 Jovocs, but that's rather a nuclear option.

Of course there's always traps, but I'm assuming you're looking for colorful solutions as well as practical ones. If you're looking at poison, Black Dogs can make it for free, though limited uses per day.

[Jack_Simth]

This is the response whenever they show up and nuke people with Charm Person, which is essentially the problem.

Cloudkill is way slower than the cats and it sinks (they have no trouble rising or hovering), so cloudkill isn't a particularly effective way of addressing the problem even if you spotted one of the cats.

From a non-RAW perspective, this does seem to be the ideal choice, but are there any cheap poisons? Oil of Taggit is 75 GP per dose, causes unconsciousness. That's fine as far as it goes - Knock them unconscious and then coup de grace them. But are there other options that are cheaper?

How do you feel about a potion of Magic Missle or Inflict Light Wounds?

[Troacctid]

Set traps for them. They have -4 Search and their Int is probably too low to even think to look anyway.

[Quertus]

Kill all the humans in the town, replace with residents immune to Charm Person, profit.

Or just accept that the town loves cats.

[Jack_Simth]

Set traps for them. They have -4 Search and their Int is probably too low to even think to look anyway.

Note that the DR 5/Cold Iron makes this expensive, unless they are live traps.

[Crake]

Blindsight and magic missile should do the trick. Arguably true seeing should let you see them. They only have 2 int, so they aren't particularly smart, and since they didn't evolve, they wouldn't necessarily have any natural instincts beyond that of a normal cat, so they wouldn't necessarily instinctually avoid lighted conditions in an effort to stay hidden any more than other cats would. Likewise, it's honestly unlikely that they'd be able to make any decent use of their charm person SLA, as again, it's not an instinct that they would have evolved. Even so, the save DC would be pretty low, and once they've failed it once, the hostile tingle from a passed save would likely incur penalties for retries as if the subject were in combat.

But yeah, easiest way to avoid it is to just use a non-humanoid as the pest remover, not a hard problem to solve. If you want to make sure you've gotten them for the most part, throw out a locate creature spell, that should ping any that are in a decent radius which you can hunt down

So, for the cost of 750gp for a wand of magic missile, 700gp for a scroll of locate creature, and 9000gp for a blindfold of true darkness, you should be able to spend the next hour and a bit walking around town picking off the little suckers one by one. Admittedly, the wand has a 1/4 chance to leave them on 0hp, giving them a chance to escape/force you to waste another charge, but that could be solved by simply having the person doing the eliminationg pick up the knowledge devotion feat for a minimum +1 to damage rolls, which should give you a nice auto-kill.

[Afghanistan]

I can't imagine why paying a Druid or a Cleric 280gp just to cast Stone Metamorphosis per casting to make Sickstone wouldn't work. They have an intelligence of 2 meaning they can't read any warning signs that might be set up to keep citizens away from these areas that are switched out, changed, and closed off at random and arbitrary parts of the day (nothing says that I can't just make a single shard of Sickstone and have it glow off it's 40 ft illumination), but they might wander into such areas and then be forced to make all sorts of nasty fortitude saves and overtime either migrate out or be fully exterminated.

Cheap, easy, effective. Unless these things are immune to magical sickness or their fortitude is 15 or they have some way of avoiding the illumination of the stones or whatever.

[Psyren]

I have no doubt it's quite doable but keep in mind that adventurers are expensive and the city would prefer to keep it lower level where possible.

No offense, but any city that gets this kind of attention from a "fairy queen" is probably going to need to loosen the purse strings a bit. That is definitely an adventurer-sized problem, if not one for an entire organization. So yes, the "best way" is going to involve some high level seek-and-destroy or relocation magic.

[Bronk]

Alright, so I was thinking about templates and high-powered magical deviance for another thread and a set of malign ideas popped into my head. Suppose a fairy queen of difficult disposition were to gift mortals with her favorite stock of hunting cats to deal with pests, Magebred Shadow Half-Fey Cats to be precise and they breed true. Suppose that these cats were successfully able to propagate themselves into a few hundred and the fairy queen no longer cares what happens to them. What's the best way for a city to eliminate these new pests? I have no doubt it's quite doable but keep in mind that adventurers are expensive and the city would prefer to keep it lower level where possible. The cats do not seek out conflict with humanoids and generally only "emerge" into visibility after successfully Charming everyone present.

HP: 1/2d8 (2)
STATS: Str 5, Dex: 21, Con: 10, Int: 2, Wis: 14, Cha: 11
Speed: 60 ft., 120 Fly (Good)
AC: 19, Touch 15, Flatfooted 14
Attack: Melee +5 1d2-3
Special Qualities: Charm Person at will, Shadow Blend, Scent, Low Light Vision, Dark Vision 60 ft., Evasion, DR 5/Cold Iron
Skills: Move Silently +15, Spot +8, Listen +8
Feats: Alertnessb, Weapon Finesseb, Flyby Attack
CR: 2
Shadow Blend grants total concealment in non-daylight conditions. The cats can also use Hypnotism 1/day and Glitterdust/Faerie Fire 1/Day (one or the other, not both)

I don't know... why would they want to get rid of these guys? Everyone's their friend now, and wants to give them snacks. It's a lot like regular cats, only there are even fewer rats around. I guess everyone could be ready with some snacks at all times, then have some shiny dangly cat toys set up to spring out and act as a counter distraction when you open your snack container. But really, if anything, the adventure would be for PCs entering the town and seeing everyone already completely smitten with their undetectable kitten overlords.

Hire some shadow mastiffs?

This is a fun idea! I think you'd need to give the cats at least one full HD before any of the half-fey SLAs kick in though. However, once they get started, Half-fey can advance with class levels, and that's when you'd really want to watch out. They've basically been defeating people all that time, gaining experience, and if they get sneak attack, and decide they don't like the townsfolk, it's all over. If they do like the townsfolk, well, you can break out the Fabulous Cats Dragon article and go to town!

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fools/20030401c