Adapting the Cathezar to 3.5e?

[danielxcutter]

The Cathezar is a unique fiend from the famous 3.0e module, Bastion of Broken Souls. I've honestly been interested in both her concept and her combat abilities.

Below are her 3.0e stats shamelessly taken straight from the module.

The Cathezar: Female half-demon/half-devil; CR 22; Large outsider; HD 20d8+160; hp 250; Init +10; Spd 40 ft.; AC 35, blinking 50% miss chance (touch 19, flat-footed 31); Atk +31 melee (2d8+11, 6 chain rakes), +28 melee (4d6+5, tail slam); SA Constrict (4d6+16), dancing chains, improved grab, spell-like abilities, summon fiend, unnerving gaze; SQ Baatezu and tanar’ri traits, DR 20/+5, outsider traits, SR 32, regeneration 5, +8 racial bonus on Listen and Spot checks; AL NE; SV Fort +25, Ref +27, Will +22; Str 32, Dex 30, Con 27, Int 22, Wis 20, Cha 24.

Skills and Feats: Balance +12, Bluff +27, Concentration +23, Diplomacy +11, Escape Artist +32, Hide +26, Intimidate +9, Jump +13, Knowledge (the planes) +26, Knowledge (religion) +26, Listen +33, Move Silently +30, Scry +26, Search +26, Sense Motive +25, Spellcraft +26, Spot +33, Tumble +33; Cleave, Multiattack, Multidexterity, Multiweapon Fighting, Power Attack, Weapon Focus (chain rakes).

Spell-Like Abilities: At will—animate dead, bestow curse, chaos hammer, cloudkill, comprehend languages, darkness, desecrate, detect good, detect law, detect magic, fireball, haste, inflict serious wounds, magic circle against good (self only), magic chain (as magic weapon for personal chains), magic circle against good, project image, polymorph self, pyrotechnics, see invisibility, shatter, telekinesis, teleport without error (self plus 50 pounds of objects only), unholy aura, and unholy blight. These abilities are as the spells cast by a 20th-level sorcerer (save DC 17 + spell level).

Improved Grab (Ex): To use this ability, the Cathezar must hit a Medium-size or smaller opponent with its tail slam attack. If she succeeds, she can constrict.

Constrict (Ex): The Cathezar deals 4d6+16 points of damage with a successful grapple check against Medium-size or smaller creatures. The constricted creature must make a Fortitude save (DC 31) or lose consciousness for as long as it remains in the coils and for 2d4 rounds thereafter.

Dancing Chains (Su): The Cathezar can control all chains within 20 feet as a standard action, making them dance or move as she wishes. In addition, she can increase the chains’ length by up to 15 feet and cause them to sprout razor-edged barbs. These chains attack as effectively as the Cathezar herself. She can climb chains she controls at her normal speed without a Climb check.

Fearless (Ex): The Cathezar is so fierce that she believes that no one and nothing can overcome her. She is immune to all fear effects, including Intimidate checks.

Unnerving Gaze (Su): Once per round as a free action, the Cathezar can make her face resemble one of the opponent’s departed loved ones or bitter enemies. Those subjected to the gaze must succeed at a Will save (DC 27) or suffer a –1 morale penalty on all attack rolls for 1d3 rounds.

Regeneration (Ex): The Cathezar takes normal damage from blessed weapons.

Summon Fiend (Sp): Once per day the Cathezar can attempt to summon one balor or one pit fiend with a 50% chance of success.

Baatezu and Tanar’ri Traits: Immune to electricity, cold, and poison; fire and acid resistance 20; can see perfectly in darkness of any kind, including that created by deeper darkness spells; can communicate telepathically with any creature within 100 ft. that has a language.
Outsider Traits: Darkvision 60 ft.; cannot be raised or resurrected (though a wish or miracle spell can restore life).
Possessions: Cloak of resistance +5, ring of blinking, crystal ball, helm of teleportation, 3 potions of cure serious wounds, blood mark (see Appendix III), bracers of exit (see Appendix III)

(The Blood Mark is a Macguffin seeker while the Bracers of Exit negate one Dimensional Anchor per day.)

Pretty damn impressive to be honest. I know Teleport Without Error was changed into Greater Teleport, and I dunno what Multidexterity does, but aside from that... is there anything else to convert, aside from her attack routine and skills? She seems like for a quite dangerous foe for even quite high leveled PCs, if I'm to be honest, but what do you guys think?

[Firest Kathon]

Multidexterity was the 3+-appendixes-version of the Ambidexterity feat, which reduced your penalities to off-hand attacks in 3.0. As 3.5 has eliminated this aspect of two-or-more-weapon fighting, you can simply drop the feat.

Edited to add: DR X/+5 does not exist anymore and would be DR/magic now. I would upgrade to DR 20/good and (silver or cold iron), compare other high-level demons and devils

To be honest, it does not seem very impressive for a CR22 creature. It is intended for a level 19-20 party, but her main attacks are melee attacks and grappling. See invisibility to reduce the miss chance to 20%, Freedom of movement agains the grapple, Dimensional anchor and you only have a simple melee bruiser left. Other than dimensional anchor, that are spells that even a medium-level party will have available. SR and high saves, but nothing that I would say is out of the ordinary. Seven attacks with moderate damage, I would say a fair challenge to a non-optimized party and not really a danger to mid-to-high optimization.

[Telonius]

We just fought one of these recently. Our group had quite a bit of trouble with it (at level 16-ish), mainly because of the chain rakes, miss chance, high SR, and the fact that most of the group is Chaotic Neutral (so we don't typically have any Holy weapons up). We've been rolling over a lot of high-CR foes, but I think this one was more suited to target our weaknesses.

[danielxcutter]

Multidexterity was the 3+-appendixes-version of the Ambidexterity feat, which reduced your penalities to off-hand attacks in 3.0. As 3.5 has eliminated this aspect of two-or-more-weapon fighting, you can simply drop the feat.

That does certainly make sense, but her chain rakes are... weird. If they're natural attacks, why does she need Multiweapon Fighting? If they're weapon attacks, how does she qualify for Multiattack, and why is it 6 chain rakes like primary natural attacks and not one chain rake with iterative attacks and five off-handed chain rakes?

From her body shape and her chain abilities, I'd guess she's a hybrid between a Kyton and a Marilith, but I'm not sure... how did Mariliths attack in 3.0e? I think it's best to treat her chain rakes like one-handed weapons, though there are monsters that gain iterative attacks with their innate and/or natural weapons - the female Hulks of Zoretha or Illurien are examples.(Huh... all of these are unique female outsiders.)


Edited to add: DR X/+5 does not exist anymore and would be DR/magic now. I would upgrade to DR 20/good and (silver or cold iron), compare other high-level demons and devils

Let's see, 3.0e Balors apparently used to have DR 30/+3(or at least Ammet does)? And they have DR 15/cold iron and good, so... I think DR 10/good and silver or good and cold iron is good enough for the Cathezar.


To be honest, it does not seem very impressive for a CR22 creature. It is intended for a level 19-20 party, but her main attacks are melee attacks and grappling. See invisibility to reduce the miss chance to 20%, Freedom of movement agains the grapple, Dimensional anchor and you only have a simple melee bruiser left. Other than dimensional anchor, that are spells that even a medium-level party will have available. SR and high saves, but nothing that I would say is out of the ordinary. Seven attacks with moderate damage, I would say a fair challenge to a non-optimized party and not really a danger to mid-to-high optimization.

Regard the point about her chain rakes above, plus she's not just a bruiser, no sirree. She's literally got more than two dozen(specifically 25) at-will SLAs, which means she can blast(Fireball, Chaos Hammer, Unholy Blight), buff(Divine Favor, Haste, Magic Circle Against Evil, Unholy Aura), or use one of her other various utility, combat, or even minionmancy SLAs.

Dimension Anchors are less worrisome considering she literally has an item that negates one of them per day.

And to be honest, I think half the reason she's got Improved Grip because it'd be weird if she didn't what with her snake tail lower half.

Oh, and incidentally, I think she's supposed to have the WBL of an NPC of her CR - the Blood Mark does take up most of it, but it's still very useful in that she can basically use scry-and-die tactics as much as she wants on the descendant of Dydd(who is likely one of the PCs). And she also has other items like a Cloak of Resistance +5 or a Scrying Ball, so since I don't really need the Blood Mark I think I can justify swapping that(and maybe the Crystal Ball too, I dunno) with other items. Note that the Blood Mark costs 252k gp, which leaves plenty of items to give her - for starters, I'm thinking of a Belt of Strength +6, a pair of Gloves of Dexterity +4, an Amulet of Health +4, and a Cloak of Charisma +2. Which still leaves a lot of money left, so I'm open to suggestions.


We just fought one of these recently. Our group had quite a bit of trouble with it (at level 16-ish), mainly because of the chain rakes, miss chance, high SR, and the fact that most of the group is Chaotic Neutral (so we don't typically have any Holy weapons up). We've been rolling over a lot of high-CR foes, but I think this one was more suited to target our weaknesses.

To be honest, I don't really know about the Ring of Blinking, but yeah I can see her being pretty tough to fight, especially if you don't typically prepare anti-fiend abilities and doubly especially if she uses scry-and-die tactics on you. What was your group like, and was she just transplanted into your setting or is your DM actually planning to run BoBS?

[Telonius]

That does certainly make sense, but her chain rakes are... weird. If they're natural attacks, why does she need Multiweapon Fighting? If they're weapon attacks, how does she qualify for Multiattack, and why is it 6 chain rakes like primary natural attacks and not one chain rake with iterative attacks and five off-handed chain rakes?

From her body shape and her chain abilities, I'd guess she's a hybrid between a Kyton and a Marilith, but I'm not sure... how did Mariliths attack in 3.0e? I think it's best to treat her chain rakes like one-handed weapons, though there are monsters that gain iterative attacks with their innate and/or natural weapons - the female Hulks of Zoretha or Illurien are examples.(Huh... all of these are unique female outsiders.)



Let's see, 3.0e Balors apparently used to have DR 30/+3(or at least Ammet does)? And they have DR 15/cold iron and good, so... I think DR 10/good and silver or good and cold iron is good enough for the Cathezar.



Regard the point about her chain rakes above, plus she's not just a bruiser, no sirree. She's literally got more than two dozen(specifically 25) at-will SLAs, which means she can blast(Fireball, Chaos Hammer, Unholy Blight), buff(Divine Favor, Haste, Magic Circle Against Evil, Unholy Aura), or use one of her other various utility, combat, or even minionmancy SLAs.

Dimension Anchors are less worrisome considering she literally has an item that negates one of them per day.

And to be honest, I think half the reason she's got Improved Grip because it'd be weird if she didn't what with her snake tail lower half.

Oh, and incidentally, I think she's supposed to have the WBL of an NPC of her CR - the Blood Mark does take up most of it, but it's still very useful in that she can basically use scry-and-die tactics as much as she wants on the descendant of Dydd(who is likely one of the PCs). And she also has other items like a Cloak of Resistance +5 or a Scrying Ball, so since I don't really need the Blood Mark I think I can justify swapping that(and maybe the Crystal Ball too, I dunno) with other items. Note that the Blood Mark costs 252k gp, which leaves plenty of items to give her - for starters, I'm thinking of a Belt of Strength +6, a pair of Gloves of Dexterity +4, an Amulet of Health +4, and a Cloak of Charisma +2. Which still leaves a lot of money left, so I'm open to suggestions.



To be honest, I don't really know about the Ring of Blinking, but yeah I can see her being pretty tough to fight, especially if you don't typically prepare anti-fiend abilities and doubly especially if she uses scry-and-die tactics on you. What was your group like, and was she just transplanted into your setting or is your DM actually planning to run BoBS?

Actually running BoBS, updated to 3.5.

Our group:

1 - Draconic Human Rogue1/Cleric/Warlock/Eldritch Disciple (Olidammara) - Me, mainly focused on sneakiness and Eldritch Blast, with casting on the side. (I'm the "fake cleric" of the party; generally using Blend into Shadows to get Craven sneak attack in my Warlock darkness invocation)
2 - Feytouched BardBlade - S., casual player, mainly a "point me at the bad guys and let me charge" type
3 - Human (Heavily Houseruled) Monk/Paladin/Ordained Champion - K., DM's significant other. Absurd AC, able to deal some actual damage due to houserules
4 - Human Sorcerer/Dracolexi - C., my significant other, casual player, blasty, mostly acid-based spells
5 - Human Wizard - N., the Party Pyromaniac. Mostly blasty, but has been picking out spells much more deviously recently.

Lots of blasty damage in the Fire and Acid categories, which the bad guy has Resistance 20 to.

If I'm remembering right, S. won initiative and charged it (Shock Trooper), missed because of the Blinking. It went next and hit S in the face with 5 of the 6 chains, and Constricted. C proceeded to fail against its SR (thanks to some truly horrible rolling, even with Assay Spell Resistance). N cast Greater Invisibility, which didn't help at all (thanks to See Invisibility); though we didn't know this since our Knowledge rolls weren't quite high enough. I had to use a couple of Revivify spells by the end of the combat.

[danielxcutter]

Actually running BoBS, updated to 3.5.

Our group:

1 - Draconic Human Rogue1/Cleric/Warlock/Eldritch Disciple (Olidammara) - Me, mainly focused on sneakiness and Eldritch Blast, with casting on the side. (I'm the "fake cleric" of the party; generally using Blend into Shadows to get Craven sneak attack in my Warlock darkness invocation)
2 - Feytouched BardBlade - S., casual player, mainly a "point me at the bad guys and let me charge" type
3 - Human (Heavily Houseruled) Monk/Paladin/Ordained Champion - K., DM's significant other. Absurd AC, able to deal some actual damage due to houserules
4 - Human Sorcerer/Dracolexi - C., my significant other, casual player, blasty, mostly acid-based spells
5 - Human Wizard - N., the Party Pyromaniac. Mostly blasty, but has been picking out spells much more deviously recently.

Lots of blasty damage in the Fire and Acid categories, which the bad guy has Resistance 20 to.

If I'm remembering right, S. won initiative and charged it (Shock Trooper), missed because of the Blinking. It went next and hit S in the face with 5 of the 6 chains, and Constricted. C proceeded to fail against its SR (thanks to some truly horrible rolling, even with Assay Spell Resistance). N cast Greater Invisibility, which didn't help at all (thanks to See Invisibility); though we didn't know this since our Knowledge rolls weren't quite high enough. I had to use a couple of Revivify spells by the end of the combat.

Ouch. Yeah, she's hard to damage with spells; you've practically got to look for damage types hardly resisted(sonic, force, desiccation, etc.) and good luck with that since most probably allow SR. Guessing Nurn really saved your asses.