Optimizing the Maurezhi's ghoul spawning

[No brains]

If you want an omelette, you need to break a few eggs. If you want to make ghouls, you need a 6th level spell slot.

Normally, casting Create Undead gives you 3 ghouls that you can control for a while. If Summon Greater Demon is upcast at 6th level, you can summon a challenge 7 maurezhi who could create potentially more ghouls, albeit with far less control.

If I decide my goal is to make a bunch of ghouls, dropping a maurezhi into a humanoid settlement sets me off to a great start. The trouble is (I assume) that a ghoul is only made if a humanoid dies from the charisma damage from a maurezhi's bite. This creates an issue of optimizing the hp-to-charisma ratio of target humanoids. What can be done to guarantee a ghoul party?

First, picking a good target monster puts you well on your way. Quaggoths seem to be an ideal candidate. They can stand up to the hp damage of more than the ~3 bites that it takes to reduce their charisma to 0. It seems like kuo-toa, lizardfolk, and troglodites are the next best bets.

One way to help maximize ghoul output is to stretch the hp of your targets. Ray of Enfeeblement could halve the damage of the maurezhi's bite while leaving the charisma damage intact, but saving every round keeps this from working well in the best of situations. Assuming control can be maintained or the maurezhi is smart about its goal, it may be possible to knock-out loop humanoids. If a humanoid can survive a critical hit without instant death, a knockout bite against a stable target dips them down two death save failures before resetting them to zero. Barring that, pop-up healing can possibly be abused to mitigate the hp effect of the bite until charisma damage does its job.

Magical healing is also probably useful to keep the maurezhi alive while it is fighting. The good news is that it is a fiend, not undead. That means it can receive most forms of healing. It still needs to be kept above 0 lest the spell fail.

Finally, you need an exit plan. 'Air dropping' a maurezhi and then flying or teleporting away is likely what's going to be safest for you in the long run. Even if the maurezhi realizes you are helping it fulfill its purpose, the text of Summon Greater Demon says that your demon will attack the nearest non-demon after it makes it save, which it gets to try every round for an hour- while also sticking around 1d6 rounds after the spell ends early. In the end, this strategy is not about gaining an army of ghouls so much as leaving a massive problem for someone else to have to handle.

Can anyone else think of any suggestions for this crazy plan? I realize that this strat defies PHB+1 and possible readings of knock-out's interaction with damaging creatures at 0 hp, but allowances were made in the name of theorycrafting. Did I miss any other rules? Can I benefit from any other spells or effects? Do I just need to find an ideal drop zone? What do you think?

[Corran]

Disguising the Maurezhi to look like a ghoul could help a ton. Makes it more difficult for enemies to focus on it, which is great, since time works for it in a scenario where we drop it in the middle of a settlement.

Edit: Nevermind. It can assume another form on its own, and spawning ghouls takes some time, so this is considerably different to what I was imagining.

Edit 2: Hmm, I think a benefit of the Maurezhi's ghoul spawning, is that it goes against how necromancy tends to work in a dnd setting. Unlike what happens in a post zombie apocalypse setting, dnd fictional characters dont generally expect (some of) the dead to rise as undead 24 hours after having been killed. That knowledge would be restricted to a certain few casters, who either rolled pretty good on their knowledge check or who have a vast knowledge about demons (or about the Maurezhi in particular). So, what I am trying to say, is that a potential benefit of using the Maurezhi for ghoul spawning, is that there might be an element of surprise to it. So going big at the beginning (coordinate multiple Maurezhi attacks across different locations), before your jig is up, could be important.

[No brains]

Disguising the Maurezhi to look like a ghoul could help a ton. Makes it more difficult for enemies to focus on it, which is great, since time works for it in a scenario where we drop it in the middle of a settlement.

Edit: Nevermind. It can assume another form on its own, and spawning ghouls takes some time, so this is considerably different to what I was imagining.

Edit 2: Hmm, I think a benefit of the Maurezhi's ghoul spawning, is that it goes against how necromancy tends to work in a dnd setting. Unlike what happens in a post zombie apocalypse setting, dnd fictional characters dont generally expect (some of) the dead to rise as undead 24 hours after having been killed. That knowledge would be restricted to a certain few casters, who either rolled pretty good on their knowledge check or who have a vast knowledge about demons (or about the Maurezhi in particular). So, what I am trying to say, is that a potential benefit of using the Maurezhi for ghoul spawning, is that there might be an element of surprise to it. So going big at the beginning (coordinate multiple Maurezhi attacks across different locations), before your jig is up, could be important.

Disguising the Maurezhi is a nice plan, but I have trouble finding many good ways to 'disguise other'. Assuming a creature's form takes 10 minutes, so either 10 minutes of the spell is lost and the demon may turn before it is finished, or it somehow needs a body sent to it in the abyss and the ability to give you the greenlight to summon it.

The 24 hour time buffer before ghouls rise adds a layer of complication, but one that could be overcome. You will want to target a settlement that doesn't burn bodies or otherwise have the capacity to destroy/ bury bodies en masse. To combat people who may know about a maurezhi's modus opperandi, it would be smart to find some way to disguise the bites it leaves on people.

If there were some way to have its bite deal 0 damage, the charisma damage may still take effect and assessing 'loss of self' on a dead body would probably be a high DC. Perhaps, if a maurezhi were dropped on a people that have a natural bite and it were allowed to assume their form, it would be hard to tell that there was more than a normal altercation.

Multiple maurezhi would be better for spreading damage or concentrating cha damage. Bigger is better.

[Lunali]

Dropping it into the middle of town will probably cause significantly more damage on its own than the subsequent ghoul uprising, especially if you aren't nearby to command it not to use its multiattack.

As an alternative, you could abduct people from town, summon the maurezhi, and use healing magic combined with restricting the demon's actions to ensure they died of cha loss. If it then breaks free, you can be somewhere it can't get to you, leaving only the intended victims available to it. Without the restrictions on its actions, it would be more difficult, but still possible to ensure the cause of death. As far as the city is concerned, some people might be noticed going missing, then shortly after they show up as ghouls, making it reasonable to repeat, possibly even in the same place.

[PrinceOfMadness]

Looking at the Maurezhi's stat block, there are several troublesome elements you have to account for in order to optimize ghoul spawning.

The first is that it's default attack action - Multiattack - doesn't only process the bite, which, in reading the stat block, is what you need to seal the ghoul deal. Between the claw and bite attack (and assuming you've picked a target the Maurezhi will have little difficulty hitting) you can expect an average of 26 damage per round for roughly 2.5 points of Charisma reduction. Your selections of kuo-toa, lizardfolk, and troglodyte will most likely die in 1 round without their Charisma hitting 0.

Making matters worse, that claw attack has a chance to paralyze, and if that goes off, the Maurezhi's damage output will go up substantially. Weakening the Maurezhi's damage output is a start, but not sufficient for discount villagers. So you need a humanoid creature with lots of HP, a good Con saving throw, an AC manageable for a creature with a +6 to hit (ideally, lower than 16), and a low Charisma score, that can be found in bulk.

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure there's a good example of an ideal prey for this type of scenario.

Your best bet would probably be to prepare in advance by hitting these unsuspecting townsfolk with some other effect that reduces their Charisma and/or increasing their HP/THP totals (via spells such as Aid) if you want to get a good-size army out of one of these guys, but that'll eat a lot of your spell slots.