The "Whispers" of a Whisper demon ...

[orlondok]

My heroes are about to enter a crypt ...
The crypt happens to be inhabited by a Whisper demon (MM4 pg. 46) ...
One of the demon's most interesting abilities is :
Maddening Whispers (Su) : Any living creature within 60 feet of a whisper demon hears its maddening telepathic whispers and must succeed on a DC 21 Will save or become confused for 1 round. When rolling d% to determine the actions of a creature confused by maddening whispers, on a roll of 51 or higher, instead of the normal confusion result, the creature automatically deals damage to itself equal to its normal melee damage with the weapon it currently wields or its primary natural weapon, whichever deals more damage. A creature that succeeds on the Will save cannot be affected by the same whisper demon’s
maddening whispers for 1 round. This is a mind-affecting compulsion effect. The save DC is Charisma-based. This ability does not allow a whisper demon to exercise mental control over a creature, and thus the protection from evil spell does not provide immunity to this effect. Demons are immune to a whisper demon’s maddening whispers.
My question is : Do the telepathic whispers require line of sight or line of effect ?
I have searched thru other sources of telepathy and they do not actually provide details on these points ...
Anyone have any ideas regarding this (provide references in 3.5 source books if possible please)

[Cortillaen]

Looking at the text for the Telepathy (Su) special ability, it doesn't mention any requirement of LoS or LoE either. My assumption is that it requires knowing the location of a creature through some means in order to target it for telepathic communication (an argument can be made for just broadcasting telepathy to everything in range without knowing what is there), but something like Mindsight, that can locate targets regardless of LoS/LoE, would presumably allow targeted telepathy without LoS/LoE. Based on the absence of any qualifiers like in Detect Evil and similar effects, I don't see any indication that telepathic communication requires LoS/LoE. From that and the description of Maddening Whispers affecting "any living creature within 60 feet of a whisper demon", it sounds like anyone in range gets subjected to the effect regardless of LoS/LoE considerations.

Thankfully, Whisper Demons are utterly insane and not particularly intelligent, so maybe they won't be inclined to take full advantage of this ability (and the fact that a successful save only protects you for 1 round) and their own incorporeal nature by just hiding inside walls and such while the PCs fight undead or something else immune to the effect.

[Saintheart]

Thankfully, Whisper Demons are utterly insane and not particularly intelligent, so maybe they won't be inclined to take full advantage of this ability (and the fact that a successful save only protects you for 1 round) and their own incorporeal nature by just hiding inside walls and such while the PCs fight undead or something else immune to the effect.

And just as thankfully, it's just as well DMs can create unique monsters which don't behave as the average monster does, and that a more intelligent Whisper Demon commanding a covey of undead is an excellent reason that a crypt has not been successfully plundered by less awesome adventurers than the PCs up to this point :smallamused:

Thanks for drawing this creature to my attention! I would thank you on behalf of my future parties of PCs, but I don't think they'll actually want me to do so :smallbiggrin:

[Seward]

Ugh. I remember a Whisper Demon+4 Allip encounter that was just brutal in a "combat special" Living Greyhawk adventure. Each hit from an allip drains your wisdom, the DCs were such that failures were near certain (with 4 allips, even with good will save making 4 in a row is hard, and the whisper demon had much higher save DCs on the confusion) and the only saving grace was that the whisper demon does come out to do damage to somebody so it's targetable if you can find anybody in the party who isn't confused or fascinated. Plus the confused guys sometimes broke the fascination, and allips were too dumb to take advantage of all that party dysfunction.

To add insult to injury the party usually encountered a SECOND encounter of that sort later, after several were wisdom drained, and the tiers were such that restoration wasn't likely (or at best the party might have 1-2 between them).

But then those combat specials weren't supposed to be easy. Just be prepared for the party to be significantly thrashed if you make such an encounter - it will be much more swingy than a normal encounter of same EL due to the impact of who saves and when, and if the party can't kill incorporeals quickly it can spiral into multiple party deaths, tpk or at least a couple three dudes wisdom drained to helplessness if you go with the allip minions or something similar.

I do have to admit the FLAVOR of teaming an insane whisper demon with insane-mindless allips was pretty good. But they had brutal synergy.

[Jack_Simth]

My heroes are about to enter a crypt ...
The crypt happens to be inhabited by a Whisper demon (MM4 pg. 46) ...
One of the demon's most interesting abilities is :
Maddening Whispers (Su) : Any living creature within 60 feet of a whisper demon hears its maddening telepathic whispers and must succeed on a DC 21 Will save or become confused for 1 round. When rolling d% to determine the actions of a creature confused by maddening whispers, on a roll of 51 or higher, instead of the normal confusion result, the creature automatically deals damage to itself equal to its normal melee damage with the weapon it currently wields or its primary natural weapon, whichever deals more damage. A creature that succeeds on the Will save cannot be affected by the same whisper demon’s
maddening whispers for 1 round. This is a mind-affecting compulsion effect. The save DC is Charisma-based. This ability does not allow a whisper demon to exercise mental control over a creature, and thus the protection from evil spell does not provide immunity to this effect. Demons are immune to a whisper demon’s maddening whispers.
My question is : Do the telepathic whispers require line of sight or line of effect ?
I have searched thru other sources of telepathy and they do not actually provide details on these points ...
Anyone have any ideas regarding this (provide references in 3.5 source books if possible please)

I don't believe it's specified anywhere official, one way or the other. I'd be inclined to go with "requires line of effect, but not line of sight" based on how area spells usually work.