Jay R
2023-03-30, 10:38 PM
My players did something cool last weekend. I didn’t know the rule on it, so I made a DM call and allowed it to work – slowly.
I’m not second-guessing my decision. Running a game happens in real time, and decisions are extemporaneous. That’s fine. Besides, the players thought it was awesome.
But because I’m new to running 3.5e, I thought I’d ask what the rules (and/or other DMs) would suggest.
The party is five 6th levels and one 5th level, plus a 4th level cleric cohort, who had just joined the party. The players have been D&D players off and on since the 1980s, but have never played 3.5e before.
They were being attacked by a necromancer who would then escape and look for bigger corpses and bones to animate. [He was actually after the cohort.] The first attack was ten humanoid skeletons and ten humanoid zombies – a mix of humans, elves (sort of), hobbits, and kobolds. I two turns, the cleric had destroyed them all, but they’d gotten a little experience – enough to know that skeletons have DR 5 / bludgeoning and zombies have DR 5 / slashing.
The next encounter was two owlbear zombies and 3 owlbear skeletons. Then 2 minotaur zombies and 2 minotaur skeletons.
When they finally cornered the necromancer, he had found a fossilized triceratops skeleton. [Their reaction when I put the mini out was quite gratifying. It’s 2½ inches high and 5½ inches long, plus the tail.]
I was running it like a normal triceratops skeleton, but with higher AC because it was made from a fossil. The rogue’s first physical attack would have hit normal skeleton, so I had the rogue make an INT check. He rolled fairly high, and I announced, “It did no damage. It felt like it should have, but the thing is harder than it should be. It’s like you’re hitting stone, not bone.”
So one of them pulled out his wand of stone shape, and flew over the skeleton. He tried to reshape its neck vertebrae so they wouldn’t hold his head.
That’s a really cool idea, but I had no idea whether it should work. The skeleton is held together by negative energy more than by bone and sinew. I quickly looked up the spell stone shape to see if it mentioned whether it affected stone golems or earth elementals. That would give me an idea of what to do, but the rule didn’t mention it.
So I decided it would work, but be difficult, because the spell was fighting the negative energy of the animate dead spell. After his first attempt, the head was held at a funny angle and I gave it a penalty for its gore attack. A second casting, and I decided he couldn’t gore at all, and it tried to trample them. After the third use of stone shape, I had the head fall off. [And the ones near the front had to make a reflex save.] Finishing off a headless skeleton whose only attack was a now non-existent gore wasn’t difficult.
Again, I am not second-guessing my decision. But I would like to learn what other DMs would have done, and if there is a rule that would have helped guide me.
So what would you have done?
Thanks for any comments you have to offer.
I’m not second-guessing my decision. Running a game happens in real time, and decisions are extemporaneous. That’s fine. Besides, the players thought it was awesome.
But because I’m new to running 3.5e, I thought I’d ask what the rules (and/or other DMs) would suggest.
The party is five 6th levels and one 5th level, plus a 4th level cleric cohort, who had just joined the party. The players have been D&D players off and on since the 1980s, but have never played 3.5e before.
They were being attacked by a necromancer who would then escape and look for bigger corpses and bones to animate. [He was actually after the cohort.] The first attack was ten humanoid skeletons and ten humanoid zombies – a mix of humans, elves (sort of), hobbits, and kobolds. I two turns, the cleric had destroyed them all, but they’d gotten a little experience – enough to know that skeletons have DR 5 / bludgeoning and zombies have DR 5 / slashing.
The next encounter was two owlbear zombies and 3 owlbear skeletons. Then 2 minotaur zombies and 2 minotaur skeletons.
When they finally cornered the necromancer, he had found a fossilized triceratops skeleton. [Their reaction when I put the mini out was quite gratifying. It’s 2½ inches high and 5½ inches long, plus the tail.]
I was running it like a normal triceratops skeleton, but with higher AC because it was made from a fossil. The rogue’s first physical attack would have hit normal skeleton, so I had the rogue make an INT check. He rolled fairly high, and I announced, “It did no damage. It felt like it should have, but the thing is harder than it should be. It’s like you’re hitting stone, not bone.”
So one of them pulled out his wand of stone shape, and flew over the skeleton. He tried to reshape its neck vertebrae so they wouldn’t hold his head.
That’s a really cool idea, but I had no idea whether it should work. The skeleton is held together by negative energy more than by bone and sinew. I quickly looked up the spell stone shape to see if it mentioned whether it affected stone golems or earth elementals. That would give me an idea of what to do, but the rule didn’t mention it.
So I decided it would work, but be difficult, because the spell was fighting the negative energy of the animate dead spell. After his first attempt, the head was held at a funny angle and I gave it a penalty for its gore attack. A second casting, and I decided he couldn’t gore at all, and it tried to trample them. After the third use of stone shape, I had the head fall off. [And the ones near the front had to make a reflex save.] Finishing off a headless skeleton whose only attack was a now non-existent gore wasn’t difficult.
Again, I am not second-guessing my decision. But I would like to learn what other DMs would have done, and if there is a rule that would have helped guide me.
So what would you have done?
Thanks for any comments you have to offer.