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View Full Version : [3.5]Incorpereality - How do I deal with it?



jcsw
2008-07-21, 04:24 AM
My friend is DMing not just an Evil campaign, but an evil villain campaign, that is, we're going to have to establish your evil-ness and have a master plan and all that, while defending your dungeon (or you could not have a dungeon) against pesky do-gooders.

We start at CR 11, and the thing about this is that he let us use any evil(that is, it's not "Always Good" or something) creature. Since we're using CR, there's no annoying LA, and I'm playing an Unbodied (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/unbodied.htm) Thrallherd.

Now here's the major issue, I'm incorporeal, so I can't use most items, how should I go about spending my WBL? Is there some way to wield items? I don't even have a strength score...

-My thralls don't get WBL, except for basic things such as clothes and mundane weapons and/or tools.
-40 Point buy, so I have a Cha of 22 and a Int of 22.

ghost_warlock
2008-07-21, 05:21 AM
You can use items just fine, just don't put any of them down! Weaponry and armor won't be all that helpful unless it's ghost touch, but other gear and miscellaneous stuff will still work for an incorporeal creature (the item is also incorporeal).

Buff your stats, especially Int and Cha, give yourself some miscellaneous abilities such as teleportation and such from items. Ignore natural armor or deflection bonuses to AC (natural armor won't apply to you and you already have a deflection bonus from your Cha that doesn't stack with a ring of protection and the like). A monk's belt and insight bonuses to AC can be utilized, though.

You can use dorjes/wands and similar items because powers/spells cast by an incorporeal creature still affect other creatures just fine.

Ecalsneerg
2008-07-21, 05:21 AM
Ghostly Grasp, from Libris Mortis allows you to carry items while incorporeal. It needs Cha 13, but hey, you're a Thrallherd anyway. :smallbiggrin:

Talic
2008-07-21, 05:36 AM
Ghost touch is effective. However, if you're going this route, why not pick a high Cha/Int race and go with a Psion Uncarnate?

Or, for real fun:

Young Green Dragon

CR 5, 11 HD. Primary strengths are in melee combat. Melee class levels are considered Associated class levels.

Has no casting ability, so caster levels are non-associated class levels, per SRD. Thus, each one may be added at an increase of 1/2 CR until those levels equal the HD of the creature.

So now, I can add 10 levels of cleric for +5 CR.

Now I have a 21 HD creature at CR 10. Throw on a level of fighter, and take your two epic feats.

So I have a 22 HD creature with access to Divine Power. Competitive starting stats (Str +6, Con +4, Int +2, Wis +2, Cha +2). Access to 2 epic feats. Able to take full advantage of magic gear. Make sure to take practiced spellcaster so his Caster level is 14.

This, friends, is why players don't get access to the CR system.

Jack_Simth
2008-07-21, 06:19 AM
This, friends, is why players don't get access to the CR system.Oddly, it does work so long as everyone is using approximately the same "base" - because balance is relative to the other players, not to the CR system (I'm running a dragon game, myself, using somewhat similar rules).

By default, there's only a couple of critters where you can use that tactic (most critters under CR 5 or 6 have less than double their CR in Hit Dice by default), unless you are permitted to advance by hit dice first.

So while the Air Memphit is CR 3 with 3 hit dice, elemental hit dice are +1 CR per 4 HD added, so it's only CR 4 with 7 hit dice... and CR 4.5 with 9. Generally though, yeah, it's the Dragons you want to look at to abuse that particular aspect - with a couple, you can end up with more spellcasting levels than you have CR....

Talic
2008-07-21, 06:32 AM
Satyrs are abusable too. As bard primaries, you can go Wizard, and have a creature with a Base CR of 2, 5 Racial HD, and take it to wizard 5/Fighter1, and have an 11 hit dice creature with a BAB above +5, 5 levels of wizard, and a total CR of 5.

There's a lot of critters with many more HD than CR. This is because the primary way of giving a critter staying power is adding HP.

Turcano
2008-07-21, 07:07 AM
There's a lot of critters with many more HD than CR. This is because the primary way of giving a critter staying power is adding HP.

Of course, that's yet another of the assumptions made by the CR assignment team, the other primary assumptions being playtesting with the standard unoptimized meatshield/ skillmonkey/ healbot/ blaster-caster team-up and bugger-all strategy on the part of the DM.

Tangentially, has there ever been an attempt to systematically recalibrate CR?

Talic
2008-07-21, 10:21 AM
I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that my analysis of the MM and the typical high HD to CR ratio of many creatures would bring about a rant on all that is evil about the game that was good enough for your gaming group to shell out how much money on again?

Incidentally, you put "Tangentially" in the wrong part of your post. It should be the first word, as your entire post is a tangent derailing of the actual subject matter. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, I'm just a nitpicky kinda guy, I guess.

Jack_Simth
2008-07-21, 03:47 PM
Satyrs are abusable too. As bard primaries, you can go Wizard, and have a creature with a Base CR of 2, 5 Racial HD, and take it to wizard 5/Fighter1, and have an 11 hit dice creature with a BAB above +5, 5 levels of wizard, and a total CR of 5.

There's a lot of critters with many more HD than CR. This is because the primary way of giving a critter staying power is adding HP.
The break point for it being abusable under this particular method is HD = 2*CR. If it's less than that, then you can't cram in more class features (e.g., spellcasting) than your final CR. If it's more than that, you can cram in more class features than you have CR (so your 9 HD Satyr (base 5 HD, +4 HD = +1 CR)) is CR 3, base, and can get 8 or 9 class levels before they're considered associated - so an advanced Satyr (9 HD, CR 3), without pipes but with class levels in Wizard (let's use 9 of them, for now) would be CR 7.5. He's got 1.5 more class levels than CR (and with 18 hit dice, his BAB and Saves, even when they're poor, are non-negligible).

However, as long as everyone in the party is using the same basic framework, and using about the same level of optimization at it, it's fine. In a party of four Satyr's (without HD advancement on the base critter) with a campaign-rule that you advance by CR instead of ECL, nobody has any particular edge over the others (other than that everyone is something of a skill-monkey), so it's just stronger than usual, rather than broken (there's no more imbalance than their would be with standard characters).

Another_Poet
2008-07-21, 04:24 PM
In our campaigns, we have house ruled a way that incorporeal creatures can use items. Basically, since magic weapons can hurt incorporeal creatures 50% of the time, we decided incorporeal creatures have a 50% success rate at picking up any given (corporeal) magic item. Thus, in battle it's a real gamble to try to pick up something, but out of batle if you have 30 seconds to try again and again you'll manage to pick it up eventually. I think it's kind of funny to picture a ghost repeatedly trying to pick up a flask of alchemist's fire and watching his hands go right through it, but it gets the job done.

Of course, if the item is not magical then by our rule you couldn't pick it up at all.

Another thing you could do is see if your DM will let you find an Ethereal merchant to buy from. That way all your items are Ethereal and not only do they work for you, but they don't work for any corporeal creatures (unless you're using the above house rule, of course, which works both ways).

A third option is to make yojur very first item a set of Gloves of Ghost-touch or a Ring of Ghost-touch or something else that will allow you to handle/wear the items.

Alternately, find a way to possess corporeal creatures and have them use your items for you :)

ap

Turcano
2008-07-21, 04:30 PM
I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that my analysis of the MM and the typical high HD to CR ratio of many creatures would bring about a rant on all that is evil about the game that was good enough for your gaming group to shell out how much money on again?

I think you misunderstand me; I don't think CR is bad in principle, it's just that its execution was lackluster, especially if you improve monsters in ways other than adding hit dice. To their credit, WotC realized this and redid some of the monsters, but I don't know of any effort to redo the rest.

And "incidentally" referred to that particular section of my post, if you want to a pedantic old fart. :smalltongue:

Benejeseret
2008-07-21, 04:43 PM
Perhaps reverse engineer an ethereal jaunt or some such power to allow you to move around on the material plane as per usual. Items you pick up and wear there should "jaunt" back with you so long as you do not drop them.

Jack_Simth
2008-07-21, 04:50 PM
Perhaps reverse engineer an ethereal jaunt or some such power to allow you to move around on the material plane as per usual. Items you pick up and wear there should "jaunt" back with you so long as you do not drop them.
An Incorporeal creature isn't on another plane; you're thinking of an Ethereal creature (for whom it's much easier - Plane Shift will deal with it).

Benejeseret
2008-07-21, 07:10 PM
Duh, foiled again by stupidly repetitive yet completely different rules...quite right.

In that case I second a few levels in Psionic Uncarnate...

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-07-21, 07:20 PM
BoEF gave us Gloves of Ghost Touch, which allow an incorporeal being's hands to affect the material plane when he wants them to, for 6,000 gp at CL7.

jcsw
2008-07-22, 07:50 AM
I'd like to point out that unbodied... don't have hands.

marjan
2008-07-22, 12:25 PM
BoEF gave us Gloves of Ghost Touch, which allow an incorporeal being's hands to affect the material plane when he wants them to, for 6,000 gp at CL7.

Do we want to know what affect means in this context? :smalleek:

ericgrau
2008-07-22, 06:11 PM
If the players have no gear or levels, this will be balanced by CR. If players have gear and levels, you need LA and HD instead, not CR. Otherwise I smell major imbalance issues.

I would suggest to the DM that you get your gear based on the treasure tables (at most) and "level up" per the monster advancement rules. Your CR goes up accordingly. So if a creature requires +2 HD to gain a CR, you get 2 HD every time you gain a "level".

Turcano
2008-07-22, 06:36 PM
If the players have no gear or levels, this will be balanced by CR. If players have gear and levels, you need LA and HD instead, not CR. Otherwise I smell major imbalance issues.

Well yeah. LA and CR were never meant to be interchangeable. CR is meant to measure power for a single encounter, while LA is supposed to compensate for a more permanent increase in power. (Again, that's how it works in theory. In practice, as any optimizer can tell you, LA discourages players from using those races, as the powers need to be pretty dang awesome for the trade-off to be worthwhile.)