(Creature) (Spell) Organ Undead, Nightmares of Anatomy (P.E.A.C.H.)

[DracoDei]

First combat in the campaign I am playtesting these in starts on these two pages:
OOC
IC


Copy over of two post-combat posts(Heavily edited to remove stuff not relevant to this thread, note that the character in question is a modified cleric who gets ALL the spells necessary to make ALL Deathless, but anything not on the cleric list he can ONLY cast for the purposes of making Deathless):
DracoDei:
Just for the record, I have a permanent small hopping stomach (and a slithering spinal cord of some size or another) as one of my lesser minions... I totally forgot about it... we will say that I left its 6 hp, 25 GP ?? SP self outside the room when Alton was punching the floor, since I didn't want to risk it when I could conjure disposable counterparts to it.

So... what did people think of my Deathless?

My own analysis:
Big Bertha was the star here, with the close range of the fight letting her get her engulf on two targets. Definitely a credible advancing wall of doom in many scenarios given that I was never really worried about her hitpoints in this one.

BBoJ was one successful saving throw from doing something really useful. If any of them had opened the door and tried to run for it, it would be the one stopping them probably. 60' movement rate was very helpful for navigating around stuff, even if, by RAW it didn't need all that because it could have moved through Martin and the hopping stomachs.

The stomachs were... a good summon I think, given the nature of the mission (capture) we MIGHT have been better off with 6 medium gut snakes, or a single Large one. Less damage, but no spellcaster likes being grappled, and even the medium ones would have been in the ballpark of these guy's grapple checks, due to Improved Grapple. Of course, they probably would have been shredded by the AoOs for falling into the room (edit: Nah, 19 hitpoints means they survive most of the time even if they get hit, and they have the DR to ignore the falling damage). If these cultists were multiclassed, instead of gestalt (not sure which they were), then they might not have had the 3rd level spell slots to auto-clear the filth fever if one had gotten off "Explosive Diarrhoetic Discharge"... which would have been an interesting little "gotcha". They almost certainly had 2nd level spells, which would have handled the visual impairment, and their fort saves were high enough that the disease wouldn't have been a big deal.

Bone Bear (my control group, although I doubt that most PCs consider grizzly bears prime necromancy material) was a glass cannon. It probably could have taken a single hit (meaning a maneuver, not a mere AoO) and stayed standing, two hits and it would have gone down... and it would have needed to risk that first hit to get off its full attack.

The eyes... well, I don't have any opinion on them, since I already knew everything I had proposed I think. But we did go into some detail IC about them, including the misunderstanding about what exactly "roll under the door, then look around" meant. For this reason, I suspect that others may have an opinion on them.


Quellian-dyrae:
Homebrew Thoughts:

Organ Undead: What I'm seeing regarding Organ Undead, so far, is not a matter of the creatures themselves. They look like they do their job fine, and I don't think I've seen anything to indicate their CR's are off (although my knowledge is fairly cursory). What might be troublesome in a game with more normal power levels is the acquisition method; skeletons and zombies have generally high HD, low CR, and no versatility to speak of, and that varies much more widely with Organ Undead. In other words, I wouldn't so far say Organ Undead are overpowered, but Animate Dead might become overpowered with Organ Undead in the campaign.