Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

Nightshades

Read, if you will, the Monster Manual, and look for the edgiest monster imaginable. "Powerful Undead composed of equal parts darkness and absolute evil"? Yep, that's the one, the Nightshade. Now read its tactics. "Their tactics vary according to their abilities, but they all make liberal use of Haste." That, my friends, is a clear leftover of the age of 3rd edition, before the 3.5 update. At the time, Haste was not only single target, but allowed the target to use one extra standard action in their turn, including casting SLAs or spells! This spell was so potent that they felt the need to put it on every high-level monster to offset a bit the action economy.

The Nightshades were supposed to always cast this before combat (why wouldn't they, it didn't even cost them an action), and so were supposed to have two standard action per round to attack and use SLAs. Why does it matter to us? You see these unupdated CRs? 14 for the Nightwing, 16 for the Nightwalker and 18 for the Nightcrawler? That means these CRs are fake! Fake, I say! Their abilities are updated, but they really are in the same ballpark as non-hasted 3.0 nightshades, so there's that. They even removed their cool "Immunity to all spells below 6th level" to replace it with a much more boring SR (6 to 10 +RHD).

So, what have we got here. Summon Undead is irrelevant at this level, even more so when the summoned undead takes 1d10 rounds to appear. Desecrating Aura is pretty good actually. +2 on a lot of things and effective immunity to turn undead is pretty necessary for high-level undeads. Aversion to sunlight is a drawback, but also pretty irrelevant at this level. Lots of SLAs, with the interesting ones being at-will Haste and Greater Dispel Magic, and 1/day Finger of death and Plane Shift. Good stuff here.

However, they're Undead. Good immunity at low levels, bad HP and BAB at high-level. That's somehow compensated by the desecrating aura, but that still hurts, since Nightshades generally want to be in melee..

Nightcrawler, 25 RHD: Look at that +38 Strength! That is enormous (Gargantuan, in fact)! A nasty bite with poison, and Swallow Whole (with his stomach acids dealing negative levels) make for a dangerous foe. Does it deserve to be epic, though? I don't think so. This is a big stupid fighter, after all. A good BSF with some pretty useful SLAs, but most of the time you'll just rush the opponent to eat it. Also, you get a burrow speed. Make what you want of this information. Still, if you want to play an undead purple worm 40 ft long, then I think 19 RHD or so is pretty balanced. 1 levels is just enough to give it a tiny bit of personnality and customization. Maybe it deserves a bit more than that, but I feel generous. Since it doesn't create an epic monster in a non-epic game, I think I can also give it a DNLA. Epic levels are generally better than non-epic ones, so I don't think the Nightcrawler will get enough leverage for those last 5 RHD. DLA-4 for ECL 21 is acceptable in my opinion (if there is no Epic Magic involved, of course). It only makes it lose one feat, in the end.

Nightwalker, 21 RHD: Oh no, it has legs now! But it also has arms. So it can have rings, and boots, and whatever magic items you like. 10 Str less than the crawler, but a weird SoL gaze that could decimate a non-immune to fear party. Then again, lots of things are immune to fear at these levels. Crush Items allows it to destroy any magic item, which is interesting (are there magic items that are said to be indestructible, and would break the game if they weren't?) but is clearly supposed to harm a PC in a dungeon by destroying their weapons before the BBEG. For a party, this is just a way to destroy your own loot and doesn't really help you since you already need to have disarmed your opponent for it to work. This really doesn't have the focused abilities of the crawler, but just the body shape helps a lot. I think 15 RHD is pretty good here. Maybe a bit weak? The gaze really helps it during the first turn, and there are still interesting abilities in there.

Nightwing, 17 RHD: And the non-epic one of the bunch, who really should have been called Nightflyer, to fit the theme. Losing a lot of Str puts it around Giants tier, or lower, and it loses Greater Dispel Magic. But it has the highest SR of the three, with 10+HD, and Magic Drain is a pretty funny tool. Since you generally want to have as much special abilities as possible, most high-level weapons are +1 plus special abilities. Magic Drain will make them a normal masterwork item in one application. (Granted DC 22 is not that high, but that's pretty cool. Again, more of a DM tool than a player one, though. And you don't even have a humanoid shape. I don't think it deserves much more than 11 RHD. You can compare it with the Iron Golem, who hits harder and has infinite SR, but much less versatility and doesn't fly. Undead RHD are really bad, though, and DLA-4 seems warranted.

Weird creatures, these ones, much more adapted as enemies than PCs. But you have to acknowledge that the nightwalker art is freaking awesome. Next time, we'll happily blub blub with the Oozes!