Effigy Master

[sonofzeal]

We've got a recurring Effigy Master villain in a campaign I'm in. He's specifically designed to be sort of an "evil parallel" to my character, a support/skillmonkey Artificer. So, questions!

1) What is the consensus on the class? Is it strong, stupidly broken, total moneysink?

2) What creatures make good Effigies, and what should I expect of them? So far we've seen Felldrakes and Linnorms, and both have had heavy first-round damage but little staying power. Is that typical?

3) What can I do as an ECL 12 Artificer to stop him, without breaking budget (limit of 5000 base price in expendables)? Can an advanced and buffed Iron Defender keep up, assuming I can raise it size categories via extra HD? I have a 10-HD Large Iron Defender already, but it got smashed by the Linnorm in one round last time; should I rebuild it stronger or scrap it?

[Innis Cabal]

I really like it. For a 5 level PrC its not half bad really. Not stellar but very interesting. Have someone in one of the games i'm in looking at it.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

One word: Disintegrate.

All constructs are horridly vulnerable to it, and as an ECL 12 Artificer, you should have access to it, if nothing else, in scroll form.

[PinkysBrain]

1) What is the consensus on the class? Is it strong, stupidly broken, total moneysink?

The class is pretty much irrelevant, but effigies themselves are stupidly broken for PCs. Fine for a NPC though ... in an encounter the effigies have their own CRs and increase the EL, whereas in a PC party things just get plain nuts once you get a bit of money (even without cheese like templated creatures).

2) What creatures make good Effigies

As a PC stuff with pounce is good, but the DM seems to be going with a Draconic motive ... so expect more of that.

Can an advanced and buffed Iron Defender keep up, assuming I can raise it size categories via extra HD? I have a 10-HD Large Iron Defender already, but it got smashed by the Linnorm in one round last time; should I rebuild it stronger or scrap it?

Scrap it.

Effigies have lousy saves and don't have a lot of hitpoints, grease, glitterdust etc all work fine to semi-disable it and then just kill it with damage.

[tyckspoon]

In order:

1: Mostly a moneysink unless you abuse templates. Since the cost of an effigy is based only on HD, you can cheese the crap out of it by stacking templates that provide benefits without changing the base creature's HD. Generally, the player of an Effigy Master needs to remember that he is still primarily a spellcaster; if he tries to operate the way pet-based classes usually do, he'll just burn more and more resources trying to keep his pets going and relevant (biggest difference between Effigy Master and things like Animal Companion: the Effigy Master has to pay for his.)

2: Good effigies have either impressive physical attack capabilities or modes of movement that you want to make use of. Constructs tend to be rather glass-cannonish, since becoming a construct means the creature retains almost all of its special attack abilities but usually loses a lot of its buffer against damage. In particular, Constructs don't get to enjoy Regeneration (needs a Con score), Con bonus to HP, or Con bonus to Fort (and they have all bad saves. As mentioned above, all this makes Disintegrate kill them very quickly.) So a 'good' effigy either has the ability to kill and/or disable your opponents before they can strike against its weaknesses, or it's not meant to be going into a fight at all. An Effigy Dire Badger, for example, is not a particularly good fighter. But it is cheap to build at only 3 HD and its Burrow movement mode leaves usable tunnels, which has all sorts of useful applications.

3: Blast 'em. Effigies generally aren't very good at resisting magic, as long as you pick something that doesn't run into construct immunities. Don't try to fight it with your own constructs- as satisfying as it would be, mechanically you've pretty well out-leveled the point where homonculi can be useful fighters. Unless you get Craft Effigy yourself (it's a general item creation feat, absolutely not restricted to Effigy Masters) you shouldn't be building constructs for combat duty any more.

[sonofzeal]

One word: Disintegrate.

All constructs are horridly vulnerable to it, and as an ECL 12 Artificer, you should have access to it, if nothing else, in scroll form.

Hmmm.... and a scroll of Disintegrate is entirely affordable! Woot!


Also, further opinions on the viability of the class are appreciated. I've found from my own character that it's not all that hard to keep my Iron Defender in line with what the Favoured Soul-zilla (fairly unoptimized except for Divine Power + Righteous Might + Combat Brute) is doing... at least until he got an artifact weapon. Effigies seem to scale the same way my Defender does, for roughly similar prices, so I'd imagine we're only talking about maybe a quarter of our WBL to outfit something that'll compare reasonably with what could be expected of a melee character at that level, at least offensively. Defenses might be more of an issue though; any suggestions on building on them?

[PinkysBrain]

Meh, for that money you could buy a lot of wand power ... I assume you do have some metamagic feats for wandificing?

[sonofzeal]

Meh, for that money you could buy a lot of wand power ... I assume you do have some metamagic feats for wandificing?

Split Ray, Persist Spell, Wand Mastery, and picking up Dual Wand Weilding (or whatever it's called) as my lvl12 feat. However, disposable wealth is relatively hard to come by for this level, so I've been going the economy route with CL1 Scorching Ray / Seeking Ray; once I start dual-blasting, I get 16d6 on four ranged touch attacks with massive bonuses, for something like 79 gp a round. Now, 16d6 isn't near the limit but is entirely respectable at ECL12, and I've never seen a better bargain price-wise for that level of damage. Still, I'm primarily support/skillmonkey, with blasting as a relatively low priority.

[ErgoBibamus]

One thing I've always wondered about Effigies is whether you can build them with a small cockpit inside? For example, let's say you want to make an effigy of an Ogre. Can you make it slightly larger than normal, maybe work out a proportionate gp increase, and allow space for a small creature to fit inside? Because if so, then your Gnome Wizard or Reduce Person Wizard can wear the effigy like a freaking power suit and be a front-line combatant that fires full-caster level spells out of its chest, mouth, hands! Plus, when the effigy is finally hacked to pieces and the bad guys think they've won, a totally unharmed caster crawls out of the rubble and starts blasting away.
Right? RIGHT?!

[Jimp]

I'm taking part in a play by post game at the moment where one of the other players is an Effigy Master. It seems like a really fun class. He has a brigade of robo animals to deal with combat and stuff for him. I really like it.

[Danin]

I made a modified version of this class that allows the creation of effigies from an artificer and advances some artificer abilities. I plan on running him as a reoccurring sub-villain in a campaign. Overpowered? Yeah. But fun to play with.

As to weaknesses? As has been mentioned, a lot of terrible saves, mostly fort. Disintegrate will eat them alive, as will most reflex based spells. Also, don't forget that they are constructs, and as such may be immune to mind affecting affects, but still have a lot of vulnerabilities. As I understand (and please, correct me if I'm wrong) most constructs don't get a save against illusions until they interact with them, in which case they automatically pass. If a construct is instructed to guard against intruders... well, I doubt it will recognize a bookshelf as an intruder. Again, I could be mistaken.

And Ergo, yes, that idea rocks. Then again, I'd just teleport out, and leave the PCs wondering why there is an un-manned cockpit.

[sonofzeal]

And Ergo, yes, that idea rocks. Then again, I'd just teleport out, and leave the PCs wondering why there is an un-manned cockpit.

The Effigy Master we're fighting has really annoying tactics along this line. He almost invariably starts combat invisible, with his Effigies invisible. They charge, appear out of nowhere and start attacking; he buffs from invisibility, and teleports them out if they get in trouble. So far we've fought him twice and beat him both times, but only ever managed to take out one of his three effigies.

[lilhowie624]

comming from both the dm and played prespective i say the following

one the effigies can be deadly if you abuse the templates. just find everyone you can that gives it benefits but no extra HD.

one word kill disintagrate

now as for the question of the cockpit. yes you can actually do this.
since an effigy is created from the ground up you can desgine it (i used craft(enginerring) ) to have a cockpit. the size of the cockpit was proportional to the monsters new size catagory-2. so a large could hold a small. i made the base cost 50gp X effigy HD to add a cockpit you can cast through. for 10 X effigy HD added a storage compartment that can hold 50lbs of loot per HD.

i personally found the cockpit part rather fun. but bewarned if your DM allows it he should make you take a portion of AOE spells. since your still in the area. i made my mage take 1/2 on a failed or 1/4 on a save.

[PinkysBrain]

It's not overpowered for NPCs, unless you count the effigies towards the NPCs wealth rather than to the EL ... in which case you are screwing your players on treasure and run the risk of TPK.

As for the artificer driving an effigy, casting humanoid essence on a construct makes it vulnerable to necromancy effects ... which means you can magic jar it. You can put your own body and the jar in a backpack or saddlebag.

[sonofzeal]

It's not overpowered for NPCs, unless you count the effigies towards the NPCs wealth rather than to the EL ... in which case you are screwing your players on treasure and run the risk of TPK.

Explain, please?

Also, Humanoid Essence + Magic Jar is cheesy as allgetout... but Humanoid Essence + Power Stone of Ego Whip = instawin, even if they pass their second will save, sing Ego Whip does 1d4 Cha damage, Will half, minimum 1... and Effigies have Cha 1. Score!

[PinkysBrain]

Explain, please?

Compared to "normal" magic items independent creatures with independent actions are by far more effective in combat ... they are also far more likely to end up as scrap than "normal" magic items. In essence they are long lasting consumables. NPC wealth is not meant to mainly consist of a couple of expensive consumables, they give the NPC too much power and the PC too little treasure.

[Llama231]

the MM2 has a monster call the Effigy.