[3.5 ed] Jovoc catapult

[Bronzeevil]

So a friend and I got a few ideas while goofing off in physics class. It all started when he brought up the Jovoc, from the 4th monster manual (I think).

It's like this. The Jovoc is a small demon, about 1 foot tall, black, roundish, etc. It has 35 or so hp, CR 4, and has an awesome ability: retributive aura. What this does is anything within 150 feet of the Jovoc (except other demons) takes force damage equal to whatever damage the Jovoc takes. No save, just pure damage.
So, we started thinking of weapon ideas that use these adorable little fellas. We quickly narrowed them down to one: falling damage from firing them out of catapults/ballistae. Of course, this only gets you a maximum of 20d6 in a 150 foot radius area. That's just not enough. And where would you get them? Normal armies wouldn't have any. So you get a level 23 wizard to cast summon monster IX, and get (correct me if I'm wrong) 64 Jovocs. Of course, that's too many to fit on one catapult, and we're going for maximum efficiency here. That's when you get the wizard to cast shaped anti-gravity, to focus the pull of gravity to a point above the catapult, and throw the Jovocs in. Now you have a scattershot of awesomeness.

Further ideas included a very far epic (due to it's outrageously expensive price tag) warhammer that has a Jovoc attached to it, with True Resurrection at-will on it, so you can keep bringing the Jovoc back to life. You'd have to be a demon for it to work well, but every ten minutes you do double damage to the thing you hit, and regular damage to everything within 150 feet of you.

So, what do you think, forumites? Would these work as well as we think they would? Would any DM allow it? Any other ideas like this?

[RTGoodman]

I think the best way to take advantage of the retributive aura would be to become a demon yourself. Either as an Outsider (Aasimar, Tiefling, that FR elf that can take a feat to be an Outsider, whatever) with polymorph to change into a devil, or as a non-Outsider using shapechange.

From there, you just need to figure out a way to do some ridiculous amount of damage in one turn. An Ubercharger could work, I guess, or maybe a Cindy-style blaster. Either way, that'd be the way I went.

[ChaosDefender24]

Actually there's a Fort DC for half damage on that aura. just saying

[Bronzeevil]

Actually there's a Fort DC for half damage on that aura. just saying

Ah, didn't know that. Still, it's awesome.

[Eldariel]

Actually there's a Fort DC for half damage on that aura. just saying

This is v. beneficial. It includes the variety of builds capable of making extensive use of this. Just gain Mettle (Pious Templar 1 will do, or Hexblade 2), pump the living out of your Fort-save, mite as well pick up something that stops the autofail on 1 (Pride-domain, Steadfast Determination, etc.), and start pummeling the living out of those adorable little fellows.

Best option I can come up with: Malconvoker Cleric with some dipping for Mettle (for example, Pious Templar 1). Go DMM: Persist to make yourself a melee beast and pick up the charge-line of feats. Malconvoker doubles the amount of evil creatures your summons brings and enables for good Clerics to do it without alignment problems. Also advances casting so you can keep making yourself a Zilla. Then there's a number of other boons.

But most importantly for this exercise, it doubles the amount of beasts you can summon. You're also a Cleric so you can access Pride-domain. So pick up Great Cleave, slap Summon Monster Big to summon a ton of them as a swift action (use Rapid Spell-metamagic in conjuction with Quicken Spell-rods or the feat; rods can be used with weapons with Glove of Storing), full Leap Attack Shock Trooper Charge with a valorous weapon at them (for the record, that could easily be 300+ damage per Jovac on high levels; if you summoned 5 or so of them, you'll be doing quite a bit of damage)! You could one-up that with a Frenzied Berserker for the midlevels, but ultimately Cleric's buffs will come out ahead and having access to all those Summon Monster-spells is just awesome for this.

[Olo Demonsbane]

How about this: the Jovoc railgun!

You get your wizard that can summon 64 of them at a time.

I am assuming that these Jovocs are pretty strong...I cannot find my MM2 anywhere!

You summon them in a line while moving backwards on your phantom steed.

Each round your line increases by 64 jovocs. Each of them ready an action to pass along anything the previous jovoc hands to them, and then the last Jovoc jumps into the arms into the jovoc immideately in front of him's arms.

The Jovoc will be doing lots of damage (I dont really know how to calculate it...lets just say 20d6 damage) and blowing up. This is a siege weapon. One of these can level an entire castle. As the length of the line gets longer, the speed gets faster. Because of the fact that after you have 64x23 jovocs they will start dissapearing, you probably wont reach escape velocity. Or you might...who knows. Nevertheless, you can probably hit a castle a fair distance away with something that will blow the entire thng to smithereens...actually, it will take a few jovocs to destroy a well built castle, but just one would kill everyone inside.

[Swooper]

Wait. Stop. Go back. How exactly are you summoning 64 of them at a time?

[notagain111]

I remember that in 3.5 they have fast healing of some sort so if you don't kill them off they can last a bit longer...
An idea would be take a large metal box, fill it with angry little Jovocs and launch it out of a trebuchet(sp?) or some such and instruct the runts to pummel the bodily fluids out of each other. This would proc their aura through fall damage/the box collapsing and crushing them and also from them beating on each other.
As a simplistic idea, one could just send an army of these blokes at someone you don't like and watch as the fool gets killed by hurting the jovocs and by the jovocs stabbing him (and each other when they can't reach a valid enemy)

As i remember in the monster manual entry they suggest outright that the buggers hide somewhere in range of enemies and poke at each other while exploiting their DR, Fast healing and aura.