The LA-assignment Thread IV: Live Free or Hit Die Hard

[Morphic tide]

If it had just one or two less RHD, or came with Powerful Build or another similar grapple improvement, I'd give it +0 for making the pass for an Ubercharger quite well. As-is, it falls just shy of working as one.

With one more feat worth of Fighter levels, it'd work thanks to the Natural Attack magic items being one item for all of the attacks (something that's actually quite important for the larger sorts of Dragon).

[Flickerdart]

Ouch. -0 and the stupidest name yet.

[Mike Miller]

Ouch. -0 and the stupidest name yet.

I feel like a thread could be made just to discuss stupid enemy names. There are so many! Where to start?

[Nifft]

I feel like a thread could be made just to discuss stupid enemy names. There are so many! Where to start?

Make a thread. It won't run of content anytime out soon.

[No brains]

I'm still gonna defend this creature's name (but not its build. -0) since it's a fairly simple descriptive name. If you don't like it, you have 1 minute to explain the etymology of "Morkoth" and make it meaningful to me. It's not even the worst name that it could have:

"What is the name of this thing?"
"We call it a Bone Drinker."
"How did it earn THAT name? You can't 'drink' bones!"
"It drinks the life force of people by sucking the marrow from their bones."
"Well then why not call it a Bone S- Oh. I see your predicament."

Though there is the point that it's a serious lapse in thinking to invite that kind of joke so easily.

[Zaq]

No innate casting or SLAs. 11 RHD that screw over martials. Um, yeah, there's no way in Baator that this is anything but LA -0.

[Lapak]

Small sized grapplers make me cry.

Small 'grapplers' with knock-on effects like this one would really be better represented by having an Attach quality like Stirges and weasels.

[Celestia]

Small 'grapplers' with knock-on effects like this one would really be better represented by having an Attach quality like Stirges and weasels.

Indeed it would.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Plus, after a point, unless you're going to randomly string consonants and vowels together, you're looking at crappy names for things that aren't more or less pulled from pre-existing myths, legends, and/or fictions. And randomized character strings aren't much better.

I'd argue that they're worse. Random character strings make you sound like a cheap fantasy author who wants his novel to be uniquer than anyone else's.

I have serious questions about where the concept for the Bonedrinker came from. But I'm not entirely sure I want to know the answers.

I'd imagine it went something like this:

1. Hm...maybe a vampire that drinks bones instead of blood?
2. How do I make it meaningfully different than a monochrome vampire?
3. ...Tentacles?
4. Maybe I can make it goblinoid-themed, to make it more distinctive.
5. No, I won't make it a template. That would be silly.
6. Oh crap, the deadline's coming up...well, guess it's time to stop iterating!

[Inevitability]

Brood Keeper

Oh my! A new monster! I sure hope it is playable!



Nevermind.


The brood keeper's special traits don't do much to help here. The ability scores are horribly underwhelming for a 22 HD Huge creature (25 strength???), the special abilities are horribly outdated (Fear, Rake, Rend, Improved Grab).

The best thing about the keeper is probably that it gets pounce, but so do a 3 RHD monster race or a barbarian dip. Evasion's also kinda neat, if only because area spells are the only way attacking this thing is worth it over more dangerous targets.

Finally, their signature ability: releasing a swarm of larva. The larva themselves are mostly useful as mobile Distraction causers, and are remarkably durable, but all it takes is one stray spell and you lose one of your few racial features for a month. At epic levels, where there's barely any travel times, 'a month away' may very well mean 'halfway into the next adventure'.

Fast healing, SR (laughably low at ECL 22) and DR don't help: the brood keeper is simply a bad monster because of its massive amount of RHD, and deserves -0 LA.

Brood Keeper Larva Swarm

It's a swarm, but that's it. The larva aren't even Tiny, so weapons will still harm them, and their offensive presence is next to none. Not worth spending 22 levels on, -0 LA.

[Zaq]

22 RHD? No discussion needed. Next?

[danielxcutter]

How tough are they compared to their CR?

[ViperMagnum357]

How tough are they compared to their CR?

Pretty soft-by the time you face one, everyone should have Freedom of Movement, and your spellcasters should have no trouble Quickening an extra low level spell to splat the swarm first turn. After that, it cannot do much but Pounce and try to savage 1 character at a time, with no alternate movement or special abilities to help-almost pathetically easy to keep at arm's length and pincushion. Even then, a well built martial around ECL 11-12 should be able to charge in and out-damage it per round, while handily avoiding or tanking its rather pathetic attack array outside a Grapple.

Oh, right: LA thread. Well, this is actually a Monster I wanted to like, since it has a great array of special attacks-Pounce, Improved Grab, 4 Rake attacks, and Rend. Magical Beast is OK for a martial, but 22 RHD is not. Swarm is way too limited, and its basic abilties are pathetic for a Huge monster-let alone one with 22 RHD, and Natural Evasion is a 2 level dip you would rather have in actual classes. The DR 5/- and fast healing do little more than stem the bleeding, even if they are great in a vacuum.

Verdict: LA -0 and then some. You would have to shave at least 10 RHD to even approach LA +0.

[Dimers]

LA -0. But I'm sure we'll come across monsters worth discussing eventually!

[ZamielVanWeber]

It is the non-epic vemiurge! -0 This is not the equal of anything but the worst built epic characters.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Hmm... at LA -5, you would get two epic feats (HD 21 and 24) before anyone else got their first, as well as two extra class levels. Would that be enough to create a viable ECL 19 character?

[Remuko]

Hmm... at LA -5, you would get two epic feats (HD 21 and 24) before anyone else got their first, as well as two extra class levels. Would that be enough to create a viable ECL 19 character?

we dont assign actual negative numbers. it breaks the game too much.

[Lapak]

22 RHD? No discussion needed. Next?

Well, the Angels disproved that going all the way back to pages 1 and 2 of the first thread, but barring 'Outsider which casts as a full spellcaster of level = HD' or similarly powerful features, probably.

[ViperMagnum357]

Hmm... at LA -5, you would get two epic feats (HD 21 and 24) before anyone else got their first, as well as two extra class levels. Would that be enough to create a viable ECL 19 character?

What Remuko said. No negative LA: any LA such that the RHD alone are worse than its ECL, then just put it as LA -0 and move on. A recent thought exercise has been shaving the RHD by different amounts to try to get it to LA +0, but that is an extra analysis separate from the thread's aims.

[ExLibrisMortis]

we dont assign actual negative numbers. it breaks the game too much.

I know. I proposed the -0 notation for monsters that could be assigned a negative LA without becoming game-breaking. I'm asking the question to show that the Brood Keeper is really weak.

[Inevitability]

Cadaver Collector

Continuing the trends of descriptive names, grittiness, and cripplingly high numbers of hit dice is the cadaver collector, a construct created specifically to gather bodies for necromancers and golem-builders. To me, that seems like a task that could be performed much more effectively by a couple of strong-stomached peasants, or maybe a handful of animated skeletons, but apparently an enormous construct is the way to go here.

The racial traits are basically what you'd expect of a 17 RHD construct. Large size, lots of strength, two slams that deal lots of damage if nothing else, lots of natural armor, Trample, Improved Grab, and DR/adamantine.

Grappled creatures can, with an additional grapple check (goodbye, standard actions), be impaled on a collector's spikes, which causes them to get pinned while the collector is no longer grappling them, and deals decent amounts of damage. I suppose it's useful against anything that isn't a giant melee brute and can't teleport, which at these levels is maybe one in six monsters.

A collector's breath weapon is far more interesting, being apparently a paralyzing gas that is negated with dexterity rather than constitution. A semi-spammable (1d4 rounds cooldown) save-or-lose that target's Reflex is actually rather good. The errata, however, nerfs it considerably by setting the duration to 1 minute (enough to last through a fight, not enough for prisoner containment or crippling enemy forces), and making the effect end early when a paralyzed target takes lethal damage. The possibilities of foes slapping their allies mobile aside, this means dropping AoEs turns in a shapes puzzle if your casters don't want to un-incapacitate (capacitate?) bad guys. Also, the constitution-based saving throw DCs of something that has no constitution aren't going to be very high.

The cadaver collector's magic immunity is actually kinda interesting. It rebounds all 3rd-level and lower spells, which won't come up much but is pretty neat. Sonic spells Slow a collector, while electricity ones heal it (making lightning spells a decent alternative for the Repair Light Damage wands you can no longer use). Also, rust and stone-transmuting spells damage collectors in spite of their immunity.

All things considered, the cadaver collector is supposed to be good at something that stopped being viable a while ago (grappling and pinning), and its unexpected niche (reflex-based save-or-lose spammer) is not big enough to keep it from deserving a LA of -0. This is an ECL 17 monster, after all.

Greater Cadaver Collector

35 RHD, therefore -0 LA. That's basically everything I have to say here.

[ViperMagnum357]

Cadaver Collector: big monster with the usual big monster traits, a breath weapon based on the constitution it does not have, and 17 RHD tied for the worst type possible with Ooze (Undead have a good save and larger Hit Die).

Going to go with LA -0, and not anticipating much discussion.

And somehow, adding another 18 RHD of the same type did little to improve my opinion. LA -0 for the greater variety as well.

[Flickerdart]

Hm...will awakening the golem (and granting it a constitution score) help?

[javcs]

Hm...will awakening the golem (and granting it a constitution score) help?

Not particularly. I mean, sure, it could be a marginal improvement, but it's already so far in the hole, with 35RHD, you're looking at getting hold of ECL21+ T1 casting before you're not a bad joke. Although, you'd also probably be giving up a number of immunities in the process of gaining a Constitution score, so that might actually make it worse.


-0 ... no way around it.

[Zaq]

So ARE there any meaningful planetar-class outsiders (or similar) in MM3 that will threaten my “anything with 10 RHD or more is automatically -0” rule?

[javcs]

So ARE there any meaningful planetar-class outsiders (or similar) in MM3 that will threaten my “anything with 10 RHD or more is automatically -0” rule?

Not sure there's anything quite at that level, but there are some critters that have 10 or more RHD that are actually probably worth +0 or better, or are at least close.

There's the 10RHD Arrow Demon, and I think that the 13RHD Protean Scourge (racial 8th sorcerer), maybe the Ak'chazar Rakshasa (17RHD, 12 racial Sorcerer), Naztharune Rakshasa (11RHD), maybe a couple of the trolls (Crystalline or War), maybe some of the yugoloths, would be contenders for the 10+RHD and LA +0 club.

[Nifft]

So ARE there any meaningful planetar-class outsiders (or similar) in MM3 that will threaten my “anything with 10 RHD or more is automatically -0” rule?

Not yet, but we're only on "C".

[Inevitability]

Hm...will awakening the golem (and granting it a constitution score) help?

Actually, cadaver collectors have an intelligence score already. 5 isn't a lot, but it's enough to function.

Granting one a constitution score somehow would obviously help the breath weapon, but the only way I can think of (Incarnate Construct) also removes all of the useful construct immunities.

[Jormengand]

There are two inevitabilities here: the OP, and the fact that this thing is getting LA -0.

[ZamielVanWeber]

So ARE there any meaningful planetar-class outsiders (or similar) in MM3 that will threaten my “anything with 10 RHD or more is automatically -0” rule?

Two distant possibilities and one I think may actually snag a +0 and I must admit the distant possibilities sneak in due to minor shenanigans. I do not want to list them ATM since we are not there yet. Also while flipping through the book I got to lament the monsters I loved who just utterly stank.