LA Assignment Thread X: New Year, New Management, Same Old Unplayable Monsters

[Thurbane]

Paralysis is helped by the fact the DC can be improved with Improved Paralysis, on top of Ability Focus. Then there's also Contagious Paralysis, which is a little niche, but can be pretty nasty.

Oh, and a Veil of Allure.

[danielxcutter]

I am aware of the fact that by definition it applies, but it's really weird considering that the implication seems to be that it was mostly intended to be a boost to compulsion types and such but actually boosts a very wide range of abilities.

[Lapak]

The conversation thus far has convinced me that +2 LA is the right call and that no asterisk is needed for this substantially-harder-to-snowball spawn ability, so that's where my vote lands.

[Morphic tide]

I do wish to point out that the paralysis is Charisma based. Your stat bonuses do help you spare the points, yes, and it also scales on HD - it's just that for the most "obvious" choices you're probably not going to be pumping your Charisma.

Undead Meldshaper Totemist, Paladin, Crusader, Sorcerer and Wilder based gishes, maybe Clawlock if we're taking Dragon Magazine, melee-oriented Bards, Hexblades, and any Charisma-based creature that can survive the LA given it's a template, which has a lot of options since Fae are valid.

I'm randomly curious of the viability of a Gravetouched Ghoul Pixie sans Irrisistable Dance. LA +5 is madness but you get bonus feat Dodge and Weapon Finesse, -2 Str, +12 Dex, Con -, +8 Int, +8 Wis, and +8 Cha, as well as +3 Natural Armor and a +1 Size Bonus, on top of baseline 60 ft. Flight and permanent Invisibility, and a nice bundle of SLAs, and SR 15+class level so SR=ECL. That's... Your HP is pathetic but your AC is ridiculous and easy to make moreso, and you end up with a net +4 to attack rolls over a full-BAB character from size, Dex, and permanent Invisibility.

Rogue 1/Swordsage 2/Paladin of Tyranny 3 then splicing Rogue, Crusader, and Swordsage levels as you please would let you turn into a complete abomination as Paladin of Tyranny 3 gives you Charisma to all saves, thrice your Charisma as self-healing, and a -2 to enemy saving throws, Rogue for the niche-protected skillmonkey duties for something to do with your enormous Int, Swordsage for Shadow Hand (Con damage/teleport), Tiger Claw (attack volume on better action economy), and Wis to AC because you get a +8 to that anyway.

That's at the point where I'd consider Vow of Poverty if the Good requirement could be met, which I suppose means trading a Paladin level for a possible open Alignment. Because you aren't losing much, being as how you're a spell-resistant invisible flying save-or-lose dispenser with half a dice rollover in racial AC before a single piece of equipment, and VoP does offer decent AC and ability score progression. It's all the secondary stuff this handles by race and class that VoP fails at.

[danielxcutter]

Honestly it's probably just easier to drop a 12 or so in your Charisma(more if you can spare it of course) and in general go for Swordsage or something. You know treat it more like a rider effect rather than build around it.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Which makes me wonder, ghouls are intelligent, why not just become shepards to some creature that doesnt flip out at undead. Raise some chickens maybe?

Probably because they were envisioned as basically being a step above zombies, and don't stand out enough for any setting designer to think "I bet I could do something neat with these dweebs". Or maybe it's one of those things where the victim gets infested with a generically evil spirit that replaces the original personality.

[danielxcutter]

Probably because they were envisioned as basically being a step above zombies, and don't stand out enough for any setting designer to think "I bet I could do something neat with these dweebs". Or maybe it's one of those things where the victim gets infested with a generically evil spirit that replaces the original personality.

I think they do a little with them in Pathfinder? Something about ghoul paralysis not working on elves because the first ghoul was an elf.

[Tzardok]

Wasn't there something in the fluff about ghouls arising spontanously from people who committed canibalsm and enjoyed it? I at least always treated the ghoul's feeding dependency as meat from humanoids, the fresher the better.

[liquidformat]

Paralysis is helped by the fact the DC can be improved with Improved Paralysis, on top of Ability Focus. Then there's also Contagious Paralysis, which is a little niche, but can be pretty nasty.

Oh, and a Veil of Allure.

Where does Veil of Allure come from I haven't heard of it before? Also I don't think Contagious Paralysis is very useful, I honestly can't think of a case where it would be worth a feat.

[danielxcutter]

Where does Veil of Allure come from I haven't heard of it before? Also I don't think Contagious Paralysis is very useful, I honestly can't think of a case where it would be worth a feat.

I think it's been reprinted from the original, but it's in the MIC. Boosts the DC of (compulsion) spells and SLAs by 2, as well as any Cha-based (Su) abilities I think?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Where does Veil of Allure come from I haven't heard of it before? Also I don't think Contagious Paralysis is very useful, I honestly can't think of a case where it would be worth a feat.

Have the beatstick use paralyzed victims as weapons? Though that plan could fall apart pretty fast if they failed the Fortitude save...


Anyways, I decided to actually do a quick model of ghoul fever death rates in python. Which took longer than expected, because I apparently never got numpy on my new computer, and installing that was a lot more effort-intensive than I remembered. Anyways, here's the code I used.

Spoiler: Code

Show

from numpy import random

def main():
    victims = input("How many subjects do you want to infect? ") # Number of tests
    d = 0                                                        # Number of deaths
    l = 0                                                        # Number of survivors
    while (d+l) < int(victims):
        if sick(10,0) == "d":
            d += 1
        else:
            l += 1
    print("Ghouls: ",d)
    print("Survivors: ",l)
    if input("Again? ") == "y":
        main()

def sick(con,save):                                              # con is the victim's remaining Constitution; save is whether or not they just succeeded on a save (boolean)
    mod = (con-10)/2                                             # I considered doing a mathematically equivalent operation, but clarity is nice.
    if random.randint(20)+mod < 12:                              # Failed save
        con -= random.randint(3)                                        # Subtracts 1d3 from con
        if con < 1:
            return("d")
        else:
            return(sick(con,0))
    else:
        if save == 1:
            return("l")                                          # I don't think I need to return anything, but it can't hurt.
        else:
            return(sick(con,1))

main()

...The comments line up in my editor.

In case it's not clear, I'm assuming a Con 10 commoner with no base Fortitude save.

First I ran it three times with 100 subjects, returning 45, 47, and 29 ghouls. Then I decided to up the sample size a bit for more clear results, specifically to 1,000. Three trials again; 419, 409, and 379 ghouls. Finally, I decided to go with a really big sample (100,000 ghouls), which took a minute but returned 40,968 ghouls. So it looks like the death rate is a bit over 40%...call it 41%.

I also decided to see what would happen if I modified the DC. Boosting it to 13 and running samples of 10,000 resulted in 5,391, 5,313, and 5,415 ghouls (~54% fatality). Reducing it to 11 and doing the same gave 2,937, 2,870, and 2,974 (~29%). So it looks like each point of DC modifies fatality rates by roughly twelve percentage points; if this is a linear trend, we'd expect 100% fatalities around DC 17. Unsurprisingly, it's not a linear trend, but DC 17 does get us within half a percentage point of 95% mortality.

I might modify the code to figure out how long the infection lasts. But that's interesting information for now.

EDIT: Wait, I forgot to account for ability damage healing. My results are invalid.

EDIT2: So, I ran the new model. (I just threw a con += 1 between each loop for the new code.) I ran three trials again; the first trial returned three ghouls, the second two, the third three again. Each trial used 10,000 victims. I tried a 100k trial, and it only returned 48 ghouls. That's less than a 0.5% death rate no matter how you cut it. Ghoul fever barely qualifies as a spawn ability. It might be threatening if it inflicted ability drain, but as-is it's virtually impossible to die of ghoul fever without a carefully-calculated application of Constitution poison or something.


One 10k trial for each Con score:
8—26 ghouls
7—96 ghouls
6—237 ghouls
5—543 ghouls
4—1,255 ghouls
3—2,721 ghouls

So obviously, it's exponentially more effective on populations with low Constitution scores, but even with the lowest Constitution score an adult human can be given, the death rate is barely over one in four. Ghoul fever is pathetic.

[Falontani]

Possible Build

Spoiler: Primordial Half Giant Gravetouched Ghoul

Show

ce/Class/Alignment: Primordial Half Giant Gravetouched Ghoul

Stat	32 Pt	Racial	Total
Strength	18	+0	18
Dexterity	12	+2	14
Constitution	7	-	-
Intelligence	12	+6	18
Wisdom	7	+4	11
Charisma	16	+6	22

Lvl	HD	Class	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Skills	Feats	Class Features
1	0	Primordial Half Giant	-	-	-	-	+2 Spellcraft, +2 Use Magic Device	-	Magical Knack, Lowlight Vision, Naturally Psionic, Fire Acclimated, Powerful Build, Stomp 1/day, Invisibility At Will
2	0	Gravetouched Ghoul	-	-	-	-	-	Multiattack(b)	+2 Natural Armor, Ghoul Fever, Paralysis, +2 Turn Resistance, 2 Claws, Bite
3
4	1	Holy Warrior Paladin of Slaughter	+1	+2	+0	+0		Ability Focus: Paralysis	Aura of Evil, Detect Good, Smite Good 1/day
5	2	Paladin of Slaughter	+2	+3	+0	+0			Divine Grace, Unholy Touch
6	3	Paladin of Slaughter	+3	+3	+1	+1		Improved Paralysis	Debilitating Aura
7	4	Paladin of Slaughter	+4	+4	+1	+1		Power Attack(b)	Rebuke Undead
8	5	Fighter	+5	+6	+1	+1		Point Blank Shot(b)
9	6	Fighter	+6	+7	+1	+1		Rock Hurling, Weapon Focus: Rock(b)
10	7	Hulking Hurler	+7	+7	+3	+1		Snatch Arrows(b)	Really Throw Anything
11	8	Hulking Hurler	+8	+7	+4	+1			Overburdened Heave
12	9	Hulking Hurler	+9	+8	+4	+2		Contagious Paralysis	Area Attack
13	10	Spiritual Totem Barbarian	+10	+10	+4	+2			Improved Grab, Ferocity 1/day
14	11	Psychic Warrior	+10	+12	+4	+2		Improved Sunder(b)	Expansion
15	12	Psychic Warrior	+11	+13	+4	+2		Cleave(b), Multigrab	Vigor
16	13	Blackguard	+12	+15	+4	+2			Poison Use
17	14	Blackguard	+13	+16	+4	+2			Dark Blessing
18	15	Psychic Warrior	+14	+16	+5	+3		Greater Multigrab	Extend Range
19	16	Fighter	+15	+16	+6	+4
20	17	Fighter	+16	+17	+6	+4		Brutal Throw(b)

The character comes online fully at ECL 12. You can throw anything at an AC of 10 as a two handed weapon as long as the weapon is at least Huge. A light weapon is a weapon 2 size categories below you. A normal weapon is a weapon of 1 size below you. A Two handed weapon is considered a weapon of your size. So right off the bat we are able to throw Gargantuan weapons without penalty, and can throw anything within our medium load at only a -2 penalty. Thus with our 20 str and large size we can throw anything up to 532 lbs (without any buffs or equipment). This is easily able to throw small and medium creatures with our Contagious Paralysis. If your DM does not allow you to throw still alive creatures without the Fling Enemy feat, I have everything set up so that you can take it, either delay further feats, or if you are allowed a flaw or two you should have it at this point.

Nowhere near optimized. I honestly took twenty minutes throwing this into a table. Unfortunately I am rarely able to explain what I am trying to do, or what a character is able to do. The character is definitely wishing it had more feats, but that is what you get when you are trying too much. It could honestly have been a fighter/Hulking Hurler and still done what I was trying to do well enough. But the main thing that it does, is throw paralyzed creatures at enemies to utilize Contagious Paralysis. I think its fairly evil to throw whales at people, but... Original creature needs to make a fort save DC 30 without equipment and doing any ASIs past level 8, or be paralyzed and be a vector for further paralysis. And this is without abdication on what happens to a number of paralyzed creatures all touching each other that were paralyzed by you. I would assume that if you get hit by a paralyzed whale under the effects of contagious paralysis and then get paralyzed yourself, you don't suddenly stop touching the whale, and it doesn't stop touching you. Eventually one of your paralysis will wear out, or the DM will have you be making saves each round or renew duration.

[Debatra]

+2* - Debatra
+2 - Thurbane, Morphic tide, AvatarVecna, Blue Jay, liquidformat, Caelestion, Tzardok, InvisibleBison, H_H_F_F, GreatWyrmGold, Efrate, Lapak
+2/+2* - PoeticallyPsyco
+1 - Remuko

Ghoul Fever only has to deal the proverbial finishing blow. You don't need to deal their entire Con score in disease damage, only either their last point or the point that also drops their HP to -10. Inefficient as it might be, there are definitely ways to turn it into a viable spawn engine.

I'm of the mindset that if simply being inefficient or difficult to abuse prevented an asterisk, there would be a few less of them in the archive. (Top of my head: the Visilight, which can NI boost its Charisma by draining Cha from other creatures. The buff is self-stacking, but each iteration only lasts an hour.)

That said, with twelve votes, the vast majority disagrees with me here, only barely not being unanimous because of the one vote that explicitly has no strong opinion on the matter.

The Gravetouched Ghoul gets +2, no asterisk. Gravedirt Golem coming up in a bit.

[Debatra]

Gravedirt Golem

Size & Type: Large Construct
Space/Reach: 10'/10'
HD: 11
Speed: 20', can't run
Ability Scores: Str +12, Dex -2, Con -, Int -, Wis +0, Cha -10 - Net +0, two penalties
Natural Armor: 12
Natural Weapons: Two Primary Slams (2d8 plus Soiled Wound)
Skill List: -
Body Shape: Humanoid
Speech (Languages): No
CR: 9
WotC LA: -
Our LA: -0* (Berserk)

So we saw Undead Fire and Water Elementals, so here's- Sorry, what? Oh. ...Excuse me, I'm being told this creature is in fact a Golem. And now I want to know what would happen if you used the crumbled remains of an Earth Elemental to fill a grave.

Starting off, we have a cumulative 1% chance each combat round of going permanently berserk and attempting to destroy everything it can find. Asterisk, just like the Alchemical Golem before it.

Aside from that, it's crap chasis forces you into being a beatstick, though DR 5/adamantine and bludgeoning and the standard-issue Golem's immunity to anything that allows for Spell Resistance are always nice. As for the Golem's interactions with specific spells, Move Earth drives it back 120' and deals 3d12 damage. Disintegrate slows it for 1d6 rounds and deals 1d12. An Earthquake centered on it stops it from moving on its next turn and deals 5d10. It gets no saves for any of this. Any magical electricity damage heals it for one point for each three damage it would deal, with any excess becoming temporary HP that last an hour.

In the special ability department, all they have is Soiled Wound, a rider on their slam attacks that deals an extra 2d4 negative energy damage the round after you land a hit.

Tombstone Golem

HD: 14
CR: 13
WotC LA: -
Our LA: -0

From a sidebar on the same page as the Gravedirt Golem, this variant of the Stone Golem (which we gave -0) has a CL17, Con-based Slay Living once per two rounds as a rider on its melee attacks instead of Slow. Alongside +2 to CR, it is otherwise identical to the standard Stone Golem. Since it's just a nearly-identical variant of a previous monster, I'm not bothering with a full breakdown of it.

[danielxcutter]

Isn't there also a tombstone variant?

[Unavenger]

HD greater than CR is never a good sign, and this just doesn't... do much. -0*, in the worst possible sense of the asterisk.

EDIT: Also you're in luck with the undead earth elementals thing - coming soon to... well, here probably.

[Tzardok]

Isn't there also a tombstone variant?

Yeah, in a sidebar on the same page. It's a stone golem that can do Slay Living instead of Slow.

[H_H_F_F]

Dr 5 is too low to grant real survivability at these levels, though it's certainly helpful. Golem immunities are obviously fantastic. Soiled wound is trash, and this guy has nothing to really offer in combat.

The only thing holding me back from giving an easy -0* here is regeneration cheese. Getting regeneration would make this thing very nearly untouchable, and you could use the remaining levels to get offensive options. I'm not sure how this should be treated.

I'd like to ignore that option and give this thing a -0* anyway, but I don't know how stuff like that has been treated before. I'd like to listen to the discussion before voting.

Edit: forgot the asterisk.

[danielxcutter]

Dr 5 is too low to grant real survivability at these levels, though it's certainly helpful. Golem immunities are obviously fantastic. Soiled wound is trash, and this guy has nothing to really offer in combat.

The only thing holding me back from giving an easy -0 here is regeneration cheese. Getting regeneration would make this thing very nearly untouchable, and you could use the remaining levels to get offensive options. I'm not sure how this should be treated.

I'd like to ignore that option and give this thing a -0 anyway, but I don't know how stuff like that has been treated before. I'd like to listen to the discussion before voting.

I'm pretty sure regeneration's only for living creatures anyways. Fast Healing, maybe, but that's about it.

[liquidformat]

easily -0* not much going on here.

Tombstone Golem is still fine -0

[H_H_F_F]

I'm pretty sure regeneration's only for living creatures anyways. Fast Healing, maybe, but that's about it.

Right you are! I was thinking "not undead", but this guy doesn't have a Con score either.

Easy -0*, then, IMO.

[Debatra]

Isn't there also a tombstone variant?

Yeah, in a sidebar on the same page. It's a stone golem that can do Slay Living instead of Slow.

Yes, I missed that. I added a smaller segment to the same post since it's not really different enough from its base to warrant a full breakdown.

[AvatarVecna]

+2* - Debatra
+2 - Thurbane, Morphic tide, AvatarVecna, Blue Jay, liquidformat, Caelestion, Tzardok, InvisibleBison, H_H_F_F, GreatWyrmGold, Efrate, Lapak
+2/+2* - PoeticallyPsyco
+1 - Remuko

Ghoul Fever only has to deal the proverbial finishing blow. You don't need to deal their entire Con score in disease damage, only either their last point or the point that also drops their HP to -10. Inefficient as it might be, there are definitely ways to turn it into a viable spawn engine.

I'm of the mindset that if simply being inefficient or difficult to abuse prevented an asterisk, there would be a few less of them in the archive. (Top of my head: the Visilight, which can NI boost its Charisma by draining Cha from other creatures. The buff is self-stacking, but each iteration only lasts an hour.)

That said, with twelve votes, the vast majority disagrees with me here, only barely not being unanimous because of the one vote that explicitly has no strong opinion on the matter.

The Gravetouched Ghoul gets +2, no asterisk. Gravedirt Golem coming up in a bit.

FWIW, I'm of the opinion that it probably should have an asterisk on general principle, but I also see where people are coming on this: for the disease to strike the finishing blow, it's going to take at least a couple days after the encounter to take them down. For an NPC under the DM's control, this can be picking a fight with a couple commoners, and then a few days later those commoner-ghouls pick a fight with four more commoners, and so on. For a PC ghoul, this means getting a foe into that very tiny zone where they are alive, but unable to take action to help themselves, because the disease DC is never going to be impressive, and if they can take actions at all, 10 minutes gives them an untrained Heal check as an alternate option to throw it off, and they can even potentially use magic to solve it. So you need to keep someone mostly dead for at least a couple days, and probably more, to even have a chance at the disease killing them. And unlike vampire (which stacks with their existing stuff, because it's a template), they just turned into a really lame ghoul too. It's extremely slow, inconvenient, and unhelpful. Taking advantage of it is going to involve having some kind of commoner farm set up, and the effort of keeping one of those running is honestly probably more trouble than it's worth.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and easy -0* this time around.

[Morphic tide]

HD is only three more than CR, which as we've seen before is not necessarily insurmountable with PC gear. You get +6 to attack rolls from racial Strength, giving you +1 overall from a full-BAB character and +9 damage for the usual two-hander if one wishes to pass up Soiled Wounds. The -2 Dexterity bumps your AC to +11 before gear, a half-rollover which, as mentioned previously, does horrible, horrible things to the likelyhood of being damaged, and total immunity to all but three spells that get mostly turned irrelevant as damage renders Touch AC not much an issue, while being a Construct makes Fortitude saves not an issue.

As it does have solid Natural Attacks, I feel the BAB loss is overstated because you don't get iteratives anyway, and make up for it with Strength. Looks to be an exceedingly boring +0* to me, as it isn't actually being affected by its downsides if you go with the inbuilt Natural Attacks and possibly get a mount (if one that'll carry you is reasonably available). 4d8+4d4+12 is not bad damage when it's before you even assign ability scores. DR 5 probably sounds like nothing at level 11, but I again cite the CR 20 Pit Fiend who's losing around a quarter it's Natural Attack output (less, proportionately, from its Bite) from the DR alone, before speaking of your AC advantage by that level.

[Tzardok]

@Morphic tide, why the asterisk?

[Morphic tide]

@Morphic tide, why the asterisk?

Berserk unplayability, as mentioned by Debatra:

Starting off, we have a cumulative 1% chance each combat round of going permanently berserk and attempting to destroy everything it can find. Asterisk, just like the Alchemical Golem before it.

[danielxcutter]

Two slams with no iteratives is not what I'd call "solid natural weapons" and you're also lacking a Constitution score for hit points. And healing's arguably harder than undead.

[Morphic tide]

Two slams with no iteratives is not what I'd call "solid natural weapons" and you're also lacking a Constitution score for hit points. And healing's arguably harder than undead.

Not compared to a tricked-out Totemist leveraging Twin Chakra to get +3d4 damage to each of four 1d4+3 attacks atop items, sure, but 2d8+2d4x2 is ahead of 11pp Claws of the Beast and you retain full gear options. And Electricity damage spells aren't going to be much under triple the Cure trend, so there's plenty of access.

[Tzardok]

Berserk unplayability, as mentioned by Debatra:

Right. I forgot.

[danielxcutter]

Oh right I forgot that golems usually heal from certain spells. Still incredibly doubtful that this is worth much, if at all.