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

[GreatWyrmGold]

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.)

The difference is that NI Charisma is a lot more useful than a few uncontrolled ghouls.

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.

Same way it is on every construct and undead—which is to say, not at all. Unless there's some way the grave-dirt golem can more easily get regeneration than most, but I'm not seeing it.

Berserk unplayability, as mentioned by Debatra:

As an aside, I'm disappointed that WotC didn't give each of its golems a bit more flavor by coming up with unique conditions to end their berserk-ness. You know, like a flesh golem seeing someone who one of its component corpses loved, or a grave dirt golem killing someone. (I guess flesh golems can be re-controlled by their master speaking clearly at them, but that's kind of boring and I'm not sure what it implies about them.)


Anyways, gravedirt golem. At first, I thought this would be incredibly potent as a beatstick focused on taking down major foes...then I reread Soiled Wound and realized it dealt negative energy damage, not negative levels.
Compared to the clay golem...slightly worse damage output and AC, slightly easier energy-healing (I think), an attack rider that's kind of useful instead of just annoying to PC targets, and no haste. I can't see any argument for anything except -0*.

The Tombstone Golem's every-other-round save-or-die is neat; needing to hit with an attack instead of just being within 10 feet is less neat. And I'm not sure how much that could make up for the 14 lost levels of class features. -0*

[liquidformat]

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.

Agreed, like I have repeated many times if you want to take advantage of the ghoul disease to make minions you are looking at ~2 days min and to ensure you get them you are left beating people almost to death then tying them up and watching them for at least 2 days. By the time you do that you have invested so much time and effort that it would have been easier to use a method like fell animate or normal means to get undead minions. This is in no way a infinite ghoulpocalypse except in theory and even then as GreatWyrmGold highlighted its a very slow process that is too easy to derail.

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.

I will give you that Gravedirt is hard to kill (though there are quite a few SR no spells out there so you are overstating its power against casters) but your argument literally only holds up against a warrior of equal level to the GdG, heck even a Fighter with its hordes of feats is able to do more than GdG. You just aren't getting much for your 11 hd investment except for being slightly harder to kill, which just means enemies can ignore you and go after actual threats then deal with you once everyone else is neutralized.

[Lapak]

Gravetouched Ghoul additional commentary: as mentioned above, it's not just the difficulty of getting any actual spawn out of the ability, it's the fact that they are not worth the effort even if you do. You have to give up more levels and/or party resources if you even want to be able to control a small group of them.

Gravedirt Golem: yes, this does get the worst asterisk it can, and I don't see it drawing even with a moderately-built beatstick in terms of versatility or ability to deliver its damage. It's not one of the 'this would need half its HD cut out to be viable' -0s, but it still is one.

-0* for the Golem.

[Efrate]

-0* for both. A high strength and golem immunities are nice, but any bog standard barbarian is going to outdamage it pretty easily. Defensive stuff is super nice but difficult healing and poorish hp due to lack of con makes me hesitant.

Slow, easily kitable, and easier still for an enemy to just ignore you to deal with someone who matters. It is not even that hard to do your hp in damage punching past DR 5. You can get up to 7th level manuevers which is decent at BaB 17 if going crusader or warblade which is fine I guess, maybe with a random swordsage level or 2 to fix some mobility issues and atill get 16 BaB, but I would rather just have the initator 20 over a initiator 9/golem 11 in almost every situation.

[Remuko]

easy -0 to both imo. Asterisk added wherever the majority believes it be added.

[H_H_F_F]

easy -0 to both imo. Asterisk added wherever the majority believes it be added.

Do you not think berserk is deserving of an asterisk? It seems pretty clearly disfunctional on a PC to me.

[GreatWyrmGold]

-0* for both.

Why an asterisk for the tombstone golem? It doesn't have that unstoppable berserk thing going on like the gravedirt golem.

[Thurbane]

Easy LA -0* for the Gravedirt Golem. I mean, infinite SR is nice, but not nice enough given the chassis.

LA -0 for the Tombstone Golem. While Slay Living on attacks is great, it isn't enough to change the base playability we already assigned to the Stone Golem. I'm also not seeing a need for an asterisk?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Oh, and in case anyone cares, I continued my epidemiological study on ghoul fever by figuring out how long infections usually last.

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
    tD = []
    tL = []
    while (d+l) < int(victims):
        end, dur = sick(10,0,0)
        if end == "d":
            d += 1
            tD.append(dur)
        else:
            l += 1
            tL.append(dur)
    avD = sum(tD)/len(tD)
    avL = sum(tL)/len(tL)
    print("Ghouls: ",d)
    print("Average time to death: ",avD," days")
    print("Survivors: ",l)
    print("Average time to recovery: ",avL," days")
    
    if input("Again? ") == "y":
        main()

def sick(con,save,dur):                                          # 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",dur+1)
        else:
            con += 1
            return(sick(con,0,dur+1))
    else:
        if save == 1:
            return("l",dur+1)
        else:
            con += 1
            return(sick(con,1,dur+1))

main()

According to my model, the mean duration of infection for those who die of ghoul fever is approximately 24 days (call it 3-4 weeks), while for survivors it is 7.7-7.9 days (call it a little over a week).

This probably doesn't affect ghouls' LA, gravetouched or otherwise, but I think it's pretty neat.

[H_H_F_F]

Oh, yeah, LA -0 to the tombstone golem.

[Beni-Kujaku]

What's a player to do with two slam attacks and litterally nothing else that is not standard golem protection? Tank things worse than a barbarian and hit worse than a fighter. -0*, without hesitation. Tombstone golem has a nice SoD and decent Natural Armor (good luck to kill it with the /adamantine DR and spell immunity), but I don't think it warrants +0 at level 14. If only it had intelligence, we could give it some feats.


Plus, I'm pretty curious what would be the LA of a creature like the cadaver golem of Heroes of Horrors. Since it can absorb the abilities of its foes, that may be interesting...

[liquidformat]

What's a player to do with two slam attacks and litterally nothing else that is not standard golem protection? Tank things worse than a barbarian and hit worse than a fighter. -0*, without hesitation. Tombstone golem has a nice SoD and decent Natural Armor (good luck to kill it with the /adamantine DR and spell immunity), but I don't think it warrants +0 at level 14. If only it had intelligence, we could give it some feats.

The assumption is it does have intelligence (awaken construct typically, got to love those humanoid brains!) and therefore feats but the skills becomes a question, I guess everything is considered a cross class skill?

[Beni-Kujaku]

The assumption is it does have intelligence (awaken construct typically, got to love those humanoid brains!) and therefore feats but the skills becomes a question, I guess everything is considered a cross class skill?

If nothing is a class skill, then everything is cross class. Honestly, with feats (and considering it can supress its Spell Immunity to get buffs), I would consider giving it +0. It should not be that hard to find an object to make it less kitable at this level (give it horse-riding feats and Horseshoes of Flame), and Save-or-Die is an interesting ability for a melee character. It does lack in the social department, but so does the barbarian most of the time.

[liquidformat]

If nothing is a class skill, then everything is cross class. Honestly, with feats (and considering it can supress its Spell Immunity to get buffs), I would consider giving it +0. It should not be that hard to find an object to make it less kitable at this level (give it horse-riding feats and Horseshoes of Flame), and Save-or-Die is an interesting ability for a melee character. It does lack in the social department, but so does the barbarian most of the time.

If feats were enough in and of themselves then fighter would be much higher in the tiering system. Having the same number of feats a normal pc has in no way makes up for the lack of class features you receive from this and a lot of other LA -0 monsters. being 'kitable' isn't an issue for a PC being useless is, this is a case of the later.

At level 11 a an orc barbarian 11 with only enlarge person permed which is horribly under optimized outperforms gravedirt golem there is nothing +0 about gravedirt golem. There is nothing +0 about having 11 hd where all skills are cross class skills, there is nothing +0 about a random melee focused encounter being able to one hit a gravedirt golem...

[danielxcutter]

I would nitpick that “orc barbarian with Enlarge Person” isn’t exactly horribly unoptimized, but otherwise I agree.

[Remuko]

Do you not think berserk is deserving of an asterisk? It seems pretty clearly disfunctional on a PC to me.

i couldnt remember while typing up my comment which one (if it was only one of them) had a berserk effect. i agree berserk should have an *

[Efrate]

Same thought they both had berserk, my mistake.

Melee SoD are nice but ToB get that a little later iirc unless I am confusing that with PF in which I know they do.

Massive damage has been a thing since level 6 or so for a charger so i do not see it as being too great regardless. The things it will work on you can likely DPS down nearly as fast. The things you want it to work on it will not, between defenses and reasonable DC and death ward.

[Beni-Kujaku]

If feats were enough in and of themselves then fighter would be much higher in the tiering system. Having the same number of feats a normal pc has in no way makes up for the lack of class features you receive from this and a lot of other LA -0 monsters. being 'kitable' isn't an issue for a PC being useless is, this is a case of the later.

At level 11 a an orc barbarian 11 with only enlarge person permed which is horribly under optimized outperforms gravedirt golem there is nothing +0 about gravedirt golem. There is nothing +0 about having 11 hd where all skills are cross class skills, there is nothing +0 about a random melee focused encounter being able to one hit a gravedirt golem...

I was not talking at all about the gravedirt, but the tombstone one, but yeah, that makes sense.

[Caelestion]

A 1% cumulative chance of going permanently berserk means that after just 11 rounds of combat, you already have a 50% chance of being insane. After just 14 rounds, that chance increases to a 67% chance, and then to 90% after just 20 rounds. Unless there's a way of counteracting that progress, it's quite literally unplayable.

[Lapak]

A 1% cumulative chance of going permanently berserk means that after just 11 rounds of combat, you already have a 50% chance of being insane. After just 14 rounds, that chance increases to a 67% chance, and then to 90% after just 20 rounds. Unless there's a way of counteracting that progress, it's quite literally unplayable.

I mean, if you want the roleplaying challenge of our times, you could play a pacifist Gravedirt Golem who avoids combat at all costs for fear of going insane, but trying to run a pacifist role (party face, maybe? With massive penalties to all soft stats, including -10 CHA?) with this thing would certainly merit the strongest -0 I can imagine.

[H_H_F_F]

I mean, if you want the roleplaying challenge of our times, you could play a pacifist Gravedirt Golem who avoids combat at all costs for fear of going insane, but trying to run a pacifist role (party face, maybe? With massive penalties to all soft stats, including -10 CHA?) with this thing would certainly merit the strongest -0 I can imagine.

Thanks for the NPC.

[Batcathat]

I mean, if you want the roleplaying challenge of our times, you could play a pacifist Gravedirt Golem who avoids combat at all costs for fear of going insane, but trying to run a pacifist role (party face, maybe? With massive penalties to all soft stats, including -10 CHA?) with this thing would certainly merit the strongest -0 I can imagine.

Kind of sounds like something out of Discworld (with the exception of Discworld golems not working like that).

[liquidformat]

A 1% cumulative chance of going permanently berserk means that after just 11 rounds of combat, you already have a 50% chance of being insane. After just 14 rounds, that chance increases to a 67% chance, and then to 90% after just 20 rounds. Unless there's a way of counteracting that progress, it's quite literally unplayable.

Now you know how Bruce Banner feels...

[Debatra]

As one would expect, the Gravedirt Golem gets -0*. Next on the docket is the Half-Vampire.

[Debatra]

Half-Vampire

A Half-Vampire Gnoll

Acquired or Inherited: Inherited
Applied To: Any Humanoid or Monstrous Humanoid
Size & Type: Unchanged
Space/Reach: Unchanged
Hit Dice: Unchanged
Speed: Unchanged
Ability Scores: Str +2, Dex +2, Con +0, Int +0, Wis +0, Cha +2 - Net +6, no penalties
Armor Class: +2 Natural
Skills: +2 to Bluff, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Spot
CR: +1
WotC LA: +2
Our LA: +1

Apparently drinking enough blood can restore certain biological functions to a Vampire. That or a pregnant woman survives a Blood Drain. I'm not even joking, those are the two listed ways of creating one of these things.

We gave normal Vampires +3*. First thing to point out is that Half-Vampires are not Undead. Once more for the folks in the back: Their Creature Type is unchanged.

Anyway, it retains any natural weapons it already had, and gets a slam attack that counts as magic for overcoming DR. No negative levels here though. It gets one Special Attack from a list, all of which are nerfed versions of what a full Vampire gets.

Blood Drain was hit the softest with the nerf bat, the only difference (aside from lack of spawn creation) being that the five temporary HP only last an hour now. (It had no listed duration for regular vampires.) Half-Vampires with Blood Drain are also Blood Dependent, which is not actually a Diet Dependency on blood. Every day the Half-Vampire doesn't use Blood Drain on a living creature, it must make a Fortitude save (DC equal to 15 plus one for each day beyond the first) or become fatigued. After that, it has to make another save each week (20 plus one for each week after) or become exhausted. As you may expect, this fatigue/exhaustion can only be cured by drinking blood. Doing so immediately turns exhaustion to fatigue, or removes fatigue.

Charm Gaze is the Domination Gaze's little brother, working identically except for being Charm Monster instead of Dominate Person, the CL being equal to the HF's HD instead of a set 12, and a successful save granting 24-hour immunity.

Children of the Night also works identically to the full Vampire, except you get less creatures. Only 1d4 rat swarms, 1d3 bat swarms, or 1d6 wolves.

To cap things off, it gets DR 5/silver or magic, Fast Healing 1 that only works if its below half its maximum HP, 5 resistance to cold and electricity, and Improved Initiative.

[danielxcutter]

This is at minimum a +1, but it's still kinda weaksauce if I'm being honest. It's not too bad, but the special abilities are not exactly impressive.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

BTW, what do we compare templates to? This would be weaksauce on a Wizard, but you'd never not take it for LA +1 on a Barbarian.

[Troacctid]

Underpowered at +2, overpowered at +0 makes this an easy +1.

[AvatarVecna]

Underpowered at +2, overpowered at +0 makes this an easy +1.

A good summary of my feelings. LA +1.

[liquidformat]

I think this fits in at +1 looking at some of the other templates we have rated, looking at most of the other +1 creatures we rated this seems to fall somewhere between woodling and Huecava. I think the Charm Gaze is the strongest choice, the creatures of the night just sucks and grappling rules are bad enough that blood drain while it could be built around it still seems worse than Charm Gaze.

BTW, what do we compare templates to? This would be weaksauce on a Wizard, but you'd never not take it for LA +1 on a Barbarian.

never not take it? Mineralwarrior and feral are +1 and better than this and I still don't take them very often...