Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

Needletooth Swarm

Playing one dinosaur isn't cool enough? How about three bazillions of them! Or, you know, 300, since they're Tiny.

Needletooth swarms are remarkably weak. Tiny size, so no weapon immunity. No flying, basically no ability except Wounding and the regular Distraction, and pretty bad ability scores (-8 Str, +10 Dex, +4 Con, -9 Int, +2 Wis, -8 Cha). Still better than a rat swarm in most ways, notably the 40ft speed, but definitely worse than the bat swarm, despite the better stats. Seems like a weak 3 RHD, DLA-6. There is also a poisonous version, with a swarm attack dealing an additional 1d3 Dex/1d3 Dex poison. Negligible improvement, at least not enough for one more RHD.

Yeah, this one is not worth much more than the JoJo reference. One of the few creatures where googling its name in french doesn't give even one result related to d&d. I advise to skip. Next one is much more interesting, but maybe even harder to play, it's the Night Twist!

[Beni-Kujaku]

Night Twist

Does it twist in the night, does it twist the night, or is it a plot twist during the night? All of the above!

The night twist is... Surprisingly strong for a creature of the Material Plane. With the exception of dragons and constructs, most creatures above CR 12 are Extraplanar. And the night twist has nothing special about it. It's just a naturally occuring species that just happens to be an immortal singing and talking animate tree which could kill three ogres in the span of 6 seconds and charm people in a half-mile radius. It's a good thing they dwell in "the most inhospitable marshes", because they could decimate whole villages by just using their despair song and killing the villagers one by one.

The night twist is a monster designed for battlefield control, and it does its job well. Despair Song prevents any who hear from doing anything, even eat or sleep, except approaching blindly the night twist, on top of inflicting a Crushing Despair. Considering it hunts like that, it is most probable that victims don't stop until they are adjacent to the tree. However, the night twist has several abilities that prevent its opponents from approaching, blocking them in their tranced state. As a free action(!), the night twist can create an omnidirectional Gust of Wind using its own DC instead of the regular Severe Winds DC. Basically all Medium or smaller creatures cannot approach closer. Large creatures and those who made their saving throws are met with its Entangle SLA, which prevent them from approaching closer. And if even then they can reach the night twist, there's always the 20ft reach. As a monster, that means a free attack of opportunity with your slam which breaks the Despair Song (the song is specifically said to stop working only on creatures attacked by the night twist's slam). As a PC, that means you can attack with Totemist-accessed natural weapons, use Large and in Charge to prevent them from reaching you even more easily, or have your allies attack them while they're "charmed".
The problem? Al of that is subordinated to your ability to use Despair Song. And Despair Song is... Unwieldy. It's only useable during the evening, it's mind affecting (worse than that, it doesn't even affect creatures with less than 6 Int), and it's a HUGE radius that is unfriendly to basically everyone. If you're using it in town, you'll have hundreds of citizen coming to you begging for you to slam them, which will not only disturb your fight, but probably kill them all afterwards, since your strength is so damn high. Even if there's nobody less than 700ft away from you and the big bad, your party will be affected too, and you'll have to slam them to snap them out of it. And even around level 14, a 2d8+18 (considering you put all your points in strength) slam is nothing to sneeze at, and will be felt by the target, even nonlethal. Even your wind blast affects everyone in a 120ft radius, including your allies.

Without Despair Song, the night twist is mostly a beatstick with SLAs, with classic but still really high beatstick-with-SLAs stats. Large size, +28 Str, -4 Dex, +18 Con, +2 Int, +4 Wis, +10 Cha. Obviously the strength is stellar, but the Charisma is also great, considering the night twist has Unholy Grace (Cha to AC and saves), and it makes even its low-level SLAs have DCs equivalent to pretty high-level ones. Yes, I'm talking about Entangle. And Fear. But mostly Entangle. All in all, its combat abilities are lower Necronaut's, with lower strength, a lower number of attacks despite higher BAB, no ability to wield weapons, and overall equivalent defensive abilities (equivalent +20 natural armor for both considering Unholy Grace, but putting points in Charisma may improve the night twist's; no SR and lower DR for the night twist, but DR/slashing is much more useful than DR/Lawful or magic; and undead immunities are better than plants immunities). The real problem is the low speed. At these levels, it's not too hard to find ways to gain fixed fly speed or something, but it's still a problem. Overall, I still think the night twist is better than the Necronaut in most ways, but the lower physical offense means it's just slightly better overall. Pretty strong 12 RHD, DLA-2. In a mega-dungeon, or otherwise very combat-centric campaign, you might want to increase it to 13RHD, DLA-1 to account for Despair Song being actually useful with not many innocent casualties.


Ancient night twist, 25 RHD: The night twist cannot die of old age, and continues growing for its whole life, similarly to sequoias and other trees. After a few millenia, that's what you get. This advanced night twist is one size category bigger with regular stat increases, the elite array, and 6 slams instead of three. The slams are still dealing damage three categories bigger than normal, for a very respectable 4d6+Str per hit. Now we're talking! It also has much, much better SLAs, with notably Weird 1/day for mass murder and stunning, and CL 20 Circle of Death if you absolutely want to delete a 45 HD enemy beatstick. This kind of SLAs was what the night twist wanted all its life. I think it's good enough for a weak 16 RHD, and DLA-7. The lack of SR is still disturbing, but that's what you get for being a lowly Material being.


The night twist seems to be as much a plot device as it is a monster, and all its abilities reflect that, from the "ominous wind" coming from the tree, to the whole city disappearing in the sewers to get eaten by a mysterious tree, and even its death throes are interesting. I didn't talk about it, because it shouldn't come up, but it inflicts a permanent Nightmare effect on whoever kills it, which is great with its focus on night and dusk.
Next time, we will have one of my favourite monsters, and one I feel was done the dirtiest both by the number of RHD, and by the LA-assignment thread. See you then for the Odopi!

[Beni-Kujaku]

Odopi

Spoiler: Quotes that make me sad

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-0 at ECL 20, not even close. This is flat out bad. Ugh.

-0 no contest. I wish there was more to be said, but this one is just bleh.

LA -0 for both, there is nothing to salvage here as a PC.

Ewwwwwww. An aberration without even the natural weapons for Rapidstrike? EWWWWWWWWWWW.

Give me a monk instead, and keep that thing away from character sheets for the love of everything.

The odopi. That's a monster that deserved to exist for more than one edition. Wonderfully weird, absolutely unique in its concept and as far as I know original to D&D and not cribbed off of a myth or legend from a remote part of the real world, the odopi would not have been out of place in the OD&D Monstrous Manual. It is linked to the Planes, its anatomy is simple yet engaging, and players know immediately what its deal is. Sadly, where WotC does well in lore and design, they fail spectacularly in terms of mechanical relevance. The Odopi has almost nothing for it that makes it even remotely challenging even as a CR 14 encounter, let alone against ECL 20 opponents. An aberration with average physical stats, woefully inadequate SLAs, and the whole "abilities that stopped being useful about 5 to 10 levels ago" package, with Improved Grab, Trample and Swallow Whole. Almost sad. I feel like the reason the odopi wasn't reprinted later was because they didn't know how to improve on it. It's a rolling tumbleweed of death, and that's all.

And the playground doesn't like creatures with 20 RHD and no meaningful ability. So they went, assigned -0, spewed a few insults at the thing (as you do), even compared it to a monk (the poor thing didn't deserve to fall that low), and moved on. And I would have wholeheartedly agreed with them, but I feel like they glossed over a tiny detail. Now, I don't blame them, it's very subtle. But if you look closely at the art for the creature:



Can you see it? Yeah. That thing has ARMS. Arms for days? Arms for days. The odopi has arms with hands attached. About 50 of them, if I'm to believe the art. And although it can't use them for natural attacks and it can't wield weapons, 3.5 is a system with so many things that players could do that there is always a way to use them.
These arms are the defining feature of the odopi, and the very difference between a player and a monster is that the player can choose what feats they choose. The odopi can explicitly use all its arms to manipulate thrown weapons ("Although its hands are dexterous enough to grasp, move, and throw objects, an odopi cannot wield melee or ranged weapons other than those that can be thrown."). Even if we're disregarding Throwing weapons and the fact that RAW, an odopi can wield a 8-handed Throwing masterwork longsword (using the Savage Species rules) and deal 4d6+31 with each hit (before point-buy. 4d6+49 if you assign an 18 to Str), that means that the odopi can take Multiweapon Fighting and throw 40 shurikens in a round. With Brutal Throw, that is a lot of damage. Or you could go even further and just take Multitasking. It requires you to boost your intelligence and has a three-feat tax, but it allows you to make 20 standard actions in a round. Even the very basic "I attack with my claw" action is broken when repeated 20 times, but there's no reason to think you couldn't use it with maneuvers. Every other round, you can spend one swift action on an "End of Turn" boost, then expand all your standard action maneuvers on the enemies. Next round, use your swift and one of your standard actions to recover all your maneuvers, then rinse and repeat. This kind of abuse is what I would have expected to at least be brought up in the original thread.

The odopi is pretty fast, with a 60ft speed, and its decent Dex, Will and Con mean it is quite hard to take out, and if you allow it to get 20 standard actions or to throw dozens of shurikens, it may be really good. Good enough for ECL 20? Sadly, even with that kind of favorable ruling, I don't think so. It needs at least a level of warblade to truly use its abilities, or one of monk to make unarmed strikes, and even if it would be a beast in combat, it does next to nothing against an opponent that it cannot beat up. High DR shuts it down, as do a lot of spells, and its innate SR is quite low (2+RHD), even if its other defensive abilities are average for such a monster (+14 NA, DR 10/Good, Fast Healing 7, all-around vision). Still, the sheer absurdity of so many attacks and/or actions per round is a good part of what makes the Hecatoncheires one of the scariest monsters in the game (that and the ridiculous defenses of the Hecatoncheires which makes them quite unbreakable except through sheer damage, but we're not asking the odopi to be CR 57), and I feel like allowing it, even on the weaker odopi chassis, is good enough to warrant paying 17 RHD for it. And DLA-3. Either way, the odopi gets three levels to round up its arsenal before epic levels.


Elder Odopi, 30 RHD: The same, but bigger. The added strength is nice if you go the 8-handed sword route, but otherwise a painfully weak improvement. Not even better SLAs. 19 RHD, DLA-9

Spoiler: A saner, more boring DM's approach

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You could say that since the odopi can only throw 4 rocks in a round, only 4 arms are useable for anything. In that case, the odopi just becomes a weak beatstick with only one standard action attack. Improved Grab is still decent (especially with the odopi ability to move while grappling without a grapple check, dealing Trample damage on the way), but it won't make you good. Your stats are balanced, but -4 Int always hurts, and 5ft reach is ludicrously low if you can't efficiently move across the battlefield. In that case, classes that improve your thrown weapons, like Bloodstorm Blade, are probably the way to go. In that case, I suggest allowing the odopi with 9 RHD, where its defensive abilities, as well as that big meaty claw will really shine. That way, it can take one initiator level, then finish Bloodstorm Blade. The chassis is so much worse than the kraken's that it isn't even funny, and the odopi can't even talk. With 20 RHD, DLA-8 should be good. It needs the BAB, and it allows it to nab 9th-level maneuvers. The elder odopi is little more than an odopi advanced to Gargantuan size and 30 RHD, having its two ability score increases in Dexterity, and still probably worse than a kraken. 11 RHD, DLA-14.

Odopi could have been so much more, but it is now condemned to oblivion by weird design. You can act against it. Use odopi in your games, if not as a PC, at least as a monster of the week. You too can do your part!
It's interesting to have these eyes in the palm of each hand. I personally imagine that these are not hands, but "baby odopi". There's no organ in the center of an odopi, only a stomach with not even a mouth, a glorified bag filled with acid. My guess is that the odopi is only a symbiotic creature between the "hands" — slug-like creatures with a functioning eye, body, organs and a mouth at the shoulder-equivalent —, and the "stomach", a creature who evolved to not be able to move on its own, and to which the "hands" attach themselves to act as one big creature.

After this "Interesting Monster" intermission, we will now go back to our regularly scheduled "MM1 monster with more RHD". See you soon for the Skullcrusher ogre.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Even the very basic "I attack with my claw" action is broken when repeated 20 times, but there's no reason to think you couldn't use it with maneuvers.

Am I missing something? The odopi's stat block only lists one claw under Full Attack, none of its special abilities seem to grant it additional attacks, and the errata only corrects the elder odopi's grapple bonus.

I can definitely see the sheer number of arms being a huge boost, especially if the DM lets you take Multitasking. But that turns this into a grisgol kind of situation, where a monster is broken if you lean into its broken mechanics and disappointing if you don't. I'm glad you added alternate judgements for if you don't allow that abuse, even if hiding them in a spoiler is kinda weird.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Am I missing something? The odopi's stat block only lists one claw under Full Attack, none of its special abilities seem to grant it additional attacks, and the errata only corrects the elder odopi's grapple bonus.

I can definitely see the sheer number of arms being a huge boost, especially if the DM lets you take Multitasking. But that turns this into a grisgol kind of situation, where a monster is broken if you lean into its broken mechanics and disappointing if you don't. I'm glad you added alternate judgements for if you don't allow that abuse, even if hiding them in a spoiler is kinda weird.

I was speaking about using Multitasking to get 20 standard actions and using them all to just make one claw attack each time. Nothing about full attacking. But full attacking with all arms can absolutely be done, only with thrown weapons and not with your claw. Also I'm not sure how that would interact with monks. Monks can do off-hand attacks during a full action, would a monk odopi make an off-hand attack with each of its arms if it had Improved Unarmed Strike?

I feel like that's different from the grisgol in that the grisgol gets to use its main feature, even prohibiting what is already pointed out by the book as substantially increasing its power. On the other hand (haha.), the odopi just uses its body shape the way every other monster with several arms does: by taking the Multiweapon Fighting line. It's much more immediate, and I feel like that's the difference between using a broken ability and abusing a theoretically non-broken one. I guess most of my complaints come from the fact that the whole point of the monster is that it has so many arms, and I'm disappointed that using these arms wasn't even mentioned in the original LA thread, despite the Playground's reputation to always look for the most nitpicky way to use everything in the game. That's just a waste of monster design!

[GreatWyrmGold]

I was speaking about using Multitasking to get 20 standard actions and using them all to just make one claw attack each time. Nothing about full attacking.

rechecks the Multitasking feat
Huh. I feel like making separate attacks with all your arms should have been forbidden by the feat, and the feat text seems to imply that you need to take different actions, but nothing in the rules actually forbids repeating the same action 20 times. Huh.

I guess most of my complaints come from the fact that the whole point of the monster is that it has so many arms, and I'm disappointed that using these arms wasn't even mentioned in the original LA thread, despite the Playground's reputation to always look for the most nitpicky way to use everything in the game. That's just a waste of monster design!

I blame how the odopi tries to specifically prevent the obvious cheese you could do with a zillion arms. It doesn't do a very thorough job of it, but it can be hard to notice. And the only reason this works at all (unless you count throwing four weapons at different targets) is a specific 3.0 feat that I'd never heard of before you mentioned it.

[Beni-Kujaku]

rechecks the Multitasking feat
Huh. I feel like making separate attacks with all your arms should have been forbidden by the feat, and the feat text seems to imply that you need to take different actions, but nothing in the rules actually forbids repeating the same action 20 times. Huh.
I blame how the odopi tries to specifically prevent the obvious cheese you could do with a zillion arms. It doesn't do a very thorough job of it, but it can be hard to notice. And the only reason this works at all (unless you count throwing four weapons at different targets) is a specific 3.0 feat that I'd never heard of before you mentioned it.

Yeah, Multitasking is the obviously broken one, but by the rules, Multiweapon Fighting is enough to allow you to use all your arms, since the odopi only says it can only throw four rocks. As I said, you ca just throw 50 shurikens, or 50 knives with Quick Draw (you might want to get a gantlet of Infinite Blades). I mean, theoretically you don't even need MWF, but you'd take heavy penalties. Alternatively, since we're playing with the LA-assignment thread, why not become a skeleton? One claw per hand, available at your local dollar store! And who could forget about Fuse Arms, for a truly staggering +100 Str!!! Even Thor would shake in his boots before that... thing. (Here represented with the Girallon Arms soulmeld and a coat. Because you can be a freak of nature and still be stylish.) Or that one rule in Sword&Fist saying you can grapple with more than two arms to get a +4 bonus each time? Give me one monster that wouldn't get grappled by that!

There has to be more, it's 3.5 after all. The point is, they didn't think that players could transform into an odopi, and that's honestly great! Not only for us freaks that assign LAs to the weirdest things, but because it makes for such original monsters. Most monsters have to take into account that the wizard could cast polymorph and take their shape, or that the druid may take Aberration Wild Shape, or even that the cleric could Planar Ally them. That is such a weight on game design that it shaped all of 3.5. There are so very few monsters with low HD and very high CR because of that. And when you ignore that, you get things like the odopi, or the ethergaunt, or the living spells, or the ravid. They are broken when full casters abuse them, but make for great puzzle or surprise encounters. The ability to change into and otherwise use monsters as allies is both the thing I hate most and love most in 3.5. It gives the system so much personality, and makes high-level characters so unique, but they inflict such a stranglehold on game design that I've come to wish they would have implemented the Polymorph ban way earlier during the edition.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Skullcrusher Ogre

Seriously? Monster Manual 1 already gave us regular ogre, two-headed ogre, aberration three-armed ogre, and magical flying ogre, and we only now get "ogre but slightly more intelligent and strong"? Who thought this was an interesting variation?
The skullcrusher ogres are basically ogres sergeants, made and designed to be a low-level boss monster leading a few ogres in battle against the PCs. They are exactly what you'd expect.

- 8 Giant RHD, Large size with reach
- +14 Str, +6 Con, -2 Cha. Compared to a regular ogre, +4 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Con, +4 Int, +2 Cha. Nice to have no Int penalty, but nothing stellar, especially with so many RHD. Also +2 NA, or three less than the regular ogre. What? Who's the genius who gave their evolved ogre lower defense than the regular version?
- Rock throwing. Sure.
- Two-Weapon Fighting and Improved Grapple. Where are you going with that?

Spoiler: Why the skullcrusher ogre has one of the worst statblocks of the book

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My Gruumsh that statblock is painful to read. The thing is, WotC wanted the Skullcrusher to look more intimidating than a regular ogre, but to actually not be. At all. The skullcrusher will appear in full-plate and with a shield! But we'll reduce its natural armor so that an ogre-fighting party could still hit it. It will make more attacks than a regular ogre! Except these attacks won't hit, and won't do much damage even if they do. WotC really wanted the skullcrusher to fight with a shield it seems. They gave it Imroved Shield Bash and TWF for that. But for a monster with such strength and no bonus damage, TWF is woefully inadequate. If you just compare it to a regular ogre, its morningstar as a standard action does less damage if it hits (2d6+7 compared to 2d8+7). And if you allow it to make a full-round action to attack, it's even worse. The attack with the spiked shield deals an average of 7 damage and reduces its attack bonus with the morningstar, removing most of the advantage of full attacking in the first place. Because it doesn't even use a light shield, but a one-handed one! And that's not even considering that great piece of text:
"Skullcrusher sergeants are canny fighters. Even when confronted by a well-armored foe, a sergeant will often use its
Power Attack feat, taking a –4 penalty on attack rolls to gain a +4 bonus on damage."
That's not being canny. That's being completely dumb. The skullcrusher ogre is using Power Attack while TWFing with a one-handed shield. Aaaaaaargh. Considering a "well-armored foe" has 19 AC (full plate, 12 Dex, absolutely not rare at CR 8), making a single attack with a morningstar deals 9.8 DPR, and doing the same with 4 points of PA deals 9 DPR. First, that's the damage output of a raging 2rd-level orc with no feats, but mostly that's less than without using PA. And full attacking makes it worse. +8/+3 (2d6+7), +8 (1d8+3) deals 14.25 DPR (just giving the Skullcrusher one of its subordinates greatclub would increase it to 21.85 DPR, more than a 50% improvement), but full-attacking with Power Attack (+4/-1 (2d6+11), +4 (1d8+7)) deals 9.75 damage per round. That's less than a standard action attack with the morningstar and no Power Attack! That's almost upsetting. No. No, there it is, that's upsetting. I'm upset. Set that was previously down is now up.

Point is, don't use a shield as a skullcrusher ogre. Don't use TWF with one-handed weapons in your off-hand. Don't use Power Attack with one-handed weapons. Don't use freaking Power Attack against heavily-armored opponents! I dislike that monster very much. And the fact that on top of all of this it has Improved Grapple as a bonus but no free hand to use it is only part of my exasperation. It's basically the definition of what you should never do as a player, and it's almost fascinating for it.

The Skullcrusher Ogre has hands, so that's not too bad, but overall it only brings to the balance its goodish stats, its abysmal natural armor and its Large size, since you're probably never going to use either TWF or Improved Grapple. I guess that's enough for 6 RHD, DLA-1.


And because sometimes you just want to be everything, and a bit of the rest, next time we will review the Omnimental!

[Morphic tide]

Important note: As it's described with Full Plate and a Heavy Shield, and is a Giant, it's Proficient with all Simple and Martial weapons, all typical armor, and non-tower shields, plus having two albeit-in-tension bonus feats and no Intelligence penalty. I would strongly suggest 6 RHD/DLA -1 instead.

Playing along with its original setup, we have ourselves a perfect user for Blood-Spiked Charger. Because 2d8+5.5xStr on a Charge is a fine-enough pseudo-Pounce starting point, its requirement of an empty hand lets you use Improved Grapple with the benefits of being Large, you can get a net +1 to attack and AC if you have Combat Expertise, and you get a 2d8+3xStr Full-Round Action single swing for some rather severe demands of Improved TWF when you want to wreck one target next to you. Oh, and you can actually have Combat Expertise to qualify for Improved Trip, which TWF attack volume is applicable to for all everyone obsesses over Spiked Chain Combat Reflexes setups.

Edit: Can also just be a Spiked Chain Tripper with Improved Grapple "wasted", but I figured I may as well mention the direction that gives you 70 average damage Charges (2d8+2+6xStr, with +10 mod from 16 assigned+14 racial) off a single Spiked Shield hit. If you go Psychic Warrior, you lose a bunch of its versatility for the privilege of 1pp for Huge and being able to be Gargantuan. Which means you can try to Grapple the Tarrasque with that free hand, for all I'm fairly certain you need +100 Grapple to do that.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Skullcrusher Ogre

Seriously? Monster Manual 1 already gave us regular ogre, two-headed ogre, aberration three-armed ogre, and magical flying ogre, and we only now get "ogre but slightly more intelligent and strong"? Who thought this was an interesting variation?

Technically, only one and a half of those are ogres. The problem isn't that there are too many kinds of ogres, it's that there are too many monsters in the ogre's niche.

Trolls deserve the love they get in the MM3, because A. D&D found something interesting to add to the legendary template and B. the MM3 found interesting ways to add to the basic D&D troll. The skullcrusher ogre doesn't have either of those things going for it; the ogre is just another big dumb bruiser, the skullcrusher ogre doesn't add anything to that except a whiff of eugenics and some questionable build choices. (The TWF heavy spiked shield was brought to you by the same brilliant minds whose druid threw scimitars and never wild shaped.)

If I was going to yes-and this into something better, I'd go one of two directions.

Option one, lean into the eugenics. The skullcrusher ogre has giant-like rock throwing? Yes, because it's the result of breeding ogres and giants, to make a soldier as strong as a giant but more pliable. They failed on both these accounts, and now skullcrushers are using their clear strengths to rally rival tribes of ogres to their banners, taking revenge on those who abused them and their forebears.
Crushing the eugenicsy mages is probably a good thing, but once they're done a massive ogre army in the middle of "civilized" territory will be looking for a place to call home. Balancing the "ogres have legitimate grievances with other races" angle with the "ogres are cannon fodder mooks" angle would be tricky, but it could be done.
(The lower natural armor might even be justifiable in this narrative, if a point is made that eugenics isn't effective. Sure, maybe the ogre/giant hybrid is liger-strong, but it's tigon-fragile.)

Option two, just make them ogres with class levels. They're not super-advanced ogres, they're just ogres who survived a bunch of battles and will survive many more. It's simpler, it's harder to make stupid errors like "the tougher ogre has barely any natural armor," and it uses the game's core mechanics instead of just juggling random numbers.

Anyways, I think Morphic Tide makes some interesting points. Not sure how important its armor proficiencies are when most classes who'd use such armor are proficient with the best armor that doesn't block their class abilities, but it's certainly not nothing.

[Morphic tide]

Option one, lean into the eugenics.

I'd have the issues be a matter of not being able to select the exact trait set due to the limits of the method in use, and the skewed priorities trying to force stuff that doesn't quite work that way and leaving issues for "post-production" solutions. Actually fits well with their statblock, very significantly more Intelligence and Strength, slightly more Constitution and Dexterity, in exchange for less Natural Armor. AC is very cheap, ability scores are very expensive. A Headband of Intellect +4 is 16,000 GP, while Fabricating Full Plate is 500 GP and livable rations are measured in single-digit CP per day. It is not hard to justify some long-term villains deciding to spend a few centuries making subordinates to meet their demands, because multiple generations of selective breeding is still vastly cheaper than making up that Intelligence disadvantage with magic items.

Hell, D&D's actually gone at exactly this sort of thing on a variety of occasions with stuff like the Mul (sterile Human/Dwarf hybrids that are popular slaves on Athas), Neo-Orog (Orc-Ogre cross breeds of Thay with fertility issues induced by the magical alterations), Dray (Athasian "dragonborn" made by one of the Dragon Kings in an attempt to escape from Lichdom into full Dragon), Xixchil (hyper-individualist mantis-people with a habit of fleshshaping and grafting metal into themselves) the assorted shenanigans the Zik'chil get up to with the Kreen races (totally not just the Xixchil of Athas), the Elans (formerly-human Abberations with resurrective immortality sans memories)...

Poking at magic-as-transhumanism and people-as-resources crops up a lot in D&D settings, but Wizards of the Coast started moving it into a closet some time during 4th edition and rarely touched the depths of TSR Weird.

Not sure how important its armor proficiencies are when most classes who'd use such armor are proficient with the best armor that doesn't block their class abilities, but it's certainly not nothing.

There's niche cases where you can take just one level for skills to qualify for a PRC instead of needing another for a weapon or armor proficiency. Vengeance Knight, Knight of the Silver Pearl, Eldritch Knight, Knight Phantom, the Sword and Fist version of Cavalier, Sanctified Mind, Spellsword, it's edge-cases that are mostly Gish builds but they can matter. And fits in further with the "thoroughly specialized to Wizard Overlord attempt" direction, that they're well-situated to small bits of Wizard casting backing up drastic physical ability for cheap overall value.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Hell, D&D's actually gone at exactly this sort of thing on a variety of occasions with stuff like the Mul (sterile Human/Dwarf hybrids that are popular slaves on Athas), Neo-Orog (Orc-Ogre cross breeds of Thay with fertility issues induced by the magical alterations), Dray (Athasian "dragonborn" made by one of the Dragon Kings in an attempt to escape from Lichdom into full Dragon), Xixchil (hyper-individualist mantis-people with a habit of fleshshaping and grafting metal into themselves) the assorted shenanigans the Zik'chil get up to with the Kreen races (totally not just the Xixchil of Athas), the Elans (formerly-human Abberations with resurrective immortality sans memories)...

Poking at magic-as-transhumanism and people-as-resources crops up a lot in D&D settings, but Wizards of the Coast started moving it into a closet some time during 4th edition and rarely touched the depths of TSR Weird.

It's a little weird, but also, D&D has been criticized for how biologically essentialist its races are. High elves are smarter than half-orcs, that's an objectively true fact indicated by their Attribute bonuses, and this is just a fact of the world. {Scrubbed}

Having eugenics unambiguously work just supports that bio-essentialism. {Scrubbed}

Now, it's not hard to come up with an alternative to eugenics. D&D is a high fantasy-kitchen-sink setting, even if it only has one kind of kitchen sink. You could have your super-soldier-making villains manufacture their soldiers by binding minor demons to them, or doing blood sacrifice to give one ogre the strength of ten of its relatives, or cut out the "mercy" part of their soul and replace it with some kind of power source. Hell, it could just be a spell! Most buffs can't be made permanent with permanency, but who cares? You're the game-writer, say that there's some lost ritual that lets evil wizards make them! And if you need to specifically combine two things for the concept to work, there's always surgery.

{Scrubbed}

Then again, WotC hasn't published nearly as much for 5e as they did for 3.5. By Wikipedia's count, 5e has eight supplements and eight setting books (including three MtG settings and two podcast splatbooks), while 3.5 has 61 supplements, three compendia, and Ghostwalk, which is kinda a supplement but I'd argue more of a setting book. I didn't count 4e's books, but it looks like it has a bit fewer than 3.5, and like those sourcebooks are much narrower in focus ("Psionic Power - Options for Ardents, Battleminds, Monks and Psions," for instance).

3.5 had a lot more space for evil super-people-makers.

[Morphic tide]

It's a little weird, but also, D&D has been criticized for how biologically essentialist its races are. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{Scrubbed}

Allegory is Fantasy Worldbuilding 101, and narrative experimentation with unreal basis is Fantasy Worldbuilding 102. It has been long held as intensely awful writing to insist on having no shred of support for disagreed with positions in literature, and archetypal fantasy is even more dependent on offering at least a toe-hold to the opposed opinion due to the extreme frequency of Literally Pure Evil as a physical force making terribly wrong things happen in thoroughly unnatural ways. Unless you also want to finish the annihilation of the entire Great Wheel cosmology and afterlife system for moral ambiguity... There's Ebberon for that, let the grogs keep Faerun!

{Scrubbed}

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Because a good chunk of the business model is saving on development costs by leaving stuff to older works, so actively overturning a huge pile of it finishes losing them the nostalgia-driven section of their audience not Incredibly Actively In Favor of having political shifts supersede the decades of convention said segment is here for going back to far more intricate work than WotC has ever done themselves. Any consideration of applying such to the Illithidae demands near-total decanonization of the Illithiad and massive changes to their iconic biology, for example, and good luck getting anywhere with the dragons

Additionally, the business' best interest is maintaining homogeneity so that the play groups, and thus market, are fungible for wide ranges of products. Screwing this up is a major contributor to what killed TSR, they kept releasing incompatible campaign settings with different basic rules, so past successes did not lead to future ones. Wizards of the Coast has no way to do this directly, they can only design products and make public statements, and consequently their best choice is "nothing". Just take a look at how hard people complain about the recent Spelljammer!

[Beni-Kujaku]

I feel that one of the thing that makes people tick is the naming of the different species as races. No one would tick if I said that "on average, humans are more intelligent than dogs", whatever your definition of intelligence is. Most people would not react if I also said that the difference between humans and dogs is mostly one of degree, and not of fundamental nature. These two statements imply that there might exist species that are, on average, more intelligent than dogs and less intelligent than humans. Illithids have extraordinary memory and ability to understand the world around them (higher Intelligence and Wisdom in game terms), and they are described as an available "race", a monstrous race.
The second thing is the fact that, by magic, you can combine characteristics of various species. That is something upon which the D&D universe is based from the start. From owlbears to half-dragons and all the "wizard did it" in-between, changing that would require reworking the whole universe, and as Morphic Tide said, that would make a lot of players turn tail (honestly, including myself. I despised the upending of most of the lore in 4e and much prefer how 5e mostly came back to something consistent with earlier editions). It would also greatly reduce the design possibilities from WotC that would have to make a lot of monsters independant from each other and delete most templates.

"Eugenics work in D&D world" is mainly a byproduct of these two facts. It would be weird to have half-dragons be stronger than regular creatures, and not have wizards be able to breed creatures to improve their abilities. But I feel like one problem seems to be specifically increased intelligence as a result of selective breeding. The thing is, Intelligence as one of the ability scores is how the game works, and having ways to modify it by the same way you can increase other ability scores, both as a player and in the lore, is really the only way the world works consistently. The only way different races can not have different average intelligence (once again, specific half-orcs can very well be much more intelligent than most sun elves) and hence, not validate "racism beliefs" would be to completely remove Intelligence as an ability score, and by extension all mental ability scores, which would, I'm sure everyone would agree, remove a lot of the charm and complexity of the game.

Anyways, I think Morphic Tide makes some interesting points. Not sure how important its armor proficiencies are when most classes who'd use such armor are proficient with the best armor that doesn't block their class abilities, but it's certainly not nothing.

There's niche cases where you can take just one level for skills to qualify for a PRC instead of needing another for a weapon or armor proficiency.

I'm not absolutely convinced, considering the situationality of gaining racial weapon proficiencies and TWF on a Str-based monster, but I'll yield to the majority. Changed to 6 RHD, DLA-1.

[GreatWyrmGold]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

[...]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Oh my god, there's so much to unpack here, and it's all off-topic.

Let's start with the easy stuff!
{Scrubbed}

Human societies force wildly divergent environmental conditions on different segments of the population. {Scrubbed}

Suffice to say, there are tons of studies on how personal beliefs can be shaped by the media we consume. Not all studies demonstrate a link between media X and belief Y (for instance, Call of Duty and violence), but those studies should not be taken as evidence against the idea that media can affect people, especially when there are academic studies demonstrating that cultivation theory is, often, a thing.

{Scrubbed}

My understanding of the academic consensus is that media is bad at getting you to do specific actions, but good at shaping values and worldview. That's why morality tales have been a thing as long as humanity has told tales; stories are good at communicating worldviews and value systems.

{Scrubbed}

Tolkien didn't write The Lord of the Rings as an allegory for anything, but that doesn't mean he didn't inject his beliefs about how the world worked into his books. Even a superficial reading of the series reveals themes about the devastation of war and nature, pride and courage, and the nature of good and evil.

{Scrubbed}

And games have a unique power to portray this kind of stuff. TRPGs usually don't have preset characters or plotlines, but they do describe how the world works, in quite overt and literal ways. This is less true of narrativist games, whose mechanics are explicitly framed as being tools for collective story-telling, but D&D is definitely on the simulationist side of the curve. It portrays a fantasy world, yes, but one that implicitly functions like ours in many ways. In particular, while its people might have gray skin or pointy ears, they are still people. They look like people, they act like people, and you are encouraged to treat them like people (or at least like certain archetypes treat certain categories of people).

{Scrubbed}

TL;DR: It's more complicated than that, and those complications matter.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Allegory is Fantasy Worldbuilding 101, and narrative experimentation with unreal basis is Fantasy Worldbuilding 102. It has been long held as intensely awful writing to insist on having no shred of support for disagreed with positions in literature, and archetypal fantasy is even more dependent on offering at least a toe-hold to the opposed opinion due to the extreme frequency of Literally Pure Evil as a physical force making terribly wrong things happen in thoroughly unnatural ways. Unless you also want to finish the annihilation of the entire Great Wheel cosmology and afterlife system for moral ambiguity... There's Ebberon for that, let the grogs keep Faerun!

I didn't say any of that!

{Scrubbed}

First off: I don't think this thread should try to fix WotC's mistakes, except the ones related to level adjustment. Duh. I just think WotC should fix WotC's mistakes.

{Scrubbed}

Third, I don't think D&D 6e should get rid of the concept of race. I just think it should be handled a bit differently. If I had to summarize what I'd want, I'd say to put less emphasis on it and more on background. I'd probably design it so that race set a few basic statistics about how you move in the world (like size and speed) and gave a few fun flavorful abilities, with backgrounds being where you get your build-defining stat boosts and powers, but I'd settle for the two being more equitable. Getting +1 Intelligence from being a high elf wouldn't stand out as much if you got +2 Intelligence from being a scholar.

The key word here is "framing". And I'm going to go outside the realm of gaming for a moment, because I have a really clear example that I just thought of and which only takes a couple minutes to experience. "Door-Fighter!!" and "Wigglesticks" are both short songs released by Gavin Dunne in 2012, both make fun of repetitive mechanics used by then-relevant games to spice up their action scenes. Yet they are not saying the same thing. One of them is actively criticizing the use of that mechanic, the other is playfully roasting it, and I don't think I need to tell you which is which. Why?

Well, one song focuses on what the player does, the other on what the player character does, indicating different levels of immersion or investment. One has a plodding, simplistic melody, indicating that the mechanic is boring and simple; the other has an energetic, fast-paced melody, indicating that the mechanic is exciting. And of course, there are the lyrics. The difference between calling the main character thick and calling him a door-fighter(!!) is a bit subtle; both are making fun of that character. But it's obvious that one line is laughing at the main character and one is laughing with him.

Now, you could argue that the difference between "I hate wooden ****!" and "His spatial awareness is that of a brick" rises to the level of text, rather than framing. {Scrubbed}

Fourth, I don't think D&D needs race, except insofar as it needs to look like previous editions of D&D, but that's an argument that can be levied against any change. The existence of the Race space is not a sacred cow. Some fantasy characters are defined by their race (Constable Carrot being a prominent example in my mind), but more are defined by their background—the proud prince, the humble farmer, the stoic hunter. Race is usually irrelevant.

I'd go so far as to argue that race is irrelevant for the non-human members of the Fellowship of the Ring—the hobbits uniquely suited to bear the One Ring, and the progenitor of every dwarf/elf rivalry in modern fantasy. The hobbits don't resist the allure of the Ring better than Gandalf because they are hobbits and he is a wizard; they resist it because they grew up in a humble rustic village and he grew up as an angel walking among mere mortals. It's not their genes that matter, but their backgrounds.
Likewise, Legolas and Gimli don't fight because elves and dwarves are incompatible the way cats and dogs are; the whole point of their rivalry is that they can grow past it. They fight at first because of how they were raised—because of the longstanding rivalry between elves and dwarves, because of their fathers' conflict, because they see the differences between them and not the similarities.

Not a single thing about D&D (except the art) would have to change if every humanoid race was replaced by humans. You have the warlike Plainsmen, the magocratic Thayans, the rustic Ffolk, and so on. I don't understand why anyone could consider race to be that important.

TL;DR: I never said any of the things you say I said. Also, it's weird that you think races being fundamentally different is a central pillar of D&D.

Because a good chunk of the business model is saving on development costs by leaving stuff to older works, so actively overturning a huge pile of it finishes losing them the nostalgia-driven section of their audience not Incredibly Actively In Favor of having political shifts supersede the decades of convention said segment is here for going back to far more intricate work than WotC has ever done themselves. Any consideration of applying such to the Illithidae demands near-total decanonization of the Illithiad and massive changes to their iconic biology, for example, and good luck getting anywhere with the dragons

Additionally, the business' best interest is maintaining homogeneity so that the play groups, and thus market, are fungible for wide ranges of products. Screwing this up is a major contributor to what killed TSR, they kept releasing incompatible campaign settings with different basic rules, so past successes did not lead to future ones. Wizards of the Coast has no way to do this directly, they can only design products and make public statements, and consequently their best choice is "nothing". Just take a look at how hard people complain about the recent Spelljammer!

I'd like to start by reminding you that I never said anything about getting rid of intelligent monsters.
{Scrubbed}

(Plus, illithids and dragons are alien enough that the same rules don't apply. They have radically different natures and radically different nurtures; with the vague lore D&D tends towards, whether monsters seem dominated by nature or nurture has more to do with the context they're embedded in than it does the monsters themselves.)
{Scrubbed} I see two core arguments here. One is philosophical, the other economical.

The philosophical argument is, charitably, that D&D should avoid changing too much to avoid keep it like D&D. This is another one of those things where I agree with the principle but not the conclusion. D&D should take care to keep itself like D&D. But in that form, that argument is an argument against ever changing anything about D&D, which is obviously absurd. For all my 3.5 nostalgia, I have to admit that both 5e and PF2 made big improvements on it, albeit in very different directions. (And that's not getting into the editions that came before the first one I played, which I think are as needlessly obtuse as everyone thinks the editions of D&D before their first are.)

So while this argument has merit, it needs to be refined. We need to establish what things make D&D feel like D&D, and avoid changing those. For instance: I despise Vancian magic with every fiber of my being, from both a worldbuilding and mechanical perspective, but I acknowledge that it's part of what makes D&D feel like D&D. A rigid class/level system is core to D&D feeling like D&D. {Scrubbed} The importance of d20's is core to D&D feeling like D&D. The importance of race is not.

And yeah, that's ultimately subjective. But I could make solid arguments for the first four things being core to D&D, arguments that I don't think anyone would have an issue with (beyond "Why are you arguing this point?") But I don't think there's any solid argument for why race needs to be the second-most-important line on your character sheet—ahead of alignment, of traits and flaws, of bonds, of background. Only "Race has always been important".

It's also worth pointing out that race has gotten dramatically less important over time. Originally, Dwarf and Elf were classes. (And classes were a lot more rigid in AD&D than they are in 5e.) Then the class/race system was implemented, but the classes each (non-human) race could select from were sharply limited. Then any race could pick any class, but some had ability penalties or negative racial features that made certain classes nonviable. Then ability penalties were removed; while some races are better wizards, none are incompetent wizards. At no point did devaluing the importance of race make D&D stop feeling like D&D, the way removing Vancian casting did.

{Scrubbed}

I imagine your next argument would be that removing or reducing the bioessentialism of D&D wouldn't attract that many players. First off, I don't think that's true; 5e's PHB made some really basic moves towards trans acceptance, and now trans people playing D&D is...a thing? I don't want to be more specific than that because I'm too cis to understand how significant of a thing it is, but in terms of player volume, it's a good number.

More importantly, though? Almost nobody would be driven out. {Scrubbed} The overwhelming majority of WotC's customers would react to this sort of change somewhere between "Huh, that's nice" and "Huh, that's weird," before continuing to play D&D anyways. But even if I'm wrong, if hundreds of thousands of grognards flee the hobby {Scrubbed}, that is a good thing! I would rather welcome one La'Ron Readus into the community than a dozen Sargons of Akkad.

TL;DR: One argument is insufficient to demonstrate what you need it to demonstrate. The other is focused on business rather than ethics, and also based on faulty assumptions. Finally: Stop putting words in my mouth! Illithids are rad!

The second thing is the fact that, by magic, you can combine characteristics of various species. That is something upon which the D&D universe is based from the start. From owlbears to half-dragons and all the "wizard did it" in-between, changing that would require reworking the whole universe, and as Morphic Tide said, that would make a lot of players turn tail (honestly, including myself. I despised the upending of most of the lore in 4e and much prefer how 5e mostly came back to something consistent with earlier editions). It would also greatly reduce the design possibilities from WotC that would have to make a lot of monsters independant from each other and delete most templates.

If I said the things Morphic tide said I said, this would be a good argument. But I don't think wizards shouldn't combine different creatures in magical experiments. In fact, I supported the idea of wizards doing experiments in the very post! I just think the emphasis should be on the "wizard experiment" part, not the "crossbreed" part.

Also, the skullcrusher ogre isn't even the result of sinister magical experiments. It's not half-ogre, half-rhino or something. It's just the result of mundane eugenics. I feel like that's enough reason for me not to have mentioned other kinds of magical experiment in my previous post.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: Stay away from, real-world political topics, please. Even if someone else starts it. We depend on everyone to keep their eyes on their own work and stay as far away from all this sort of things as possible.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Omnimental

Water.
Earth
Fire.
Air.
Long ago, the Inner Planes lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Elementals attacked.
Only the Omnimental, master of all four elements, could bring peace back to the multiverse. But when the Planes needed him most, he went feral.
Eons passed, and the descendants of the Omnimental are now available as PC races. And although their number of RHD is much too high, I believe omnimentals can become playable!


During the war between the four Elemental Planes, as in every war, some of the soldiers wanted nothing more than to see peace restored. But how can you negociate when even touching an enemy can extinguish you, vaporize you, crush you or blow you away? Four Huge elementals, one of each element, met in secret. They needed a herald, powerful enough that even the Elder elementals could do nothing but hear them out, and who could travel the four planes without being utterly destroyed by the planar weather. After much deliberations, they finally resolved to sacrifice everything for their cause. In a powerful ritual, they fused their body in one. The first Omnimental was born.
The Omnimental was designed to sustain any elemental environment, using each of its four parts as the outer layer to protect the other three, and to be able to move anywhere, be it water, fire or air. And not earth, because they forgot to give it a freaking burrow speed! That would have been so cool to have exactly 4 movement modes. As it is, it's just an emissary for three elements... Still better than the Tempest having only a Fly speed.
Unfortunately, having four conflicting personalities does not a stable mind make, and the Omnimental started fighting in the war they swore to end. Even today, omnimentals continue fighting things anywhere, but are mostly found in the Elemental Plane of Fire, where their abilities are ironically the least destructive.

Elementals double in number of RHD each time they gain a size category, but WotC quickly saw that going above Huge would make for way too many HD, and went for Elder and Greater elementals instead. The Omnimental is the embodiment of "what if we didn't stop there?".

It is Gargantuan, and expectedly has 32 RHD (which, if you read the first few posts of this thread, you know we will greatly reduce this number).
Its ability scores are close to those of an Elder Earth Elemental, with +2 Str, +2 Dex, a weird +8 Con, and +11 NA to fit its CR (total +24 Str, +0 Dex, +18 Con, +0 Int, Wis and Cha, +26 NA). The natural armor is completely out of line with the other abilities, and is honestly really good.
Its attacks are based on an Elder Fire Elemental's, only with a size increase and an additional 1d8 electricity. It can also throw a part of itself up to 100ft dealing slightly less damage than a slam, but with no iterative, using its lower Dex, and dealing 10 damage to itself (a formality, considering your ginormous HP pool). I mean, it cannot use a bow like the giants can, so its a little more useful, but still not game-changing.
Its speed is a rough average of Air, Fire and Water, with 50ft land, swim and flying (perfect). Always good, but if you're not going to give it a burrow speed, might as well just give it Air's flying speed. It would have been better.
DR 10/-, immunity to fire and vulnerability to cold are expected, and immunity to electricity is welcome.
Sadly, no Elemental Mastery and no whirlwind transformation, but the Omnimental has blindsight 120ft instead. That is... Good. Out of the blue and without explanation, but good.
And finally, Death Birth. When it reaches 0 HP (not necessarily when it dies), its component elementals separate, and it changes into four Huge elementals. This would prevent any resurrection even if being an elemental didn't already make that difficult, since you're not actually dead. That's one of the best Death Throes in the entire game, but there's no real way to abuse it, as even Jade Phoenix Mage's Emerald Immolation doesn't reduce your HP. At least your party might still win a fight even if you die in it, but it's still probably better to disregard it.


All in all, you're quite a bit stronger than an Elder Earth elemental, but the absence of Earth Glide really hurts, even though the flying speed compensates. I think 11 RHD is an okay estimation, mostly because of the natural armor. 32 RHD give it so many feats and BAB that the party's fighter would be jealous if he didn't prestige class out about 8 to 10 levels earlier to get actual class features. All in all, at this level, these 22 additional RHD are probably worth 5 or 6 ECL. I'll go with DLA-15 for now.


After the ogre and the elementals, the Otyughs are the next ones to get revisited in MM3. See you next time for the Lifeleech Otyugh!

Also, first time one of my threads got moderated. Such emotion !

[GreatWyrmGold]

Whoo. Moderation. I'd complain about how GitP has never clarified the line between political and apolitical, but if scrubbing the "everything is political" paragraph is any indication, discussions about what counts as "political" are, themselves, political.

Maybe I just need to stop expressing opinions so nobody can drag me into a political argument by saying my opinions are stupid. (Which they aren't.)
Omnielementals are...um...big. Many people consider "all-your-powers-combined" sorts of monsters to be interesting and exciting. Omnielementals represent this concept applied to elementals. They have some abilities in common with other elementals and some which are not. This sounded like a funny joke when I started typing it but I am rapidly running out of material.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Lifeleech Otyugh

As Halloween approaches, we're still four monsters away from any Undead. No matter, we still have a kind of vampire, but one that sucks Conjuration (Healing) spells instead of blood.

An Otyugh is a weird three-legged creature with grappling tentacles, a big scary mouth, a flexible eyed antenna and horrendously low ability scores for its number of RHD. A lifeleech otyugh is a weird three-legged creature with grappling tentacles, a big scary mouth, a flexible eyed antenna and... ability scores ranging from pretty good to excellent. +16 Str, +6 Dex, +12 Con, -4 Int, +8 Wis, -2 Cha, or a total of +36.
It also has the ability to be considered a target of all Conjuration (Healing) spells and SLAs cast in a 60ft-radius from it. Yes that includes normally touch and personal spells. And if it is already full life (which it always is between fights with its Fast Healing 5), it gains that many HP as temporary HP. Amusingly, while the regular otyugh transmits a disease (the filth fever), the lifeleech basks in so much healing that it is perfectly sane and safe to be bitten by one (if you don't mind the teeth ripping through your flesh, of course). As a PC, that means you will most probably use a mouthpick weapon, since there's nothing you really lose (the bite itself dealing pitiful damage). The lifeleech otyugh is very well equipped defensively (5 natural armor, 4 deflection to AC, +12 Con, Fast Healing 5 and Lifeleech Aura), and very decently offensively (Large size, +16 Str (!), 40ft speed and 20ft climb, and 4 tentacles with Improved Grab and 15ft reach).
The only reasons why the lifeleech otyugh ended up in the Negative LA thread is because it can't natively use most items, has -4 Int, and because it's not quite sure where to go from there. That +8 Wis seems promising, but there's not that many casting prestige classes using this stat. Two levels of Unarmed Swordsage and one of barbarian would probably be good to give it more AC and build to its strengths without needing mouthpick weapons, then you go Champion of Gwynharwyf or another full BAB Wisdom-based Prestige Class to gain a few spells while keeping the ability to reach +16 BAB eventually. Runescarred Berserker might be good, since you just heal immediately your scars, and its spell list is absolutely awesome, even though it costs a lot of money.

All in all, there's a lot to love here, and I think 8 RHD is fair. Maybe someone will find a way to make Lifeleech Aura broken someday, but I really don't see it. DLA-1.


There was a bit of a debate about whether or not the lifeleech otyugh could be resurrected if someone cast resurrection in a 60ft radius. I... don't think I've ever seen a situation where a party resurrects several of its members at the same time. Anyway, next time, we will have creatures that are sure to be resurrected after death, but would maybe prefer not to, that is the Phoelarch! And the Phoera.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Lifeleech Aura is a wasted ability on any creature with native fast healing. It's a cool wasted ability, but that's about it. IIRC, Lifeleech lets your party get double the benefit of any healing spells cast...but in-combat healing is rarely a good use of your actions, and fast healing covers out-of-combat healing 99% of the time. I guess it's handy if your opponents use heal spells when you're low on hit points, but that's pretty niche.

Autohealing damage from runescars is neat, but they last indefinitely and the main limiting factor is the cost. I suppose the gold doesn't matter as much when you can't use most items, but the XP still hurts. I don't think it's that much of a hack. Swordsage/Champion of Gwynharwyf looks good, too, though I'd probably try to get the rage class feature from a source other than Barbarian...mostly because the class description claims you need to be a barbarian and I'm contrarian that way.

Just going straight unarmed swordsage might not be a bad idea. Four Improved Grab tentacles ain't half bad, especially if you can get your Grapple bonus high enough that you can take the -20 penalty to just hold some enemies (especially small, squishy ones) in the tentacle while attacking other folks.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Phoera, Phoelarch, Vazalka, Vazalkyon

For the day of the dead, we have undying phoenixes. Or at least humanoid descendants of the phoenix, which asks a lot of questions about phoenix reproduction. And like the phoenix from MM2, they have absolutely sh** stats and AC, but make up for that with their spell-like and other supernatural abilities. And of course, when they die, they explode, and leave an egg that hatches into a little bird. Yes, even when the original is a feathered humanoid. Of course, like the phoenix, the new creature doesn't have the memories of the previous one, it's a whole new creature. This means that this ability is useless for PCs beyond Death Throes (an impressively strong 10d6 Fire in a 20ft radius which might just kill your friends more than anything else) and completely prevents resurrection.

Phoelarchs are described as all having wanderlust and spending their lives wandering the land, meeting new people and fighting injustice. That's a nice way to say "these are just random encounters". At least they're not unnecessarily Evil, which is kind of an upgrade in this book.

- Medium Monstrous Humanoid (Fire), 7 RHD. At least it's full BAB, and immunity to Fire is good, but that's nothing impressive
- +4 Str, +6 Dex, +4 Con, +0 Int, +2 Wis, +6 Cha. That's just not that good. the Charisma bonus is interesting, but that's a bit too average and doesn't focus on anything. Also +2 NA is really low.
- Fire-focused SLAs, including at-will scorching ray and 1/day Fire Shield. 1d6 Heat to each attack with a metal weapon.
- SR 11+HD, Heals from Fire. These are really great abilities. Nice SR, and healing from fire with an at-will fire SLA means you're starting every fight with full life. Sad that the rest of the chassis is so... generic.
- bonus feats Great Fortitude and Alertness. Immunity to poison and disease. Not game-changing, but nice to have once in a while.
- Death Throes, Rise from the Ashes. Basically irrelevant.

The phoelarch just has average everything except for its infinite out-of-combat healing and its SR. And obviously, that's not good enough at ECL 7. That said, the stats and SLAs may not be too bad with 5 RHD. But I'm honestly not sure where to go from there. Not enough attacks for rogue, not enough strength for barbarian. Maybe some sort of incarnum user? Or eldritch glaive warlock, to really use both that BAB and Cha bonus (maybe the glaive can even conduct Heat). Probably DLA-1, but it might be pretty weak.


Phoera
The bird that comes out of the egg left after a Phoelarch dies. Only hatches if undamaged for 24h (unlikely even if you're facing opponents with animal intelligence, who will probably just eat the egg, and intelligent enemies will notice the egg and destroy it, so a Phoera probably only hatches when the Phoelarch's death throes have obliterated any hostile creature in the vicinity).
The phoera is a 3 RHD Medium Magical Beast with comparable stats to the phoelarch (+2 Str, +6 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Wis, +4 Cha), except with a -8 to Int, a surprisingly better natural armor with +3, and the ability to fly (60ft good). No hands is obviously bad, but it has a claw/claw/bite routine that works pretty well with its 1d6 Heat and that put enemies on fire if they hit, and an impressive breath weapon for its HD dealing 5d4 3/day in a 30ft line. It also still heals from fire. That's basically the very best you can ask for on a magical beast chassis of this level, with both defensive and offensive abilities, and an infinite healing trick just waiting to happen. I'm not comfortable allowing this at ECL 2, so even if it will have a bit of a hard time advancing to mid and high-levels, I'll say 3 RHD, DLA-0.

Cold variants
Vazalkyons are just cold-based Phoelarchs, and Vazalkas are cold-based Phoera. Assuming the conversion is made properly (any instance of fire becomes cold, Vazalkyons create Vazalkas upon death, and the SLAs are replaced with equivalent cold-based ones), then no change is necessary. If we only follow the book, the Vazalkyons heal from cold but are still using fire-based SLAs, which hampers its infinite healing trick. In that case, 5 RHD, DLA-2.


Phoelarchs and Phoeras are pretty boring if you don't work for it, despite having an interesting concept that could have yielded something good. Next time, we will have a deliciously silly monster whose concept could never have yielded anything better, the Plague Brush!

[GreatWyrmGold]

And of course, when they die, they explode, and leave an egg that hatches into a little bird. Yes, even when the original is a flying humanoid. Of course, like the phoenix, the new creature doesn't have the memories of the previous one, it's a whole new creature. This means that this ability is useless for PCs beyond Death Throes (an impressively strong 10d6 Fire in a 20ft radius which might just kill your friends more than anything else) and completely prevents resurrection.

Point 1: Maybe this is just my love of complicated life cycles talking, but I like the idea that phoelarches are reborn as more phoenix-like creatures. It's like their mortal flesh burns away, leaving only the living flame.

Point 2: I also like the idea of the party having a pet fire bird to remember their old party member by. It feels like the kind of thing you'd see in a fantasy adventure serial. Party members come and go, but they're never forgotten.

Now, neither of these should affect ECL, but that doesn't mean they don't matter at all.

[Morphic tide]

Given that True Resurrection, which does not need the body, is not on the whitelist of functional revival methods, it seems the in-universe obstacle is that the soul is in the succeeding Phoera/Vazaalka, and thus you engage in the same "magical fuzzy-logic guarantees your replacement indistinguishable" system as a Globe of Annihilation, and unlike most such mechanics the problem is that the soul has a different life. Which implies the possibility of manufacturing new candidate souls from Miracle creating a replacement that has the Jade Phoenix Mage levels, and any such Phoera would appear to be a valid candidate. You could have a high-level party with at least one other Jade Phoenix Mage easily justify a Phoera "line" that keeps recalling who they were via Rite of Awakening, thus remaining the same PC because of RAW-compatible reincarnation stacking in horrible abuse of what's supposed to be campaign-guiding fluff text rather than a serious character mechanic, in a cost-saving that's not the worst way to spend three levels.

Stats-wise, we have -14 Str, +8 Dex, -6 Con, -2 Int, -4 Wis, and +4 Cha relative to a Treant for the Phoelarch, for a net -14, having an at-will Standard Action two 4d6 Fire damage Ranged Touch Attacks with 50 ft. range plus a 1/day 10-minute Produce Flame for 1d6+5 attacks, up to 10 of which COULD be 120 ft. range if a solid 10 rounds of back-to-back use, and basically free Flaming Weapon on melee damage... Versus a Twinned 6th-level spell at will which makes more of their base statblock, nominally CR 8 creatures. To say nothing of the advantages of being Huge in the Big Dumb Beater niche, which the Phoelark is near-certainly stuck in because 7 RHD. If we're comparing other monsters, I can easily see this being debated as a choice at 5 RHD and DLA -2 against the stand-outs down at ECL 5.

For the Phoera, however, I'm mystified at it being classed -0 the first time, because "oh, you can't source Fire damage yourself" means nothing when you can just sit on a torch. Fire is extremely easy to get ahold of. Always-on +1d6 damage from any damage source available to it, with a not-trash Natural Attack routine to start off with, a good spread of ability bonuses that work well for anything it can do with the absence of hands, Natural flight's still a decent advantage this low...

Oh, and the Cold "equivalent" can easily turn obnoxious because that's a Con-based Fortitude save vs. Shaken on Bite and Claw attacks. One may at first think that's just three shots a basic -2 to some stuff, but no, it may in fact be seven, because Girallon Arms bound to Totem does not sanity-check against "didn't you already have Claws?" by RAW and is a physically different body part from the ones giving Claws here, and you can stack Fear with it, which forces rounds wasted running away on just two failed saves.

So I'll suggest LA +0 on the Phoera because it's at least fine for a range of classes, and LA +1 on the Vazalka just to curb the trivial Fear stacking issue.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Point 1: Maybe this is just my love of complicated life cycles talking, but I like the idea that phoelarches are reborn as more phoenix-like creatures. It's like their mortal flesh burns away, leaving only the living flame.

Point 2: I also like the idea of the party having a pet fire bird to remember their old party member by. It feels like the kind of thing you'd see in a fantasy adventure serial. Party members come and go, but they're never forgotten.

Now, neither of these should affect ECL, but that doesn't mean they don't matter at all.

Completely agreed. Fluff abilities absolutely matter, and make the monster what it is, I was only talking about actual impact on the power level of a theoretical Phoelarch PC. The fact that only the "phoenix part" of the phoelarch is resurrected is nice flavor, especially when the phoera itself can resurrect fully upon death. It also begs the question of whether or not the phoera can reproduce by itself, or only through the death of a phoera.

A dead phoelarch could make for a good Improved Familiar, maybe with the Complete Warrior iteration of the feat, requiring both 7th CL and BAB +7, to mirror the phoelarch itself having +7 BAB and high CL SLAs.

Given that True Resurrection, which does not need the body, is not on the whitelist of functional revival methods, it seems the in-universe obstacle is that the soul is in the succeeding Phoera/Vazaalka, and thus you engage in the same "magical fuzzy-logic guarantees your replacement indistinguishable" system as a Globe of Annihilation, and unlike most such mechanics the problem is that the soul has a different life. Which implies the possibility of manufacturing new candidate souls from Miracle creating a replacement that has the Jade Phoenix Mage levels, and any such Phoera would appear to be a valid candidate. You could have a high-level party with at least one other Jade Phoenix Mage easily justify a Phoera "line" that keeps recalling who they were via Rite of Awakening, thus remaining the same PC because of RAW-compatible reincarnation stacking in horrible abuse of what's supposed to be campaign-guiding fluff text rather than a serious character mechanic, in a cost-saving that's not the worst way to spend three levels.

That would be interesting. You'd need the phoelarch to already be a JPM, since the Rite of Waking only works on "reincarnated spirits of one of the thirteen ancient masters" and you would have been detected in your previous life if you were one. In that case, you could use the Emancipated Spawn way to recall all your class levels, feats and skills and jump back to the ECL you left when you died.

Soul-destroying or -transferring magic is inconsistent in that way. The Harvester of Souls feat says that Miracle works, as does the Reincarnate spell, the Phoera's ability and the Barghest's Feed. On the other hand, the Sphere of Annihilation, Necrotic Termination, and using a Trapped soul as a spell component completely prevent resurrection, even from Wish.
I believe those are two very different effects. When Wish works, the soul still exists in a way. In a new body, as the life force of a barghest or combined to the Harvester and used as temporary hit points. In all these cases, the soul is transformed, now simply consumed. I very much believe that even Miracle cannot create a soul, and that "resurrecting" the previous phoelarch is just bringing back the phoera to its previous body, with its previous memories, killing the new creature in the process, in a manner similar to undoing Reincarnate. On the contrary, when Miracle doesn't work, when nothing a mortal can do to bring back the creature works, the soul is completely destroyed. Out of the Multiverse, digested by the necrotic cyst for no purpose other than destroying a creature for good (the skulking cyst is just the cyst getting animated, it doesn't use the soul for that nor is it stronger than the one created by Necrotic Burst), or simply drained of all the lifeforce that defines it for the sole purpose of slightly improving a spell, the soul doesn't exist anymore, and there's nothing you can do against this.
Unname is a special case. The thing is, it doesn't destroy the soul, nor even kills the subject. It just removes any reference to it in the universe's programming. That's a variable somewhere with no definition and nothing pointing to it. It's reversible the exact same way, by just adding a "define SOUL as in_universe_being;" at the beginning of your code.

Stats-wise, we have -14 Str, +8 Dex, -6 Con, -2 Int, -4 Wis, and +4 Cha relative to a Treant for the Phoelarch, for a net -14, having an at-will Standard Action two 4d6 Fire damage Ranged Touch Attacks with 50 ft. range plus a 1/day 10-minute Produce Flame for 1d6+5 attacks, up to 10 of which COULD be 120 ft. range if a solid 10 rounds of back-to-back use, and basically free Flaming Weapon on melee damage... Versus a Twinned 6th-level spell at will which makes more of their base statblock, nominally CR 8 creatures. To say nothing of the advantages of being Huge in the Big Dumb Beater niche, which the Phoelark is near-certainly stuck in because 7 RHD. If we're comparing other monsters, I can easily see this being debated as a choice at 5 RHD and DLA -2 against the stand-outs down at ECL 5.

I'm of the opinion that the treant is one creature that was sorely underestimated in the original thread, just because of its enormous stats bonus (+36 at ECL 7, seriously) and ability to create minions by a standard action (ExLibrisMortis, one of the ardent defenders of LA+0, thought it kept the 10min casting time despite being an SLA). It was also at the time where basically everything was compared to a full caster or an übercharger (there were several mentions of polymorphing into a treant to be better than a treant), and I think comparing the treant with a martial initiator would have yielded at least LA+1 (it was already pretty close in the original thread between +0 and +1). Also, the Phoelarch's SR 11+HD is absolutely not to be overstated. It's a great ability and having the equivalent of a second save against most spells is invaluable.

Oh, and the Cold "equivalent" can easily turn obnoxious because that's a Con-based Fortitude save vs. Shaken on Bite and Claw attacks. One may at first think that's just three shots a basic -2 to some stuff, but no, it may in fact be seven, because Girallon Arms bound to Totem does not sanity-check against "didn't you already have Claws?" by RAW and is a physically different body part from the ones giving Claws here, and you can stack Fear with it, which forces rounds wasted running away on just two failed saves.

So I'll suggest LA +0 on the Phoera because it's at least fine for a range of classes, and LA +1 on the Vazalka just to curb the trivial Fear stacking issue.

Yeah, shaken is generally better than put on fire, but Cold is harder to come by than Fire, and the Vazalka cannot heal itself with just a torch. Also, fear stacks, but not from the same source. Shivering Strike can only make someone shaken for a few rounds. Of course, you can then take a level of bard and Inspire Awe them to frightened, but you have to work for it.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Given that True Resurrection, which does not need the body, is not on the whitelist of functional revival methods, it seems the in-universe obstacle is that the soul is in the succeeding Phoera/Vazaalka, and thus you engage in the same "magical fuzzy-logic guarantees your replacement indistinguishable" system as a Globe of Annihilation, and unlike most such mechanics the problem is that the soul has a different life. Which implies the possibility of manufacturing new candidate souls from Miracle creating a replacement that has the Jade Phoenix Mage levels, and any such Phoera would appear to be a valid candidate. You could have a high-level party with at least one other Jade Phoenix Mage easily justify a Phoera "line" that keeps recalling who they were via Rite of Awakening, thus remaining the same PC because of RAW-compatible reincarnation stacking in horrible abuse of what's supposed to be campaign-guiding fluff text rather than a serious character mechanic, in a cost-saving that's not the worst way to spend three levels.

I feel like I've missed some implicit assumption here, because I'm confused about both how this works and what the mechanical implications are supposed to be. But it seems thematically appropriate.

Oh, and the Cold "equivalent" can easily turn obnoxious because that's a Con-based Fortitude save vs. Shaken on Bite and Claw attacks. One may at first think that's just three shots a basic -2 to some stuff, but no, it may in fact be seven, because Girallon Arms bound to Totem does not sanity-check against "didn't you already have Claws?" by RAW and is a physically different body part from the ones giving Claws here, and you can stack Fear with it, which forces rounds wasted running away on just two failed saves.

Isn't it weird that shivering is represented mechanically with a fear effect? Props on reusing an existing mechanic instead of chucking a new one-off status effect into the game, but that's maybe not the first choice I'd have picked.

Unname is a special case. The thing is, it doesn't destroy the soul, nor even kills the subject. It just removes any reference to it in the universe's programming. That's a variable somewhere with no definition and nothing pointing to it. It's reversible the exact same way, by just adding a "define SOUL as in_universe_being;" at the beginning of your code.

I like this analogy, except for the part where it's just wrong enough that it bugs me. You're almost but not quite describing a pointer, which is a pretty good analogy for that kind of unmaking.

Also, fear stacks, but not from the same source. Shivering Strike can only make someone shaken for a few rounds.

Some exploits are obvious enough that even WotC noticed them ahead of time.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Plague Brush

Gardening in Carceri is weird.

The plague brush is basically what it says on the tin: a big ball of thorny vines wandering Carceri while spreading its "plague", its spores which act like one of the very strongest poisons in the game. It's an inhaled poison (the strongest kind), dealing 2d6 Str and 1d4 Con for both initial and secondary damage. And when I say a big ball of vines, I mean reaaaaaally big. Colossal size, +24 Str, +16 Con. 60ft movement speed, +19 NA and one slam with 30ft reach. It also has the ability that should have been given to the Odopi, from one tumbleweed of doom to another: Scoop. Basically Improved Grab for Trample, obviously not needing a limb, since the Plague Brush doesn't have limbs. Not very strong by itself, but at least interesting and flavorful for a ball of hands as well as a ball of thorns.

Sadly, apart from these abilities and a weird but unimpressive miss chance for piercing weapons, the plague brush has nothing. No hands, no abilities, no unique immunities, no SLAs, no other ability score bonus, and no intelligence. Boy the brush is bad. And of course it has 31 Plant RHD. Because obviously it has.


The thing is, the poison is so good, and the brush's speed is so fast --enough to be able to deliver the poison to most opponents without them being able to flee-- that even with nothing else, I would not give it less than 6 RHD. You're basically a swarm, who can kill people simply by existing close to them for a few rounds. And Colossal size and +24 Str is far from nothing else. If the brush has hands, it would be a scary Hulking Hurler, but it feels quite wasted as it is. There has to be something interesting to do with a Colossal sized creature and a poison covering so much ground with each movement, but even just Scooping enemies mindlessly makes me want to assign 10 RHD, and DLA-15 (the DC for the inhaled poison becomes incredibly good to the point of being irresistible at this point, but so many things are immune to poison that this shouldn't be a problem in the long run).

I'm really not sure how to advance the Plague Brush. What do you think?
Sometimes your bush is spreading the Plague, ans sometimes your giant neighbour is the one spreading the Plague. Next time, we review one of the strongest mindless undead, the Plague Spewer!

[Beni-Kujaku]

Plague Spewer

Plague Spewers are notable as being the fourth most powerful mindless undead in the whole game, with CR 10, only beaten by the Charnel Hound (CR 13) we saw earlier, the Charnel Custodian (CR 11) which is a great animated graveyard from Dr#352 who throws tombstones at you, and the Death Tyrant (PGtF, CR 13), who really shouldn't be mindless in the first time (nor be CR 13, in my opinion, but I digress). I guess they wanted a zombie beholder with only one partial action per turn and didn't think it was possible without it being mindless, but a creature with antimagic field, with 10 different SLAs and all the strategy involved really shouldn't be mindless at all. They even added a footnote with "Though it is a mindless undead, it still fights as if it had intelligence, using its eyes as effectively as possible.". Basically the same thing as the Knell Beetle, but while I think they changed the knell beetle to mindless pretty late, I think they always envisioned the Death Tyrant as mindless, but only later figured all the problems and inconsistencies it created.

The plague spewer is then is the awkward position of a CR 10 monster that can be defeated with no save by a level 2 spell, Command Undead, thereby giving the caster an extremely strong servant, and is actually one of the very best bang for your necromancer's buck in that regard. To make up for that, they carry a really strong disease (2d4 Con and 2d4 Dex) that may be crippling for PCs with no access to Remove Disease (and even then, since it spreads by contact, it may simply pass to the cleric who tries to remove it), but is utterly useless in combat when the Spewer is on the PCs side, since it has a 1 minute incubation period (still better than most disease, but no incubation period would so so much better). It also carries inside it hordes of rats, which it can spew (I suppose in an adjacent square) 4/day by a full round action. Since the rat swarm "seeks and attacks any warm-blooded prey", it will not attack the Spewer but might go for its teammates. Suffice to say, this does not bode well for its viability as a PC.

Of course, every cloud has a silver lining, and the Plague Spewer, when controlled by a PC, would be intelligent enough to know it can spread its disease with a touch attack, and not only with its slam. Cold comfort, since you still have to contend with the 1 minute-incubation time, but you take what you can. You also have hands, a mouth, and all the humanoid premium (except hair. You don't have hair.)


- 16 Undead RHD, waaaay too many. Huge size is good for bruisers, and 15ft reach can make a tripper fighter all on its own. The lost BAB will hurt you your whole career, though.
- +20 Str, -2 Dex, _ Con, -8 Int (mindless), +2 Wis, +6 Cha, total +18. Ouch. Not good. At least you have +16 NA, which is pretty high for the ECL we will put it at, and DR 10/slashing, which is probably the worst DR after /magic, but still worth mentioning.
- Two average to weak slams, transmitting Plague.
- Plague and Vomit Rat Swarm, decent abilities but hard to efficiently use in combat without harming your party. Note that Plague transforms any Huge creature into another Plague Spewer in 1d4 days if they die from it (which is not that hard, considering 2d4 Con damage can be quite itchy).


You know what? I think that would make a great Dread Necromancer. No, really! Dread Necro just walks directly into Abjurant Champion, getting one martial weapon proficiency and Undetectable Alignment as an Abjuration spell, gets Charnel Touch for unlimited out-of-combat healing, gets you some touch spells to improve on your Plague (notably Ghoul and Shivering Touch, the latter through Expanded Knowledge, which can outright paralyze your enemies while your Plague transforms them into more Spewers), and gives you Command Undead to take control of your "spawn" as soon as they animate. You have to keep Huge corpses with you for a pretty long time, but you have 31 Str, you can do that before your breakfast. Still, the build is pretty slow and won't outperform persistomancy gishes or other high-performing characters. Also, BoED doesn't specifically say that nongood characters can't cast Sanctified spells, only that evil characters can't. Having a neutral Huge undead spewing rats and transmitting disease, but protected by a sacred armor is as ridiculous as it is hilarious. I'm going to say this a weakish 8 RHD, and should get DLA-6. What do you think?


As often, the Eberron lore is slightly more interesting, but the difference is really minor. In Faerun, it seems like Plague Spewers just exist, since there's nothing hinting to how they're created except a "there are rumors of a plague cult", while in Eberron, it was a powerful curse by a necromancer dragon. I'm honestly not sure which is better. What I know is that the Plague Spewer is implied to be so full of rats that they crawl under its skin and Spew Rats is just some of them getting out to kill more people, which could make for a great Death Throes if you rewrote the monster, or even an interesting character is a Plague Spewer was inhabited by intelligent Moon Rats instead, who could manipulate the undead body to their bidding.
Anyway, skipping the Protean Scourge (thank you for that +0, nobody wants to rate that mess), we will turn our eyes to the Quaraphon, which is... Probably more than one person in a single body. Covered with blue paint. See you then!

[GreatWyrmGold]

I guess they wanted a zombie beholder with only one partial action per turn and didn't think it was possible without it being mindless, but a creature with antimagic field, with 10 different SLAs and all the strategy involved really shouldn't be mindless at all. They even added a footnote with "Though it is a mindless undead, it still fights as if it had intelligence, using its eyes as effectively as possible.". Basically the same thing as the Knell Beetle, but while I think they changed the knell beetle to mindless pretty late, I think they always envisioned the Death Tyrant as mindless, but only later figured all the problems and inconsistencies it created.

Bad call, I say. A mindless zombie beholder which uses its eye rays randomly and fires a quarter of them into its antimagic zone every turn sounds like it would be much more entertaining.

It also carries inside it hordes of rats, which it can spew (I suppose in an adjacent square) 4/day by a full round action. Since the rat swarm "seeks and attacks any warm-blooded prey", it will not attack the Spewer but might go for its teammates. Suffice to say, this does not bode well for its viability as a PC.

It's slightly more viable in a party of kobolds, warforged, and eldritch monsters which man was not meant to know. But not much more viable—swarms can be tricky, but this is a swarm meant to be a fair challenge against 2nd-level PCs. A chimera (CR 7) could squish a rat swarm in one round, without even using its breath weapon.


It's remarkable how many mediocre monsters there are in this manual. They're overshadowed by the handful with cool art or concepts.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Bad call, I say. A mindless zombie beholder which uses its eye rays randomly and fires a quarter of them into its antimagic zone every turn sounds like it would be much more entertaining.

You could make some sort of Prismatic spray-like effect. After determining the direction of the antimagic field (basically the direction the beholder attacks with its bite), everyone outside it rolls a d12 to see which rays affects them. 11 and 12 mean the guy is targeted by two rays (reroll twice, discard any 11 or 12), and discard any result already rolled, or corresponding to the 1d4 missing eyestalks.

It's slightly more viable in a party of kobolds, warforged, and eldritch monsters which man was not meant to know.

"Actually, when active, exothermic organisms like lizards have comparable body temperature as..."
"I DINNAE WANT A SCIENCE LESSON RIGHT NOW!"
I was dumbfounded to find that kobolds are cold-blooded. For a subterranean race, isn't that basically a death sentence? Are dragonwrought kobolds warm-blooded then?

It's remarkable how many mediocre monsters there are in this manual. They're overshadowed by the handful with cool art or concepts.

That's still one of the better books of the edition. The monsters are definitely hit or miss, but there are hits in every corner and for every type, which makes it a book I really like, even just reading it on its own.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I was dumbfounded to find that kobolds are cold-blooded. For a subterranean race, isn't that basically a death sentence? Are dragonwrought kobolds warm-blooded then?

A subterranean race in our caves, sure, but that's just because there aren't any natural sources of heat in them. The Underdark is full of lava flows, magical crystals, inexplicably warm fungus, etc.

It is weird that kobolds are cold-blooded when dragons are warm-blooded. Basically all 3.5 sources agree that kobolds have dragon blood running through their veins, and some add that those veins are also made of dragon blood. You'd expect their metabolism to resemble a young dragon's more than a lizard's.

That's still one of the better books of the edition. The monsters are definitely hit or miss, but there are hits in every corner and for every type, which makes it a book I really like, even just reading it on its own.

Yeah. If there's one thing these level-reassignment projects have done, they've validated my nostalgia for this specific book.