The LA Assignment Thread XI: Better LA'd Than Never

[Debatra]

Last standalone creature for the book, then we do the variants and we're finally done with Undead for a little while.

Wheep

Size & Type: Medium Undead
Space/Reach: 5'/5'
HD: 9
Speed: 30'
Ability Scores: Str +22, Dex +4, Con -, Int -4, Wis +4, Cha +10 - Net 36, one penalty
Natural Armor: 12, Cha to Deflection
Natural Weapons: Two Primary Claws (1d8 plus poison), one Secondary Bite (1d6 plus poison)
Skill List: Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Spot
Body Shape: Humanoid
Speech (Languages): Yes (Common)
CR: 11
WotC LA: -
Our LA: +1

What's this? An Undead creature from the Book of Bad Latin with a CR higher than its HD? Are we actually ending things on a high note?

Starting with the basic chasis, that's a nice Strength score. High natural armor and Unholy Grace adding its Charisma modifier to saves and a Deflection bonus to AC combine with DR 5/magic and piercing (not great, but still relevant) and fast healing 10 to make a tankier-than-average undead. They have no eyes, with 60' Blindsight to compensate. +4 Turn Resistance makes for a nice cherry on top. Save DCs are Charisma-based.

From their empty eye sockets, an injury poison with the appearance of black bile constantly seeps. It coats their claws and mouth, and can presumably be applied to a weapon easily enough given that they secrete enough of the stuff that they leave a trail of it wherever they go that makes them easy to track down. It decomposes and evaporates after an hour, so don't bother bottling the stuff unless it's for short-term things. 1d6 Con/1d6 Con.

Finally, we have Weeping Dirge, an at-will supernatural sonic ability that can be used as a free action once per round. Anything that hears the Wheep's crying and blubbering must make a will save or be shaken for the duration of the encounter. It comes with the usual 24-hour immunity on a successful save, but only for the same Wheep's Dirge. Not amazing, but nice when it works.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Remember the skulking cyst? Yeah, the Wheep has to be second place in my "creepiest D&D monsters" list with its pierced eyes and mouth on the hands leaking toxic tears... Disgusting.

As to the rating, as I said, I'm not sure it deserves -0. High strength to kind of counteract its lack of 4th iterative, extremely high AC (as a PC, you will obviously pump Cha, and having AC scaling off of 2 stats instead of one, plus an humanoid body is really good in this department), plus a pretty good rider (that's some high DC for poison, and the "the poison evaporates after one hour" implies you could pour it on a weapon or in a flask to use on any weapon instead of just your natural ones). And on top of that, you have an automatic save-or-lose by a free action if your opponents fail 2 saving throws (remember that shaken twice is terrified). Equivalent to a 4th level spell for the DC, but you can pump that, of course.

If you go paladin of Tyranny and pump a bit of that charisma, you get twice your Cha bonus on all saving throws and both your abilities get boosts.

I will vote for LA +0 for the Wheep. Being able to do something else than just hitting people on a big brute can go a long way.

Edit: Also, is wheeping dirge mind-affecting? If it isn't, nice, that makes less people able to resist it, but if it is even nicer, since you can natively go Siren and gain free action saves-or-lose in one round with one save instead of 2.

Edit 2: The SRD says that all fear effects are mind-affecting, so that's good.

[Batcathat]

Probably the wrong thing to get hung up on about a creature with hand mouths and eye spikes but I can't stop wondering whether it can properly move its arms or just wave them around a little. That dress (wrapping?) really looks like it should make it hard to move the upper arms.

[Troacctid]

I also think this is worth +0. You get a good amount of stuff for 9 HD.

[Efrate]

I am okay with this being +0. Its a really good package.

[liquidformat]

Edit: Also, is wheeping dirge mind-affecting? If it isn't, nice, that makes less people able to resist it, but if it is even nicer, since you can natively go Siren and gain free action saves-or-lose in one round with one save instead of 2.

Edit 2: The SRD says that all fear effects are mind-affecting, so that's good.

Does making someone shaken automatically make it a 'fear' effect, the ability doesn't specifically call itself out as a fear effect?

Note you need three failed saves to hit panicked, frightened isn't much worse than shaken and isn't a save or loose on its own. Also depending on how you are reading 'Once a particular creature saves against a wheep’s dirge, that creature cannot be affected again by the same wheep for 24 hours.' that could mean once you are affected by it once you aren't affected again for 24 hours or once you make a 'successful save'. So depending on how you read that you might need a other fear abilities to make targets panicked. Granted that is pretty easily solvable with things like never outnumbered and imperious command and taking barbarian so you can get intimidating rage.

Jumping into Siren will be a bit of a headache since you don't have bluff, intimidate, or perform as racial skills though I vaguely remember a feat giving you these as class skills (can't remember for sure).

While I think it is close I still don't think you are getting enough for this to be a +0 creature, 9 rhd is basically half your build and what are you getting for it? The big concerns here are that weeping dirge is a fear based mind affecting effect which means large swaths of monsters are immune to it by default. Similarly poison is another big area of immunity among monsters and even a lot of some classes and prcs so at level 9 + your two main abilities that make you more than just a beatstick will often be shutdown just due to the nature of many enemies you face. I think in an earlier thread it was determined something like 40-60% of monsters are immune to fear or mind affecting effects that is pretty huge.
I think the eval I did on Skirr is relevent here as these are both 9rhd undead:

Lets take a look at the power range we have to compare with Skirr at ECL: Cave Troll (+0 9rhd), Dragonne (+0 9rhd), Flesh Golem (-0 9rhd), Green Hagg (-0 9rhd), Hieracosphinx (-0 9rhd), Lamia (-0 9rhd), Dark/Spirit Naga (+0 9rhd). Flesh golem is probably the closest match as it has similar numbers and slightly better immunities, both green hagg and lamia are interesting in that their spell and skill access gives them more versatility but neither is powerful in combat which seems to be why they are both -0, similarly the Naga all are level 7 sorcerers and have middling combat power however, being a level 7 sorcerer is where their +0 comes from without it they are an easy -0. Cave troll is a natural attack blender with fast healing to back it up, it has similarly horrible int, similar AC, it is less susceptible to hp based attacks but more to save based attacks but in the end D&D is about being offensively powerful rather than defensively and cave troll easily outstrips Skirr in damage/threat.
The most interesting are probably the comparison between Dragonne, Hieracosphinx, and Skirr all three are fliers with Dragonne being the worst and Hieracosphinx being the best, both Dragonne and Hieracosphinx have pounce while Skirr has IG and Dragonne has the highest damage potential Skirr has the worst in air and probably on par with Hieracosphinx on the ground due to low hit rate, Skirr has best AC but not by much and worst hp. What seems to give Dragonne its +0 compared to Hieracosphinx is its roar which is a pretty powerful debuff useable over a large range. Another interesting comparison is wyvern bumped up to 9 ecl, with one extra rhd the wyvern is also huge and a level of barbarian gives it rage and pounce (or if we want to compare apples to apples Improved Grab) it has a +26 grapple mod and +15 to hit with high save and very high hp and close ac altogether it handily out competes the Skirr.

Given the fact that Skirr based on our ratings (8 +0 and 7 -0) I would say Skirr is a pretty good flagpole for the board between +0/-0 anything worse than Skirr seems clearly -0 and anything better should be a +0. So if I ignore poison tears and weeping dirge I would rate Wheep as slightly better than Skirr so I think I am ok with +0 LA on Wheep.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Note you need three failed saves to hit panicked, frightened isn't much worse than shaken and isn't a save or loose on its own. Also depending on how you are reading 'Once a particular creature saves against a wheep’s dirge, that creature cannot be affected again by the same wheep for 24 hours.' that could mean once you are affected by it once you aren't affected again for 24 hours or once you make a 'successful save'.

How is "the creature flees as best as it can" not a save-or-lose? In most cases, that's just "always use the run full-round action to get away" and at best that is "uses their best spell slots to teleport away". In bost cases, they're not going to be a problem for the remainder of the fight.

Also I'm pretty sure "to save" means "to roll a successful save", not just "to roll to see if you save" (Pathfinder example, this wording is surprisingly rare in 3.5 : https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-s...rible-remorse/ ).

Jumping into Siren will be a bit of a headache since you don't have bluff, intimidate, or perform as racial skills though I vaguely remember a feat giving you these as class skills (can't remember for sure).

I agree, and I still believe paladin would be better, but with one or two class levels before you enter and some int investment, that should not be too much of a problem.

Given the fact that Skirr based on our ratings (8 +0 and 7 -0) I would say Skirr is a pretty good flagpole for the board between +0/-0 anything worse than Skirr seems clearly -0 and anything better should be a +0. So if I ignore poison tears and weeping dirge I would rate Wheep as slightly better than Skirr so I think I am ok with +0 LA on Wheep.

If you ignore weeping dirge and poison tears? These are what define the Wheep, not its stats! With only its beatstick abilities, the Wheep is underwhelming at best, with no way to get 4th iterative and so-so natural weapons (which speaks volumes about how the Skirr, who can't even wield weapons should not be +0, but the democracy has spoken). With them, it becomes a pretty heavy-hitter still, but who can wield weapons, use it's frankly excellent poison on the whole party's weapons and who can just no-sell some encounter by just yelling at people. This is what a 9RHD +0 monster should look like, not just someone who can hit people moderately hard and no more than 3 times, even if it gets a mouthpick weapon.

[Debatra]

Well yeah, I suppose it would get a more conservative rating if you ignored it's main offensive options.

Remember people: "Do not bring up Freedom of Movement when rating a grappler."

[Beni-Kujaku]

Well yeah, I suppose it would get a more conservative rating if you ignored it's main offensive options.

Remember people: "Do not bring up Freedom of Movement when rating a grappler."

And it can grapple one person at a time, if it hits with its bite attack, so in melee, if it gives up the ability to use mouthpick weapons, with a grappling modifier that is only 3 more than the Wheep. That's still "attacking one enemy in melee with an attack roll". That's not versatility, that's a power increase on its bite attack, with a lot of conditions and not even incredibly good at that, since it has poor BAB that almost completely offset its Str bonus.

(Also, you kind of cripple yourself as well if you grapple people, since you can't fly without using a standard action each turn and a grapple check to move, so each time you want to grapple someone you're earthbound, plus people can still attack you with natural weapons, cast certain spells, or just break free if they have a decent grappling modifier, which a lot of bosses will have. Freedom of Movement isn't the only reason why grappling generally sucks, especially if you have only one attack with Improved Grab.)

[Debatra]

I was speaking metaphorically. As in "we rate for general usefulness, not just how it deals with something that directly counters it". I chose that particular example because it feels like someone has to bring up that spell every time there's a grapple-focused monster in these threads.

Not to say that poison immunity is completely irrelevant to rating a Wheep, but we also shouldn't just assume everything is going to have it to the point of ignoring it while rating things.

[Morphic tide]

+11 extra Strength bonus for -4 BAB? Net gain of +7 to attack rolls, as well as +11 to damage, before the two-hander value, and an applyable Injury Poison for 1d6 Con damage on DC 14+Cha Fort Save, which it gets +5 bonus to racially? In addition to a same-DC Will save vs. Shaken, which is -2 to attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks? With the Paladin 2 save function and hard-to-get Charisma to AC in place innately? And 12 Natural Armor and +4 Dex? That's a total of +19 AC over a Paladin that's dipped Battledancer for AC, and you also have 2x and +10 to the Charisma-derived saves if Unholy Grace stacks with Divine Grace.

You can go Holy Warrior Paladin of Tyranny and be a legitimately nasty Charger off your giant Strength modifier. The usual odds of the iterative you miss out on aren't very good, anyways, and you have a net accuracy gain to Power Attack with. You might actually take the Charging Smite AFC if facing Good enemies on the regular, since you don't have Lay on Hands to heal the standard Special Mount and thus an Undead mount is a very good option. In that case, you actually probably want a 16 assigned to Intelligence, to have +1 skill point/level on 12 final Intelligence, and settle for "merely" 36 Strength, 18 Dexterity, 12 Wisdom, and 27 Charisma (counting the two ASIs and using 30 point buy). At level 9.

...Definitely worth LA +1, you'll make up the HP rather quickly with Deadly Touch and get remarkably close to completely unkillable out of the box. I can very much see an argument for LA +2, but Martials deserve good things, and this doesn't quite have enough levels left to use that Charisma to be a non-Martial since there aren't, to my knowledge, proper Charisma-gishes that are Undead-with-Int-penalty friendly and turn on in a sensible number of levels.

[liquidformat]

How is "the creature flees as best as it can" not a save-or-lose? In most cases, that's just "always use the run full-round action to get away" and at best that is "uses their best spell slots to teleport away". In bost cases, they're not going to be a problem for the remainder of the fight.

Also I'm pretty sure "to save" means "to roll a successful save", not just "to roll to see if you save" (Pathfinder example, this wording is surprisingly rare in 3.5 : https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-s...rible-remorse/ ).

Maybe, it really depends on the location of the battle. the second sentence of frighten is important 'If unable to flee, it may fight.' Many non random encounters I have come across in game are in locations where unable to flee is in play, in which case frighten and shaken are pretty much the same. So frighten is situational save or loose where as panicked is always save or loose. And yet again its important to also point out that a large number of monsters and quite a few prcs give immunity to fear or mind effecting affects. So while fear affects are nice especially at level 9+ there are a lot of encounters where its not useable.

If you ignore weeping dirge and poison tears? These are what define the Wheep, not its stats!

That was my point, Skirr seems like it is a yard stick as the boarder between -0 and +0 and if we ignore wheep's two most powerful abilities Wheep still comes out ahead of the skirr...

[Debatra]

That was my point, Skirr seems like it is a yard stick as the boarder between -0 and +0 and if we ignore wheep's two most powerful abilities Wheep still comes out ahead of the skirr...

That sounds more like an argument for +1. I could see it going either way.

[Thurbane]

Cool Wheep

• Medium Undead
• 9 RHD (d12hp, poor BAB, one good save, 4 skill points/"level")
• Speed 30ft.
• +12 natural AC.
• 2 claws 1d8+poison, bite 1d6+poison.
• Weeping dirge: free action to force a Will save from anyone who can hear you to avoid being shaken for an encounter. Once creatures save, immune for 24 hours. Nice debuff that doesn't take an action, and the party can get their saves out of the way at the start of the adventuring day. Fear stacking would make this very potent, although I'm not sure it would stack with itself. Still, plenty of other sources, either from you with the right investment, or from party members. Not called out out as sonic or mind affecting, but I'm pretty sure that there is a rule somewhere that all fear effects re mind-affecting (citation below by Debatra).
• Poison tears: 1d6 Con/1d6 Con. The way it's written, should be one of the most easily collectable poisons in the game, even if it only lasts for an hour. Share with the party!
• Blindsight 60 ft, darkvision 60 ft: wait, are they blind, or do they have darkvision? Does the text specifically call them out as blind? I mean, Skeletons have no eyeballs, but they aren't blind?
• DR 5/magic: meh. DR 5/magic and piercing: not a big number, but a lot more relevant.
• Fast healing 10: very nice. Big enough number to be somewhat relevant in combat.
• Undead traits.
• Unholy grace: Cha bonus to saves and AC. Nice.
• +4 turn resistance.
• Str +22, Dex +4, Con --, Int -4, Wis +4, Cha +10: net +36, one non-ability one penalty. Overall, great numbers, but on a personal note I hate playing low Int characters. Skills matter.
• SMall racial skill list, but at least they are useful skills (stealth & perception).

Medium humanoid in form, and can speak. Should be no issues with gear, interacting with the environment*, or class progression.

*Is it blind? Fluff text implies maybe, but it's not spelled out anywhere. Like I mentioned, Skeletons lack eyeballs, but aren't blind. Also seems odd that a blind creature would be listed as having Darkvision.

Lot of good stuff going on. Natural AC, Cha to saves and AC, stat boosts to most stats (and a massive Str boost), decent poison, strong fast healing, undead traits, decent turn resistance, and a free action debuff. Downsides are 9 RHD, hit to Int (but not big enough that you can't get around when assigning ability scores), and possible blindness (although I'm not sold on the fact they are blind).

Progression? Crusader seems a natural fit, or some kind of Paladin-type build. Maybe into Divine Crusader? You'll need ways to deal with your relatively low HP for a melee build, but that's been discussed a lot in previous entries. You could also go for some kind of stealth/scouting build, I suppose, but the hit to Int and (at least) 9 lost levels of precision damage hurts this.

I'm going LA +1 for now. It gets a lot of good stuff, but 9 lost class levels is a lot.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Starting with the basic chasis, that's a nice Strength score. High natural armor and Unholy Grace adding its Charisma modifier to saves and a Deflection bonus to AC combine with DR 5/magic and piercing (not great, but still relevant) and fast healing 10 to make a tankier-than-average undead. They have no eyes, with 60' Blindsight to compensate. +4 Turn Resistance makes for a nice cherry on top. Save DCs are Charisma-based.

From their empty eye sockets, an injury poison with the appearance of black bile constantly seeps. It coats their claws and mouth, and can presumably be applied to a weapon easily enough given that they secrete enough of the stuff that they leave a trail of it wherever they go that makes them easy to track down. It decomposes and evaporates after an hour, so don't bother bottling the stuff unless it's for short-term things. 1d6 Con/1d6 Con.

Finally, we have Weeping Dirge, an at-will supernatural sonic ability that can be used as a free action once per round. Anything that hears the Wheep's crying and blubbering must make a will save or be shaken for the duration of the encounter. It comes with the usual 24-hour immunity on a successful save, but only for the same Wheep's Dirge. Not amazing, but nice when it works.

Throw a hat of disguise on this freak and you have a decent face/tank, a very unusual combination. High AC, solid fast healing (albeit only reversing about half an attack of damage at this level—a bit more after DR, but still), and Constitution poison as a nice rider on your high-STR attacks? Decent package. Weeping Dirge is fairly weak—shaken is a moderate debuff (though if an enemy fails its saves in the first two rounds it's probably frightened?)—but it's free, and free debuffs to attack rolls make you (and your party) just a smidge tankier when they go off.

There's no way I'd rate this as a -0, but I'm not sure whether a +0 or +1 would fit better. I'll abstain for now.

Probably the wrong thing to get hung up on about a creature with hand mouths and eye spikes but I can't stop wondering whether it can properly move its arms or just wave them around a little. That dress (wrapping?) really looks like it should make it hard to move the upper arms.

To me, it looks like an unusually cruel old-timey sanitarium with a religious prohibition against sleeves tried to improvise a straightjacket for one of his patients, things went wrong, and now STARS has to investigate the result. Which I realize is a very specific analogy but the details kept falling into place as I wrote it.

[Debatra]

Not called out out as sonic or mind affecting, but I'm pretty sure that there is a rule somewhere that all fear effects re mind-affecting.

It actually is called out as sonic (second-to-last sentence on the page), and the "all fear effects are mind-affecting" thing does indeed exist.

Blindsight 60 ft, darkvision 60 ft: wait, are they blind, or do they have darkvision? Does the text specifically call them out as blind?

It doesn't have-

I mean, Skeletons have no eyeballs, but they aren't blind?

...That is actually a good point. Either way, it wouldn't be the first blind thing to also have darkvision listed. It's just a standard Undead trait, but it's always listed.

DR 5/magic: meh.

It's magic and piercing. Still not amazing, but at least it isn't totally irrelevant.

[Thurbane]

It actually is called out as sonic (second-to-last sentence on the page), and the "all fear effects are mind-affecting" thing does indeed exist.

Ah... somehow missed the sonic part. And thanks for the citation on fear/mind affecting.

It's magic and piercing. Still not amazing, but at least it isn't totally irrelevant.

Huh, missed that too. That's what I get for skimming before I start work.

Not great, but a lot more relevant that DR/magic alone.

Interesting, though: most undead are either vulnerable to bludgeoning (skeletal types, usually) or slashing (fleshy types). Not a lot have DR that involves piercing, from memory.

[H_H_F_F]

Glad to see I wasn't the only one thinking Siren. With Cha that high, and a free-action sonic attack not limited by range, it could get absolutely nasty.

Of course, the more obvious progression would be martial, probably with 2-4 levels of pally thrown in for Cha synergy.

I may be biased here, because I love bruisers and I love Cha builds, but this seems powerful enough to justify LA +1 in my view. It's got great combat options and awesome stats, and has several and versatile career paths open to it. divine crusader gish, siren, and pally/crusader are the big ones, it seems.

Awesome AC and saves (2 levels of paladin and plate are enough to make you really want to ignore this thing) allow it to fight up close and personal despite undead HP.

Overall, yeah, voting +1 seems reasonable to me.

[Thurbane]

I dunno, most creatures that are blind call it out somewhere in the text (unless they are blind by type, like Oozes):

Blood amniotes are mindless and are immune to all mind-affecting spells and abilities, and they are blind, giving them immunity to gaze attacks, visual effects, illusions, and other attack forms that rely on sight.

Grimlocks are blind, but their exceptional senses of smell and hearing allow them to notice foes nearby.

Runehounds are blind but perceive their surroundings with their psychic senses.

Nagathas are blind, so they rely on their keen hearing to detect creatures beyond the 60-foot range of their blindsight.

Voors are blind and are immune to fire and poison.

Dustform creatures are blind, but they can sense all creatures within 60 feet as a sighted creature would by defecting subtle vibrations in the air around them.

Veserabs are blind, but can see in a manner similar to bats, and have a keen sense of smell. They are immune to gaze attacks and illusions.

...I guess at the end of the day it's a DMs call, but my vote would be that Wheeps aren't blind (despite having no eyeballs, and look like they have nails in their eyes ).

[Troacctid]

To be clear, fear effects only stack if they are from different sources, so the AoE fear effect here is not going to escalate on its own; it will need to be combined with other fear effects. That said, good fear effects aren't exactly in short supply. You ought to be able to find something without too much trouble.

[Morphic tide]

Oh, remember how I mentioned the issue with Lay on Hands not working on the normal Special Mount? Yeah, so there's an Ebberon book called Five Nations. In it is a prestige class called Bone Knight. It gives you the skeletal mount I mentioned likely being preferable due to Deadly Touch, but more importantly for Undead as a whole is that it converts your Lay on Hands to be able to heal both living and undead targets! It also adds Desecrate to the Paladin list and has an Undead control ability explicitly based on taking control from an allied caster (limited to the PRC level for the individual ones, so chaffiest of Skeletons for quite some time), as well as Charisma to Turn Resistance for Undead you control. And for the Craft requirement it gives you DR/Bludgeoning.

That Paladin Slaymate is feeling a lot better with the capacity to have the standard Lay on Hands for healing friendlies. You lose Detect Evil, Smite Evil, and Remove Disease, but those are the frilliest of frills if you're diving head first into mass Undead and, if you can swing the fluff associations of two different settings, are substituted by the wonderful extra layer of horde-buff of Harmonious Knight, for all you lose out on Smite to Song.

...As a quick rundown, you can get +4 to Strength from Corpsecrafter, Dread Necromancer or Enhanced Undead Wizard (they're all Enhancement bonuses), +2 to HP each for, Corpsecrafter, Dread Necromancer's Undead Mastery, and the variant Wizard Enhanced Undead, +4 to HP for Fell Energy Desecrate, +2 Natural Armor from Hardened Flesh, +4 Initiative and +10 ft. speed from Nimble Bones, +4 Turn Resistance from Bolster Resistance, +1d6 Cold damage from Deadly Chill, and 1d6+1d6/2HD on-death Negative Energy from Destruction Retribution. This ends up being eight feats from a two-classed character, and only Fell Animate is covered by Wizard, so you'll need to drop something or go Human for True Necromancer, but the end result of all that is a rather dramatic degree of additional survivability and a none-too-shabby bump to offenses.

How out-of-line would it be to suggest we rate LA for at least the Corpsecrafted package? Since that's giving the vast majority of the value, all the other stuff is just HP/HD, and it is a source of answers to a lot of extremely common Undead problems.

[Debatra]

How out-of-line would it be to suggest we rate LA for at least the Corpsecrafted package? Since that's giving the vast majority of the value, all the other stuff is just HP/HD, and it is a source of answers to a lot of extremely common Undead problems.

No. Just no. In addition to just not being something we can just assume is present, we would also have to go back and re-rate every single undead in the archive. Do you want to start Libris Mortis over again? Because I think a lot of us are getting a little sick of undead by now.

[Troacctid]

...As a quick rundown, you can get +4 to Strength from Corpsecrafter, Dread Necromancer or Enhanced Undead Wizard (they're all Enhancement bonuses), +2 to HP each for, Corpsecrafter, Dread Necromancer's Undead Mastery, and the variant Wizard Enhanced Undead, +4 to HP for Fell Energy Desecrate, +2 Natural Armor from Hardened Flesh, +4 Initiative and +10 ft. speed from Nimble Bones, +4 Turn Resistance from Bolster Resistance, +1d6 Cold damage from Deadly Chill, and 1d6+1d6/2HD on-death Negative Energy from Destruction Retribution.

No you can't, lol.

[Beni-Kujaku]

How out-of-line would it be to suggest we rate LA for at least the Corpsecrafted package? Since that's giving the vast majority of the value, all the other stuff is just HP/HD, and it is a source of answers to a lot of extremely common Undead problems.

+4 enhancement Str, +4 HP/level (only counting Corpsecrafter and normal Desecrate, since the rest feels much less common and class dependant, or just DrMag material), +4 init, +10 ft speed, +4 Turn Resistance, +1d6 Cold damage on natural attacks, +2 natural armor.

That seems like a high +1 to very weak +2. This does not account for -0 undead, and should be dependant on the undead (way better on a beatstick undead than on a tomb mote or an incorporeal one), but that should give you a guideline if you want to allow players with undead characters in your campaign. As Debatra said, I think a lot of us would not like to redo LM with or without any of these enhancements.

[Morphic tide]

No. Just no. In addition to just not being something we can just assume is present, we would also have to go back and re-rate every single undead in the archive. Do you want to start Libris Mortis over again? Because I think a lot of us are getting a little sick of undead by now.

I was actually thinking in terms of rating the Corpsecrafter block of feats as a pseudo-template, for the use of those who've figured a negative level setup for the LA -0 ratings and the scattering of positive or neutral LAs on Undead.

And to stick a stake in the arguments surrounding that stuff because it does come up when talking actual campaigns, particularly given the sheer quantity of -0s from the HD bloat such measures do a lot to resolve.

[Remuko]

I'm not putting out as formal vote for this thing atm but for a creature with CR higher than its HD its very underwhelming. I can't think of any other CR > HD creatures that didnt also have casting > HD as well whereas this doesn't have casting at all that I can tell. I don't think its weak by any means just...odd that its CR is so high. I think they overvalued that Unholy Grace or something.

[danielxcutter]

Well hitting like a small minivan and having other abilities probably doesn't hurt, plus PC scaling and NPC scaling are two entirely different kettles of aboleth slime.

[Caelestion]

I'll go for LA +1 too. The Unholy Grace, Fast Heal 10 and Str +22/Cha +10 are particularly potent.

[liquidformat]

That sounds more like an argument for +1. I could see it going either way.

That is why it is important when comparing monsters to other monsters to look at more than one , also I think Skirr is bare minimum you need to hit +0, to be honest I don't think it even hits +0 but the community voted.

Anyway if you go back to my post I also mentioned cave troll which I think is a great point of contrast to Wheep, the cave troll tanks int and cha but have almost as high str, similar dex and NA, very high Con score, and has medium instead of bad bab progression allowing it to get all iteratives by 20. Between dazing blow, pounce, rake, and rend in addition to fast healing it is a veritable melee blender. I don't think Wheep comes close to competing with cave troll which is +0 LA, so I can't see an argument that wheep is +1 if we aren't changing Cave Troll to a +1 too...

[Debatra]

I was actually thinking in terms of rating the Corpsecrafter block of feats as a pseudo-template, for the use of those who've figured a negative level setup for the LA -0 ratings and the scattering of positive or neutral LAs on Undead.

And to stick a stake in the arguments surrounding that stuff because it does come up when talking actual campaigns, particularly given the sheer quantity of -0s from the HD bloat such measures do a lot to resolve.

Oh, that's what you meant. Could be interesting I suppose.