The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles

[H_H_F_F]

Gotcha. I was confused by the word "default" there.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Incorporeal, SoL touch, long distance travel, mass debuff, an incredibly good dispel for its level, mind-affecting immunity, and a few niche bonuses, including a weird immunity that may or may not mean that you can't be resurrected and stay for several days unable to act in the Dreamscape as you slowly heal to full. Much to love, not much to hate. Is it enough to balance the bad body shape and the bad ability scores? I... don't think so. But then you have Dream Phase. You can't be detected by Undead, Constructs, Elementals, non-native Outsiders, Plants or Oozes. That's fantastic! Most of your innate abilities don't work on these types, but that's the difference between a regular monster and a PC. The PC can have other abilities and kill these enemies with no problem, or just use Death Urge. It's not great for the rest of the party, but I kinda don't want to allow this kind of impunity below ECL 11 or 12. I'll go with LA +1.

[Thurbane]

Usual disclaimer about my lack of psionics knowledge... (also, insert rant about the later 3.5 stat blocks).

• Large Fey (incoporeal)
• 11 HD
• Fly 50 ft (perfect)
• Cha as deflection bonus to AC
• Fast healing, regeneration: undefined. Impossible to rate, and in likelihood, the DM would be within rights to say they don't exist. For me, I'd probably rule fast healing 5, regeneration 5 overcome by cold iron.
• Immune mind-affecting: nice defence for anyone.
• DR 5/cold iron
• PR 21
• Dream phase: only visible to creatures that can sleep and dream.
• Sleep Touch: sleep effect unlimited by HD. Save is Cha based.
• Dream gaze: gaze attack that inflicts -4 on attacks, save and skill checks for 1d6 rounds. Save is Cha based.
• See in Darkness: see through all kinds of darkness.
• PLAs: not well versed, but seems like a decent array of low-mid power PLAs. Looks like it might struggle against mindless foes.
• Str --, Dex +6, Con +2, Int -4, Wis +6, Cha +8
• Relatively small racial skill list.

This seems to make for a pretty decent CR 9 encounter, but not sure how it stacks up as a PC. No languages listed, unless I'm missing something? You seem to get decent attacks and definitely solid defences. Incorporealness is a mixed bag: great for defence, but makes interacting with things difficult at times.

I'm going to tentatively agree with +1, but again, my grasp on the PLAs involved aren't that great.

I'd be interested in home-brewing a non-psionic version for my own game, and swapping out the PLAs for similar themed SLAs.

[Tzardok]

I'm going to tentatively agree with +1, but again, my grasp on the PLAs involved aren't that great.

I'd be interested in home-brewing a non-psionic version for my own game, and swapping out the PLAs for similar themed SLAs.

You wanna an overwiew what those powers exactly do?

Edit:

IBut then you have Dream Phase. You can't be detected by Undead, Constructs, Elementals, non-native Outsiders, Plants or Oozes.

Outsiders are able to sleep, they just don't need to, and the description of the dream travel power states that they have dreams (even if they are not easy to navigate).

[remetagross]

Kudos to the author, this monster's concept is very cool. An incorporeal fey? I think that's a first to me.

Where does this guy go? I suppose Ardent is the usual answer, what with the Wis bonus, and it evens fits the psionic fluff of the monster. Plus, picking the right ideals can orient you towards a certain sort of "dream". The dude is unkillable, and has nasty abilities against those who actually can detect it. The problem of friendly fire with the gaze attack can be solved with the Narrowed Gaze feat from Serpent Kingdoms that allows you to choose to set your gaze attack into "active only" mode. The infiltration and concealment abilities put a Rogue of equal level to shame (to creatures that can see you, just hide in the ground). The one downside is the trouble for handling equipment. Communication is easily solved through one or the other way of acquiring telepathy.

I cannot see this monster not having an LA. Let's say LA +2. This is a very strong package.

[Debatra]

Wouldn't it be 11?

No, the ML of the Psi-Like abilities is listed as 9 (except for dream travel).

Gotcha. I was confused by the word "default" there.

Actually, that was me managing to accidentally be right due to the combination of later 3.5e statblocks sucking (so I didn't notice the general ML) and somehow getting their HD and CR mixed up (so I thought the "unlisted" MLs defaulted to their HD, which I got wrong). It's fixed.

an incredibly good dispel for its level

To be fair, that's just how Dispel Psionics works. It starts off just being Psionic Dispel Magic, with the dispel check being 1d20+ML, capped at 10. But then you can augment your bonus by pumping more points into it. Combined with an apparent lack of Greater Dispel Psionics (at least in d20SRD.org) and it appears this is trying to take both roles. Any ML9 character can get that bonus, it's just that having i as a PLA means not having to spend those points.

But then you have Dream Phase. You can't be detected by Undead, Constructs, Elementals, non-native Outsiders, Plants or Oozes. That's fantastic!

Don't forget Elves. There are more than enough of those to be effective. (Also, Outsiders do sleep.)

No languages listed, unless I'm missing something?

Yep. "Languages --", right under the initiative and senses.

[danielxcutter]

You can't counterspell with Dispel Psionics, but you can't do that with SLAs anyways.

[H_H_F_F]

This is very good, but I'm worried about progression. Martial is a hard sell, losing that many manifester/caster levels is a hard sell. For thise voting for LA +2 - what would an ECL 20 version of this (with 7 class levels) look like, in your opinion?

[Metastachydium]

Kudos to the author, this monster's concept is very cool. An incorporeal fey? I think that's a first to me.

Well, off the top of my head there's the joystealer in MM4 and (I think) something weird in MM2 (because of course). More to the point, I'm kind of with H_H_F_F on this. Yes, this is way cool. Yes, this is effectively unkillable (even though this probably makes bringing it back from the "dead" more rather than less complicated). But where does it go from there? Worse yet, It's essentially a one trick pony against what? Six types out of 15 (not counting deathless)? It's offensive PLAs are all mind-affecting and immunity to sleep effects is ridiculously common.

[Tzardok]

I think it is no more or less unkillable than devils or demons are, who after all reform on their homeplane if killed elsewhere (see FC 1 and 2). The fluff is the same, with no mechanics given, so I'm not sure it should go into the LA.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Worse yet, It's essentially a one trick pony against what? Six types out of 15 (not counting deathless)? It's offensive PLAs are all mind-affecting and immunity to sleep effects is ridiculously common.

That's the point. All creatures natively immune to mind-affecting (except Vermin and weird things like the boneleaf or the shedu) do not sleep, and hence can't hurt it back. It is a two-trick pony with the two being almost exactly complementary to each other. Honestly, an Ardent with Practiced Manifester or a Swordsage can get up to 4th level powers or maneuvers quite easily and dish out touch-ranged death on these guys with no way for them to strike back. And for the rest, well. Death Urge is a good power, and you have other quite good SLAs, even if you don't want to just put them to sleep. Or, in the case of a mind-affecting immune creature who can sleep, you can still make a great job helping your teammates by dispelling whatever they try to do.

After looking, in all reviewed creatures (not counting the Dream Phane itself), there are only 9 non-vermin creatures who can sleep but are immune to mind-affecting effects. That's really not that much.

I think it is no more or less unkillable than devils or demons are, who after all reform on their homeplane if killed elsewhere (see FC 1 and 2). The fluff is the same, with no mechanics given, so I'm not sure it should go into the LA.

I agree with that. "Not killed but stuck on another plane until it recovers" is not much better than "soul-bound so that it can't be resurrected"

[Thurbane]

You wanna an overwiew what those powers exactly do?.

That would be very useful, thank you.

[ixrisor]

That would be very useful, thank you.

Brain lock: dazes a creature for concentration + 1 round, will negates

Concealing amorpha: 20% concealment, basically psionic blur

Crisis of breath: forces a creature to take standard actions to breathe, if they don’t they have to make fort saves to avoid dropping to 0. Will negates.

Dispel psionics: just like dispel magic

Dream travel: like shadow walk

Death urge: forces a creature to spend the next round trying to kill itself as effectively as possible, will negates

[Tzardok]

That would be very useful, thank you.

Then I will do that and also give my thoughts regarding what spells could replace them in a non-psionic version of the creature.

Concealing amorpha grants the user concealment, similiar to the blurr spell. Dispel psionics is of course the psionic counterpart to dispel magic or greater dispel magic. Those are the easy ones to replace.

Dream travel is the obligatory power for traveling dreamscapes. Ruleswise, it works like shadow walk, except using dreams instead of the Plane of Shadow, but I don't think that's important for finding a spell that fulfills the same theme. The only spell like that that I could find on a cursory look is dream walk from Heroes of Horror, which works more like planeshift.

The other three powers don't have easy counterparts.

Brainlock prevents the target from casting spells and using powers by dazing it. It has a duration of concentration.
You can propably find an abjuration somewhere that does something similiar ("sunder spell-like" or something like that).

Crisis of breath is a compulsion that forces the target to exhale all air in its lungs. For the duration, the target may choose every round wether it fights the compulsion (allowing it to breath normally for that round) or acts normally (with the risk of suffocation).
There is IIRC a spell that fills the target's lungs with water, but I personally feel that the mind-affecting thing and the "can fight back every round" part is thematically more important than the "can't breath" part, so I wouldn't use that one. Maybe hold monster fits better?

Death urge is a compulsion with a duration of a single round. During the duration, the target chooses the most suicidical course of action available, be that attacking itself, charging a monster or jumping from a cliff.
Thematically I feel that it could be replaced with phantasmal killer as a potentially deadly mind-affecting effect.

[Thurbane]

Thank you.

Hmm, some of those would have pretty clear spell/SLA equivalents, but others not so much.

I ran into similar issues trying to make a non-psionic Caller In Darkness.

[edit] Updated for Tzardok's post - thank you for the analysis [/edit]

[Troacctid]

But where does it go from there? Worse yet, It's essentially a one trick pony against what? Six types out of 15 (not counting deathless)? It's offensive PLAs are all mind-affecting and immunity to sleep effects is ridiculously common.

Into a prestige class, presumably. Fey hit dice have enough skill points even with the Int penalty that it shouldn't be too hard. My earlier suggestion was heartfire fanner (with a quick one-level dip to qualify) or something similar. I think a bard-type class makes a lot of sense with what this monster has going on.

[Glimbur]

I chuckle to consider one of these in a party made up of characters that do not sleep and so cannot perceive it. Things just go right for them, until the wizard gets True Seeing and they learn who their mascot is.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Does anybody have anything else to say here? H_H_F_F, have you made your mind?

[H_H_F_F]

I'm voting for LA +0.

[Thurbane]

Could you shoehorn this into a fast progression casting PrC, like Ur-Priest?

Its HD meet the Fort +3 and Will +3 save reqs.

You can take Iron Will and Spell Focus (evil) as feats - although it always feels cheesy to me taking SF when you aren't actually a caster. Iron Will can be gotten through Otyugh Hole, but that feels cheap to me; I know it's kosher at most tables, though.

The skills are the most challenging part: Bluff, Knowledge (arcana) and Knowledge (planes) are easy enough, albeit as cross-class. Knowledge (religion) and Spellcraft will be trickier. K(R) can be gotten using the Knowledge Devotion feat. You could try for the Education feat, but that feels kinda weird on this monster. Spellcraft would probably require Keeper of Forbidden Lore, which has a req of 13+. With a -4 Int penalty, that requires a fair bit of an investment.

So yeah, you can do it, but it requires 4 feats (or 3 + a magical location), and putting 17+ into int. If it were ruled as LA +0 or +1, you'd still get 9th level spells by ECL 20. May still be worth it. The boost to Wis (for spells) and Cha (for rebuking) would be nice.

...then there's the issue of no languages: does this mean it's incapable of speech? That will cause issues with spells that have Verbal components. Item based solutions are going to be difficult for an incorporeal being. Also, the issue of being incorporeal and manipulating spell components etc.

Is it doable? Maybe. Going to require a pretty big build investment.

[edit] Just looked here for some ideas about Verbal spells etc. https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...s-Spellcasters [/edit]

[Beni-Kujaku]

Could we just say as a rule that if nobody posts anything in this thread for 48 hours, we should wrap it up and go to the next creature? At least if it's not a problem of time from Debatra, it's just that I feel like most creatures last for one or 2 days of discussion, and then more than a week of nothing.

[Debatra]

Yeah, I have been rather slow to update lately.

+0 - Troacctid, H_H_F_F
+1 - Beni-Kujaku, Thurbane
+2 - loky1109, remetagross

...Lovely. Averaging it out to +1 then. Next is... a Drider template? Okay then.

[Debatra]

Drider Template

Acquired or Inherited: Acquired
Applied To: Any Humanoid
Size & Type: Size increases one category, Type becomes Aberration, lose all Subtypes
Space/Reach: As per new size
Hit Dice: Increased to a minimum based on new size by gaining Aberration RHD. 3 (Small), 4 (Medium), 6 (Large)
Speed: Set to 30', Climb 15'
Ability Scores: Str +4, Dex +2, Con +8, Int +0, Wis +2, Cha +2 - Net +18, no penalties
Armor Class: Natural Armor increases to 3 (Small), 4 (Medium), or 6 (Large) if lower.
Skills: +4 to Hide and Move Silently; Class Skills for any gained Aberration RHD are Climb, Concentration, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Spellcraft, Spot.
CR: +2
WotC LA: -
Our LA: +2

We gave the original Drider +2. By comparison, the regular Drider gives you +2 Dex, -2 Con, +4 Int, +4 Wis, and +4 Charisma. And of course six effective levels in a casting class. That said, that's a 6-RHD creature whereas this is a template. A template that gives you additional RHD if you don't have enough already is odd, but you can avoid that by already being at least level 3/4/6.

SR 11+HD is always nice, and you don't lose any special abilities. You gain a bite that scales with your size if you didn't already have a better one, and it also delivers Str-damaging poison (which also scales with your size) with a Con-based save (that doesn't scale with size).

You get a handful of 1/day SLAs, each with Charisma-based saves and a CL that scales with your Sorcerer CL (or just CL 1 if you aren't a Sorcerer). Dancing Lights, Darkness, Detect Chaos, Detect Good, Detect Evil, Detect Law, Detect Magic, Faerie Fire, Levitate. Note the absence of Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, Dispel Magic, and Suggestion; which regular Driders also get.

If you already want to be a Cleric, Sorcerer, or Wizard, the regular Drider is probably better for you because it gives better mental stats. Then again, you get to tack your existing racial traits onto this and possibly avoid being Large. For anything else this is probably better by virtue of not locking you into a certain class for those 3/4/6 levels. Overall, call it a mixed bag.

[loky1109]

I'd give it +2.
Maybe less if applies with aberration HD.

[Debatra]

I think this might be a good case for variable LA.

[loky1109]

I think this might be a good case for variable LA.

Ok.
Something like this.

HD	LA
+5	-0
+4	-0
+3	-0
+2	0
+1	+1
+0	+2

Spoiler: code

Show

[table="class: head alt1 alt2"][tr][th] HD [/th][th] LA [/th][/tr]
[tr][td] +5 [/td][td] -0 [/td][/tr]
[tr][td] +4 [/td][td] -0 [/td][/tr]
[tr][td] +3 [/td][td] -0 [/td][/tr]
[tr][td] +2 [/td][td] 0 [/td][/tr]
[tr][td] +1 [/td][td] +1 [/td][/tr]
[tr][td] +0 [/td][td] +2 [/td][/tr][/table]

[Beni-Kujaku]

I don't feel like this really needs variable LA. Gaining HD if you take the template before you already have 3 to 6 HD is a drawback, but one that is easily solved. I don't think it warrants the final score being less simple and readable.

This is definitely worse than the original drider on a pure sorcerer, but the ability to have actual class features (even a cleric 6 can turn undead and can get acfs that will be worth it compared to losing some mental stats, and dispel magic and suggestion as SLAs), to stack it on top of other classes and to multiclass your drider (also the fact that the SR explicitly scales is great) make up for it in my opinion. LA+2

[Troacctid]

If you assume you always gain HD, instead of only gaining HD if you're low enough level, then I think +2 is fine. But if you can just dodge the HD by not becoming a drider until later, then spending 2 levels to get 6 levels of casting is wildly overpowered and should not be allowed in any universe.

[H_H_F_F]

If you assume you always gain HD, instead of only gaining HD if you're low enough level, then I think +2 is fine. But if you can just dodge the HD by not becoming a drider until later, then spending 2 levels to get 6 levels of casting is wildly overpowered and should not be allowed in any universe.

This template doesn't give casting, as far as I can tell. Just SLAs that key off sorc level for their CL.

I'm actually thinking this might be a strong +1. It's good, sure - but on what build is this worth 2 levels, especially when compared to other templates we've rated this high?

This is a genuine question, by the way, not a rhetorical device.

[Troacctid]

This template doesn't give casting, as far as I can tell. Just SLAs that key off sorc level for their CL.

Oh, I misread the description.

In that case, yes, +2 sounds right. The size increase, spell resistance, and +18 net stats is way too strong for LA +1 even before taking the SLAs into account (and the SLAs don't even account for that much). This seems about on par with the best LA +2 templates in the game.