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

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Now I'm picturing a necromancer gish using a Raiment as essentially resistance training; instead of wearing weights, every movement is opposed by their clothing.

[danielxcutter]

Now I'm picturing a necromancer gish using a Raiment as essentially resistance training; instead of wearing weights, every movement is opposed by their clothing.

Okay that actually sounds neat.

[liquidformat]

The Strength bonus easily makes up for the lost BAB (cf. hulking hurler)

It explicitly has the ability to grapple Large creatures, so they have the same hard limit, and get an advantage on the rolls (+3 from Strength, untyped +4 negating Small size, lose 1.5 BAB), and itemization is...

Are we looking at the same monster here? Raiment has +1 BAB +3 STR and its untyped +4 cancels out small -4 that is a grapple of +4, note the grapple check and attack for this thing are both wrong in the stat block. Having a +4 on your grapple check at level 3 is horrible for a character focused on grappling, an orc barbarian 3 with improved grapple feat and putting 10 into str before racial mods would expect to have a grapple check of +11 and that same character could easily have +11 for trip as well. DR 5/magic is pretty much worthless after level 5, sure DR you get from barbarian and what not also sucks but that is why people jump ship into PRCs. Blind Sight should always be useful and is rather hard to get normally so that is a plus. Having +5 on melee attack at level 3 is low end of average and as GreatWyrmGold and many have pointed out melee undead are going to be hurting for HP which means they are easier to kill and harder to bring back after said death.

I am on the fence about equipment and functionality of these guys. After all if they are going to be player monsters allowing Raiment to either change out articles of clothing or to have their clothes enchanted into magic items seems reasonable as does having gloves as part of the Raiment so they can pick things up. Then again I could see a mean DM shafting you on that but that is more of an issue with the DM than the monster.

Anyways I think Raiment made from full plate with a sword is a pretty fun idea, though at that point it should probably be medium instead of small...

Talking seems to be an issue for these guys since they have no mouth for a pearl of power but drow sign language is just as reasonable as always.

Over all I am on the fence this is one of those we see a lot that isn't good for anything but also isn't obviously horrible, except at grappling. I guess that is the answer though, it is supposed to be a grappler but undead RHD make bad grappler bases and getting an untyped +4 to bring it up to on par with medium characters isn't a tick mark in its favor since grappling is the most common special attack in the game and its handily outclassed by anything large or larger. -0 LA

[Beni-Kujaku]

Just be a Raiment from an eccentric gnome who only wore riverin clothes. Boom, immunity to damage except disintegrate!

[Troacctid]

Are we looking at the same monster here? Raiment has +1 BAB +3 STR and its untyped +4 cancels out small -4 that is a grapple of +4, note the grapple check and attack for this thing are both wrong in the stat block.

Yes. The +4 grapple cancels out the -4 so you break even with a Medium creature, and the +4 Str cancels out the missing +2 BAB so you break even with a full BAB character (except the Strength bonus is actually a little better than BAB for melee characters so it's a slight upside). Then you still have +2 Str/+4 Dex/+2 Wis left over, plus Improved Improved Grab (works on creatures up to two sizes larger rather than the usual one size smaller), constrict, and blindsight 60 ft.

So, in three levels, a fighter (probably the most comparable base class) gets two bonus feats, but we'll call it three, since human is the traditional baseline. Improved Grab is equivalent to a good feat, constrict is equivalent to a so-so feat, blindsight at that range is probably worth at least three feats (cf. Combat Awareness, Pierce Magical Concealment), and the remaining ability score boosts (offset by the Cha penalty) are worth maybe...three or four feats? Oh, and two slam attacks, that's worth another feat, and DR 5/magic is worth two-ish. Let's be conservative and assume it's absolutely necessary to take Improved Toughness to make up for the HP loss, and Open Minded to make up for the lost skills. That still leaves the raiment racial class up by the equivalent of at least four feats over the fighter.

[Morphic tide]

Having a +4 on your grapple check at level 3 is horrible for a character focused on grappling, an orc barbarian 3 with improved grapple feat and putting 10 into str before racial mods would expect to have a grapple check of +11 and that same character could easily have +11 for trip as well.[/B]

...That +4 is naked. Before even the first class level. And the Raimant fails very basic functional needs of being a Barbarian, what with having d12 HD to start with and a Con-boosting feature who's duration falls back on the -4 Charisma. It's a stupid comparison because for all that's a decent direction to be a Grappler, you need to take a specific AFC if you want that +11 and any other feat at 3rd level. PsyWar doesn't demand Constitution or Charisma, possesses Bonus Feats to more readily access Improved Grapple, and has Expansion for another +4 and access to larger targets, making it both work for the Raimant and ultimately be better at grappling than Barbarian, even accounting for the 3/4ths BAB because you pick up more bonuses over time.

[danielxcutter]

I still find having half the hit points of a fellow melee character not worth it.

[Troacctid]

I still find having half the hit points of a fellow melee character not worth it.

*counts on fingers*

So your melee rogues, clawlocks, and eldritch knights typically have...26 Con? Am I mathing that right? 🤔

[Thurbane]

Once you have an Int score, just grab Faerie Mysteries Initiate to boost your HP.

Nothing weird about a set of disembodied clothing getting bizzay with a fey.

[H_H_F_F]

I'm still leaning towards -0, but I accept that I might be too harsh. Perhaps the importance of HP is overrepresented in my games - though I tend to believe the opposite is more likely; that is, that those dismissing the con issue for a melee have games with much less direct damage than the common game.

All that being said, I think I'll abstain from voting on the Raiment, and will try reconsider my approach to -0 by the next monster.

[Tzardok]

I'll weigh in on the +0 side.

[Caelestion]

I think that this is a fairly weak +0, but I prefer to save -0 for clearly underpowered creatures.

[liquidformat]

...That +4 is naked. Before even the first class level. And the Raimant fails very basic functional needs of being a Barbarian, what with having d12 HD to start with and a Con-boosting feature who's duration falls back on the -4 Charisma. It's a stupid comparison because for all that's a decent direction to be a Grappler, you need to take a specific AFC if you want that +11 and any other feat at 3rd level. PsyWar doesn't demand Constitution or Charisma, possesses Bonus Feats to more readily access Improved Grapple, and has Expansion for another +4 and access to larger targets, making it both work for the Raimant and ultimately be better at grappling than Barbarian, even accounting for the 3/4ths BAB because you pick up more bonuses over time.

How is using an unoptimized tier 4 grappler as a comparison point stupid? I wasn't saying Raiment should go into barbarian just that an unoptimized barbarian is outperforming the Raiment at the job. I understand that the +4 is an untyped bonus and that this thing has a racial +6 strength bonus but my point is it needs those to just barely keep up with an unoptimized counter example. If we start optimizing a Psychic Warrior or Totemist for grappling it will out perform Raiment at that role at the same level. The only thing the Raiment has going for it is undead immunities which help protect it from a lot of nasty spells, but as a beatstick it falls behind in the hp department which is just as important.

This thing isn't particularly good at grappling and there are concerns whether it can do basic stuff like open doors, communicate with others, and what equipment it can wear. Add in being a beatstick with low HP and it isn't particularly attractive. At level 3-7 it isn't horrible; however, at level 8+ a lot of shape changing stuff like bear warrior, primeval, and so forth come online that not only cancel out Raiment's abilities but outperform them in grappler builds. The fact that Raiment only has +1 BAB at 3 HD is an issue for it to perform well as a grappler purely because most of the options out there to make you a better grappler are based on BAB.

In the end I think whether this thing is +0 or -0 really depends on whether it has hands and what equipment it can use. If it doesn't have hands and is stuck with sleeve attacks and has a restricted item slots then it is -0. If it does have hands and no restrictions on item slots then I think it is a low end +0 similar to things like half elf, half orc, and shifter. (granted I also think all three of those should be -0 and need adjustments to brought up to competitive level with things like human)

[Temotei]

I think I'll go with +0.

[Morphic tide]

How is using an unoptimized tier 4 grappler as a comparison point stupid? I wasn't saying Raiment should go into barbarian just that an unoptimized barbarian is outperforming the Raiment at the job. I understand that the +4 is an untyped bonus and that this thing has a racial +6 strength bonus but my point is it needs those to just barely keep up with an unoptimized counter example. If we start optimizing a Psychic Warrior or Totemist for grappling it will out perform Raiment at that role at the same level. The only thing the Raiment has going for it is undead immunities which help protect it from a lot of nasty spells, but as a beatstick it falls behind in the hp department which is just as important.

It's a bad example because it's an oranges to pears situation. You aren't ever going to go Barbarian, and aren't actually functioning particularly like one, because Barbarians are the meatshield class and, as we have seen many complaints about, you are not viable at meatshielding. But this is distinct from grappling, even though Barbarians are one of the classes technically proficient in it. The point of bringing up PsyWar is that the Raiment actually meets all the underlying benchmarks to work as one, and the most important power is the 1st-level Expansion, followed by various 2nd-level buffs, because there's strikingly little progression.

Seriously, off the lists I can find you have to go all the way to the horrifyingly costly 5th-level Psychofeedback to find a Power that helps Grappling after 2nd-level Powers, and then you have the untyped Strength bonus of the 6th-level Form of Doom. Oak Body gives no advantage over Animal Affinity. The question is purely how much damage you can scrounge together after your Grapple package, and having those two little sleeves can cascade quite well with per-hit modifiers. Furthermore, being a Psychic Warrior deals with your beatstick flaw quite bluntly thanks to Vigor and Body Adjustment, while your pile of immunities is all the way up at a 5th-level Power that fully halves movement and brings a -2 to Dexterity (the aforementioned Oak Body).

This thing isn't particularly good at grappling and there are concerns whether it can do basic stuff like open doors, communicate with others, and what equipment it can wear. Add in being a beatstick with low HP and it isn't particularly attractive. At level 3-7 it isn't horrible; however, at level 8+ a lot of shape changing stuff like bear warrior, primeval, and so forth come online that not only cancel out Raiment's abilities but outperform them in grappler builds. The fact that Raiment only has +1 BAB at 3 HD is an issue for it to perform well as a grappler purely because most of the options out there to make you a better grappler are based on BAB.

...Did you seriously just bring up shapeshifter builds in monster LA assignment? Of course they're going to outperform! They get to turn into, or mimic the benefits of, higher-level grapple-suited monsters, a better example of the exact thing we're trying to assign an LA to without paying any of the ECL that would otherwise get in the way. As for BAB, if you're at a table willing to accept a total LA revamp from an optimization-minded discussion forum, chances are they'll be willing to use fractional BAB outside of Gestalt to take the edge off the clunk, in which case you're precisely one level behind a regular Psychic Warrior on that front.

[danielxcutter]

I don't see why we should assume fractional BAB or Gestalt when handling monsters, tbh.

[Thurbane]

I don't see why we should assume fractional BAB or Gestalt when handling monsters, tbh.

Same: these are optional alternative systems, and AFAIK, were not the assumed method for these threads.

[danielxcutter]

Also don't a lot of Psychometabolism powers not work if you lack a Con score or something? At the least I don't see anything that a Psychic Warrior Rainment would do better than basically any other race viable for doing such a build in the slightest.

[Morphic tide]

I don't see why we should assume fractional BAB or Gestalt when handling monsters, tbh.

"Fractional BAB outside of Gestalt". It's not core rules, and the variant predates Gestalt to my understanding. It's just mandatory in the Gestalt rules, and rather makes sense in the context of monsters because anything with non-full-BAB RHD that stick in a 3/4ths BAB niche is in an awkward position. Only makes a difference of a single point of BAB, but apparently people's constant winging over theoretical numeric disadvantages that they refuse to substantiate the impact of (show me a must-have Grapple feat that has literally any BAB requirement!) demands bringing up things that solve nasty messes of the multiclassing rules that routinely mess with monster PCs because you can end up whacked with the first-level 0 twice.

This affects Rogues, Swordsages, Druids, Psychic Warriors, Monks, low-level Clerics, the fixed-list casters, Totemist, most PRCs... The list goes on and on, full BAB is extremely rare outside very blunt Martials, so leaving out fractional BAB causes a huge pressure to stick to a very limited selection and/or avoid multiclassing like the plague if you care about BAB.

Also don't a lot of Psychometabolism powers not work if you lack a Con score or something? At the least I don't see anything that a Psychic Warrior Rainment would do better than basically any other race viable for doing such a build in the slightest.

You pretty much have to look towards Goliath or Half-Giant for blanket superiority to the Raimant's package on stuff that's actually intended as player races, and we've rated the latter as a hard LA +1 already, firmly marking it as non-standard. And there's no explicit targeting catch on Psychometabolism Powers based on Con that I can find, you may be thinking of some RAW awkwardness with Fortitude saves against "harmless" effects. Or the 3.0 rules.

The source of advantages is in the costs of what you're bringing, as is always the case when talking about Martials. In the case of a Psychic Warrior, your Str/Dex scores are 7pp and a Standard Action or Psionic Focus and Swift per fight as "standard" races basically aren't allowed +4s (and the exceptions probably have horrible issues matching somewhere else, like the -2 Wis on Orcs), and you can invest that anyways to have pure advantage when needed. This repeats for the minor bit of non-Dex AC (4pp for +2) and the DR (cheapest DR 5 seems to be 10pp Biofeedback, though Oak Body does DR 10/Bludgeoning at 9pp... and halving your speed...), meaning that directly copying part of the innate statblock is 21pp per fight and requires you to simultaneously use Linked Power and either Quicken Power or another 6pp to make Thicken Skin a Swift to do on your first turn.

...PsyWar is surprisingly action starved. You basically need Form of Doom's pile of untyped upside to actually make the Raiment worry about blanket inferiority, giving you all of three rather high levels of serious advantage, simply because matching Monster-type bonuses with Powers takes so many different ones. Any item bought or feat taken leveling the playing field is an expense the Raiment spares, and it takes a lot of little things to catch up, adding up to a quite mad final cost.

[Debatra]

The votes so far, up to 1286:

+0 - Thurbane, Morphic Tide, Blue Jay, Tzardok, Caelestion, Temotei, Troacctid, Lapak, AvatarVecna
-0 - Beni-Kujaku, Remuko, Efrate, Elkad, liquidformat

Nine for +0, five for -0. Not calling it yet, just getting a count for the moment.

[Troacctid]

I am also a +0.

[liquidformat]

It's a bad example because it's an oranges to pears situation. You aren't ever going to go Barbarian, and aren't actually functioning particularly like one, because Barbarians are the meatshield class and, as we have seen many complaints about, you are not viable at meatshielding. But this is distinct from grappling, even though Barbarians are one of the classes technically proficient in it. The point of bringing up PsyWar is that the Raiment actually meets all the underlying benchmarks to work as one, and the most important power is the 1st-level Expansion, followed by various 2nd-level buffs, because there's strikingly little progression.

Seriously, off the lists I can find you have to go all the way to the horrifyingly costly 5th-level Psychofeedback to find a Power that helps Grappling after 2nd-level Powers, and then you have the untyped Strength bonus of the 6th-level Form of Doom. Oak Body gives no advantage over Animal Affinity. The question is purely how much damage you can scrounge together after your Grapple package, and having those two little sleeves can cascade quite well with per-hit modifiers. Furthermore, being a Psychic Warrior deals with your beatstick flaw quite bluntly thanks to Vigor and Body Adjustment, while your pile of immunities is all the way up at a 5th-level Power that fully halves movement and brings a -2 to Dexterity (the aforementioned Oak Body).

Again I am not seeing any validity in your argument that using a barbarian is a bad comparison point. 90% of the grappler builds I have seen in or out of play use barbarian just because a Raiment is bad at being a barbarian doesn't mean I can't use a barbarian in pointing out my dissatisfaction with Raiment as a grappler.

...Did you seriously just bring up shapeshifter builds in monster LA assignment? Of course they're going to outperform! They get to turn into, or mimic the benefits of, higher-level grapple-suited monsters, a better example of the exact thing we're trying to assign an LA to without paying any of the ECL that would otherwise get in the way. As for BAB, if you're at a table willing to accept a total LA revamp from an optimization-minded discussion forum, chances are they'll be willing to use fractional BAB outside of Gestalt to take the edge off the clunk, in which case you're precisely one level behind a regular Psychic Warrior on that front.

Yes I seriously did because once more it is a valid comparison point most grapple builds out there are going to take bear warrior, primeval, and or black blood cultist and with the exception of black blood cultist the others have high bab requirements which is an issue with Raiment who is minimum of 2 bab behind.

The fact is we are trying to compare Raiment with what we could expect a standard race build to look like and trying to make the assumption that that means we have to look at a single class and not an actual build is ridiculous. If I can make the monster look like crap by using a straightforward rules league build that is an issue of the creature we are looking at not a bad faith comparison point.

Making an orc barbarian/fighter/bear warrior/frenzied berserker build is tier 4 but it handily outperforms a Raiment Psychic Warrior at grappling and that is an issue for a monster that is supposed to be a grappler.

[Lapak]

I'm convinced by both the trend that this is either a very marginal +0 or a very strong -0 and the argument that as a thread we're leaning towards over-assigning -0s in marginal situations.I think this is a very weak +0 but falls on that side of the line. I vote +0.

[Morphic tide]

Again I am not seeing any validity in your argument that using a barbarian is a bad comparison point. 90% of the grappler builds I have seen in or out of play use barbarian just because a Raiment is bad at being a barbarian doesn't mean I can't use a barbarian in pointing out my dissatisfaction with Raiment as a grappler.

Why are you comparing the Raiment to a specific case it's exceptionally terrible at being? The Raiment cannot function as a Barbarian, on a basic level, so one should be drawing comparisons to non-Barbarian Grappling builds the Raimant can attempt to be, to make the most direct possible comparison.

Yes I seriously did because once more it is a valid comparison point most grapple builds out there are going to take bear warrior, primeval, and or black blood cultist and with the exception of black blood cultist the others have high bab requirements which is an issue with Raiment who is minimum of 2 bab behind.

Again, the comparison defeats the purpose, because the tool in question is a direct substitute for being a monster without the cost of being a monster. Comparing any Medium-sized Animal to Wild Shape Ranger or Druid is farcical because said class explicitly becomes the Animal without an RHD cost.

Both Bear Warrior and Black Blood Cultist use Rage, making them an incomparable subset of Grapple builds regardless of their quality at such because they require a feature the Raiment does not have useful access to in the first place, and Primeval is the exact statblock looting I'm complaining about.

Compare the Raiment with the builds it can actually be, not the builds it cannot be. If you want to be a Primeval, the Raiment is spectacularly and comprehensively unsuited, but Psychic Warrior can Power its way into Grappling with minimal losses, while Swordsage has access to per-hit bonuses and has overwhelmingly size-independent damage, and both of these use the slight Wisdom bonus. You are not locked into Grappling alone and have hooks to scale into more typical builds. It can just as well be a side-competency for lighter enemies, just as it is with many Primevals by having all the applications of a completely abominable Strength score.

[Troacctid]

Frankly, though, if we compare the raiment to a human barbarian 3, the raiment still comes out well ahead AFAICT. Barbarian gets approximately three or four feats' worth of features (plus more skill points) in its first three levels, compared to the raiment's...uh...however many I said earlier. Nine or ten? I think you have to go pretty deep on ACFs before barbarian has a chance of winning out.

[AvatarVecna]

I was under the impression that comparing a creature to classes at a similar tier of capability that perform in similar roles is how we're meant to judge things. The question isn't "is a raiment/barbarian X as good as a human barbarian Y", it's "given that a raiment is a grappler, how does it compare to non-raiment grappler builds", and barbarian just happens to be a good comparison point for grapplers. And at least by default, raiment is most definitely a grappler, even if that's a bad fighting style to aim for - constrict and improved grab push it into that role, and it's damage, size, and body type punish it for trying to pursue other fighting styles. A raiment will never be a reach monster.

Practically speaking, for its main schtick it's got some benefits over a standard build. Without assigning feats, a Fighter is looking at +3 from BAB and +3 from Str, for a total of +6. A raiment with similar attribute allocation is looking at +1 from BAB, +6 from Str, +4 from Improved Grab, and -4 from Small size, for a total of +7. (No I don't know why the statblock lists it as +5 when it should be +4 by default. It's very strange). Presuming that the "Int -" issue is resolved in some fashion per thread rules, both the fighter and the raiment can assign feats to grappling; the fighter gets two extra feats from having three fighter levels, while the raiment gets free action grappling on its two attacks, constriction damage when already grappling, and cuts off the grappled opponent's ability to speak or cast spells with verbal components. If instead we compare to a barbarian, the barbarian isn't getting the extra two feats the fighter did, but is getting another +2 to grapple from rage-strength, making it +8 vs +7 before feats, with the raiment's +7 having the free action/constriction/anti-caster upgrades.

On the HP front, a Fighter 3 is probably looking at 3d10+6 (avg 22.5), a Barbarian is looking at 3d12+12 during a rage (avg 31.5), and a Raiment is looking at 3d12 (avg 19.5). Raiment is 3 HP behind Fighter, or 1 HP/level (equivalent to Con -2), and much further behind Barbarian. However, over time, the Fighter can improve their Constitution directly with enhancement items, wishes/tomes, and even HD bumps if he's an idiot, so the gap will widen further than that as we get into the mid/late game. DR 5/magic makes up for that for a time, but not significantly, and after awhile it's more or less irrelevant on its own. Of course, how much this matters is going to vary from game to game - DR/magic stops being useful around lvl 5, while rocket tag generally starts around level 10. If your table is engaging in rocket tag, the difference between 12d12 (78) and 12d12+120 (198) matters a lot less than you'd think. One upside of DR/magic is that its own natural attacks count as magic for the purposes of bypassing DR, which helps mitigate the poor damage it deals by default.

My biggest issue with raiment is advancement - barbarians, fighters, and monks can be built to be something besides grapplers, but if you're playing a raiment, it's because you wanna be a grappler. And grappling sucks to specialize in, basically no matter how much effort you put into being good at it.

I'm leaning a weak +0. I wouldn't play a grappler, but if I were considering playing a grappler, this would be tempting at low levels - and even at higher levels, for a lower-op game.

EDIT: Barbarian, ToBers, Monk, Fighter, PsyWar...Totemist? I think I recall undead not being great for incarnum cuz of their lack of Con, but totemist is the golden example for natural attack nonsense IIRC.

[Debatra]

+0 is clearly pulling away, and discussion has been inactive for a few days. Revived Fossil coming up next.

[Beni-Kujaku]

+0 is clearly pulling away, and discussion has been inactive for a few days. Revived Fossil coming up next.

Ah, yes, the only d20 damage on a natural weapon, and the only one with the Vrock's dance in all of 3.5.

[Debatra]

Revived Fossil


Dome

Acquired or Inherited: Acquired
Applied To: Any non-undead corporeal creature with a skeletal system.
Size & Type: Size unchanged, Type becomes Undead (Augmented). Keeps any subtypes except alignment and "that indicate kind (such as goblinoid or reptilian)".
Space/Reach: Unchanged
Hit Dice: Drop any gained from "experience", raise remaining to D12
Speed: Winged creatures can't use their wings to fly. If the base creature could fly magically, so can the Revived Fossil. Otherwise unchanged.
Ability Scores: Str +0, Dex -2, Con -, Int -, Wis set to 10, Cha set to 1
Armor Class: Natural armor set based on size, from +6 to +30.
Skills: N/A
CR: The table on page 119 was removed by errata. It is now simply +3.
WotC LA: -
Our LA: +2

More fixed ability scores. Lovely.

So this thing has a few tables to sort out what it gets based on size, such as natural weapons, natural armor, and even some bonus HP. Unlike most templates which explicitly tell you not to, the Revived Fossil actually does recalculate your BAB and saves to that of the undead type. The Fossil retains any natural weapons it had (except any that required flesh, like a Mind Flayer's tentacle), as well as weapon proficiencies. Any hands it has gain a claw attack. If the base creature's claw or talon attack did less damage than the second table on page 118 would indicate, it gets upgraded to match. Special attacks are lost, as are any special qualities aside from extraordinary ones that improve its attacks.

It gains bonus HP based on its size (from zero to eighty), DR 10/adamantine, and cold immunity. Presumably but not explicitly because of its new mindlessness, it loses any feats it had but gains Combat Reflexes.

[Troacctid]

If I'm not mistaken, this is just a strictly better version of skeleton—same thing, but with more natural armor, more HP, better DR, and bigger claws. Skeleton got a +1 for the version of it with no HD. Given that, I would put revived fossil at +2, assuming it is accompanied by an awaken undead effect.