Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

My first thought was using it as an aerial equivalent of sea serpents, but A. most D&D settings have few to no airships and B. sea serpents don't need to be human-plus-intelligent.

That doesn't prevent the sea drake from already having human intelligence. The difference is that sea drakes are noble, though territorial, draconic creatures who often engage in conversations with humanoids passing through their sea and strike deals with them to protect them from pirates (and from the sea drake itself, that's how mafia works) against money. It wants to gather a hoard and eat its fill if it cannot. The thunder worm is incorporeal with no vocal chord, so a hoard is out of the question, food is unnecessary, and speaking is impossible. It literally has no need or interest in attacking a flying ship.

If they did, the Charisma score would need to be sane (and not just a +16 bonus to AC).

Really, they could have went any number of ways. The Dream Vestige and Prismatic Golem have an unexplained +13 and +16 bonus to their deflection bonus to AC. The Phane has a +23 insight bonus to AC for being able to see into the future. The Deathshrieker has a +6 profane bonus to AC because it is awesome. Don't tell me these numbers weren't chosen just to reach the target AC. No need to pump the charisma for it. Ability scores are supposed to mean something, for Abyss's sake!

I feel confident arguing that the tunnel terror is all mouth.

The book flat-out says "Tunnel terrors have no mouth, eyes, or ears.". Checkmate, moutheist! I mean, you're right (technically. The best kind of right) if you consider "mouth" to mean "entrance of the way towards the stomach", but really that definition would mean that we have at least two mouths (I will now leave the reader to imagine which is the second one I am thinking of). My point was more about being able to speak, to say command words or communicate with its teammates.

On a primal level, I like this backstory better. It's funny.

But when I take it seriously, I prefer the version where Kyuss gets screwed over from his own arrogant callousness and not random chance. I get wanting to spite Nerull, though.
Maybe if Nerull told Kyuss how to become a god, forked over some important resource, and Kyuss screwed it up on his own? Would that be a good compromise?

That would remove any involvement of the spellweavers, but they're also not that important to the story. I think a good one would be "Nerull told Kyuss how to become a god (sacrificing many people to him), Kyuss wants to backstab Nerull somehow, he independantly researches spellweaver rituals (entering an obelisk covered in blood) that would also give immense power, tries to combine the two ritual in the hopes that it could make him surpass Nerull. The two rituals don't mesh well together, resulting in an Elder Evil instead of a major god". Alternatively, remove any mention of Nerull and replace with Orcus. Really, it does not change a thing.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The book flat-out says "Tunnel terrors have no mouth, eyes, or ears.". Checkmate, moutheist! I mean, you're right (technically. The best kind of right) if you consider "mouth" to mean "entrance of the way towards the stomach", but really that definition would mean that we have at least two mouths (I will now leave the reader to imagine which is the second one I am thinking of). My point was more about being able to speak, to say command words or communicate with its teammates.

Saying that deuterostomes have two mouths (since their GI tract has two orifices) is about as accurate as saying chordates have two tails (since their spinal columns have two ends), and significantly less accurate than saying that most tetrapods have three nostrils (since their mouth is another orifice that can perform nostril functions, including sensing certain chemicals).

Anyways, yeah it can't talk. (I mean, neither can zombies or wargs, which do have mouths, but I know what you mean.)

[Tzardok]

What do you mean, worgs can't talk?

[Morphic tide]

Anyways, yeah it can't talk. (I mean, neither can .... wargs, which do have mouths, but I know what you mean.)

Incorrect:

More intelligent than their smaller cousins, worgs speak their own language. Some can also speak Common and Goblin.

[glass]

That would remove any involvement of the spellweavers, but they're also not that important to the story. I think a good one would be "Nerull told Kyuss how to become a god (sacrificing many people to him), Kyuss wants to backstab Nerull somehow, he independantly researches spellweaver rituals (entering an obelisk covered in blood) that would also give immense power, tries to combine the two ritual in the hopes that it could make him surpass Nerull. The two rituals don't mesh well together, resulting in an Elder Evil instead of a major god". Alternatively, remove any mention of Nerull and replace with Orcus. Really, it does not change a thing.

This version has the bonus of still being compatible with Age of Worms. Headcanon accepted!

Or...maybe he tried to play Nerull and Orcus off against each other, and that's how he ended up attempting two incompatible rituals (one came from the former and the other the latter).

[Beni-Kujaku]

Wicker Man

The Wicker Man is certainly the most badly translated monster in all of Fiend Folio, and a strong contender for the worst french translation in the whole game. The litteral word-to-word translation for Wicker Man is "homme d'osier". The french name for the celtic effigy that was burned in pagan rituals is also "homme d'osier". So how did they translate the monster's name? "Homme-arbre". Tree Man. Tree Man!? Not only does it lose any connection to its historical origin, it fails to convey any of the Wicker Man's abilities or specificities, and makes it seem like it is a plant creature rather than a Construct. I just cannot fathom why they didn't just go with the obvious pick and chose this bland, meaningless, weird-sounding, unfit name.

Like their real-life counterparts, Wicker Men are used by druids to conduct ritual sacrifices by trapping criminals inside of the effigy and setting it on fire. Unlike its real life counterparts, such a Wicked Man then uses the lifeforce of the sacrificed people as well as divine energy from the gods the druid worships, such as Nerull (oh, so now you don't care about naming him!), to animate as a kind of super golem impervious to basically anything, dealing fire damage and trapping its creator's enemies in its fiery belly.
A Basket Man's defenses are really impeccable, including being almost unassailable both with magical and physical damage, and with decent slams and grappling capabilities, there even was someone asking for LA+0. But in the end, 12 RHD on an intelligentless chassis proved too much and the Twigger Man ended up here.

- 12 RHD Huge Construct. As a reminder, a Huge construct has +40 HP, corresponding roughly to 16 Con at that level.
- +18 Str, -2 Dex, _ Con, _ Int, +0 Wis, -10 Cha, +8 natural armor. We love golem stats.
- 2 slams with Improved Grab. Pinned creatures are encaged in the Willow Man's chest, similar to Swallow Whole.
- Flaming Body : if the wicker man is set on fire (no damage to it, lasting for 10 minutes with a 5 min literal cooldown), its slams deal +2d6 damage, and encaged creatures take 6d6 fire per round. It also has a 30ft fire aura dealing 1d6 per round.
- Immunity to magic, immunity to piercing, immunity to fire, hardness 5, construct traits. Holy hells.

It's just four abilities, but those are incredibly encompassing defenses. Immunity to piercing means immunity to bites, claws and gores. In addition to immunity to magic, a lot of monsters will just be fully unable to hurt the Cage-coal Man. And even if they can, hardness 5 is nothing to sneeze at, at it applies even to SR:No damage, while construct immunities mean that most alternate ways of dealing with it (special conditions, poison, instant death...) will be ineffective as well. As a monster, it's an abysmally boring encounter. As a PC, it's a way to ensure that you are going to keep slamming for a long time, though you won't be doing much of anything outside of combat. Warblade is definitely the way to go here, and 10 RHD, DLA-1 9 RHD, DLA-2 seems fair.


Building a Druidic Man requires 70,000gp, which includes 3,000gp for the wood alone. We know that 20lbs of firewood costs 1cp, which would make the Woodbundle Man around 6,000,000 lbs, or more than 100 times the weight of a Gargantuan blue whale, while being an air-filled Huge construct. All in all, I think we can safely assume that the Wicker Man is made of high-quality mahogany directly imported from Kara-Tur. That or woodseller massively inflate their costs when dealing with evil divine casters.
Next time, we have the final evolution of the yuan-ti, named after one of my favorite english words : the Yuan-ti Anathema.

[Tzardok]

Does it mean immunity to bites though? Bites after all also deal slashing and bludgenoing damage, so that part should still go through.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Does it mean immunity to bites though? Bites after all also deal slashing and bludgenoing damage, so that part should still go through.

That is not how I read it. Bite damage is not "either piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning depending on what is most beneficial", it is "piercing, slashing AND bludgeoning". All of the damage is all three kinds. If something somehow had all of DR/piercing, DR/slashing and DR/bludgeoning, a bite attack would still bypass all of it. Each DR separately checks "is the current damage P/S/B? If yes, then the DR is bypassed".
That's the same thing with immunity to piercing. It is not the same thing as "immunity to everything that is not slashing or bludgeoning". When faced with damage, it checks "Is the damage piercing? If yes, then negate it." And bite damage is indubitably piercing.

[Tzardok]

That is not how I read it. Bite damage is not "either piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning depending on what is most beneficial", it is "piercing, slashing AND bludgeoning". All of the damage is all three kinds. If something somehow had all of DR/piercing, DR/slashing and DR/bludgeoning, a bite attack would still bypass all of it. Each DR separately checks "is the current damage P/S/B? If yes, then the DR is bypassed".
That's the same thing with immunity to piercing. It is not the same thing as "immunity to everything that is not slashing or bludgeoning". When faced with damage, it checks "Is the damage piercing? If yes, then negate it." And bite damage is indubitably piercing.

I would argue that the immunity works closer to damage reduction. It seems more logical to me. Like, a morningstar deals both bludgeoning and piercing damage. If I strike you with a morningstar, even if you are immune to getting pierced by the spikes (for example because you are made of wicker with a lot holes in it), that doesn't change the fact that I'm still beating you with an iron club, so I should still do damage. And bites work the same way.

[Dualight]

The problem then becomes determining how much of the damage is piercing (and thus negated) and how much is bludgeoning/slashing(and thus goes through).

Why do I get the sinking feeling that this is in 'ask the DM, because there is no unambiguous RAW' territory?

EDIT: As it turns out, there is some very clear RAW on the topic.

[Remuko]

That is not how I read it. Bite damage is not "either piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning depending on what is most beneficial", it is "piercing, slashing AND bludgeoning". All of the damage is all three kinds. If something somehow had all of DR/piercing, DR/slashing and DR/bludgeoning, a bite attack would still bypass all of it. Each DR separately checks "is the current damage P/S/B? If yes, then the DR is bypassed".
That's the same thing with immunity to piercing. It is not the same thing as "immunity to everything that is not slashing or bludgeoning". When faced with damage, it checks "Is the damage piercing? If yes, then negate it." And bite damage is indubitably piercing.

I thought that this was not correct, and it is not, I found the source.

Some weapons deal damage of multiple types. If a weapon is of two types, the damage it deals is not half one type and half another; all of it is both types. Therefore, a creature would have to be immune to both types of damage to ignore any of the damage from such a weapon.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I thought that this was not correct, and it is not, I found the source.

Oh. Then it is much worse. 9 RHD‚ DLA-2.

[remetagross]

It's still nice though, as piercing damage comprises 95% of mundane ranged attacks.

Too bad for the boring "Homme-arbre". Besides, didn't we already have a "Homme-Arbre" somewhere? Maybe the French translation of the Treant? Anyway.

I'd go with Desert Wind Swordsage with this dude. It's thematic as hell (ha!) and Swordsages have access to nice out-of-combat utility maneuvers as well, like the Shadow Jaunt line from Shadow Hand.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Yuan-ti Anathema

Spoiler: Big cool snakey picture

Show

Anathema... Such a pretty word. Anathema. You can recognize its greek roots, but it is hard to pinpoint its etymology, or any word of the same family. And yet, it is sort of powerful in its own way. Like the name of an entity that you don't get to meet often, but that still makes heads turn whenever it is mentioned. Anathema. I like this word. I always have. Despite that, I had never looked up where it came from, and now that I have, I think I like it ever more. Anathema, in greek, means "to set something upwards", to present it. It is not something despised or disliked, it is an offering. A sacrifice to the gods above. And the greatest sacrifice one can ever is that of one's own life. As such, anathema started to mean "devoted". One who gives their all to the powers they worship. The hebrew religion used anathema to refer to their sacrifices, things and animals that should be preserved for the divine, no longer used in everyday life.
As christianity started taking hold, the greek devotion, the anathema, started referring to offerings specifically to the old gods. It was no longer any divine worship, but an adoration of the evil, the pagan, and the devilish. Maybe combined with the hebrew understanding that anathema was to be cast out of people's life, the anathema became a religious ban, the disfavour of God. And thus, during the middle age, anathema were the ones cast away from the christian religion. The heretic, the excommunicated, the accursed. From worshipping God to being disavowed by Him, this is the anathema. The most devoted in a society, that cannot be allowed to live in it. Either at the service of the gods, or their mortal enemy, but always glorifying them and highlighting their power. Such a good name for this monster.

The Yuan-ti anathema is either an extremely rare mutation or the result of a ritual that changes a yuan-ti abomination into something that is so much more that it's not a Monstrous Humanoid anymore, but an Aberration. The six-headed Yuan-ti Anathemas are some of the most powerful servants of Mersshaulk and Sseth, with a lot of them taking cleric levels, and vying for the absolute destruction of humanoid gods. However, their immense power means they upset the balance of the yuan-ti society by encouraging all-out attacks on all humanoid settlements nearby. That's why the leading abominations banish them out of the cities to live alone. However, many yuan-tis see the anathema as the pinnacle of their race and an actual avatar of their gods, and start worshipping it rather than the gods. Are you seeing what's going on? The best in the society, banned by said society, most devoted to their gods, but a bane both to these gods by inadvertently stealing their worship, and hating all other gods. That. Is. Such. A. Good. Name.


The yuan-ti anathema is basically your average high-level monster. Decently high stats, a lot of SLAs of varying powers, one nice unique ability, and way too many RHD. The unique ability here is the ability to produce and attach yuan-ti grafts to anybody in 8 hours, presumably without paying for them. At first glance, it is incredible. If it was any other kind of grafts (fiendish, undead or illithid), it would be one of the best abilities around. Untyped bonuses to ability scores, additional natural weapons, improved speeds or special abilities... Grafts are great! Except yuan-ti grafts. Yuan-ti grafts are super bad. Apart from the scaly skin that gives +3 NA, they all have as much drawback as benefits, like losing an arm or 10ft of your speed, or are just irrelevant to most creatures, like adding a poison to an existing bite weapon. All in all, definitely not worth epic levels.

- 22 RHD Huge Aberration
- +16 Str, +2 Dex, +18 Con, +14 Int, +14 Wis, +12 Con, +20 natural. The stats are high (total +76), but they don't have enough personality to point in a specific direction.
- 40ft speed, 20ft swim and climb.
- 2 claws and 6 bites with Improved Grab, Constrict, 1d4/1d4 Con poison, and 10d6 acid per round to anybody grappled. Probably enough for a decent grappling bruiser all on its own.
- Alternate Form (T to H viper, or viper swarm), Mass Aversion (30ft emanation to make people flee snakes and yuan-tis on a failed Will save), Attach Grafts
- SLAs : 1/day CL20 blasphemy and unholy aura, lots of 3/day including suggestion, baleful polymorph, haste and entangle, at-will detect poison.
- All-around vision, Scent, Regeneration 5 (force or adamantine), +10 to Hide checks, poison and acid immunity, resistance 10 to fire and electricity, DR 15/Good and Magic (still not sure how a weapon that radiates good can be non-magic), SR 4+HD. The regeneration is weird. I like it.

There's many things here, but nothing you're particularly good at. But just for high CL Blasphemy, good stats and decent fighting capabilities, especially with Haste. Let's go with 15 RHD 16 RHD, DLA-4.


The anathema is a pretty good evolution of the yuan-ti family. Just everything yuan-ti cranked up to 11. The snake people have always had a problem with having too many individually weak abilities, but the anathema can make pretty good use of them all thanks to its balanced bonus to all stats, which fits its role as the ruler. Next time, we have the complete opposite, a one-trick pony that couldn't rule over a litter of puppies, the last non-symbiont monster of the Fiend Folio, the Zodar!

[Metastachydium]

Anathema, in greek, means "to set something upwards", to present it. It is not something despised or disliked, it is an offering. A sacrifice to the gods above. And the greatest sacrifice one can ever is that of one's own life. As such, anathema started to mean "devoted". One who gives their all to the powers they worship. The hebrew religion used anathema to refer to their sacrifices, things and animals that should be preserved for the divine, no longer used in everyday life.
As christianity started taking hold, the greek devotion, the anathema, started referring to offerings specifically to the old gods. It was no longer any divine worship, but an adoration of the evil, the pagan, and the devilish. Maybe combined with the hebrew understanding that anathema was to be cast out of people's life, the anathema became a religious ban, the disfavour of God. And thus, during the middle age, anathema were the ones cast away from the christian religion. The heretic, the excommunicated, the accursed. From worshipping God to being disavowed by Him, this is the anathema. The most devoted in a society, that cannot be allowed to live in it. Either at the service of the gods, or their mortal enemy, but always glorifying them and highlighting their power. Such a good name for this monster.

An interesting detail regarding that: anathema doesn't actually mean ' set something upwards'; that's ανατιθημι (transl. anatithēmi), the verb the word derives from. On a less pedantic and perhaps more pertinent note, there's two discrete ways in which this nominal derivation happened in practice: in Greek, αναθεμα, with an epsilon, and αναθημα, with an eta, are separate words. Both mean roughly the same. The meaning of 'accursed, devoted to Evil' only really came to be associated with the former spelling, however, due to its use in the Septuagint.

The Yuan-ti anathema is either an extremely rare mutation or the result of a ritual that changes a yuan-ti abomination into something that is so much more that it's not a Monstrous Humanoid anymore, but an Aberration. The six-headed Yuan-ti Anathemas are some of the most powerful servants of Mersshaulk and Sseth, with a lot of them taking cleric levels, and vying for the absolute destruction of humanoid gods. However, their immense power means they upset the balance of the yuan-ti society by encouraging all-out attacks on all humanoid settlements nearby. That's why the leading abominations banish them out of the cities to live alone. However, many yuan-tis see the anathema as the pinnacle of their race and an actual avatar of their gods, and start worshipping it rather than the gods. Are you seeing what's going on? The best in the society, banned by said society, most devoted to their gods, but a bane both to these gods by inadvertently stealing their worship, and hating all other gods. That. Is. Such. A. Good. Name.

At any rate, I will readily agree that this little word is quite an exquisite (ana)thematic fit here.

- 22 RHD Huge Aberration
- +16 Str, +2 Dex, +18 Con, +14 Int, +14 Wis, +12 Con, +20 natural. The stats are high (total +76), but they don't have enough personality to point in a specific direction.

It has very high STR and CON, as well as very respectable WIS and CHA. It has a low DEX, just high enough, unless invested in, to make good use of a shiny full plate. It also has religious inclinations. Finally a good chassis for a Paladin, I have to wonder?

[remetagross]

Wow, thank you for the etymology analysis, mate. Really interesting.

By the by, I'm a bit wary of having a CL20 Blasphemy tacked on an ECL15 character. Such a PC would effectively one-shot an entire encounter 1/day, till it reaches level 18 where CR=ECL+2 encounters start to pop up.

[emulord]

Yeah I agree this seems too strong for 15 RHD, but also the DNLA gives them epic feats early which also could be pretty potent. Maybe 17 RHD and -3 DNLA?

[Beni-Kujaku]

there's two discrete ways in which this nominal derivation happened in practice: in Greek, αναθεμα, with an epsilon, and αναθημα, with an eta, are separate words. Both mean roughly the same. The meaning of 'accursed, devoted to Evil' only really came to be associated with the former spelling, however, due to its use in the Septuagint.

Interesting. Having two words come from the same root and pronounced the same but with different spelling is quite unique (I say, looking at "key" in french being both "clé" and "clef"). The fact that the drift in meaning comes from the use in the bible does not surprise me. It reminds me of the reason why "ghost" is spelled like that. It's because William Caxton (the guy who introduced the printing press in Great Britain) had flemish assistants who made a spelling error while printing the Bible and wrote "Holy Ghost" instead of "Holy Gost". Since that was the first or only book many people ever read, everybody assumed that was the right spelling and went with it.

It has very high STR and CON, as well as very respectable WIS and CHA. It has a low DEX, just high enough, unless invested in, to make good use of a shiny full plate. It also has religious inclinations. Finally a good chassis for a Paladin, I have to wonder?

Yeah, I can definitely see an anathema paladin of slaughter.

Wow, thank you for the etymology analysis, mate. Really interesting.

By the by, I'm a bit wary of having a CL20 Blasphemy tacked on an ECL15 character. Such a PC would effectively one-shot an entire encounter 1/day, till it reaches level 18 where CR=ECL+2 encounters start to pop up.

Yeah I agree this seems too strong for 15 RHD, but also the DNLA gives them epic feats early which also could be pretty potent. Maybe 17 RHD and -3 DNLA?

Blasphemy does not work on evil creatures (the most common enemies, even in an evil campaign), is only 1/day, and is crippled by the fact that at this level creatures have many more HD than CR. From the creatures from the Monster Manuals, the Environment series, and all the books covered by the LA thread, 43 have CR 15, and 22 have more than 20 RHD, with an average being at 21 RHD. Blasphemy is weaker than people give it credit for (still pretty strong, just not broken).
Also, emulord, this thread works on the assumption that creatures get epic feats according to their ECL being above 21, not their number of RHD (which is supported by p25 of the ELH), so the Anathema would not get any epic feat in DNLA. Still, I hear you, and I'll increase it to 16 RHD, DLA-4.

[Tzardok]

Interesting. Having two words come from the same root and pronounced the same but with different spelling is quite unique (I say, looking at "key" in french being both "clé" and "clef").

They aren't pronounced exactly the same. An Epsilon denotes a short e, like in "ken". An Eta denotes a long e, more similiar to the end of the French "desirez".

[remetagross]

I'm not quite sure how this thread gets sometimes sidetracked into etymological and philological discussions, but please do continue to do so.

[Metastachydium]

I'm not quite sure how this thread gets sometimes sidetracked into etymological and philological discussions, but please do continue to do so.

(Your wish, my command…

They aren't pronounced exactly the same. An Epsilon denotes a short e, like in "ken". An Eta denotes a long e, more similiar to the end of the French "desirez".

…for I feel the need to add that they aren't even a short/long pair in the strict sense, as epsilon is mid/close-mid and eta is mid-open. Also: the -si- and -ma deverbal suffixes tend to come with long or lengthened stem-final vowels, so αναθεμα is not only pejorative in meaning, but also "slightly less correct" than the other version.)