Community Based Monster Classes: Come in and help out!

[Hyudra]

I'll phrase it better when I can.

Cleric casting is pretty essential for a monster that normally 'prefers to solve encounters with spells' and has cleric casting 14 on what is normally a 12HD monster. I figured making it 2/3rds casting might leave some room for features; and caster level = HD seems to be pretty standard for these things. I just wasn't sure how many features I could slide into those lost five levels, so I overshot.

Did I remember to put in the part about the continual flames only lasting a minute unless some material components are spent? Yeah, OK. They're not exactly overpowering spell-likes, so I'm not all that worried about them.

The thing about spellcasting is it's pretty much the most overpowered class feature you can get. Divine spellcasting is notable because you're effectively getting access to every divine spell printed for your class, in every sourcebook your DM allows.

Adding to that, you've got a bunch of spell-likes. They're not amazing, true, but they alleviate the need to fritter away some of your daily spells to do the regular stuff (detect magic, shed some light on your surroundings, etc). It just gives you a little more freedom with a class feature that gives you a lot of freedom to begin with.

Remember, we have a fair bit of freedom with interpreting the classes. I prefer sticking with the flavor over the mechanics - the Trumpet Archon as printed may prefer solving encounters with spells, but that's a conclusion the developers likely came to after they were done designing the creature. Given that most celestials have some extensive spellcasting, I do not think it would be a tragedy to deviate slightly from the pattern & make the Trumpet Archon a little more distinct. Keep the core elements, of course, but focus more on the trumpet and the music than on the core celestial stuff.