Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

Phoera, Phoelarch, Vazalka, Vazalkyon

For the day of the dead, we have undying phoenixes. Or at least humanoid descendants of the phoenix, which asks a lot of questions about phoenix reproduction. And like the phoenix from MM2, they have absolutely sh** stats and AC, but make up for that with their spell-like and other supernatural abilities. And of course, when they die, they explode, and leave an egg that hatches into a little bird. Yes, even when the original is a feathered humanoid. Of course, like the phoenix, the new creature doesn't have the memories of the previous one, it's a whole new creature. This means that this ability is useless for PCs beyond Death Throes (an impressively strong 10d6 Fire in a 20ft radius which might just kill your friends more than anything else) and completely prevents resurrection.

Phoelarchs are described as all having wanderlust and spending their lives wandering the land, meeting new people and fighting injustice. That's a nice way to say "these are just random encounters". At least they're not unnecessarily Evil, which is kind of an upgrade in this book.

- Medium Monstrous Humanoid (Fire), 7 RHD. At least it's full BAB, and immunity to Fire is good, but that's nothing impressive
- +4 Str, +6 Dex, +4 Con, +0 Int, +2 Wis, +6 Cha. That's just not that good. the Charisma bonus is interesting, but that's a bit too average and doesn't focus on anything. Also +2 NA is really low.
- Fire-focused SLAs, including at-will scorching ray and 1/day Fire Shield. 1d6 Heat to each attack with a metal weapon.
- SR 11+HD, Heals from Fire. These are really great abilities. Nice SR, and healing from fire with an at-will fire SLA means you're starting every fight with full life. Sad that the rest of the chassis is so... generic.
- bonus feats Great Fortitude and Alertness. Immunity to poison and disease. Not game-changing, but nice to have once in a while.
- Death Throes, Rise from the Ashes. Basically irrelevant.

The phoelarch just has average everything except for its infinite out-of-combat healing and its SR. And obviously, that's not good enough at ECL 7. That said, the stats and SLAs may not be too bad with 5 RHD. But I'm honestly not sure where to go from there. Not enough attacks for rogue, not enough strength for barbarian. Maybe some sort of incarnum user? Or eldritch glaive warlock, to really use both that BAB and Cha bonus (maybe the glaive can even conduct Heat). Probably DLA-1, but it might be pretty weak.


Phoera
The bird that comes out of the egg left after a Phoelarch dies. Only hatches if undamaged for 24h (unlikely even if you're facing opponents with animal intelligence, who will probably just eat the egg, and intelligent enemies will notice the egg and destroy it, so a Phoera probably only hatches when the Phoelarch's death throes have obliterated any hostile creature in the vicinity).
The phoera is a 3 RHD Medium Magical Beast with comparable stats to the phoelarch (+2 Str, +6 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Wis, +4 Cha), except with a -8 to Int, a surprisingly better natural armor with +3, and the ability to fly (60ft good). No hands is obviously bad, but it has a claw/claw/bite routine that works pretty well with its 1d6 Heat and that put enemies on fire if they hit, and an impressive breath weapon for its HD dealing 5d4 3/day in a 30ft line. It also still heals from fire. That's basically the very best you can ask for on a magical beast chassis of this level, with both defensive and offensive abilities, and an infinite healing trick just waiting to happen. I'm not comfortable allowing this at ECL 2, so even if it will have a bit of a hard time advancing to mid and high-levels, I'll say 3 RHD, DLA-0.

Cold variants
Vazalkyons are just cold-based Phoelarchs, and Vazalkas are cold-based Phoera. Assuming the conversion is made properly (any instance of fire becomes cold, Vazalkyons create Vazalkas upon death, and the SLAs are replaced with equivalent cold-based ones), then no change is necessary. If we only follow the book, the Vazalkyons heal from cold but are still using fire-based SLAs, which hampers its infinite healing trick. In that case, 5 RHD, DLA-2.


Phoelarchs and Phoeras are pretty boring if you don't work for it, despite having an interesting concept that could have yielded something good. Next time, we will have a deliciously silly monster whose concept could never have yielded anything better, the Plague Brush!