Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

Makes me think of a Living Construct version that's explicit about the magic making a Monstrous Spider "core". Perhaps ask for Giant Vermin, Magic Fang, and Summon Swarm.

So, basically, the puppet taratects from "I'm a spider, so what?"? They're golems made from tightly woven spider thread with a live sentient spider controlling them from within. It might be a really interesting monster, maybe with the ability to remodel themselves by working for a few hours or days like an Astral Tasker to gain new limbs (max. 8) than can serve as arms, or legs (+4 stability and +10ft movement speed) or wings (30ft flying (Poor), +10ft speed and +1 maneuverability for each pair of wings beyond the first).

[Emberlily]

A party with both a gloom golem and a prismatic golem seems like it would be really fun, at least just conceptually. And mechanically, with spiked chain and eldritch glaive and both of their passives they could be fun for potent area denial (especially since the prismatic golem can just go wherever it wants)

[loky1109]

Obviously, the spider webs making up the web golem were not properly cleansed of spiders beforehand. Which makes sense; spider webs are vulnerable to most things spiders are, they're even more fragile, and spiders generally won't abandon their webs even if you ask nicely.

I don't agree with you. Firstly, web is one of the most tear resistant material, it isn't fragile or vulnerable. Second, it isn't complex task to milk spiders for web especially if we take into account magic.

[remetagross]

Well, spider web is vulnerable to heat at the very least, and while it is highly resistant to being ripped apart, that's because it's highly elastic. So, OK your web golem has not been destroyed when these two Fire Giants have grabbed one the feet and one the arms and pulled, but its limbs are now fledging outstretched 5-foot-long lengths of silk. So eh.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Grisgol

And today, we have the living Magic Item Compendium of D&D. It's seemingly an attempt to concentrate as much magic as possible in a single place in the hope that something powerful would come out of it. Its bones are wands and rods, its joints are flasks of magic potions, its head and torso are the helm and cuirass of a magic armor and its skin is made of hundreds of scrolls sewn together. And, of course, its heart is a phylactery still containing the soul of the lich who once called it their own. This over-the-top amalgamation couldn't not have at least access to the ultimate power of 9th-level spells. Sadly, it natively lacks the intelligence to use its world-altering powers to their full extent. This is why we're here to make it playable by humans!


Note: This monster is one of those where the asterisk in the original thread is the least clear. Nifft summarized this monster in a single sentence:

I feel like the only way to make this thing viable is to make it broken, and that's not a good sign.

A grisgol with Mage Armor, Repair Moderate Damage, Haste, Animate Dead, Permanency, Geas, Simulacrum, Greater Planar Binding, and mother-freaking Wish would be similar or probably even stronger than a Wizard 20, simply due to the sheer power of XP-free, Material-free SLAs castable as standard actions, but also probably not representative of what a grisgol would be capable of in a regular campaign. The only thing Inevitability said was "Aside from abuse of a few choice spells". I choose to interpret this as "no spell with XP cost, no spell with material component of 100gp or more, no spell taking more than one minute to cast". The first two criteria are the criteria upon which you should increase a grisgol's crafting price according to the MM3, and the last one is meant both to prevent abuse and to emulate the fact that the grisgol is supposed to cast these spells from magic items (hence the DC being 10+1.5 times the spell level).

Still, the grisgol's SLAs are by far its most interesting feature, to the point that the total cost of the construct is only marginally higher than the cost of sorcerer-crafted items allowing to cast spells from 1 to 9 each 1/day (210,000gp for the grisgol, 204,840gp for the nine items).
In core only (and if you pity your DM enough to not take the Polymorph line), I think I'd go for Mage Armor, Repair Moderate Damage, Haste, Evard's Black Tentacles (no problem if there's no need for a save), Overland Flight, Greater Dispel, Greater Teleport, Greater Shadow Evocation, and Foresight or Etherealness. Remember that since you have Magic Immunity, only your own spells can affect you, which means you have to be the one able to cast Greater Teleport or you're not going anyway. Teleportation isn't absolutely necessary around ECL 10, but it starts to be starting at 15.

Apart from the SLAs, the Grisgol has both the qualities of a lich and a golem. Paralyzing slams (two of them. Take Rapidstrike) going relatively well with its +8 Str (as pathetic as it is on a 19 RHD Construct), magic immunity (much better on something that can buff itself) with no drawback to speak of, DR 10/Magic and Piercing (sure, I think slashing would have been more flavorful as its skin is made of scrolls but why not), a weird unfriendly defensive ability, Chocking Dust which deals Con damage around it when it is damaged by a non-piercing weapon, and a weird death throes, which gives the people who destroyed it a maniacal need to try to make sense of the heap of worn out magic items it leaves behind it. And as they lose themselves in this impossible task, they lose one point of intelligence each week. Very flavorful, completely useless.


The grisgol is a pretty magic-oriented gish, but doesn't have enough slots to last very long before having to rely on its paralysing slams only, and doesn't have enough raw stats to be good with its slams. The ability to cast a 9th level spell is still as excellent as ever, and I think Magic Immunity and getting them two levels early should balance the lack of intelligence and of slots. 15 RHD, DLA-3 (this DNLA should allow it to improve in the melee department, notably to reach +16 BAB).


What about you? What would be your choice of spells for a grisgol? This is a really great concept for a monster, and I give full credit to the guy who decided to draw a cape on it, it looks awesome. Next time, we'll have the complete opposite of the grisgol, with not even one (Su) ability, the Gulgar!

[GreatWyrmGold]

I don't agree with you. Firstly, web is one of the most tear resistant material, it isn't fragile or vulnerable. Second, it isn't complex task to milk spiders for web especially if we take into account magic.

Point 1: Spider silk is tear-resistant, compared to other things that are three micrometers thick. They are very tearable compared to things that are, say, a millimeter thick. Spiders are often multiple millimeters thick.
Point 2: It was a joke ya dingus.

It's seemingly an attempt to concentrate as much magic in a single place in the hope that something powerful would come out of it.

Historically, this is a viable strategy. Assuming you don't care about what kind of power it has, or what it does with that power.

Next time, we'll have the complete opposite of the gulgar, with not even one (Su) ability, the Gulgar!

The Gulgar, well known for being its own antithesis.

On one hand, being able to cast 9th-level spells at 15th or 16th level is a bit eyebrow-raising...but my eyebrows are lowered a bit by recalling that it can only cast 9th-level spell. And since there's so little else it can do...seems fair.


Since you didn't limit expensive focus components, I think Shapechange would be on my list, along with other buff spells like haste (and yeah, some kind of long-distance teleporty effect). Focus on making those slams as good as possible. Maybe see if I could con persuade the DM into letting me take a homebrew Persistent Spell-Like Ability feat...

[loky1109]

Point 1: Spider silk is tear-resistant, compared to other things that are three micrometers thick. They are very tearable compared to things that are, say, a millimeter thick. Spiders are often multiple millimeters thick.

You can weave web into millimeter or more thick threads.

Point 2: It was a joke ya dingus.

Ouch. I didn't buy it. Sorry. )

[GreatWyrmGold]

You can weave web into millimeter or more thick threads.

Not before collecting it, you can't. And if you collect it before cleaning out the spiders, you're just going to collect spiders with it. Which somehow transmute from ordinary spiders into giant spider facial features, because this was supposed to be a joke explanation for why the web golem had those.

[loky1109]

Not before collecting it, you can't. And if you collect it before cleaning out the spiders, you're just going to collect spiders with it. Which somehow transmute from ordinary spiders into giant spider facial features, because this was supposed to be a joke explanation for why the web golem had those.

Why should I not clean out spiders from the web? Moreover, why should I collect web snares instead of milking spiders?
Plus, there are monstrous spiders of any sizes in D&D. Big spiders should give big threads. And have big mandibles.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Have... Have you all forgotten that Web exists (and both Web and Permanency are required for a Web Golem anyway)? 2nd level spell‚ explicitly harvestable when Permanencied and regrows in 10 minutes. Far "thicker and tougher" web than a regular spider's... All you ever needed for your golem-crafting purposes! Oh‚ and you kill a Large Monstrous Spider to harvest its eyes and mandibles. Because it's far cooler with eight eyes than with none!

I know this is a joke‚ I just wanted to double down on the "we live in fantasy‚ why should we follow real-life logic?

[Beni-Kujaku]

Gulgar

Today, Gulgars! One of the very few creatures with the [Earth] subtype but no burrowing speed, the gulgars share with the xorns their origin in the Elemental Plane of Earth and the fact that they eat gems and other rare stones. However, they all fled the genies of the Plane of Earth so long ago that they aren't Outsiders anymore, only big Monstrous Humanoids with adamantine skin who hate dwarves for hoarding all the "food" for themselves. Also they speak in subsonics and their gender is color-coded (females are white to light gray and males are dark gray to black). Why? Why not?

As PCs, Gulgars are pretty boring (so at least it's consistent with their lore). Large 10RHD Monstrous Humanoids, they have physical stats similar to that of an ogre (+10 Str, -4 Dex, +6 Con) and the mental stats of an Asimaar (+2 Wis, +2 Cha). Let's say that's really bad, but not completely unuseable with fewer RHD. They also get a good DR 10/adamantine, a decent +8 natural armor and the ability to make all their racial natural attacks (2 slams, one gore) count as adamantine. Not completely awful, but nothing really interesting, and I feel like this was over-CRed. On top of that, the gulgar can fire a sonic cone dealing 3d6 and deafening foes. Okay, but I'm not sure you won't deal more damage just hitting things with a warhammer. And finally, subsonic speech, which is more of a drawback than anything. You can only be heard by people with tremorsense, blindsense or blindsight. This may make adventuring hard. All in all, I feel like this is a pretty weak 6 RHD, or a strong 5 RHD. Considering how hard it will be to communicate, I'm thinking the latter for now. What d'you think?
Edit: 6 RHD, DLA-2. Should have given it that from the beginning.


These guys are training Yrthak for war. They serve as their eyes and Yrthaks are some of the few creatures who can actually hear them. It would be quite wholesome if it wasn't explicitly called out as enslaving another sentient species. Next time, we will review spiders that are litterally twice as intelligent as these humanoids and can actually talk, it's the harpoon spider!

[GreatWyrmGold]

Ogres are strong ECL 4 characters. They're a bit tougher, less dextrous, and have better mental stats. Defensively, they have better natural armor and a decent bit of DR. (Not many enemies are likely to have adamantine weapons, and it'll be a while before 10 damage isn't a significant chunk of each enemy attack.) Oh, and they're hard to knock over.

Offensively, they have two slams that are barely better than Improved Unarmed Strike (which might see use in a monk or totemist build alongside better attacks); a gore attack that's actually comparable to decent weapons, at the cost of counting as Light and looking ridiculous; and a weak legally-not-a-breath-weapon which is only really useful for fighting swarms. Also, their gore is an adamantine weapon, good for smashing shenanigans and fighting golems. (I guess the slams technically are too.)

They also have a bonus to Listen checks and a penalty to Spot checks, which is a flavorful little detail I love and probably a small net perk. It's balanced out by the fact that you can't talk to people. Hopefully, someone in your party learned sign language...

So it's mostly a tougher ogre with a decent natural weapon and some miscellaneous perks. That seems vaguely comparable to some single class levels. Totem barbarian (lion) 1, for instance. I wouldn't feel this way if the gulgar was just tough, but it's as big and strong as an ogre—it gives enemies as much reason to focus on them as a fighter does. Since all of this is added to a strong ECL 4 chassis, I'd argue for 6 RHD or a DNLA of -2 or -3.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Ogres are strong ECL 4 characters. They're a bit tougher, less dextrous, and have better mental stats.

Yeah, I guess that's right.

Defensively, they have better natural armor and a decent bit of DR. (Not many enemies are likely to have adamantine weapons, and it'll be a while before 10 damage isn't a significant chunk of each enemy attack.)

You know, defense has never won you fights.

Oh, and they're hard to knock over.

OH MY GOD THEY ARE! 10 RHD, LA+8 IMMEDIATELY!

It's balanced out by the fact that you can't talk to people. Hopefully, someone in your party learned sign language...

So it's mostly a tougher ogre with a decent natural weapon and some miscellaneous perks. That seems vaguely comparable to some single class levels. Totem barbarian (lion) 1, for instance. I wouldn't feel this way if the gulgar was just tough, but it's as big and strong as an ogre—it gives enemies as much reason to focus on them as a fighter does. Since all of this is added to a strong ECL 4 chassis, I'd argue for 6 RHD or a DNLA of -2 or -3.

More seriously, I was already on the verge of giving it 6 RHD and only stopped because I wasn't sure of the impact of subsonics. But at least it has a mouth, I guess. Anyway, I'm perfectly comfortable giving it 6 RHD. However, I don't think 4 full BAB RHD are balanced for one ECL, so I'd prefer it with DLA-2 than DLA-3.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Harpoon Spiders

Spoiler: In response to a Mortal Kombat reference

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What utter buffoon put the "get over here!" ability set on a weirdo spider instead of a scorpion?

That's the thing! The harpoon spider is not a spider! It has ten limbs and not eight! Still, it spins web and has a clearly separated abdomen/opisthosoma and all its legs attached to its cephalothorax. It also has no wings and non-compound eyes. It is clearly an arachnid, and more specifically a chela-spinner, who are also known as "pseudo-scorpions"! If WotC really thought of that, then mad respect to them. If not (much more probable), then no problem, but I really think WotC gets a lot of unjustified hate on this forum. Yes, they are a bit (too) weak in the mechanics department, but the design and lore department has a lot of good surprises in store.

The harpoon spider is basically a super-intelligent arachnid (14 Int) that can propel its mandibles attached to a string of web. As they hit an enemy, it can reel them back to bring foes to it and trip them. That's a nice method of ambush, but will probably not be as useful for a PC.

- Large size, 5 Aberration RHD (I don't understand why it's not a magical beast but sure). It's really not that much for what it brings to the table
- +6 Str, +8 Dex, +8 Con, +4 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha, +3 NA. Total +26. Honestly great stats, and pretty balanced to, with lower bonuses being to less important stats and high improvements to the basic physical stats and intelligence. That's the main draw of the monster.
- no hands, one bite attack with a 1d6 Dex/2d6 Dex poison. Good poison, and having ten legs can be interesting for those "one claw per limb" template (hello revived fossil), but the bad body type really kills the viability of the harpoon spider.
- Harpooning is the ability to throw one (or two by a full-round action) fangs. If you hit, you can make a free trip attempt against a creature strictly smaller than itself. If you succeed against , the enemy is prone and brought adjacent to the spider and it can make its Improved Trip attack with its bite. If you fail the trip or try it on a creature too big, the fang rips itself off the opponent and deals the fang damage once again.
- Evasion, Webwalk, and Spines (creatures hitting you with a natural weapon are dealt 1d6 damage and you can impale helpless creatures on your back cadaver collector-style)

The harpoon spider has great stats, but can't wield weapons (except Mouthpick, but then it loses its poison), and its main ability has just too many moving parts to be consistent (attack roll + trip attempt + doesn't work on Large creatures + another attack roll for the bite). It seems taylor-made for some kind of initiator, probably unarmed swordsage. I'm comfortable giving it a somewhat weak 4 RHD. That way, it at least only loses one BAB because of its RHD. And since the fifth RHD doesn't give it much, DLA-1 seems good.


Dread Harpoon Spider, 9 RHD: Well that's just an advanced Harpoon Spider. The size increase is pretty interesting but Harpooning is still pretty unreliable. 6 RHD, DLA-2


What do you think of these spide... pseudoscorpions? If the regular version was a Magical Beast instead, it might have even gotten +0. Next time, we will have the panserbjørn from "His Dark Materials", the Ironclad Mauler!

[Beni-Kujaku]

Ironclad Mauler

Buy a bear, get an armor free!
(non-removable armor, the company is not responsible for any infection, unhealed injuries and diminutive or smaller creatures getting stuck between the armor and skin of the subject)

The Ironclad Mauler is nothing surprising, just a bear on which you magically grafted an armor and Wolverine-style enhancements to its natural weapons.

Compared to a dire bear, what do you get? Not much.
- You're a Magical Beast, so you have at least full BAB.
- +2 Str, +2 Con, and +5 armor bonus (no reduction of skills or speed due to the grafted armor). Total +22 Str, +2 Dex, +10 Con, -8 Int, +2 Wis, +0 Cha, +7 NA
- Natural weapons dealing damage as one size larger and notably claws now having reach.
- Trample and a weak sickening aura. Uninteresting.

How much is all that worth? 2 more RHD maybe? I think 8 RHD and DLA-4 is good.


Even the coolness factor of "bear with an armor" cannot save a creature that bland. Next time, we will have the guy they sent when Inevitables are too busy, the Justicator!

[remetagross]

About the Grisgol, are they eligible to the Magic in the Blood feat? If yes, bam, all their 1/day SLAs turn into 3/day ones, which is much more interesting. Maybe a convoluted trick implying the Stoneblessed class to get them. Actually, even if the Stoneblessed class is utter crap, it might still be worth it if it allows the PC to nab two extra uses of Shapechange per day.

Ironclad maulers make me think about the panserbjørne from His Dark Materials, but are unfortunately less cool. I'd never take that as a PC, even for 1 RHD.

[GreatWyrmGold]

You know, defense has never won you fights.

No, but if your race has good defenses, you can play more aggressively or invest more in your offense. And again:

I wouldn't feel this way if the gulgar was just tough, but it's as big and strong as an ogre—it gives enemies as much reason to focus on them as a fighter does.

I feel that there's an important distinction between "This race only has defensive abilities" and "This class has a good melee chassis, plus really good defenses". The first is not good. The second...well, it's limited by the tier system, but it's good compared to peers.

To put it another way: Adding good defensive abilities to a featless human doesn't increase its power that much. Adding those same defensive abilities to an ogre increases its power more.

About the Grisgol, are they eligible to the Magic in the Blood feat?

Region: Dwarf (Oldonnar or Underdark [Darklands]), elf (Menzoberranyr), gnome (the Great Dale, Thesk, or Underdark [Northdark]), planetouched (Calimshan, Mulhorand, or Unther), or spirit folk (Ashane).

RAW, no. Grisgols are not Oldonnar/Underdark dwarves, Menzoberranyr elves, Great Dale/Thesk/Underdark gnomes, Ashane spirit folk, or planetouched.
RAI, this is a feat intended for humanoid races with some petty SLAs to use those more casually. Also, grisgols don't even have blood.
RAW with a DM who houserules that you can ignore the Region text of Regional feats? It's allowed. And if you didn't mention which regional feat you planned to take on your grisgol, you could probably get away with it. Your DM would be annoyed though.

Maybe a convoluted trick implying the Stoneblessed class to get them. Actually, even if the Stoneblessed class is utter crap, it might still be worth it if it allows the PC to nab two extra uses of Shapechange per day.

Just checked out the class; not sure I'd be excited even if I got all the abilities in one level of the class. But as long as the grisgol was from Oldonnar, the Great Dale, Thesk, or the Underdark, this would be 100% RAW-legal. And it's not like you're gonna find many other classes that'll boost your SLAs.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Just checked out the class; not sure I'd be excited even if I got all the abilities in one level of the class. But as long as the grisgol was from Oldonnar, the Great Dale, Thesk, or the Underdark, this would be 100% RAW-legal. And it's not like you're gonna find many other classes that'll boost your SLAs.

Isn't Magic in the Blood a 1st level feat only? You'd have a hard time taking it since prestige class levels automatically disqualify you. Also I'm not sure Greater Humanoid Essence could be used to qualify for it‚ there are a lot of disputes on how long an effect should last to allow for prerequisites.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Isn't Magic in the Blood a 1st level feat only? You'd have a hard time taking it since prestige class levels automatically disqualify you. Also I'm not sure Greater Humanoid Essence could be used to qualify for it‚ there are a lot of disputes on how long an effect should last to allow for prerequisites.

It's not specified in the feat, but I just searched for rules on regional feats in general. Apparently, all regional feats are first-level-only.

So yeah, if the DM doesn't waive region prereqs, you're SOL.

[Bohandas]

-Racial Hit Dice reduction (RHDR): You take a monster, you remove RHD without altering its abilities, and you play at lower level. Pretty simple too, even if recalculating all of the monster's variable can be tedious (as a reminder, (Su) and (Ext) abilities DC scale as RHD/2). This method solves the high-level shenanigans of the previous one, allowing for a rules friendly, somewhat lower negative LA than the DNLA, but you never get to play the whole monster ("What is a Tarrasque? A miserable pile of RHD, before everything else."), with all its abilities capped at their reduced RHD level, and your sorcerer blue dragon is stuck with mostly d6s instead of its original d12. This method favors low level monsters, where the full abilities and ability scores of a monster thought for higher level outperform what a PC could do, but falls short when those become irrelevant before class features. One way to offset these issues is to have every ability of the monster scale with its class level afterwards. You never have all the RHD of the creature, but it allows for a way to play characteristic of the monster, even at higher levels. Method used, with the abilities scaling, in Martixy's, then Blue Jay's thread

Why stop there? Why not remove its RHD without altering its abilities OR recalculating, so tne effects of its racial hit dice become racial bonuses to HP, Saves, BAB, special abilities, and skills. (which is honestly yhe way they should have been building the monsters to begin with instead of treating the racial HD as some kind of bizarre pseudo-levels)

[Morphic tide]

Why stop there? Why not remove its RHD without altering its abilities OR recalculating, so tne effects of its racial hit dice become racial bonuses to HP, Saves, BAB, special abilities, and skills. (which is honestly yhe way they should have been building the monsters to begin with instead of treating the racial HD as some kind of bizarre pseudo-levels)

This has extremely minor and fiddly functional differences from the blunter Direct Negative Level Adjustment, which just has its ECL lower, associated scaling to the RHD intact.

As for using RHD as "some kind of bizarre pseudo level", it eases a lot more core rules than it complicates to share the statistics derivation process, as abilities will easily work the same way regardless of the target. Con damage is Con damage, lose Fort save, Concentration check bonus, and HP accordingly. Also means that you can scale up monsters by just adding RHD, for what little value that "really" has.

[remetagross]

It's not specified in the feat, but I just searched for rules on regional feats in general. Apparently, all regional feats are first-level-only.

So yeah, if the DM doesn't waive region prereqs, you're SOL.

Ah, crap. See, off the top of my head I was convinced Magic in the Blood was 1st-level only, and thus that my trick was doomed to fail, but upon reading its description it wasn't written anywhere. Alas, I remembered right but the rule was hidden somewhere else.

I still think it's possible to nab it with a tad more cheese: once you've completed the Stoneblessed class, go for Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle and swap your 1st-level feat for Magic in the Blood. Wouldn't that work?

[Beni-Kujaku]

Ah, crap. See, off the top of my head I was convinced Magic in the Blood was 1st-level only, and thus that my trick was doomed to fail, but upon reading its description it wasn't written anywhere. Alas, I remembered right but the rule was hidden somewhere else.

I still think it's possible to nab it with a tad more cheese: once you've completed the Stoneblessed class, go for Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle and swap your 1st-level feat for Magic in the Blood. Wouldn't that work?

Nah, the strength of Shun the Dark Chaos is that it checks if you qualify for the new feat now, not if you qualified for it before. You're not "shuffling" your 1st level feat, you're losing your 1st level feat to get an Abyssal Heritor feat, then losing the Abyssal feat to get a new feat. It's not 1st level, so you can't go with MitB.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Justicator

Spoiler: Been a while since we had a translation tangent

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Justicator is a weird one, because it doesn't rely on english having a vocabulary too vast, but on english having words already from other countries in its vocabulary just to put more emphasis on something. See? I could have just said "to highlight your point", but emphasis is so much grander a word. For example, a meeting is just two people. A rendezvous is the same thing, but will probably lead to something more interesting. Freedom is just a lack of constraint, liberty is the very philosophical concept of it. In french, these words are just basic things, a rendez-vous means a meeting or planning a meeting (litterally meaning "you go there"), and we have to add "rendez-vous galant" ("romantic meeting") to mean a date. "liberté" means both freedom and liberty, and is an exceedingly common word, unlike liberty.
The same way, justicator is a great name in english. It's the concept of justice put as a noun, with the "ator" suffix meaning "someone who exerts", like the terminator. It sounds badass, and it really drives the point that these guys are not just all about justice, but that they are the very embodiment of it, defined solely by it. In french, however, we already have a word for someone who exerts justice. It's a "justicier" (from justice and "-er" which is used to create a lot of job names). A "justicier" is mostly a vigilante, but can be a cop, or someone fighting bullies during school breaks, anybody who tries to do what is good. The thing is, just naming the big Lawful angel with a single common word would be really underwhelming, we would lose the feeling that this guy is the embodiment of justice if it had just a name used for regular humans, and french doesn't have the same "-ator" suffix that just makes everything look more intimidating by its very presence. So, what do you do? You could put a variation on "justicier", like "justicateur", to stick to the original name. That's what they did for the wheep from Libris Mortis. Wheep is a variation of weep, so they called it "larmoyeux", a variation of "larmoyant" (weeping). Really great translation. But that sort of things makes the name look a bit ridiculous, like it's corrupted. It's good for an undead or an aberration. For a Lawful outsider it might feel out of place. So they chose to just put two words. In french, the justicator is called a "justicier planaire". Simply "planar vigilante" (not great translation, considering vigilante is mostly against the official law while "justicier" isn't, but that's the best I've got.). It keeps the idea of justice and makes it artificially more impressive by making it on the scale of the planes. Still not perfect, but I guess that's the best they had.

Fun fact, that's not the last time this exact issue has occured. In Complete Warrior, there is a vigilante-themed class named "justiciar", which has the exact same problem. In english, they used the ancient latin word for "judge" (which incidentally later became "justicier" in french), but just naming the class "justicier" would be bland, so they named it "justicier solitaire" (lone vigilante) in french, which is a simple but effective change in my opinion.

Anyway, the justicator is a really cool monster visually. Black-winged angels with golden armor and silvered two-handed sword are terrific. Justicators care only about the law-chaos axis of the alignment, and might help devils against eladrins as well as archons against demons. Interestingly, they speak celestial, infernal but also abyssal languages. I guess you have to speak to your enemies to know them, and know them to fight them.

The justicator is an outsider. That means that its HD are really, really good. It's really rare to have humanoid-shaped outsiders get LA -0. The only other ones we got were the Xorn and Salamander. It even has a few interesting features. That said, 17 RHD is just way too much for most martial-oriented monster to be viable, save really obscene stat adjustments like the Tarrasque.

- 17 Outsider RHD, Large size, 30ft land speed and 90ft flying speed (Good)
- +10 Str, +6 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Int, +8 Wis, +2 Cha, +5 Natural armor. This is all really low, especially the natural armor (then again, they're supposed to show up with a full plate armor), and I would have liked these stats adjustment more on a creature with half the RHD.
- DR 10/Chaos, SR 7+HD, Smite Chaos 4/day, Lawful subtype. Sure, that will improve your effectiveness on the battlefield
- A few SLAs, most of which are not that good, but still Planeshift 1/day is nice, the rest (greater command and dispel chaos 1/day, dimensional anchor, silence, invisibility purge and cure serious wounds 3/day) is situational but not awful.

I'm not sure what you would do with such a chassis. I want to say warblade would be good, but you'd leave that big wisdom bonus behind. Probably still an initiator, maybe crusader. The justicator is much worse than the valkyrie (who got 10HD+2 LA), with worse stats, no initiator level, and no free action AoE damage. The SLAs are interesting, but I still feel like I'd rather have the valkyrie's maneuvers. Seems more on par or slightly weaker with a ferrumach rilmani (worse stats and SLAs but flying and a size category bigger. ), so I'll go with a maybe weak 9 RHD. And with all its RHD, I think something like DLA-5 is good? ECL 12, one less than its CR.

That's really one of the most humanoid non-Humanoid monsters in all of D&D. Even angels have some manner of colored skin or something, the justicator only has blond hair and wings. That will not be a problem for our next entry, the knell beetle!

[remetagross]

Man, this monster's ability modifiers are really disappointing for that number of HDs. I'd go with 8 RHDs. The only other nice stuff is that really fast flight speed. What's annoying with this monster is that you can't not buy him an expensive full plate armor made of whatever crazy materials you wish, given the pitiful natural armor bonus. And there's no natural attack that allows you to not buy a good magic weapon either...

I'd go with DLA-6: this way, it can nab 9th-level maneuvers at ECL 20 if it goes straight to an initiator class.

(By the way, I'm always impressed by the cleverness of the French translations of D&D, even though "justicier planaire" is not the best one I've heard. For example, I'm a big fan of "pit fiend" turned into "diantrefosse", which is a made-up word composed of "diantre" - an old-fashioned curse word coming from the word for "devil" - and "fosse" - literally a pit.)

[Bohandas]

This has extremely minor and fiddly functional differences from the blunter Direct Negative Level Adjustment, which just has its ECL lower, associated scaling to the RHD intact.

As for using RHD as "some kind of bizarre pseudo level", it eases a lot more core rules than it complicates to share the statistics derivation process, as abilities will easily work the same way regardless of the target. Con damage is Con damage, lose Fort save, Concentration check bonus, and HP accordingly. Also means that you can scale up monsters by just adding RHD, for what little value that "really" has.

Makes things a lot harder if your monster doesn;t have the standard int score for its race

[Beni-Kujaku]

Knell Beetle

Before I played D&D, I didn't know what "knell" meant. Now, thanks mostly to the "death knell" spell, I do, and I can appreciate that this beetle and its trumpet-like horn on its head that "warbles and trumpets when it communicates", and has the ability to shake the earth with low-frequency sound, has next to nothing to do with the ringing of a bell for the dead. And to make it even more confusing, they call the horn a bell several times. But only because it looks like a trumpet bell. And they call its main ability Sonic Chime. Even though there's no actual bell involved and the trumpet can ostensibly not make any sort of chiming sound. The lesser version even has its equivalent called "sonic screech", for no discernible reason. I really don't get the naming of that guy.

The knell beetle at least doesn't hide it, it has absolutely no lore beyond "wizard did it". For some reason, it seems WotC really wanted to have that guy be a vermin instead of a Magical Beast even though they are clearly a beast created by magic, but still have them use semi-complex tactics: the beetles communicate with each other and put the lesser beetles in the front lines while the regular ones are in the back and abuse Sonic Chime to both damage their enemies and heal the lesser ones.
However, since vermin are all mindless, they awkwardly explained all their cooperation as just being instinctual. The lesser version also has three bonus feats and the regular one has five, which is the exact number of feats they would have gotten had they had an intelligence score, which makes me think knell beetles were changed to vermin pretty late during design and were supposed to be a magical beast. Anyway, are they useable as PCs?


-12 Vermin RHD, Large, 50ft land speed, 10ft burrow. Way too many HD, but being able to burrow without Earth Glide means it leaves a tunnel and can get the whole party through walls. That's good.
- +16 Str, +12 Con, +15 Natural armor. Actually good NA, but the rest is pretty low, and being mindless doesn't help.
- Shake the Earth to make people prone in a piddly 5ft radius, Trample if you want to lose most of your attacks, and Sonic Chime for a 1/day 30ft cone dealing 10d6 sonic. Not absolutely bad but it won't change your life.
- 2 really strong claws (2d8+Str after Improved Natural Attack with Rend to boot) that will maybe make you hesitate to use a Mouthpick weapon for a bit.
- Weapon Focus (Claw), Multiattack, Alertness, Improved Natural Attack (Claw) and Lightning Reflexes all as bonus feats. Would really have been better for all parties involved to just make it a Magical Beast.
- Also, you are healed by sonic. Almost irrelevant since sonic is the least used of the five basic energies, but as always, it will give you infinite out-of-combat healing if you have the right kind of Dragonfire adept in your party.

There's technically only positive here (except intelligence and body type), but far from worth ECL 12. The bonus feats are nice, but won't help you qualify for much except Soul Eater (which, to be honest, is a pretty good choice of career). The natural armor is decently high, but the abilities are overall bad. I don't think anyone would play that with 7 RHD, but 5 seems really low for these claws and for sonic chime, so I guess 6 RHD would be good. And DLA-4 to have its BAB one higher than its ECL.

Lesser Knell Beetle, 6 RHD: Basically the same, but Medium, with only +8 Str, +2 Dex, +8 Con, +9 NA, and screech instead of sonic chime (5d6, 20ft). Also, only three bonus feats (Alertness, INA (claw), Multiattack). Looks like a strong 3 RHD or a weak 4 RHD. And DLA-2. Not much to say here.


What is with monsters just looking like animals with more legs? The knell beetle has twelve instead of six, the harpoon spider has ten, the behir has eight instead of four, and I can think of at least four feline monsters with six legs (those are surprisingly common). That seems just a cop-out to artificially make monsters more exotic. And I promise I didn't look at the next monster before writing this, but next time will be the Lhosk, the eight-legged gorilla! See you then!

[Beni-Kujaku]

Man, this monster's ability modifiers are really disappointing for that number of HDs. I'd go with 8 RHDs.
I'd go with DLA-6: this way, it can nab 9th-level maneuvers at ECL 20 if it goes straight to an initiator class.

8 RHD might work, but DLA-6 seems a bit too much to me. Outsider HD have full BAB and fantastic skills, especially with the Int bonus and the super long list of class skills of the justicator. They're almost better than some of the lesser class levels and I think so many of them at ECL 11 might lead to problems. I don't know, what do other people think? I'll change it if there is some consensus in one way or the other.

(By the way, I'm always impressed by the cleverness of the French translations of D&D, even though "justicier planaire" is not the best one I've heard. For example, I'm a big fan of "pit fiend" turned into "diantrefosse", which is a made-up word composed of "diantre" - an old-fashioned curse word coming from the word for "devil" - and "fosse" - literally a pit.)

"Diantrefosse" is pretty great, yeah. There are a lot that I like, like the splinterwaif which becomes "esquille homochromique", which is unnecessarily over the top and basically ignores the english name to focus on its ability to camouflage itself. There's also the wraith becoming "âme-en-peine" and swordwraith becoming "lame-en-peine" which is deliciously punny. But my favourite is probably the elemental weirds being translated as "sybilles élémentaires" (elemental sibyls). It's just how they should have been named in the first place. Let's be honest, "weird" is just a lame name, and "sibyl" keeps the element of mystery in them with the secondary meaning of sybilline being "mysterious" or "cryptic", while really distinguishing the weirds from other elementals by focusing on the foresight powers.

Makes things a lot harder if your monster doesn;t have the standard int score for its race

I'm not sure I understand. If you roll an 18 for your ability you just add 4 skill points per RHD of the monster, just the same you would add 4 skill points per level of a character that you build at an ECL higher than 1. What's the problem?

[Bohandas]

I'm not sure I understand. If you roll an 18 for your ability you just add 4 skill points per RHD of the monster, just the same you would add 4 skill points per level of a character that you build at an ECL higher than 1. What's the problem?

I was thinking more if its lower. Then you have to reverse engineer the creature to figure out how many skill points it actually has in each skill so you can know how far you can drop each particular one, and of certain ones get dropped it may disqualify some of the creature's base feats, over and above the potential skill and feat disqualifications for any ability score being below standard. Better for the monster to simply have the skills and feats associated with its species by virtue of being its species, rather than by virtue of "levels" in what is basically a really **** NPC class (except for Outsiders, their monster class is actually a pretty decent NPC class, better than the Expert, probably also better than the adept and magewright at low levels).

It works better from all three perspectives. It makes more sense from a gamist perspective both for the reasons above, and because it makes the game more symmetrical; you no longer have these wierd pseudo-classes that most PCs and NPCs are locked out of, and now all your monsters are built in the same way as PC races, with a bulleted list of bonuses and penalties. It makes more sense from simulationist and narrativist perspectives because it makes the monsters less needlessly formulaic; the skills, feats, saves etc can be assigned independently and you no longer have nonsense like creatures having a higher base reflex save essentially just for being really big

[Beni-Kujaku]

Spoiler: About removing the RHD system and having monsters just have stats "as-is" that are just added to class levels for PCs

Show

I was thinking more if its lower. Then you have to reverse engineer the creature to figure out how many skill points it actually has in each skill so you can know how far you can drop each particular one

That's only a problem if you're using the monster as an enemy. As a player, you just recalculate your Int score and calculate the skill points and choose feats that way. And as an enemy, you very rarely alter its stats in a way that asks you to recalculate everything.

It works better from all three perspectives. It makes more sense from a gamist perspective both for the reasons above, and because it makes the game more symmetrical; you no longer have these wierd pseudo-classes that most PCs and NPCs are locked out of, and now all your monsters are built in the same way as PC races, with a bulleted list of bonuses and penalties. It makes more sense from simulationist and narrativist perspectives because it makes the monsters less needlessly formulaic; the skills, feats, saves etc can be assigned independently and you no longer have nonsense like creatures having a higher base reflex save essentially just for being really big

"All your monsters are built the same way PC races are". WHAT? That is the whole point of having the racial hit dice system. Monsters are literally created the same way PCs are, with just a "racial class" instead of just being a pile of bonuses. So what if it's a glorified NPC class? NPCs are more simply useable because they have NPC classes. A great warrior is a Warrior 10. I don't want to give fighter feats, or rage, or stances and maneuvers to every single guy the PCs cross. Monsters are basically NPCs with bonuses on top of their NPC class. They can be affected by ability damage, or negative energy, they can make skill checks, their abilities have DC adapted to their level, and above all they can be advanced. Let's say I want a powerful mimic. I'm not saying "I increase its HP bonus from 52 to 146, its attack bonus from +9 to +18, I basically double its saves, and increase its Adhesive DC by let's say 6, I give it more reach and increase its size, and let's go for 3 more feats. What the hell is its CR now?" I'm saying "I increase it to 15 RHD. Aberration RHD are worth 1/4 CR and the size increase is one more. It should be a good CR 7 monster now". The RHD system provides a great way for DMs to improve monsters while keeping offense and defense in line with each other, it allows for things that affect PCs to affect monsters proportionally. Bear's endurance gives more HP to a lv20 character than to a level 1 one. Why shouldn't it give more HP to a pit fiend than to a goblin? That's what the RHD abstraction is meant to represent. How well a creature can resist Sleep, or Holy Word. How many skills and how high they can get.
Now, it's not impossible to advance monsters even without RHD. In 5e, RHD are way less important, and most everything is based on CR, but you can advance monster on the nose by just increasing its DPR, AC and HP. It's not bad, but not nearly as streamlined as 3.5, which prides itself on enabling the DM and players to do almost anything they want without homerule. It's also much easier for WotC to design monsters that way. "It's an Outsider with the Evil subtype, 3 RHD and 14/12/10/4/12/6 for its ability scores and Spot, Listen, Sense Motive, Bluff, Concentration as its class skills" is easier to imagine than "It's an Outsider with the Evil subtype,14/12/10/4/12/6 for its ability scores, +5 to its attacks, +7 to Spot, +7 to Listen, +7 to Sense Motive, +4 to Bluff, +6 to Concentration, +3/+4/+4 as its saves, 17 HP, having two feats, gaining 6 HP from a bear's endurance, gaining nothing from Tenser's Transformation, and dying if it gets 3 negative levels". The numbers are more modular, but it's really superfluous compared to just having the RHD system.
And if I want to play as a monster character, I prefer to know how all these numbers are calculated, how many points I can put in any single skill at most and how these evolve. I prefer to have a few bullet points and a number of RHD than a giant pile of numbers that I would have to adjust on my character sheet and couldn't find again after a few levels. In my opinion, the RHD system is the best thing to ever come out of 3.5, and this idea that monsters and PCs are exactly the same - with both of them having types, HD, class/racial features, and circumstancial bonuses instead of one having class levels and the other having just numbers like in 4e - is what made playing monsters so attractive and basically gave birth to this thread and the original one.

Now, I'd be happy to continue discussing this, but I feel like this has already disturbed this thread enough and is kind of off-topic considering this is a thread based on another thread, itself intricately linked to the RHD system of a system that is now certain to never change since it hasn't been supported for now 15 years. If you want to answer me or discuss, create another thread on the subject.