| Eldoon |
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Coming at this monster as a GM who would have to run it, I am REALLY getting hung up on the Summon Guillotine spell-like ability. I have copied it below for convenience:
Summon Guillotine (Sp) A guillowed can summon a ghostly guillotine made of force as a standard action. The guillotine appears adjacent to the guillowed and looks like the same one that took its own head. The guillotine is a weapon that deals 2d6 points of damage and has a x3 critical, but it is not designed to be wielded and cannot be used to make normal attacks. If the guillowed begins its turn grappling a pinned creature it can use a full-round action that provokes an attack of opportunity to maintain the pin and perform a coup de grace with the guillotine. Creatures killed by the guillotine are decapitated by the falling blade. The guillotine remains summoned for five minutes, but the guillowed can dismiss it as a free action at any time.
First, we have a spell-like ability. Already I'm confused, because I am given no information about the monster's spellcasting ability. What is the caster level when my players dispel it? What ability score am I using for Concentration checks if the monster casts defensively or is hit by a player while summoning it? What happens when he tries to use this spell-like ability while grappling, which is a situation he will likely be in? A lot of important information appears to have been left out here.
Second, it seems like this ability will almost never work in combat. It takes four rounds to use (1-Summon; 2-Grab; 3-Pin; 4-Guillotine). In the course of four rounds, the monster needs to: a) not die; b) not be run off by crowd control; (e.g. turn undead); c) not moved from being adjacent to the guillotine (e.g., bull rush); and d) not have his opponent freed from him (e.g. grease spell). And those are just some concerns I have off the top of my head. A party of four 6th level PC’s will have a host of tricks at their disposal to prevent the bad guy from ever using this power.
Third, how do my players interact with the guillotine? Can they move it? Can they occupy its space? Can they block another PC from being placed in it? Can someone with a better fortitude save sacrifice themselves in place of another PC by sticking their head in first? I can’t tell because there isn’t enough information about the guillotine itself.
I see what you were going for with this ability, however it feels very unfinished to me. It feels like a lot of what should have been in the “Summon Guillotine (Sp)” write-up got chopped off at some point during the editing process, which makes this ability nearly unusable both mechanically and practically.