Kobold Lord's page

The skinwalker acolytes are basically 10th-level sorcerors that have an extra 75 hit points grafted on, along with somewhat better saves and a few other advantages like increased bab that will never come into play. Extra hit points are nice for making them less fragile, but they don't improve their ability to kill or incapacitate NPCs at all. In contrast, the skinwalker ranger takes advantage of all the properties of the base monster; the outsider hit dice are arguably every bit as valuable as the ranger hit dice in exactly the same way.

If Chief Achcauhtli seems weak relative to his CR compared to the acolytes, it is probably more to do with the fact that NPC warrior-types are weak relative to their CR compared to NPC caster-types. I'll probably re-work him as a Warblade when my campaign gets to that point.

For whatever reason, the PCs absolutely hustle past the first few levels. My group leveled once every single playing session, but when they hit the Sea Wyvern's Wake they slowed down quite a bit. By the looks of things so far compared to the expected levels in the modules, leveling gets slower and slower later in the adventure path, until the final modules where they are expected to level only once per module.

Anyway, I had PCs pushing 4th level at the end of TINH, and I'm still looking at 9th-level PCs for the end of HTBM, exactly as expected. There's a good chance it'll take care of itself for you, too.

Well, honestly instead of eliminating all those magic items, why not just hand out the same ones, but combined into stronger and weirder items? So instead of one character getting a boring set of Cloak of Resistance +1, Flaming Longsword +1, Gauntlets of Ogre Strength +2, and a Ring of Fire Resistance 10, that character instead gets one named sword that combines all of these bonuses? This then becomes that particular character's signature weapon, and instead of being replaced by new weapons it gets leveled up along with the character. A few paragraphs of backstory for the weapon could be used to suggest what sort of upgrades the player could hope for, you have a rare and unique magic item that the player will never even consider parting with or replacing.

That'd be the simple way of handling it. Another simple way is simply to play Iron Heroes or C&C or something, since those are already-playtested rules sets that don't shaft one particular player type.

Quite frankly, your proposed changes alone screw over the fighter-types completely. A few points of nonlethal damage will barely slow down a spellcaster; they'll simply hide out for a few hours until they get better. Meanwhile, the fighter-types will run out of hit points and die, because the clerics sure as heck aren't going to heal a whole party in a hard fight when there's a nonlethal-damage beatstick applied that'll drop them unconscious right next to the monsters if they're foolish enough to try to heal.

I wouldn't even consider playing a non-caster in the game you suggest. Sitting on the ground unable to reach or do anything while archers, casters, and fliers do whatever they please is not a play style I'd enjoy, and it's sadly inevitable when you barely nerf the casters, nerf the monsters not at all, and strip the fighters off ALL the versatility they can get from magic items.

Damn....always when I write a long one too.

Anyway. Sure I think it is tough on an Exalted character to do the latter parts of the STAP. Do I think the player should be warned? No. I think this presents the PC with a true moral dilemma. A good thing in my opinion. An exalted character doesn't really have any meaning unless they actually realize what they are sacrificing in order to remain Exalted.

If I were playing an EPC, I would for one, willing be Mal's offering. It would save the rest of the party from having to do it and would serve the greater good. Would I lose my Exalted status? Absolutely YES!

But I suppose it depends on what sort of exalted PC you are playing. I think an EPC should be willing to sacrifice their status for the greater good. Are the entities of Good going to let the keep their status? No. Will they get a reward in the afterlife? Not if they promised themselves to a demoness. But it still would be the right thing to do, damn yourself to save everyone else? Sounds like the right thing for an Exalted character to do in my opinion.

Well, congrats. Your Exalted character just got suckered by a demon. You're her whipping boy now, and not only do the good guys lose a powerful servant of good, but even when you succeed in deposing Demogorgon you're just going to become a demon lord of violent rape who serves your new master, and your new team will probably become worse than Demogorgon ever was. If you can possibly be capable of deposing Demogorgon, it's fair to say that you're a playing chip that cannot be sacrificed no matter what.

If you give something so precious to a demon, you don't deserve to complain when that demon uses that precious thing to ruin everything you've ever wanted to protect. Don't confuse 'heroic sacrifice' with 'taking the easy path'.

I don't see anything wrong with a campaign where an Exalted character must choose between remaining Exalted or yielding , losing that status, and then saving lives. As long as there's still something for a no-longer-Exalted LG monk to do, the character is viable. And there's even opportunities for character angst.

It's logically inconsistent. Allowing babies to be fed into a meat grinder would violate Exalted status. If we suppose that there is no way to prevent this from happening without losing Exalted status, then clearly the Exalted status never existed in the first place.

Being Exalted is ALL ABOUT being faced with a choice between two bad options, and choosing to take a third, unlisted option. Railroading an Exalted character into a situation where there is only two options, both of which cost Exalted status, is not only extremely mean-spirited, it also severely strains suspension of disbelief. A realistic universe can't be reduced to if-then-else statements.

It even explicitly says that no, "because it's necessary for the greater good" is *not* an excuse and will lead to loss of all exalted feats. The rules as written are VERY uncompromising on this.

This is exactly as it should be. The phrase "for the greater good" is essentially trope-speak for "this character is evil masquerading as good". "For the greater good" is a horrible justification for doing evil, and it pops frequently as the tragic flaw of the corrupted templar-type character, always as the proximate cause of their fall. In ancient myths, a character acting "for the greater good" nearly always ends up making things worse, usually resulting in some sort of ironic eternal punishment. In more recently-written books and movies, just about every Fallen Hero and Redemption Seeker around fell from grace due to the "for the greater good" trope; it never ends well for anybody, especially the people the fallen hero was trying to help. And of course, in real life the only people who use the phrase are either trying to justify something completely unjustifiable or they are psych students who wouldn't actually follow through in real life.

If an Exalted character wants to play the last few modules with Exalted status intact, they should either be resigned to facing Demogorgon with her full power nearly intact, or they should execute a brilliant Xanatos Roulette wherein they simultaneously weaken all of their demon allies even as they bring Demogorgon down. The last module does have some suggestions about how to yank the rug out from under the feet of their so-called allies, but if they don't start thinking about it by this point it'll be much too late.

Rules lawyering aside, I maintain that the Whirling Fury does not care about irrelevant dying gods on some backwater Prime, at least not to the extent that they care about demon lords that threaten every plane in the cosmos simultaneously. Zotzilaha has a few dozen Olman followers, and they're all extremely low-level. If it was really urgent, the PCs could arrange the extermination of his entire pantheon in an idle afternoon, at least if you subscribe to the worshipers-equals-power premise that appears to be the default assumption.

I maintain that Zotzilaha's heyday is so far in the past that any criticism of the PCs based on interaction with him is based on a static law code rather than being relevant to actual good and evil as the effects of a particular situation. Ultimately, the PC traded a trinket to a dying god in exchange for powerful untainted magic, and all that dying god got was its security doll back, so it can clutch it as it cries itself to sleep at night, wishing that it could have its glory days back.

Eh. Zotzilaha is a god, not a demon. His alignment is simply a consequence of his portfolio, which has a natural place in the order of the prime material plane. Furthermore, he's a dying god with no worshippers and no grand plan of recovery, so associating with him is not likely to have any major impact on anything. He is well outside the interests of the Whirling Fury.

If you're inclined to be strict, the PC should still get some sort of penalty, but -20 is outlandish considering all the mitigating circumstances. The Whirling Fury is chaotic by nature, after all, so they're less likely to severely punish offenders who are merely in technical violation.

By this point, they're very high-level players. They have Dimensional Lock, Teleport Without Error, and Resurrection. If they don't use these abilities when they are available, then they deserve what they get. If they have some peculiar party composition that blocks access to some useful spell, throw in a side quest or tweak a treasure hoard to accommodate for the lack.

Bear in mind, your players may be whistling in the dark. In Jollydoc's Savage Tide campaign, one of the PCs loudly and repeatedly declaimed the group's tormentor as a coward who resorted to futile tricks because he was too weak to confront the group directly. That particular PC was torn apart and killed by Olangru in the very first round.

Anyway, if you want them to be more obviously fearful, start hurting them. Telekinesis Urol or a small-size PC off the cliff. It's survivable, but only just, and they don't know that the 150-pound weight limit protects almost all medium PCs from the violent thrust function. Cause Fear Tavey away from the group, abduct him, and then torture him for a few nights within earshot of camp, dropping progressively larger body parts into the middle of the group each morning. Since you have so few red shirts, you just have to make the absolute best use out of each one.

I'd avoid letting them see Olangru until Fogmire, though, just like in the module. The monster is always scariest if you can't actually see it.

I can hardly wait for this part. My group is just about to start Dark Mountain Pass, and I don't expect that to take too long.

No PCs this week, but three NPCs died before leaving the shipwreck site on the Isle of Dread. Two PCs also came ever-so-close to death in the same encounters.

NPC name: Eldon, human expert 2
Adventure: Here There Be Monsters
Location: shipwreck site
Catalyst: excessive deliciousness, according to the T-Rex

Yeah. Eldon was the father of a family of four that booked passage on the Sea Wyvern in Pitchwall/Blackrock. The T-Rex attacked a random character, and Eldon didn't even get a chance to suffer. The T-Rex then swallowed a PC, but sadly for the T-Rex that PC killed the poor dinosaur from inside with literally 1hp remaining. They recovered a few pieces of Eldon to comfort his widow and two children, at least for the brief span of time when both children were still alive.

NPC names: Selguin, human commoner 1 and Gathric d'Jorasco, halfling expert 2/rogue 1
Adventure: Here There Be Monsters
Location: shipwreck site
Catalyst: excessive deliciousness, according to the diatryma/terror birds/chocobos

Selguin was the ill-fated ten-year-old son of the ill-fated Eldon, and Gathric d'Jorasco was an NPC who actually mattered, as he was dragonmarked and capable of healing ability damage. Anyway, the birds were content to eat the entrails of the slain T-Rex. The PC warforged insisted on shooting one with the ballista, however, which excited them to attack. Several birds descended on the smallest and weakest-looking of the survivors to carry them off. Tavey, Urol, Mugrol, and Lillian managed to escape the vicious beaks of the attacking chocobo, but Selguin, Gathric, and the PC Brik-Kyrak were carried off. Brik-Kyrak's abductor was brought down before it reached the tree line, but Selguin was killed in the initial grab attempt and Gathric was carried screaming off into the forest where he was torn limb from limb by the surviving chocobos.

They have the chaotic subtype, to they will radiate a strong chaotic aura.

They're evil aligned, but they have no evil subtype and don't draw divine power from an evil source, so they'll only radiate a faint evil aura, just like normal evil monsters.

The savage pirates, for instance, will radiate the same evil as any other 1st-level chaotic evil pirate, but they'll radiate much stronger chaos because they have that subtype.

They won't radiate magic unless they have some magic items. The shadow pearl's effect is instantaneous, not permanent. Once they're turned savage, that becomes their natural state.

Note, however, that there will be a lingering chaotic, evil, magic aura on EVERYTHING in the area due to the recent trigger of a chaotic evil magical artifact-class item. They may get some false readings on non-chaotic, non-evil, and non-magical targets because of this.

DMFTodd: I think I might work in the bit about the bloody chocobo feathers; it seems like a good idea. As for why Olangru won't go into Dark Mountain Pass... I'd just assume he knows there are monsters in there, and they're scary. He wouldn't want to risk his equipment against the Black Pudding, for instance.

vikingson: Mercifully, the only true caster in the main party doesn't have the Spell Compendium, and none of the NPC casters know that particular spell. It's definitely a fantastic spell. Was the ceiling too low for Olangru to use his Boots of Levitation, though?

Anyway, I tweaked Olangru a bit because some of my players are using Bo9S stuff. Only fair if the monsters use it too, right? Note that I kept Olangru CR9; I'd prefer to keep it that way. I decided Pearl of Black Doubt would be too mean-spirited to give him, but there's still plenty of viciousness to be had. I'm not sure the Bo9S was ever intended to be applied to monsters…

Olangru the bar-lgura
medium demon (outsider, chaotic, evil) scout 2/swordsage 2
init +8, Listen +14, Spot +14, darkvision 60ft, see invisibility, telepathy 100ft
40ft speed, 20ft climb, 20ft levitate, greater teleport at will, dodge, mobility, run
Balance +21, Climb +29, Hide +23, Jump +33, Move Silently +19, Tumble +21, Intimidate +14

hp 95, Fort +13, Ref +14, Will +8, SR 20
AC 27, touch 17, ff 27, uncanny dodge
DR 10/cold iron or good
resist acid/cold/fire: 10
immune: electricity and poison

full: +17/+17 claws 1d6+8/1d6+8 and +12 bite 1d6+4, can pounce
abduction: +17 touch against victim, victim gets DC20 will save or be teleported along with Olangru
bab: +9, grapple: +17, bull rush: +8, Power Attack at 1:1, 1d6 skirmish

summon bar-lgura: 1/day, 35% chance to summon another bar-lgura
SLA, caster level 6
at will: darkness, cause fear (DC14), dispel magic, telekinesis (DC18)
2/day: disguise self (DC14), invisibility, major image (DC16)

martial maneuvers, initiator level 6
maneuvers readied: burning blade (1d6+6), counter charge (+8), zephyr dance, feigned opening
stances available: holocaust cloak, assassin's stance
other maneuvers known: cloak of deception, fire riposte, wind stride

str 26, dex 22, con 20, int 13, wis 12, cha 16
loot: ring of the ram, bracers of armor +2, sandals of levitation, cloak of resistance +1, amulet of tears

If there's any comments or concerns, I'd love to hear them. Although I'm interested in any errors I made in the process, keep in mind that I'm using fractional bab/save advancement, while Dungeon did not.

Orlangru is trying to collect sacrifices for the temple. Anything that kills NPCs or PCs doesn't quite make sense then. I wouldn't use O to drop people off the cliff for example. Besides, there's plenty of gargoyles available to do that.

This is an excellent point. I'll make sure to intentionally throw an NPC off when the ledge is closer to the water, so the NPC is more likely to survive. If the PCs rush down to check the body, Olangru will abduct somebody at the top. If the PCs are more cautious, Olangru will just abduct the one that fell.

Alas, most of the NPCs are disgustingly survivable. Amella and Urol, for instance, will survive an 120-foot fall into the water more than half the time (2d3 nonlethal for first 40 feet due to water, 8d6 lethal for remainder, or an average of only 28hp lethal).

For what it's worth, the sabotaged lift suggests that Olangru is already a bit cavalier about collecting sacrifices.

O has Major Image, which is visual only. You can't use that to give warnings. It could be used many ways:

No problem with the warnings:

Major Image

Illusion (Figment)
Level: Brd 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Duration: Concentration + 3 rounds

This spell functions like silent image, except that sound, smell, and thermal illusions are included in the spell effect. While concentrating, you can move the image within the range.

The image disappears when struck by an opponent unless you cause the illusion to react appropriately.

As written, O doesn't try to abduct anyone until they reach Fogmire. I don't see why that is. If given the chance, O abducts people earlier. At Fogmire, he starts to get a bit desperate. If he does abduct someone, I'd give the PCs a couple days "off" from his attacks while he deals with the sacrifice. If he does manage to abduct someone, he can return a couple days later and use the body part ideas above.

If they only had the four in the module, I'd agree. But they'll probably have around 30 named NPCs following them around, and Olangru only has seven days to work with. I do want to save the big reveal if at all possible, though; they shouldn't actually see the predator until Fogmire. This complicates the process some; it would be pretty lame to pick them all off one-by-one with the same Cause Fear trick.

My group ended their last session in the sargasso, so there's only a few fights before they're out of Dark Mountain Pass. I've been wanting to make Olangru a villain to remember, so I've been reviewing some of the previous threads on this topic, so I have a fairly action-packed seven days between Dark Mountain and Fogmire. A rough schedule is as follows:

Day 1: During camp, the fire is twice plunged into Darkness for one hour or until dispelled, meanwhile random NPCs are hit by Cause Fear. Steal some supplies during the distraction.

Day 2: A native elven woman stands on the road ahead, watching the PCs. As they approach, she draws a ceremonial dagger and cuts her own neck. Her body rots with unnatural speed, and her spirit points and curses the existence of the survivors. While the PCs are distracted Thunderstrike is hit by Cause Fear, possibly knocking some NPCs off the cliff. That night, a log with a centipede swarm is dropped into camp at night, and at same time the supplies are returned with the food replaced by bloody meat.

Day 3: Decapitated bird carcasses are discovered in the middle of the campsite arranged to match the sleeping arrangements. During the day there is the skull slide. A suicidal elven native stabs himself and dives off the cliff from above; where he stood they can find a throne with a misassembled elven skeleton. While they're looking, Telekinesis shoves an NPC off the cliff.

Day 4: The head of a gargoyle is discovered in the middle of camp in the morning, warning "The winged ones come tomorrow. Do not die yet, meat." Sabotaged lift. After making camp for the night, individual fiendish baboons rain monkey scat onto the camp. The illusory ghost of a dead NPC gives false warning of betrayal from within.

Day 5: Combined gargoyle ambush by Quotoctoa's forces. A minor NPC is abducted and then tortured within earshot overnight; if they try to find the victim they run into an illusory half-eaten yet still breathing body that explodes into gore and green maggots. The illusion then rots away with unnatural speed. More abductions occur while the PCs are away from camp.

Day 6: A backpack is dropped into camp containing the organs of the kidnapped NPC, tied with article of his or her clothing. They discover a path heading into the jungle. Ahead, an illusory pathway covers a ruined section of causeway, and after the illusion is uncovered the path is found to be impassable.

Day 7: Fogmire. The native zombie is replaced by a zombie of the undoubtedly-dead-by-now Thunderstrike, which has its legs broken in order to be nailed spread-eagle. If Thunderstrike is taken down before being destroyed (and Avner will foolishly try to order somebody to do so, or eventually do it himself if nobody else will), the horse will immediately try to eat some delicious brains. At dusk, Olangru starts picking off NPCs in earnest, although he's careful not to overwhelm the abilities of his naga healer.

I'm looking for fun/creepy things to do that I missed, of course. I'm also thinking it might be possible to rearrange some of the events to make it flow better, but I thought the eyes of other DMs would be helpful. Also, I'm a bit concerned that I might be going a bit too far at certain points, running the risk of becoming tedious rather than creepy, so if something seems like too much or otherwise not worthwhile, I'd like to know.

Note that the group of PCs will probably have a large entourage of shipwreck survivors, since I'm planning to have almost everybody survive. All of these survivors have names, and there are quite a few noncombatants (three of which are children, including Tavey). There are quite a few red shirts to burn through, but I'd prefer to make it possible to save some.

We have one PC who can detect invisible creatures, but she doesn't have any ranks in Spot. So Olangru can come and go pretty freely.

Until the group reaches Fogmire, the standard operating procedure for abduction will be to hit an NPC with Cause Fear from three different casters. Any NPC with 6HD or less will automatically be panicked for one round even if they make all three saves, so they will be abducted as soon as they run out of sight.

All right, comments?

Oddly, my players decided to leave Rowyn alive after both confrontations, even though she killed one of the PCs on the Sea Wyvern. I'm still not quite sure why; they're often gratuitously violent and I don't know why Rowyn is an exception. They ripped Rowyn's tongue out, tried to sell her as a slave in an elven port, and then released her on the outskirts of that port city when that didn't work out. So she's alive and perfectly capable of writing notes in Common to explain her situation (from a certain point of view, anyway) to the locals.

That said, the PCs are heading to the Isle of Dread. Even though Rowyn is likely to get some sympathy from the locals, she's still not likely to be able to assemble a posse of elven locals willing to brave such a stupidly dangerous location just to take out some mainlanders. And without the tongue that gives her most of her class abilities, she's really not capable of taking them on herself anymore. If they ever go back to that port, she'll probably still be there, but quite frankly running off with a head start is a more than adequate way of eliminating her as a threat.

That said, I'm still planning to sub in some customized undead into the confrontation with Death Knight Vanthus to compensate for his physical frailty. I'm thinking he'd want to collect all the women he ever had in life as a macabre collection of undead "princesses", with Lavinia as his queen. Just because he's dead doesn't make them any less his property, in his mind.

I think I have seen almost the entire field of interesting and utterly ridiculous ways of "scouting" out target objects. In the end, it always comes down to poking a head or other limb in, and that is where the "flash" comes into play

#1: Planar Ally/Planar Binding with Telepathic Bond. If they die before getting a turn to report, you at least know there's something dangerous in there. And heck, outsiders and elementals often come with useful immunities, so you'll probably get that report.

#2: Contingency effect on the scout. If they get hit by an effect or damage that would prevent them from taking their next turn, the contingency sends them back to report.

#3: Core, vanilla rogue. 20 ranks in Hide, basic invisibility, a conservative 20 dexterity, Cloak of Elvenkind +5, taking 10 == Hide check of 60. The Eye of the Deep can't make that even on a natural 20, and we haven't even attempted optimization yet. If the Eye of the Deep does not detect the scout, it isn't going to just randomly start Baleful Flashing.

#4: Lead off with a hurricane using Control Weather, throw in an Earthquake while that's going on, and finish up with a Firestorm. Pick off the monsters and pirates that swarm out like ants from a distance of half a mile with long-range magical attacks. Swoop in and finish off the bosses. You really don't even have to enter the base if you don't want to, at this level. If your PCs are taking it room by room, chances are you're not taking advantage of the merits of high-level play.

As for the second paragraph, you having massively misunderstood what I was explaining cannot be helped.

It's not really a misunderstanding; we're just rejecting your reasoning outright. You've invented an interpretation that is clearly opposed to the RAW and RAI alike. It is highly unlikely that the sentence in question was originally intended to help adjudicate a NPC battle between grimlocks and an eye of the deep. The weakness of the baleful flash is there for PCs to exploit, specifically so they don't get perma-stunned.

Careful on the "hold monster" beam, though, and happy "Eye-ing"

Yeah, paralysis is always a threat. I recommend the Ring of Freedom of Movement, since it's disgustingly underpriced for what it can do.

Actually there is a mechanic for this its just rather well hidden. Check out the rules pertaining to Gaze Attacks. Under Gaze attack it specifically mentions that the victem may take counter measures such as closing their eyes or wearing a blind fold. According to the entry this counter measure defeats the gaze attack (player does not have to make a saving throw) but gives all opposition full cover.

Certianly a DM could rule that this particular tactic works only against Gaze Attacks and may not be utilized anywhere else but since they do explain the mechanic its fairly reasonable to apply this mechanic to any circumstance where the PCs decide to close their eyes.

P.S.
Not sure what TTBOMK means - love to have that clarified.

They get full concealment, not cover. Full cover is where there's an unbreakable wall between the two even if they can see each other, such as a wall of force. Full concealment is when one can't see the other, such blindness, invisibility, or closing eyes.

I think TTBOMK means "To the best of my knowledge".

Vikingson, I'm sorry to say I can't acknowledge your point of view. With no specific glossary definition in the RAW for 'sightless', we're stuck with the dictionary and DM's prerogative.

The dictionary seems to support the notion that blindness is a state of not having sight, and therefore equivalent to being sightless. A definition of 'sightless' that specifically excludes 'blindness' does not appear to exist in normal English.

The DM that judges the two states to be different for some reason does so knowing full well that doing so is likely to cause a nigh-unavoidable TPK. Criticizing the module designers for not compensating for the DM's own made-up definitions of words is really not fair.

Real-life experience is totally irrelevant. There is no evidence to speak of that an Eye of the Deep's Baleful Flash is at all similar to a flash grenade.

You can feel free to DM the situation any way you like, but if your group resents the TPK that follows don't blame Paizo.

well, the problem I see with the encounter is

a) It's an almost surefire way to alarm the entire hideout, with major optical effects and likely a building going up in flames/blasted to pieces.. Not to mention sound effects etc.
Now, this being on the outskirts of the hideout; I somehow believe the players would want to avoid that. And it is located on the "sneak up" side of the hideout, where the jungle with its foliage comes really close. And there really is hardly any way to know of it beforehand, except by powerful magical reconnaissance

It's really the party's responsibility to get some intel before they raid. It's a big open area; there's no excuse for not making some serious reconnaissance efforts. They're 17th-level PCs, which means they have access to absolutely every ability in the game. And if they can't use the required intel abilities routinely they still have access to the Scuttlecove market, where they can purchase virtually anything the DM will allow.

And yeah, they probably should end up alerting the hideout on their first major encounter. That's why the Crimson Fleet posts guards.

And unless the group uses ethereal or astral surveillance, their scout(s) will be in a very dire strait if he/she/it enters said shed... flash, boom... munch ?

Well, yeah. The scout should either be expendable or have a contingency effect up. Or just have an unassailable Spot check. And in this case, Vzorthys has only a +31 Spot check and no special detection abilities. A L17 rogue should be able to easily defeat such a spot check.

b) The Eye is simply....not the type of monster to hang out with the Crimson Fleet, whatever the backstory. Basically the whole setup IMHO ignores the self-esteem, mindset, urges and natural habitat of an Eye of the Deep for a cheap surprise effect. YMMV

Well, except for the fact that Demogorgon is the demon lord of (among other things) monsters of the briny deep. Deep-water monsters are to be expected in one of his primary home bases.

But yeah, I'll grant that even then, Vzorthys is a little bit of a Giant Space Flea out of Nowhere, and that's not to everyone's taste. I believe Paizo representatives have explained that they deliberately include some of these, though, so create variety and ensure that no one is entirely useless in an adventure if their primary schtick is nullified by the main opponent.

While I would agree that the flash is an optical effect causing the stun effect, nothing in the monster's description states that sightlessness protects you from it.

Page 65 in Dungeon 146, last line of the Baleful Flash description: "Sightless creatures are immune to this attack."

And, having experienced flash-grenades (stroboscobic) first hand during my army stint, I am inclined to argue that their flash does penetrate even closed eyelids, much to my chargrin. And it leaves a wicked green-after image, akin to snowblindness - but that does not prevent another flash from re-illuminating your retina and causing sensory overload. Turning away your head may be the only protection

Hence, no idea if blindness protects someone from the flashof the Eye, and what sort of blindness is caused by it - not by the rules anyway, and a doubtful judgement by anyone, judging from my personal experience.
But, never let the rules interfere with common sense.

Clearly, real life has far more precision and less granularity than D&D. In real life, there are many layers of protection against bright light, starting with squinting, passing through closing your eyes and turning your head, and ending with curling up in a fetal position while encased in layers of opaque insulators. On the other hand, D&D has three: no protection, avert your eyes, and close your eyes. 'Close your eyes' has game effects exactly equivalent to complete and total blindness. It seems unfair to give the PC all of the penalties of being blind, without also applying the benefit specifically added into the text of the ability for blind targets.

There are many ways to counter the DC34 flash.

Closing your eyes is a simple expedient, although it results in a 50% miss chance and loss of line of sight for the casters. The ability does not affect sightless creatures, and if you are temporarily and/or voluntarily sightless you are still sightless.

The blindness lasts twice as long as the stun, so the monster can basically never re-apply the stun effect, which is the real killer. Anybody who doesn't have a Ring of Freedom of Movement by this point presumably has some other reason not to be worried about paralysis.

Long-range strikers can and should hang back while the rogue-type does the explorations. The area is not an enclosed dungeon; there is unlimited space to work with and PCs should use it. Even melee PCs can hang 60ft back and still charge on their first turn, which they probably want to do anyway.

Many summoned or created minions are immune to stun effects. If your cleric or wizard never uses Planar Ally/Binding spells to call in elemental bodyguards when you're assaulting the headquarters of Demogorgon's personal prime material fleet, perhaps it would be a good time to start. Likewise, plant, construct, and undead minions will keep the monster off you long enough to recover from the stun.

An alpha strike from the entire party can blast the solitary monster to smithereens before it even gets a turn. No matter how beefy it is, it has a limited pool of hp and only has to fail one save and it is dead.

Ultimately, it looks like this is a bit of a lop-sided monster. If your players optimize their PCs for one particular strategy and never consider altering their modus operandi when the situation calls for something different, then they'll have trouble.

Also, the TPK a couple weeks ago featured a questionable DM rules call involving the PCs rendered unable to see due to the "blindness" effect of the flash nevertheless being ruled vulnerable to the stunning of additional flashes, even though there's only one status effect in the book that describes the inability to see.

Demogorgon article? I'm searching the WotC site, and I'm not finding it.

Character: Elizar Cordell, truedive shifter fighter 3/rogue 3
Adventure: The Sea Wyvern's Wake
Location: Hold of the Sea Wyvern
Catalyst: Striptease of Doom

Rowyn Kellani stowed away on the Sea Wyvern, intend on revenge against the PCs. It seems she was upset about how they destroyed the Lotus Dragons and then orchestrated the death of her entire family, including her little sister and all the innocent servants. (They broke into the Riedran/Scarlet Brotherhood Embassy, slaughtering most of those inside whether they presented a threat or not, but leaving two witnesses to 'accidentally' see the changeling in the guise of Rowyn's little sister.)

Most of Rowyn's initial efforts were failures, including the mephit, an act of sabotage, some poisoning, and some psychological warfare, but shortly after the group left Pitchwall/Blackrock she took advantage of the burgeoning relationship between Elizar and Lirith. She disguised herself as Lirith to lure Elizar into the hold, where she began to dance for him, stripping off one article of clothing at a time. Unfortunately for him, he did not see the magic woven into her dance until it was too late; after being held by her magic she finished him with one careful rapier thrust. Alas, her crime was interrupted by Quigby, who was guarding Thunderstrike for his master and ran for help after realizing that more was at foot than a romantic tryst.

Although the PCs were initially suspicious of Lirith, Feres, Tavey, and Thunderstrike(wtf?) each of these NPCs were eventually cleared of immediate suspicion, and the entire ship was searched. Emboldened by her success, Rowyn made the error of attempting another murder on the same day. It did not go well, since invisibility alone could not hide her from the warlock's gaze.

After she was taken down and dropped into the sea, the PCs took extraordinary measures to retrieve her alive. She was imprisoned in a makeshift brig, and since she tried to escape once they tore her tongue out to prevent her from casting again. When they made port in Renkrue on the isle of Aerenal, one PC attempted to sell Rowyn to the local elves as a slave, but when the locals reacted with hostility the group settled on just turning her loose on the outskirts of the city with the maimed tongue but perfectly serviceable hands. No way THAT could backfire.

Anyway, the Sea Wyvern was chased out of port as slavers by an angry mob, since one PC was trying to sell a slave and another (Avner) was apparently trying to buy one.

Character: Conrad Horst, aka Conrad Feres, NPC
Adventure: The Sea Wyvern's Wake
Location: Makeshift surgical table on the Sea Wyvern
Catalyst: Face full of alien wing-wong

Conrad was pretty much doomed. The highest-level divine caster had only 4 cleric levels, so there was no Remove Disease, and none of the PC surgeons who volunteered to cut the parasite out actually had any ranks in Heal. I don't know if this counts as a NPC death for purposes of this thread, though.

I know, and I agree. I decided to cut the Giant Space Fleas Out of Nowhere from SWW, instead expanding Pitchwall/Blackrock. The outrageous coincidences involved will be handwaved as interference from Malcanthet, since she doesn't want the PCs stopping to settle down or sell the bat idol on the way. My players decided to pick up a few refugees from Pitchwall, since they all agree that the place is a horrible pit, and I'm not even sure if they'll go ashore in Aerenal/Renkrue, where one of Malcanthet's minions waits (with help from the unwitting Avner) to whip up a pitchfork mob to encourage the PCs to keep moving.

I'm definitely looking forward to ToD. Lots of sidequests that the PCs can genuinely perform at their leisure or not at all, and a main quest that can be performed any way they like.

Kill them all, except possibly one. They get 24 hours after each kidnap to save their NPC friend (or Avner), and if they take too long their friend (or Avner) is gone forever. If they were attached to the character, tough. If they wanted the character's assistance later on, tough. If there are long-term political consequences for the character's death, tough. Olangru does not care; he offers sacrifices to Demogorgon, and those sacrifices have arrived.

No metagaming. Just act with ruthless brutality. The PCs' success or failure is in their own hands.

Give specific, named NPCs item crafting feats. If the PCs want to buy magic items, they have to talk to one of these specific, named NPCs. Since the PCs are basically part-owners of the colony these NPCs live in, they'll probably be pretty reasonable about exchanging magic items for resources and favors, but the PCs can't just scoop up fifty spare potions at whim. They have to wait one day for each one. Fortunately, there is very little time pressure until after Khala is taken down, so you can usually just declare, "and so two weeks pass without incident" every time they stock up.

I see no reason to force them to confront the Glutton. Lavinia asked them to search him out; he certainly doesn't care about one itty-bitty boat unless it blunders across his path. He's more interested in hitting the supply boats to the colony, over and over and over. If the PCs are chicken, they can easily sacrifice the well-being of the colony and dozens of innocent lives to avoid talking to Emraag. Lavinia may be disappointed, though, and Meravanchi will certainly spread this unflattering news.

I'm thinking of having the Vanthus in Divided Ire collect some of his old girlfriends as undead minions, since he seems to be the type who would want some princesses to go with Lavinia, his queen. That would help with his issue with hp underperformance.

In the first fight with Rowyn, she and Gut Tugger unfortunately were brutally crushed, even though they were moved into a room with more space, had five normal Lotus Dragon survivors as backup, and had a living Zhanther (bugbear Swordsage 2) as a bodyguard. Rowyn and Gut Tugger did not succeed on a single attack roll the entire fight, mostly due to the obscene AC shared by the majority of the party. They did not kill her, however; they turned who over to the City Watch, who she bribed to let her go.

After they dealt with that issue, though, they decided to attack the Riedran Embassy (Scarlet Brotherhood equivalent). They murdered almost everyone inside, from the officers to the clerical workers, leaving only two survivors, both of whom were 'accidentally' allowed to see one of the PCs disguised as Rowyn's sister. The Riedrans responded predictably, so Rowyn's family were all killed and her estate burned to the ground.

So now Rowyn is on the Sea Wyvern with an arguably justifiable reason to hate the PCs. They haven't realized that they have someone on the ship who is trying to kill them (in spite of the mephit incident and the arsenic incident, even) but they are bound to figure it out by next session at the latest, since she's going to try the midnight tryst incident next. I took the liberty of adding her little sister's fire-blackened skull to her list of possessions, but hopefully she'll be a little more challenging this time around.

I saw your story hour; it looked to me that they would have handily rolled Xerkamat over even though he was supported by many skinwalkers, including casters, had they managed to get a Dimensional Anchor in somewhere. I'm sure they'll prioritize that much higher next time they confront a named demon.

If I remember correctly, the Fiend Folio version was seriously anemic as far as hit points go, and most of the standard wastrilith's normal attacks aren't much to write home about either. If you disregard the potential Blasphemy cheese which doesn't work very well on your players' PCs anyway, they've got their Symbols to cast and then they're basically done for the day. So I don't doubt that CR17 is crazy out of whack for the basic wastrilith.

As far as Khala's link goes, I think that's more part of Khala's CR than Xerkamat. If they fought a fighter buffed by a cleric in one room, and then fought the cleric in the next room, would they get extra xp from the fighter because their enemies cooperated? Probably not; the buffs on the fighter are part of the cleric's CR already. Similarly, they'll eventually face Khala, who uses the link to much greater effect than Xerkamat, and they'll get the xp then.

[Edit: Blasted ninja.]

Dungeon #150 supercedes all other stat blocks for the purpose of Dungeon #150. If you want to justify the difference, figure that she has used 60 hit dice worth of her summoning ability already today, and obviously she can't wait until tomorrow to attack the PCs.

Wait, you claiming that because there is a fiend that takes advantage of the fact that most men are naturally attracted to females, that that in turn means that the subtext of the monster is that all women are life leeching fiends on some level?

So I guess then that it follows that because the main vampire stereotype is that of a male that seeks to enthrall a helpless female and drain her blood, then that means that what vampires are really all about is males being dominant manipulative rapists?

I guess I do have enough ranks in jump to conclusion to follow you here.

Well, yeah. Some monsters are clearly metaphorical in nature. Pointing out the sexual nature of most vampire stories is pretty darn obvious, and pretty darn unarguable. Although narrowing down vampires to male-on-female rape is overly simplistic; there are a lot of homophobic or misogynistic vampire stories, too.

My point was more about how it was pretty ridiculous to accuse the WotC writers of sexism because they dropped the erinyes. Worrying about the speck of dust in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own, as it were. I'm not saying that you can't have fun with your succubi minions; I'm just saying that you shouldn't accuse others of being sexist at the same time.

Backing up a little bit, since I missed it earlier...

well, I happened to love Eberron - I have always been partial to Steampunk and Renaissance type settings. But what is WotC doing to it ? They are not detailing areas to any useful degree, but rather present lots and lots of "D-rate" plot hooks ( "Secrets of Xendrik", "Secrets of Sarlona" "Explorer's Guide"..... not to mention the inane "Forge of War"). Major zones of the core continent have been left virtually unexplained and -featured three years after the initial launch (like droam or the other monster states, the Eldeen Reaches,the Shadowmarches... but they are adding half-baked continents left and right, none of them with any degree of detail of accuracy.

Funny... Everything you say you don't like, I do like. The tedious detail you claim to want I abhor, and indeed that's the reason I don't bother with FR products. Almost as if they're making different products for different consumers.

I loved Secrets of Sarlona, for instance; it made me want to run a Riedran campaign. I wouldn't like it if it detailed six NPCs for every community in Riedra, and I wouldn't like it if it forced through a metaplot that I had to follow if I wanted to be able to use the rest of the book or any later releases.

So yeah, the moment Eberron gets the detail you're requesting, I'm dropping it and abandoning support of the line, just like I did with FR, and just like I did with Planescape.

The Jade Ravens are there to make the PCs look more awesome.

At their first meeting, the Jade Ravens are rude. They dismiss the PCs as hired help and might even hint that the PCs are expendable.

At their second meeting, the Jade Ravens have been overwhelmed and beaten bloody by a few lousy CR1 bullywugs, and the PCs are rescuing the incompetent losers.

During the sea voyage, one of the Jade Ravens is futilely trying to woo Lavinia, but the effort is doomed. She only likes PCs.

Once both teams reach the colonies, the PCs get important tasks like gathering allies while the Jade Ravens take care of lame and pathetic jobs like killing the ethereal filcher.

The Jade Ravens all die or are enslaved in Scuttlecove just for ambiance.

Basically, the Jade Ravens are a pack of red shirts that the PCs show up at every turn. They don't have any truly important part in the plot, but a lot of players find having a few recurring NPCs that the PCs can safely abuse without any real danger is enjoyable. A leader needs flunkies.

Just to add another angle...

Does anyone else think that the whole succabus/eryines merge smells of sexism?

How many other demons and devils can be compared as being alike???

It no more smells of sexism than the very concept of the fiend smells of sexism. The succubus-as-monster was born in sexism, sleeps in sexism, eats and drinks sexism, and dies in sexism. It's a female monster that tries to suck your life energy, and on a certain level suggests that all females just want you to suck your life energy. The very concept of this particular fiend is sexist.

Merging two sexist monsters into one does not increase the ambient sexism of the piece. The succubus is cheesecake, used to sell books. Because most buyers are male, and many of these buyers are particularly vulnerable to this aspect of sexism.

As a DM, particularly a budding DM, it is always easier to remove than it is to add. (Granted, there might be an instilled belief that nothing should be removed.) To this end, keeping the Great Wheel as canon would actually make it easier for a new audience. It gives DMs all the complexity they could ever want.

This is clearly wrong. In the particular case of the Great Wheel, there's tomes and tomes of pre-existing material. A beginner DM does not need to be hooked directly up to this hosepipe as it blasts mostly irrelevant information that cannot be easily changed.

A beginner needs simplicity. And any setting with over a decade of metaplot as required reading is not. And it isn't like the Great Wheel is particularly intuitive or mythologically evocative.

If it was really better to remove than add, we'd still be using 1E and liking it. But no, we stick with a simple core system and setting and add other options in a modular manner.

And this brings us back to the symptoms.

You and some others keep saying that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means. WotC said, "We're not supporting Planescape in 4E." If releasing fluff that does not support Planescape is symptomatic of ANYTHING, it would be symptomatic of WotC telling the truth.

James Jacobs already covered my 'missed memo'. Apparently you missed the one in every edition's MM that had erinyes in Hell and succubi in the Abyss. The Great Wheel goes back to the first Manual of the Planes.

Which was formally named 'Planescape' in 2E. The Great Wheel is dead everywhere except Greyhawk and Planescape.

There is no Great Wheel in FR.
There is no Great Wheel in Eberron.
There is no Great Wheel in Midnight.
There is no Great Wheel in Krynn.
There is no Great Wheel in Athas.

And now there is no Great Wheel in whatever the new Points of Light setting is going to be called.

I could go on, but clearly there are a great many extremely popular settings that do not use the Great Wheel. Why, then, should the entire game be slaved to assumptions that aren't even valid outside of one or two of the many popular settings?

Before 2e even existed. And we aren't talking about my setting being the only 'true setting'. We are talking about the metagame.

I am well aware that Planescape tried to eat all the other settings. Some of us are still just a little bit bitter about how Athas went to pot after it was forced by TSR to add spelljammer ports and portals to Sigil in all its cities. Some of us are still just a little bit bitter how the 2E Planescape books explicitly and unambiguously labeled every character in all of the Dragonlance novels as total retards because they couldn't differentiate between "The Abyss" and the bottom of the Great Wheel. Some of us are still just a little bit suspicious about the enthusiastic threads on the WotC forums regarding how best to force Eberron into the Great Wheel, no matter how detrimental it would be to the setting.

So please, take your metagame and leave me alone. The 2E D&D metaplot that weaved all the different campaign settings together was a crudely mercenary attempt to ensure the D&D brand was elevated over the brands of its campaign settings, and in the end it was rejected because it damaged the sub-settings while still leaving the customer base fractured.

You can have illithids being barbarians evolved from squid, but that doesn't change the metagame idea that they had a massive empire ruined by the Gith revolt.

The illithid empire is only relevant if you, as DM, want them to be. For instance, illithids never had an empire in Eberron. Ever. They have entirely different fluff, and it is every bit as good. This does not make one story "true" and the other "false" because illithids are fictional constructs and their backstory is whatever is convenient at the time.

What on earth are you babbling about? This is 3e, not Planescape. You know, the edition where there was no official 'Planescape campaign setting'? This is stuff from the Monster Manual and to an extent, stuff from the Demonomicon articles (100% official content) and Fiendish Codex I.

The Fiendish Codeces were stealth Planescape supplements; the Demonomicon articles were fairly explicit. They didn't have the Planescape logo, but they sure as heck weren't talking about the FR or Eberron cosmologies.

#1 : They could, but their focus on what to publish leads me to the conclusion that they haven't straightened out the mechanical problems at all, while already(instead fiddling around with the flavour decisions. Seems like a very skewed set of priorities.... e.g., like Titanic's captain worrying about her paint-job after hitting the iceberg, you know ?

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a detailed explanation of all the 4E rules. They want to sell the books later on, so they're intentionally not telling you what you want to know. Yeah, they probably have something in mind for at least some of those mechanical problems. Unfortunately, if they tell you what it is now before they have books to sell you, you'll just houserule your 3E campaign, and that's not good business sense.

Talking about fluff, however, is pretty safe. There's nothing proprietary about devils that rebelled against their god and are now trapped in hell. They couldn't make that proprietary even if they wanted to.

#2 : all the same to me, but please, let change occur where and when change is sensible and IF something is actually broken or skewed. Are we agreed that succubi as part of the demonic hordes do not present any probelem mechanically or in the setup atm ? except a lack of sexiness for the devils ? Where is the overriding need to have succubi change allegiance ?

Hold up. There is no change of allegiance. They speak of a new setting. The 4E succubi have always been with the 4E devils. If you want to convert Great Wheel succubi from the 4E succubi, you'll have to split them into the Erinyes-succubi (loyal to the baatezu) and the Succubi-succubi (loyal to the tannar'ri), but that's not really different than what you'd have to do with any other setting's unique monsters.

Now, as far as 'need' goes, then no, there is no need to make this change. However, there was never any 'need' to go beyond the Basic OD&D, or even to invent D&D in the first place. The creative process works because it does, and it is better to let it run its course than to try to stamp out heresy. Maybe the new Points of Light setting will fail, in which case we'll have our Great Wheel back and updated in a year or two. But maybe the Points of Light cosmology will be really cool, and if we curb-stomp anybody who dares think up a new way for the planes to be arranged, we'll never know.

I have nothing against cutting space in MM-I, but I would rather see dragons reduced (who take up broadsheets of printed landscape)

According to the gleemax article on dragons, they will be reduced. I'm not sure how much I believe them, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Or cut out stuff that noone ever uses (much) anyway... say the freaky sonic damage flyer etc.

If they restrict themselves to reprinted monsters, they'll be brutalized in the forums. They have to try some new monsters, and that means that some of them will suck. I dare say that the Ythrak is nowhere near as retarded as some of the old-school monsters. Like the Nilbog or the Thoul, for instance.

#3 precisely. They can't obviously write a decent setting.

This is pointlessly inflammatory and clearly untrue. Most of the individuals working on 4E have written good setting material in 3E, and I don't expect the quality of their work to suddenly drop into the sewers just because the number 4 (shi) is cursed with death.

Oh, and as for setting managementand development - seeing just how effectively WotC mismanaged the "Eberron" setting with its funky format for publishing stuff for it, I can feel real dread creeping up on me.

I happen to like Eberron, and overall I also like how WotC has handled it.

Actually... the Great Wheel goes far beyond Planescape. Planescape used the great wheel, sure, but that organization of the multiverse had already been in place for many, many years before Planescape came along. And truth be told, since the Great Wheel is in the 3.5 DMG, it IS the core D&D multiverse.

I know, I know. I remember the 1E books well enough. But until Planescape, it was a small chapter in the DMG. There was no mention of the Blood War, there were no squads of succubus Demon Lords competing, and there was definitely no sense that there was a story going on that the players weren't allowed to alter.

It's the one the most players know about; worlds like Faerun and Eberron have smaller customer bases, while more or less EVERYONE who buys the DMG can utilize the Great Wheel. It's certainly the model we used for every non FR, non Eberron adventure showed up in Dungeon whenever we needed anything from the planes.

And whenever you did diverge even slightly from the Great Wheel, or even diverge slightly from obscure Planescape canon, the D&D gaming message boards would be filled with threads wherein people detail how you were doing it "wrong". Just like how there's an original thought about a new planar setting in the 4E previews and right now in this thread people are saying that it is "wrong".

Well, it isn't wrong to make up a new setting, even if that setting involves the planes. Planescape is a fine and lovely setting, but it doesn't have to be the only planar setting out there.

Changing succubi to LE and getting rid of the erinyes may not be a "big deal" to some, but it certainly is to me. Especially since I view it as a symptom; what else might change? If enough changes away from the D&D that I know and am interested in working on and paying writers to create, is it even still D&D?

And succubi and erinyes are no more "identical fiends" than balors and pit fiends. In fact, balors and pit fiends seem to me to be much MORE alike than succubi and erinyes. Does that mean we should get rid of one of them? I'd rather keep all four, personally.

I would have thought that a person who makes a living squeezing long adventures into short magazine space would be a little more sympathetic to the space plight of the Monster Manual I. Heck, you yourself have complained on threads on this very set of message boards that there are so many types of fiends around that it is almost impossible to write an adventure path without at least one of them taking center stage.

Well, dropping fiends that are fairly similar is one way to make room for high-level fey, giants, or aberrations.

All of which will be going up in pink clouds of "discontinued" history in 4E. Brilliant. Might be really hard to pull that one of as a GM once the succubus club relocates to Hell

#1: Making a new setting and using it in the MMI of 4E does not affect previously established settings.

And, in all honesty, to me, succubi used to be the ultimate free agent demons, causing random havoc with people's feelings and corrupting victims any which way.... not really the types who would start drawing up demonic contracts for people's souls while seductively swishing their tails. They fit into hell the same way a "lady of negotiable affection" fits into a law firm.

It is entirely possible that the devils of 4E are not the same as the devils of previous editions. Remember, WotC probably isn't saying that the 3E succubus is getting slapped into 3E Baator with the Blood War and whatnot still in progress as if nothing ever changed. They more likely mean that there is no Blood War, it's 'Hell' and not 'Baator', and it remains to be seen whether the new setting will be interesting or not but shuffling a few allegiances from one particular setting's canon should not be a deal breaker before we've even seen most of the material!

And as I said - shouldn't WotC's designers be slavering away at the real broken workface of v3.5 instead off on the flavoury toppings ?

#1: Why can't they do both? 4E isn't coming out for another year.

And both of those have nothing to do with why people don't like the succubi/erinyes merger. For three editions we've had succubi in the Abyss. For three editions we've had erinyes in Hell.

That's Planescape. The Great Wheel. In case you didn't get the memo, Planescape hasn't been the default setting of D&D since 2E. Planescape has in fact been retconned out Forgotten Realms, averted in Eberron, and sidelined in Greyhawk during 3E, and there is nothing inherently wrong with the fact that WotC isn't making 4E a big Planescape revival.

Planescape is not the only D&D that exists. Please do not pretend your setting is the one and only true setting.

In some editions their roles changed, for example 3.5 really made erinyes less temptresses and more warriors. 3e also introduced us to important Abyssal Lords who were succubi. A War of Ripe Flesh was fought for dominance of this demon caste.

Planescape is but one setting in D&D. It is not all of D&D.

Succubi were the first demons to arise naturally from the Abyss, fueled by mortal lusts.

That's not even true in Planescape. The obyriths were around before there were mortals in the first place.

Older editions also featured important succubi. A risen succubus known as Fall-from-grace is an important character. The succubus Red Shroud rules Broken Reach, a city on the Abyss' first layer.

Planescape again. Maybe if you're lucky WotC will re-release Planescape later on. Don't expect the very first Monster Manual to be a stealth Planescape book, though. It's unreasonable.

Alu-fiends are half-demons born from succubi/mortal relations. Unique because most half-fiends are born to mortal mothers, not from mortal fathers.

Pretty nitpicky. Why couldn't you get an Alu-Fiend from a succubus devil, which may or may not be lawful since 4E devils may or may not all be lawful? Why couldn't you get an Alu-Fiend from another pairing, or from corruption after normal conception?

I could go on, but the basic point is this. Succubi have a history in the Abyss. They are only 'chaotic Erinyes' in the most convoluted superficial way possible.

Fiend has sex with mortals to steal their souls. This is a succubus. The rest is just setting material, and the Great Wheel has been stifling innovation for too long. It is a great relief to see that WotC is not slaved to the reams of Planescape metaplot. True, it gave us a lot of good things, but it also gave us Die, Vecna, Die and other abominations too horrible to be named aloud.

The idea of merging them 'because they are both hot fiends' is one devised by a simpleton.

Or perhaps be have no NEED for two completely identical fiends, and the succubus/erinyes dichotomy never really had any meaning in the first place? I mean, if they didn't need more boobs in the early monster books, the succubus in 3E would just be "always evil(any)" and it would be left at that. Most of the Planescape material is just attempts to justify a dichotomy that never really made sense anyway.

The merger destroys the previous canon,

Maybe it was past time for that sacred cow to be slaughtered.

How do you add Abyssal succubi to a game where succubi are devils?

Scratch out 'LE' and write in 'CE'. Done.

Without causing stupid amounts of confusion, that is. Do you just dump the history? Do you dump the characters? Notice the destruction involved.

Odds are that if your players are Planescape continuity buffs of the magnitude that would be required to care, then they already know what changes you'd want to make, and you probably don't have to explain anything at all.

Not having 8th and 9th level spells would be absolutely crippling. A 15th-level caster cannot even breach SR more than occasionally in most endgame cases, and will not be able to have a strong effect even with a lucky roll.

That said, elemental savant only loses two levels of advancement, and will therefore only be one spell level behind. That's not so bad. On the other hand, they don't normally get a pet elder elemental, either. Are you using an old version, perhaps the 3.0 version of the class?

+10 competence (idol in latest dragon, 28K)

+10 enchantment (basic 10K skill item)
+09 cha (18 +2 inh +4 lev +4 item)

and then various feats, like fey kissed, dark speech etc..

A skill item provides a competence bonus. As such, it doesn't stack with the core Circlet of Persuasion, it doesn't stack with the idol you mentioned, and it doesn't stack with the perfume from Shendilavri in TINH. There isn't even any such thing as an 'enchantment' bonus.

Also, stuff like 18 natural charisma, inherent bonuses to charisma, level bonus to charisma, or feats spend on diplomacy is really counter to the point of the original poster, which is that the Diplomacy checks are hard for a party without a member optimized for that skill. Yes, a L19 party can have a diplomacy bonus in excess of +150. No, that isn't relevant here.

By the way...

0 ranks Diplomacy: +0 to Diplomacy check
cha 8 plus Mass Eagle's Splendor: +1 to Diplomacy check
Moment of Prescience: +19 insight bonus to a skill check
letter of introduction from Iggwilv: +10 untyped bonus to Diplomacy check
Shendilavri perfume: +10 competence bonus to Diplomacy check
Greater Heroism: +4 morale bonus to all skill checks

Using a character counteroptimized for Diplomacy, I've already achieved a +44 bonus to Diplomacy with Orcus, for an absolute minimum of 45. This requires no magic items, no feats, no skill poins, no non-Core material save that which is explicitly provided in the adventure path itself, no fuzzy rules, nothing!

If we have the other three members of the party attempt to aid another, even if their charisma is also 8 before the Mass Eagle's Splendor they still have a 60% chance to add in their +2.

If we throw in a Orange Prism Ioun Stone for the Moment of Prescience, a Luckstone, and assume that the wizard in question took at least 5 ranks in every knowledge skill at some point, it is only possible to fail if your wizard rolls a 1 and every other member of the party also fails a DC10 charisma check! If the wizard is an archmage with the spell power high arcana, failure is impossible.

Don't forget that the other party members, even those who dumped charisma, can lather on the Mass Eagle's Splendor and whatnot in order to Aid Another on the face's Diplomacy attempt. +2 untyped bonus for every other character in the party, usually, since Aid Another is a low and flat DC.

With the letter of introduction from Iggwilv, it should be possible for just about anybody to bring Orcus around. And neither success nor failure actually means anything during negotiations with Malcanthet, since she'll bestow her profane kiss and offer to trade the flask either way.

If you want to use *actual mythology* for your stories, then you have even more reason to support the new succubus. The D&D monster known as the erinyes in previous editions is nothing like the erinyes in actual mythology.

With the 4E succubus no longer camping the erinyes name, maybe we'll get another monster more mythologically appropriate. Although still with maximum cheesecake.

Bring 'em back as Necropolitans. They can come back totally immune to basically everything an Eye of the Deep can possibly dish out. Probably the worst thing about the encounter is that it is so lopsided; as long as they don't all get caught in the AoE stun at once, it looks fairly easy to kill it by kiting at range or by sending in a wave of undead, deathless, construct, or plant minions.

Incidentally, I must question, "Vhzortys is probably an abomination with a DC 34 save versus an AoE stun, with a success only halving the time spent stunned." A successful saving throw negates the stun and reduces blindness to dazzled. All characters come out of the stun in one to six rounds and are immune to further stunning for as long as they were stunned unless they were somehow immune to being blinded. The baleful flash can also be defeated by the simple expedient of closing your eyes and accepting the 50% miss chance. The whole, "Vhzorthys, flashing its main eye every round, restunning and blinding the entire group" can't happen unless I misunderstand somehow, because "sightless creatures are immune to this attack."

Look, there's no good reason to have two evil porn queens in the 4.0 MMI. The only reason we've EVER had both the succubus and the erinyes in the same monster manual in any edition is because the cheesecake sells books. Succubus is a better name for a seduction fiend since "erinyes" actually describes a radically different sort of mythological creature, and the devils with their "Faustian corruptor" theme are thematically more in need of a seduction fiend to tempt mortals into lust than the demons with their "primeval id" theme. So unless you want to be completely subservient to the intrusive Planescape metaplot, renaming the seduction devil as a succubus is really the best way to go.

There'll undoubtedly be a new erinyes in the MMII or MMIII, and the demons and the yugoloths will undoubtedly get their own cheesecake fiends at some point too. As long as gamers like staring at skimpily clothed and suggestively posed females, you can be absolutely certain of this. It'll just take a little longer and the name might be slightly different. If you want to use your old 1E-3E fluff, literally all you have to do is mentally replace references to erinyes with the 4E succubus and mentally replace references to succubus to the 4E Tentacle Rape Demon (with the Steal Mortal Skin feat so it can pass as human). Trivially accomplished.

Meh. I'm just fine with Planescape *not* being the core cosmology. By the end of 2E Planescape was made a torturous mess of metaplot, PC deprotagonization, and incoherency. The distinction between demon and devil always ways essentially arbitrary, and Planescape filed down anything that you could make of it into essentially two competing football teams that fought but never accomplished anything.

Look, nothing wrong with having goofy elements in your game. Spelljammer was cool, and Planescape can be played in such a way that makes it cool. I don't think, however, that such an idiosyncratic campaign setting should be the DEFAULT setting for D&D.

If and when Planescape is released for 4E, succubi will be back to being demons again, and the setting will overrule the default Monster Manual stuff -- but ONLY when you're playing in that setting. Just like how in Eberron the various fiend subtypes don't politely line up according to football team, and that setting overruled the default 3E Monster Manual stuff, which was stealth Planescape through and through.

Mind you, none of this is even vaguely relevant to the Savage Tide adventure path, since the STAP is set in a version of Greyhawk that is part of the Great Wheel, and setting information overrules the defaults by definition. Of course, that means that some of us have to make our own conversions, because we consider the metaplot inherited from 2E to be a liability rather than a strength.

Sounds like your group had a much better time than mine with the ixitxachitl. My group wanted the bounty offered by Urol, who I inserted a little early as a researcher from Morgrave University. He wanted to study the fascinating specimens, so he was willing to pay well for fairly undamaged ones.

The PCs first tried to deafen them by dropping some Thunderstones in the water, but it mostly ended up attracting the attention of all of them at once. The ixitxachitl wouldn't come close to the shore unless somebody came into the water, so the PCs decided to have the fighter/rogue act as live bait. Bam! Two of them skirmish Live Bait, one hitting. Another PC piles into the water to get at the one the party manages to drop. Bam! Bam! Bam! Four more come in, and Live Bait is starting to get seriously worried. He manages to get out of the water, but only because they didn't get their skirmish damage on the AoO. Live Bait got out of the water with about 3hp left.

But hey, Urol got a specimen, and that's what really mattered, right?

No, the [compulsion] tag exists for a purpose, and that purpose is to identify spells that give the caster ongoing control over the target. The word is specifically called out, defined, and tagged in the spell descriptions for the specific purpose of short-circuiting this sort of rules wank. Magic A is Magic A. Protection from X works against compulsions, because it specifically and explicitly calls out enchantment[compulsion] effects by name.

Besides, controlling their actions is controlling their actions. Why would you think it might matter if the set of options you have is a large set (all legal actions by the target) or a small set (one specific legal action by the target)? Works just fine against Hold Person, and by RAW it works just fine against Feeblemind, even though one could argue that the [compulsion] tag on that one doesn't make logical sense.

No. Protection spells only block charms/compulsions that grant ongoing control, which Otto's does not. Same reason they don't do a lick of good against a hold person.

I don't see anything in the Protection from X description that suggests that forcing somebody to dance is not ongoing control of their actions. The caster doesn't get the vast array of choices about how to control the target, as is the case with Dominate X, but the caster does quite effectively insist on the one particular hard-coded action.

Protection from X seems to quite explicitly suppress compulsions.

It's going to be awfully hard to selectively target a disjunction in that area.

Demogorgon's first action is to seize the Pearl by Telekinesis and swallow it. Once inside Hethrediah's stomach, the Pearl has total cover, which blocks line of effect for the burst of the Disjunction. Similarly, a PC swallowed by the Tyrannosaur back in Here There Be Monsters will be unaffected by any Fireballs cast at the Tyrannosaur by the other PCs.

Otto's Irresistible Dance does not allow a save.

That's why it's so good.

I suppose it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to allow Demogorgon to have one personality dance while the other acts normally; most monsters do not have two full-round actions to work with, so a full-round action spend dancing allows time for nothing else. However, this would be a house rule specifically designed to neuter one of the PCs' spell choices, so consider carefully before you do so.

One way to deal with it is simply to have Belcheresk and Nulonga try to dispel or disjoin the spell, hopefully tagging a few PC buffs in the process. Naturally, don't have them risk disjoining the Pearl.

Also note that Otto's Irresistible Dance is a [compulsion] effect, so Nulonga's Protection from Law spell hedges it out, even if the caster is not lawful. If he's down, he can still infest one of the dead ghouls, run to the entrance of the showdown chamber, and then do a suicide run to cast Protection from Law on his master.

I submit the possibility that this is the very thing Malcanthet whispers to Demogorgon, the results of which are one of five things that has a dramatic impact on Demogorgon's motivation. If one of the PCs can do the job, then there's no need for Malcanthet and the PCs can safely throw her out on her... ear.

I had some trouble here. All my players seemed to have AC 18+, and the Lotus Dragons could simply not hit that reliably. So after the initial skirmishes, I had the Lotus Dragons break open the treasury and distribute Tanglefoot Bags and Alchemist's Fire to all the rank-and-file. The Tanglefoot Bags are probably particularly useful for your needs, since one of them entangles one PC and the other two throw an Alchemist's Fire and then all three run back. If the other PCs tear off after these three, another three approach the entangled PC from behind.

The Crucible is punishment for players who are too unobservant to notice that they're repeatedly being led into traps or for players who are so overconfident that they notice but don't care. They've already been set up twice: Vanthus trapped them in Parrot Island, and other Lotus Dragons lured them into a blind alley full of window snipers. The Crucible is just another attempt at the same thing, and if they're smart enough not to fall for it they shouldn't be forced to be stupid.

I recommend letting them avoid the Crucible and then complaining afterward about how they dodged your killer ambush later, so they feel the satisfaction about putting one over on the ol' DM. If they foolishly blunder into an ambush for the third time in two days, however... Let the dice fall where they may.

Incidentally, my players simply ignored the ambushers who tried to draw them into the Crucible well. They went in through the Taxidermy entrance and proceeded to clean out all the humans in the complex without even stopping to rest.