Veneth Kestrel's page

Since playing Pathinder in-person lately has been difficult (for obvious reasons), I've been spending a lot of time messing around with updating old characters and such, which led me to looking at one of my favourite thematic creatures from Minions: Fearsome Foes, the Devil Doll.

That said, while thematically, the creature is fantastic (a tiny devil sent from Hell to corrupt children with a high potential for good or evil), it's statistics were somewhat off, in that familiar 3rd party way. Below are two conversions; a raw 3.0 - 3.5 - Pathfinder conversion of the monster, and a personalized version to bring it's stats and abilities to (hopefully) more in line with what is expected by CR and creature type.

I'd love to get some feedback on the revised version regarding it's CR and general balance.

• Incredibly low HP
  
• Incredibly high AC
  
• High attack bonus, but very low damage with no other real combat options
  
• Abysmal Fort save
  

• Redistributed stats to bring some values closer to average
  
• Stole Sneak Attack from the Salikotal Devil to improve combat effectiveness
  
• Added some thematically appropriate spell-like abilities, as the only devil with no spell-like abilities at all is the Lemure
  
• Reworded Air of Innocence and Enthrall to use actual Pathfinder spell effects rather than potentially vague or percentage based abilities
  

As indicated in the title, roughly 90% of all combat encounters our party faces are against a single APL +2 to +5 monster of some sort. Additionally, (and this mostly irks me because I'm the only one who owns a set of books, meaning I literally bought some books specifically for him to use) the DM mostly likes to use the Bestiary as a 'reference' to figure out roughly what stats his custom horror-terrors should have, rather than using actual published monsters. Don't get me wrong, in moderation that's fine, but this is nearly every single combat encounter. Oh, and the one encounter in this entire campaign (which has run from level 5 to 15) that was against more than one monster was 5 of the same monster. Lovely variety there.

I've already sat down and talked to him about this, and have done the same with some of the other players. One guy built a Barbarian around massive intimidate and group intimidate skills, and just doesn't ever get a chance to use them. I'm playing a utility buff/debuff Mystic Theurge and aside from Haste at the start of combat and some horribly inefficient emergency healing, I'm pretty much useless, as monsters usually have to roll a 2 or higher to pass my save-or-suck spells.

Really, I'm looking for suggestions on how to convince this DM that:
A) Actually using the bestiary is a good thing.
B) Variety and multiple-monster encounters are worth the extra planning time.
C) Action economy is IMPORTANT. Most of his big-bad's only get one to three rounds of attacks before dropping.

And to answer the obvious question, he's the only guy DM'ing something other than 4th Ed in this tiny city, and actually is pretty good aside from this.

Honestly the only thing I can think of at this point is trying to build a character who's nearly invincible against single large opponents but who could be taken down by a group, and then just stomping everything with it until he gets the hint.

Due to some recent losses, our group is extremely small at the moment, and actively hunting for several new players. We're running a high-powered custom setting using Pathfinder with some 3.5 material. The party is currently 8th level, but contains only two members. The game runs on Saturdays from around 6pm to 12am, though we may be open for rescheduling if necessary.

For a bit of info on the current party and some of the ridiculous crap we've gotten up to, check my post in this thread.

If interested, please just reply here for now, and we can work out further contact information.

I'd also be interested in any suggestions as to where else online I can hunt for players.