Kazmojen in the Hardcover, is it him or me?

[Eric Eslinger]

Hey folks. I was working on statblocking chapter 1, and it seems like kazmojen is very different from what I expected. I was wondering if this is just me missing something crucial or an artifact from his conversion into 3.5 (and reduction in power from the dungeon mag version)

He should be a Dwarf with the half-troll template (from fiend folio). It looks like they got a bunch of stuff wrong with him, specifically, all his attack and damage numbers were wrong (bite should do 1d6 and claw 1d4, they got it backward, he should take nonproficient penalties with the exotic weapon he's wielding), and they have him down as having regenerate 5, not fast healing 5.

Also, he's wielding an urgosh, with as far as I can tell is just silly. He doesn't have TWF or even proficiency with the urgosh, so a waraxe or greataxe seems like a far smarter thing to do. Or is his poor choice of weapon a balancing factor for his suddenly changing from fast healing to regenerate?

Are there any errata posted anywhere? Am I being a goof? Thanks.

[VedicCold]

Well, thanks to some changes in 3.5, Dwarves now treat Dwarven urgroshes and Dwarven Waraxes as martial weapons rather than exotic, so since Kazmojen is a fighter, he is proficient with the urgrosh. As for the two-weapon fighting bit... don't know why he wouldn't have it if he's going to wield and urgrosh, but I'll be switching one of his curren feats for that one when I run him. For the half-troll template stuff, I have no idea. Don't have Fiend Folio. Of course, him being half-troll, having regeneration instead of fast healing makes sense to me.

[James Jacobs]

Unfortunately, we did get the claw and bite damage dice reversed for Kazmojen's stats.

As for his urgrosh, VedicCold is right. Since Kazmojen's a dwarf he treats the urgrosh as a martial weapon, and since he's a fighter he gets proficiency with the urgrosh. So no nonproficiency penalties for him.

The existing art for Kazmogen (see page 72 of the hardcover) depicts him wielding an urgrosh, so we couldn't change his weapons to anything else even if we wanted to. As for him fighting without Two-Weapon Fighting... sure, it's a sub-standard choice for him, but keep in mind that the PCs are, at the most, 3rd level. Having him fight with the urgrosh as a double weapon not only makes him look more menacing, but helps those low-level PCs survive a bit longer since he won't be hitting as often. If he realizes he's not hitting, he can always just use the urgrosh as a single weapon. Not every NPC needs to be number-crunched to peak, 100% efficiency. It's more realistic (and more fun) for the PCs to encounter NPCs now and then who aren't savants at combat and do indeed make some sub-par choices.

And looking at his stat block on page 365 of the hardcover, it looks like we have him listed with fast healing 5 after all. Not sure where you're getting the regeneration 5 from...

[VedicCold]

James Jacobs wrote:

As for him fighting without Two-Weapon Fighting... sure, it's a sub-standard choice for him, but keep in mind that the PCs are, at the most, 3rd level. Having him fight with the urgrosh as a double weapon not only makes him look more menacing, but helps those low-level PCs survive a bit longer since he won't be hitting as often. If he realizes he's not hitting, he can always just use the urgrosh as a single weapon. Not every NPC needs to be number-crunched to peak, 100% efficiency. It's more realistic (and more fun) for the PCs to encounter NPCs now and then who aren't savants at combat and do indeed make some sub-par choices.

A very good point about the survivability of those 3rd level characters facing a half-troll dwarf. I don't know what all of his other combat options are or what feats he has since I'm not looking at the book, but unless there's a feat he's taken that just doesn't make sense to me, I'll keep him as-is instead of giving him Two-Weapon Fighting.

[Eric Eslinger]

What can I say, but Whoops! I clearly misread the statblock somehow. I have no idea where the regenration came from. And I never realized that dwarfs get urgosh familiarity in addition to waraxe familiarity (is there anything dwarfs can't do?)

On the min-max front, I'm of two minds. I'm not suggesting that Kazmojen do something like take two levels of ranger or a level of barbarian (optimized BBEGs shouldn't, IMO, have cleave, there are far better choices). I also understand the flavor issue, but a clearly suboptimal combat choice in this situation means I would probably give a minor XP deduction for defeating Kazmojen in combat.

How about this for flavor: Drop Ftr3 for Brb1 (changing his alignment to NE). Kazmojen fights with both ends of his urgosh until he drops to 50% of his hitpoints (or just cannot hit anything, or the combat starts to go really south). At this point, he drops the urgosh, rages, and starts his claw/claw/bite routines.

You could work something up where Kazmojen has aspirations of becoming a high-society member of the criminal underworld (or maybe the underdark, depending on how the underdark gets played in the campaign); keeping his berserker tendencies under control is an affectation he has in an attempt to seem more "civilized" among his peers (Pyllrak). This could also work into a situation where the PCs can negotiate with Kazmojen for the time being (avoiding a confrontation). Just a thought.

[Kolvin]

The way I did it in my game and in order to make the beholder even more badass was to make the battle versus Kazmojen to be a losing one.

The PCs were outgunned and they knew the end was near. When the beholder appeared it was very effective for him to blow away a few of the NPCs in order to help him make his entrance. The PCs were almost grateful but very fearful that they might be next. They handed over the kid without even thinking to put up a fight...they were darned sure he wasn't just an illusion.

[Talon Stormwarden]

I also notice that Kazmojen's strength damage for primary hand attacks is listed as +4. Any reason it's not +5, since his str is 20?

[VedicCold]

Talon Stormwarden wrote:

I also notice that Kazmojen's strength damage for primary hand attacks is listed as +4. Any reason it's not +5, since his str is 20?

Looking over his stats, I can't find any reason why this would be, but it does seem as though there are several places in his stat block that were written as if Kazmojen's STR were 18 rather than 20, at least as far as damage is concerned. So... I'd say the call is yours. Run him as written, assuming STR 18, and he'll be slightly less challenging, but not much; or re-calc everything based on STR 20 and watch him go.