How does the Alkilith's Cloudkill Form work.
My reading is that is becomes a gaseous form creature as per the spell who causes a cloudkill effect when in the same space as another creature. That means the alkilith in cloud kill form is more vulnerable then when not.
For instance its AC goes down because it looses its natural armor bonus. It looses supernatural abilities so there goes it DR 15/good and now it gets DR 10/magical. What character isn't going to have a magical weapon at this level???
Am I reading this wrong. Is is supposed to turn into a roving cloudkill spell (radius 20' I beleive.) As it is this seems like a very poor choice for the Alkilith to make.
Shade325
Despite all those losses, I'm pretty sure gaseous form gives you several defensive abilities... I think being an immaterial cloud of gas has to have some other benefits.
My party never killed the alkilith; after an ice wall nearly cut the halfling wizard in half they all hid inside the tiefling's room. That's when the alkilith used his cloudkill to seep through into the room; at that point the party just freaked and bugged out. The ONLY retreat they've had in the entire Adventure Path, and it comes from an alkilith. ;)
Creative Director
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The alkilith's cloudkill form does nerf the demon's abilities somewhat, but cloudkill remains an excellent way to not only poison higher level characters, but to quickly destroy lots of lower level enemies. It's also good as a getaway spell in areas that bar teleport. In addition, it retains its extraordinary abilities.
One excellent tactic for an alkilith is to fill an area with a stinking cloud (it can still use spell-like abilities in cloudkill form) and then hide within the cloud and spray things with cones of cold and unholy blights.
When you divide the party in the Alkalith room through usage of the symbol, you block those that leave the room with a wall of ice. If the rest of the party panics and runs into the lavatory, closing the door behind you, the Alkalith transforms into its cloud kill and seeps under the door with horrific results.
I thought about doing this to my party, but there would have been little satisfaction choking them out like that. Instead, it beat on the door (damaging it with acid), breaking through only to peek its head through to say "Hereeeee's Johnny!"
The pacing on this fight was off, but all of the elements were there for a memorable encounter.
One excellent tactic for an alkilith is to fill an area with a stinking cloud (it can still use spell-like abilities in cloudkill form) and then hide within the cloud and spray things with cones of cold and unholy blights.
A cloudkill-form hiding in a stinking cloud... That's incredibly nasty! What effect would that have on the gaseous alkilith's Hide check in terms of situational modifiers? I'm thinking that unless the 2 types of cloud are different colours or something, it'd be almost impossible to distinguish between them even if it didn't already have such a high Hide bonus to begin with - if all the PC's failed their spot rolls, they'd probably assume it teleported off to somewhere nearby in order to ambush them... again. Or when you mentioned hiding in the stinking cloud, did you just mean it would stay in there to enjoy 20% - 50% miss chances due to the concealment provided by the stinking cloud?
And it can still use its SLA's in cloudkill form? I had not realized that... Yikes. I'm almost afraid to try it, as it is entirely likely to mean a TPK - we began this encounter last night; it ran through the whole session and the (advanced per Scaling the Adventure sidebar) alkilith still has over 100hp, while one PC is staggered, a couple more have taken a ton of damage, and one of its walls of ice is still blocking their escape... Really, it's only the fighter who's not at death's door already, and even he's not exactly in great shape at the moment.
Kang
One excellent tactic for an alkilith is to fill an area with a stinking cloud (it can still use spell-like abilities in cloudkill form) and then hide within the cloud and spray things with cones of cold and unholy blights.
Good god you are an evil b*****d. I salute you.
Doyle
Um ... last I heard, Cloudkill does basically squat to creatures with reasonably decent Fortitude save bonuses, being a poison and all.
I like it though - go ahead and kill 'em all off. ^_^
Um ... last I heard, Cloudkill does basically squat to creatures with reasonably decent Fortitude save bonuses, being a poison and all.
Yes, cloudkill is much less deadly against PC's at the level where they're likely to be getting slain by this adventure than it would be against lower-level PC's - it does 1d4 Con damage (fort half). The resulting loss of Con-based bonus hit points may be enough to drop a couple of my players' PC's as they are running very low on hit points. If it does deal enough Con damage to make them lose hit points (ie. if it deals enough to reduce their Con modifiers), it will also reduce their Fort saves, making it harder to function in the stinking cloud without getting nauseated, which in turn may prevent them from taking advantage of iterative attacks, using some of the actions they would normally be entitled to, etc. Note also that in my campaign I have advanced the alkilith's HD as recommended in the Scaling the Adventure sidebar, which means also giving it new feats, which in my case included Ability Focus (cloudkill form), so that save DC is actually a bit higher than you may have assumed.
But in a way, a sub-optimal tactic is actually just what I am sort of hoping for, as I am really not trying to pull a TPK. I do realize a TPK is sometimes appropriate when the PC's do something stupid or are too proud to flee, but in all honesty if you knew my players you wouldn't be looking forward to waiting for them all to create new PC's either - I just know I'd show up expecting them to have done it between sessions, only to end up wasting a whole night of what should have been playing D&D helping a couple of my more casual players put a character together...
It's a realistic trick for the alkilith to try, so it won't feel like I'm throwing the fight if it turns out to give the party a slim chance to prevail. I know I originally mentioned that this tactic sounded like a recipe for a TPK, but the more I think about it the more I think maybe this could give the heroes one last chance to survive the encounter. As it stands, a TPK is almost a given over the next few rounds if I don't do something. The full round action required to transform into cloudkill form will give them a round where it's not killing PC's with multiple slams, cones of cold, etc, and the reduced AC from losing its natural armor bonus, plus the loss of its alignment-based DR, might just give them a chance to drop the thing before it does them all in. All the while making sure the players are still quite worried that their PC's are all about to kick the bucket - which they may well still be.
But still no suggestions for situational modifiers for the alkilith's spot bonus while it is a cloud hiding in a cloud (ie. it would seem to have some pretty darn good camouflage there), eh? That was the real reason I decided to practice thread necromancy on this topic after it had lain dormant in the archives for about 2.5 years... Anyone have any suggestions about that?
Thanks,
Kang
Um ... last I heard, Cloudkill does basically squat to creatures with reasonably decent Fortitude save bonuses, being a poison and all.Yes, cloudkill is much less deadly against PC's at the level where they're likely to be getting slain by this adventure than it would be against lower-level PC's - it does 1d4 Con damage (fort half). The resulting loss of Con-based bonus hit points may be enough to drop a couple of my players' PC's as they are running very low on hit points. If it does deal enough Con damage to make them lose hit points (ie. if it deals enough to reduce their Con modifiers), it will also reduce their Fort saves, making it harder to function in the stinking cloud without getting nauseated, which in turn may prevent them from taking advantage of iterative attacks, using some of the actions they would normally be entitled to, etc. Note also that in my campaign I have advanced the alkilith's HD as recommended in the Scaling the Adventure sidebar, which means also giving it new feats, which in my case included Ability Focus (cloudkill form), so that save DC is actually a bit higher than you may have assumed.
But in a way, a sub-optimal tactic is actually just what I am sort of hoping for, as I am really not trying to pull a TPK. I do realize a TPK is sometimes appropriate when the PC's do something stupid or are too proud to flee, but in all honesty if you knew my players you wouldn't be looking forward to waiting for them all to create new PC's either - I just know I'd show up expecting them to have done it between sessions, only to end up wasting a whole night of what should have been playing D&D helping a couple of my more casual players put a character together...
It's a realistic trick for the alkilith to try, so it won't feel like I'm throwing the fight if it turns out to give the party a slim chance to prevail. I know I originally mentioned that this tactic sounded like a recipe for a TPK, but the more I think about it the more I think maybe...
Ah, apologies on not addressing the intended topic.
Cloudkill = yellowish green; Stinking Cloud = regular fog; true seeing bypasses both (being magical in origin); the alkilith would have to be at the center mass of the cloud to benefit from the visual concealment.
Is the alkilith considered incorporeal I take it ? If so, that will give it some countermeasure to being easier to hit due to lost natural armor bonuses. The FRA will give your characters a reprieve as you observed.
If they think the alkiliths are bad news, they're in for real trouble with the structure of the place they're in combined with the really nasty critters ahead of them. In some ways, the alkiliths are the mooks of the place...
Ah, apologies on not addressing the intended topic.
Cloudkill = yellowish green; Stinking Cloud = regular fog; true seeing bypasses both (being magical in origin); the alkilith would have to be at the center mass of the cloud to benefit from the visual concealment.
Is the alkilith considered incorporeal I take it ? If so, that will give it some countermeasure to being easier to hit due to lost natural armor bonuses. The FRA will give your characters a reprieve as you observed.
If they think the alkiliths are bad news, they're in for real trouble with the structure of the place they're in combined with the really nasty critters ahead of them. In some ways, the alkiliths are the mooks of the place...
No need to apologize; I'm the one who's sort of jacked this thread I guess, with the excuse that it hadn't been updated in a couple of years so hopefully the OP won't feel like I'm stepping on their toes or whatever. Didn't mean to be pushy or sound like your earlier comment wasn't useful, if that's how I came off.
Anyhow, thanks for pointing out the different colours for the 2 cloud effects in question; I guess that would be sort of obvious if the cloudkill part were close enough to a PC to be seen through the stinking cloud at all, in which case it would benefit from the 20% miss chance the stinking cloud provides. 50% if it were deeper within the stinking cloud. So I guess the different colours of fog should probably mean that the concealment provided by the stinking cloud lets it make a hide check, but no differently than it would for anyone else, ie. without getting any extra bonuses on its hide roll that I had in mind when I was assuming the clouds would look virtually identical.
I don't believe the cloudkill form of the alkilith is considered incorporeal - IIRC it works like gaseous form; still corporeal, but rather insubstantial. So you don't need magic weapons to have a 50/50 chance of damaging it; just to bypass its DR.
I am well aware the party is in deep doo-doo. I had not expected the alkilith to walk all over them the way it has. But I am really hoping to avoid a TPK, in large part due to all the time I have spent working on converting and painting a miniature to represent Madtooth the Hungry, who they are slated to fight in the arena the next day if they're still alive. I don't want that to have all been for nothing! :o)
And if they somehow survive that, well, I'm pretty sure the apostle will take them out.
But they could get lucky, I guess, or start playing a bit smarter or something... It might happen.
Anyhow, thanks again for the pointers.
Kang
Glad to help Kang. You didn't offend - it helps to remind me to stay on topic now and again ... just look at some of the off-topic threads...
And if you time things right, you can achieve TPK status at the end of the sesssion. ^_^
Heh, yeah, it could easily end up that way. But even if they don't make it through to experience the fight with Madtooth, I have still been having lots of fun making that Froghemoth mini anyhow, and he'll look good on a shelf (IMHO) even if nobody ever encounters him on a battle grid... I think I can even still salvage the campaign in the event I do pull a TPK:
The party left a member behind at the end of the Encounter at Blackwall Keep adventure - a lizardfolk wilder (Koko) who was replaced by the party's current fighter when he decided he'd stay in the swamp to assume his own brand of iron-fisted rulership over the shattered handful of Twisted Branch Tribe members who survived the PC's raid on their home. Perhaps an angry Ilthane will have chased him back to Diamond Lake where he'll fail to find his old companions for help and will therefore have to hire on a new group of bodyguards/servants (which is how he always treated the original party)... Gonna have to reread the next adventure, but IIRC Ilthane is supposed to make an appearance, so that might work. I'll also get to have fun seeing the look on their faces when I tell the other players how their new characters have been hearing rumours about how something went horribly wrong during the Champion's Games that caused the whole City of Greyhawk to be overrun by thousands of wights or wraiths or whatever the heck undead starting with a 'W' it was... :o)
Kang
Heh, yeah, it could easily end up that way. But even if they don't make it through to experience the fight with Madtooth, I have still been having lots of fun making that Froghemoth mini anyhow, and he'll look good on a shelf (IMHO) even if nobody ever encounters him on a battle grid... I think I can even still salvage the campaign in the event I do pull a TPK:
The party left a member behind at the end of the Encounter at Blackwall Keep adventure - a lizardfolk wilder (Koko) who was replaced by the party's current fighter when he decided he'd stay in the swamp to assume his own brand of iron-fisted rulership over the shattered handful of Twisted Branch Tribe members who survived the PC's raid on their home. Perhaps an angry Ilthane will have chased him back to Diamond Lake where he'll fail to find his old companions for help and will therefore have to hire on a new group of bodyguards/servants (which is how he always treated the original party)... Gonna have to reread the next adventure, but IIRC Ilthane is supposed to make an appearance, so that might work. I'll also get to have fun seeing the look on their faces when I tell the other players how their new characters have been hearing rumours about how something went horribly wrong during the Champion's Games that caused the whole City of Greyhawk to be overrun by thousands of wights or wraiths or whatever the heck undead starting with a 'W' it was... :o)
Kang
one word : awesome! ^_^