Don’t you love it when players surprise you?
Most of my players play the game to kill stuff, get loot and level up. They are very light on RP and heavy on kicking in heads. So I created one nasty min-maxed Zarik Dhor for them to have a good fight against. Using mostly ideas from the old Zarik Dhor tripping/disarming thread. But something strange happened. The main character they depend on to do the protecting/killing is an orc fighter/barbarian who averages close to 40 points of damage a round. This player didn’t turn up. In fact only 3 players turned up for a game the players know they should have 6 for plus they also know they are under-leveled with a 12, 11 and 10 making up the mix. So when they met Zarik Dhor they were scared witless without their orc bodyguard and did everything they could to avoid combat.
Some probing questions, best effort RPing and good diplomacy dice rolls later they had turned a vicious combat encounter into more of a psychiatrist – patient setup. They found out Zarik Dhor was out to kill them because they had deprived him of killing his father himself which was his entire life ambition (made it up on the spot). Then something happened. The players felt for poor Zarik. Bemoaning amongst themselves what a wasted and empty life he had lead and they refused to fight him and continue his misery.
When all was said and done Zarik left peacefully with much soul searching to do. The level 12 sorceresses who had done all the fast talking declared that she wanted to take ZD as her cohort and is planning on taking leadership the next chance she can get. Which will be level 16. At level 16 Zarik fits perfectly as a cohort with a CR of 14. However since she used her level 12 feat for something she wasn’t interested in and I allow retraining she may want to take him at level 12. Keeping that in mind when I ask my questions:
1. How unbalancing would Zarik be as a cohort at level 12?
2. What could I do to modify Zarik to drop his CR to 10~12 ish?
My initial instinct is to leave him as is. He will add more firepower than he normally should be due to his high ECL the party will outstrip him level wise fairly quickly until level 16 when he is more appropriate. Or I could use the PHB2 rules to buy off his racial-ECL. Don’t have the minotaur stats handy so not sure how many he can buyoff at his current level. I suspect only 1 at best.
That’s a great idea. Thanks.
Be sure you balance Dhor by his ECL, not his CR. He's probably around a 15-18th level character, so he'll require a lot of work.
Be sure you balance Dhor by his ECL, not his CR. He's probably around a 15-18th level character, so he'll require a lot of work.
Works out at ECL 14. So appropriate for a level 16 character as a cohort. Assuming one ECL is paid off he would drop to a 15 ECL. So not so much to do for a 13th level character. Of course 16 would be the best option.