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Hey all.
I've been DMing a conversation of the classic 2nd Edition Weiss and Hickman "Desert of Desolation" series.
There is an NPC in this module named Munafik that I'm trying to convert over to 3.5 rules, and I was looking for some input from you guys on how to do it.
Because he has hidden his heart elsewhere, Munafik cannot be damaged or killed by spells or blows. Cutting hits will slice through him with no effect and thrusts will impale him but do no damage for his "heart isn't in it"; he has trapped his soul elsewhere. Spells will effect him as they would any 10th level MU, except that damaging attacks have no effect. For example, a hold person will hold him, but a magic will cause no damage.
Munafik: AC 7; MV 12''; MU 10; hp N/A; #AT 1; D 1d6; AL LE
Here's a description of how he got this way:
Munafik read old and wicked books to prolong his life, but the books turned him undead. Finally he magically placed his heart into a special jar so that we would be protected from all harm.
I don't know of mechanisms in 3.5 ruleset that support this sort of thing. I was thinking of just changing him to be a cleric lich (is such a thing possible? I saw a druid lich recently in the kobold quarterly).
Thanks in advance!
There's a spell, in the Complete Mage maybe, that allows a caster to replace his heart with stone but that's not entirely what you're looking for; it doesn't make him immortal but it is somewhat close.
Does he take a certain amount of damage and then vanish, only to reform some days later? This sounds like a lich's phalcyarty like you said. One way of doing this might be to give the NPC in question a template. Make it so that the template maybe gives a -2 or -4 penalty to Constitution (after all, he has no heart), although since he can't be killed this wouldn't be the biggest disadvantage in the world. The only benefit the template bestowed was the phalcyartry effect and it would necessitate a considerable boost in CR.
If memory serves, a cleric lich is indeed possible. I think that the only prerequisite is Caster Level 12 and you have to have a lot of gold and XP to burn.
He basically has an exception based power.
Let me take a shot at this
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Soulless(Su): Using powerful magics Munafik hid his soul making him impervious to hp damage. Any effect, magical or otherwise, that does hp damage simply don't modify the number of hps Munafik has. Spells or actions that don't actually do hp damage function normally. Hence Munafik could be grappled normally and he would still need to make a Will Save to avoid the effects of charm person or hold person.
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You might want to clean this up a bit to cover all the angles but you get the idea. Making him immune to hp damage is essentially just a matter of giving him a supernatural ability that says he is immune to hp damage. The most important aspect of this is making sure that your mechanic works and that it will run smoothly at the table. You might want to go so far as to try and test it a bit by trying to play out how your players might handle this.
Obviously trouble shooting like this is getting more and more fiddly but your basically looking to make sure that the mechanics hold up to the rigours of actual play before they hit the rigours of actual play.
Thats really the most important part of bringing something new from an old edition into a new edition. Make sure you understand how your inclusion needs to be redesigned to conform to 3.5's mechanics. The difference between some power you made up and one thats in the back of the Monster Manual is usually more about the fact that the one in the back of the Monster Manual won't break at the table except in corner case situations. If you've managed to cover all the bases then yours won't break either and your players won't even know you made it up.
Maybe give him a similair trait to the Tarrasque; he can't be killed by normal hp damage but damage via nonlethal functions as normal.
There's a spell, in the Complete Mage maybe, that allows a caster to replace his heart with stone but that's not entirely what you're looking for; it doesn't make him immortal but it is somewhat close.
Does he take a certain amount of damage and then vanish, only to reform some days later? This sounds like a lich's phalcyarty like you said. One way of doing this might be to give the NPC in question a template. Make it so that the template maybe gives a -2 or -4 penalty to Constitution (after all, he has no heart), although since he can't be killed this wouldn't be the biggest disadvantage in the world. The only benefit the template bestowed was the phalcyartry effect and it would necessitate a considerable boost in CR.
If memory serves, a cleric lich is indeed possible. I think that the only prerequisite is Caster Level 12 and you have to have a lot of gold and XP to burn.
If I understood the explanation, this NPC is undead, no? So he shouldn't have a Constitution at all. Functionally, the character is a lich. The only difference, I think, is kind of cosmetic. With a lich, when you do enough damage, hte body is destoyed, but the lich is not - it just takes over a new corpse. What you have here just circumvents the body swap. Since the slashing weapon "just passes through," it's kind of like instant regeneration, but I don't want to say that too strongly, becuase then the implication would be that if you do enough damage in one attck you could destory him. That's not the case (I presume).
Regarding game ballance, though, I'm not sure why there would be a problem. Apparently, using 2nd ed you didn't have any problem, right? I can't see where 3.5 would throw a monkey wrench in the works.
but if he was undead, with regenatation that could not be bypassed, then he would be effectively immune to damage (undead are immune to subdual).
See, no, I don't think that's right, and that's why I felt I had mitigate it when I said it. Regeneration implicitly requires some amount of time – at least one round – even if it’s full regeneration. So, if the NPC has 30 hp and takes 75 hp damage from Dragon Breath, based on the Regeneration model, he’s completely destroyed and there’s nothing left TO regenerate. That’s why thinking of it in terms of regenerating doesn’t really work. It would have to be even faster than Instantaneous – the damage is healing AS IT IS BEING MADE.
So, what it comes down to is that, if we are really going to help you, in terms of rules, we really need to know a bit more about the effect you are going for. Is the NPC truly indestructible? Your description of the blade passing though him sounds like regeneration, but what happens if a ridiculous amount of damage is done all at once? If he is set on fire, blasted by a dragon, blown up, cut into pieces and the ashes dropped into a vat of acid, what would that do? Can you cut off his head or a limb? Can you burn him? See, I’m picturing something like Wolverine in the last X-Men movie, but even Wolverine has his limits.
That’s what I’m getting at. Are there any limits? If so, you can tailor rules to those limits. If not, then it just is what it is and you don’t need rules to describe it.
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If you look at the stat block, it shows the hit points as "N/A." Thus, it doesn't matter how much damage you do in a single round, this opponent can't be killed. For flavor, it might be kinda cool to have him have total instant regeneration, but this would not be necessary. If you dropped him in a vat of acid, he would eventually just swim out. The idea here is to get the players to think outside the box. They have to trap or imprison him, or they have to find his heart and destroy it.
If you look at the stat block, it shows the hit points as "N/A." Thus, it doesn't matter how much damage you do in a single round, this opponent can't be killed. For flavor, it might be kinda cool to have him have total instant regeneration, but this would not be necessary. If you dropped him in a vat of acid, he would eventually just swim out. The idea here is to get the players to think outside the box. They have to trap or imprison him, or they have to find his heart and destroy it.
Oh, now I see. Now I’m REALLY sorry I brought up the regeneration thing. What we’re really saying is he doesn’t TAKE damage in the first place.