Soul Eaters and Eating Souls

[Bigrin da Troll]

Chapter 3 gives us the Soul Eater, an outsider of evil alignment which is summoned to the prime material and possesses the 'Soul Drain' power:

Soul Drain (Su) When a soul eater reduces a foe to 0 Wisdom, it can devour that creature's soul as a standard action that provokes an attack of opportunity. The victim can resist having his soul drained by making a Fortitude save. If he does, he is slain but can be restored to life normally. If the victim fails, he is immediately slain and his soul is consumed by the soul drinker. A victim slain in this manner cannot be returned to life through clone, raise dead, reincarnation, resurrection, true resurrection, or even a miracle or wish. The victim's soul remains within the essence of the soul eater forever: unless the soul eater is slain while the victim's body is within 30 feet and the victim has been dead for no more than 1 minute. In that case, the victim's soul returns to the body and restores it to life (although at -1 hit point). This is a death effect. The save DC is Constitution-based.

This means that an educated party's most likely line of defense is Protection from Evil - which "prevents bodily contact by evil summoned creatures. This causes the natural weapon attacks of such creatures to fail and the creatures to recoil if such attacks require touching the warded creature."

So... given that Soul Drain doesn't mention whether or not it requires physically touching the victim, what's your opinion? Should a well-timed Protection from Evil save a character from having her soul consumed by the creature, or is the soul a glowing stream of light that floats from one to the other, with no physical contact required?

[Orthos]

It doesn't require an attack roll, so I'd say no, it doesn't.

[Rickmeister]

I wouldn't call it a summoned creature. Maybe more like a planar ally which 'someone' made a bargain with, or had an IOU from.

Problem solved.

[Icyshadow]

If it's a Magic Circle Against Evil, wouldn't it have to get past the circle itself to get to you and eat your soul?

[Hassy]

Yes and no. The ability triggers when the soul eater has used its claw attack to drain the targets wisdom. Protection from evil would protect against that claw attack if the creature was summoned, which it in the adventure is not.

[Rickmeister]

Hassy wrote:

Protection from evil would protect against that claw attack if the creature was summoned, which it in the adventure is not.

Let the creature "doubt" for a moment, swirl left and right at the edge of the circle..

DM call

Spoiler:

I would make it immune for dmg etc for one round, because it's a cutscene

.. and then rush in, none-the-less.
Things like that will make them remember ;)

[Icyshadow]

What do you mean it wasn't summoned in that scenario?

[RuyanVe]

Spoiler:

V used planar binding for the soul eaters, which is not a summon but a calling.

Ruyan.

[Drejk]

*cough* Spoiler.

[RuyanVe]

Like this?

[Drejk]

I meant more that there should be spoiler tag next to the name of the thread.

[Orthos]

It's in the Kingmaker forum, it's assumed anyone here is in the know as a GM or former player. You should probably not be here if you're a player or trying to avoid spoilers ;)

[DMFTodd]

The text says Conjured, so I'd assume Planar Ally-like, thus Protection of Evil doesn't help.

Can V call more than 1 of them? There's nothing in the text of the item that says how this works. Maybe he can do 1/week? Month? Year?

[Hassy]

DMFTodd wrote:

Can V call more than 1 of them? There's nothing in the text of the item that says how this works. Maybe he can do 1/week? Month? Year?

Err... Yes there is. Page 52, fourth bullet point in the right column: "Planar binding once per week (only to summon natives of Abaddon, such as daemons or soul eaters)"