Treant with a couple of druid levels

[Douglas Muir 406]

My PCs will probably roll over a plain treant, so I need to beef this guy up a little. I'm thinking to add two levels of druid, which would give him +2d8+10 hp, +1 BAB, +3 Will, +3 Fort, an extra feat, and a grand total of three first level spells, increasing his CR by 1. For spells, Entangle and Magic Fang seem to pretty much cover it -- there aren't a lot of other things useful to a huge CR 9 plant. The Plant domain does have the Growth subdomain, which lets him do a free Enlarge several times per day... that could be fun.

Mind, if it's him vs. the whole party of PCs (likely), then action economy means he may not be able to do any of this stuff -- combat starts, they mass-attack him, and the best he can do is animate some trees and then start with the slam attacks. Unless I give him a high-stealth Animal Companion who spots the PCs coming...

Thoughts?

Doug M.

[Douglas Muir 406]

Man, the treant's glass jaw is the humble Grease spell. Even with the druid levels, still a pathetic +3 Reflex save. 60% of the time, he goes down like an axe got him, and then eats a bunch of AoOs standing up. My PCs are really good at dishing out melee damage, so that's going to hurt.

Something more seems called for.

Doug M.

[XMorsX]

Give your treant Qinggong MoMS / Monk of the Sacred Mountain monk lvls with feral combat training (slam) and dragon style / ferocity and snake style + snake fang if you take adequate lvls (it has a good sense motive too). More damage, better saves.

Alternatively a maneuver master monk that trips and do dirty tricks?

Give it Combat Reflexes too.

Ninja Treant!

[Douglas Muir 406]

That would work mechanically, but... this is a guy who's been standing in the woods for a century or two, guarding something. Kinda hard to explain how he gets monk levels.

Also, alignment.

Doug M.

[Cornielius]

Mythic Simple Templates

The following simple templates can be used to turn any monster into a mythic creature. A creature given one of these templates counts as a mythic creature for the purposes of spells, abilities, and magic items even though it doesn't have the mythic subtype. Note that because it doesn't have the mythic subtype, it doesn't gain the many benefits of having the mythic subtype—the creature only gains the benefits described in the simple template.
Agile (MR 1, CR +1)

Creatures with the agile template are quick and deadly, moving faster than their normal counterparts and striking with incredible speed and agility. An agile creature's quick and rebuild rules are the same.

Rebuild Rules: Init +20 bonus; AC +2 dodge bonus; hp mythic bonus hit points; Defensive Abilities evasion (as the rogue class feature); Speed +30 feet for all movement types (up to double the creature's base movement speed); Special Attacks dual initiative.

from prd mythic monsters

dual initiative gives two actions, 1 at rolled init, the other at -20 init

which means the creature gets 2 turns per turn, meaning your players will have to work harder

[Douglas Muir 406]

That's actually kinda tempting. Not using mythic rules, though. (If I start using them with NPCs, soon the PCs will want them, and that way madness lies.)

Doug M.

[CWheezy]

Advanced template?

[Douglas Muir 406]

That would probably be the simplest way to do it, yes. I was hoping to get a little more creative, but possibly I'm overthinking it.

Doug M.

[Macharius]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

That would work mechanically, but... this is a guy who's been standing in the woods for a century or two, guarding something. Kinda hard to explain how he gets monk levels.

Also, alignment.

"Standing in the woods for a century or two, guarding something" to me is precisely why a Treant would have levels in Monk. That's a long, long time to be doing this task: the obligation to do so would certainly be a difficult task to maintain (indicating a change in alignment to lawful), and if it's going to take that responsibility so seriously one could reasonably assume it practices some type of combat technique - particularly one that explicitly mitigates its own natural weaknesses as much as possible.

[Ciaran Barnes]

Superstitious barbarian treant with oversized great club.

Or

Treant ranger

[Imbicatus]

Wood Oracle? House rule Wood Bond to work with the slams (They are wood), and an extra revelation for Wood Armor to up the AC. Alternately, Shillelagh is stupidly powerful if the weapon is already huge.

[Dosgamer]

I really like the effect of having shillelagh on its slam attacks. That's very cool. I would also add the advanced template and give it max hps if your group is good at melee damage as you say. You could also swap out improved sunder for vital strike if you allow the shillelagh to make the huge slams into colossal slams (not sure what that becomes...2d6 to 3d6 to 3d8?). If so, then with vital strike (assuming it has to move if all of the PCs move out of range) it could be doing 6d8ish plus bonuses?

I ran a treant encounter for my group and between the treant suddenly turning on them and animating 2 other trees they were taken quite by surprise. It was a fun encounter. Granted, in mine the treant was "crazed" and therefore they tried to not kill it. That can always add another layer. Maybe they need information from the treant rather than just whatever it is guarding? Good luck!

[CWheezy]

Maybe not one, but TWO treants