| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The spell is quickened, using only a swift action. You still have your regular standard action available to vital strike.Vital Strike is it's own unique special Standard Action. You cannot combine Vital Strike with casting a spell, so you cannot Vital Strike the spell.They can cast an intensified, empowered, and quickened shocking grasp and attack in the same round for 60d6 damage.So a Dragon, Pit Fiend, or Solar who took greater vital strike could do 80d6 damage plus 4d4 dex drain with a polar ray?No, because Polar Ray is a spell and takes a standard action to cast, while Vital Strike is it's own, separate, Standard Action.
You make a free touch attack as part of casting the spell. You need to use the Vital Strike action to make the touch attack, not the spell action.
It helps if you quote all of the relevant parts.
Holding the Charge: If you don't discharge the spell in the round when you cast the spell, you can hold the charge indefinitely. You can continue to make touch attacks round after round. If you touch anything or anyone while holding a charge, even unintentionally, the spell discharges. If you cast another spell, the touch spell dissipates. You can touch one friend as a standard action or up to six friends as a full-round action. Alternatively, you may make a normal unarmed attack (or an attack with a natural weapon) while holding a charge. In this case, you aren't considered armed and you provoke attacks of opportunity as normal for the attack. If your unarmed attack or natural weapon attack normally doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity, neither does this attack. If the attack hits, you deal normal damage for your unarmed attack or natural weapon and the spell discharges. If the attack misses, you are still holding the charge
If you hold the charge, you no longer get to make a touch attack to deliver it, instead you must make an unarmed strike or natural attack.
If you use vital strike with an unarmed strike or natural attack, you amplify the unarmed strike or natural attack, not the spell, because the spell is delivered as a part of the attack and basically becomes extra damage dice (ala flaming property).
Trust me, if this worked, I'd be all over it. I made a thread about it awhile ago because Vital Strike would absurdly could on Healers as they could then Vital Strike a Cure Spell.
Think about a 12d8+CL Cure Critical coming your way due to Improved Vital Strike.
On the reverse, think of a 12d8+CL Inflict Critical coming your way via Imp. Vital Strike. Or a 9d8+CL Inflict Serious delivered via a Spell-Storing weapon.
Feats from expansion material can be strong too. If you follow the FAQ nonsense, then Dispel Synergy from Ultimate Combat allows the pit fiend to cast greater dispel magic (ideally via Quicken-SLA) and if they dispel any buffs on their target the target suffers a -2 untyped penalty vs the pit fiend's SLAs, which is effectively a +2 to the DC of your next mass hold monster or trap the soul on that target (possibly after removing any wards that would have guarded against such things).
Penalties always stack. If you take out four buffs from the party spellcaster he is making saves at -8.
It's on page 185/186. And you are correct, I was misreading the part, you can continue to make touch attack instead of an unarmed strike or natural attack.
However, you can't hold the charged of a ranged touch spell:
Ranged Touch Spells in Combat: Some spells allow you to make a ranged touch attack as part of the casting of the spell. These attacks are made as part of the spell and do not require a separate action. Ranged touch attacks provoke an attack of opportunity, even if the spell that causes the attacks was cast defensively. Unless otherwise noted, ranged touch attacks cannot be held until a later turn.
The only ranged spell I know of that you can hold the charge on is freezing sphere which states:
You can refrain from firing the globe after completing the spell, if you wish. Treat this as a touch spell for which you are holding the charge. You can hold the charge for as long as 1 round per level, at the end of which time the freezing sphere bursts centered on you (and you receive no saving throw to resist its effect). Firing the globe in a later round is a standard action.
Even though you can hold the charge, firing the globe is, specifically, a standard action, so you can't vital strike it.
I can't speak for the Witchfire's attacks, but when I made a nearly identical argument a ways back that Vital Strike would work with a Tzitzimitl's eye beam attacks ("it's a natural attack" I said), a game developer told me that it most definitely was not ("it's a supernatural ability, not a natural attack" he said), and that it would not work with Vital Strike.
I imagine the same logic would hold true here.
EDIT: Found it.
... The [Tzitzimitl]'s eye beams can't be enhanced by Vital Strike because using them requires a standard action. Since vital strike requires an attack action (a specific KIND of standard action, and not the one used by this monster to activate its eye beams—see the entry for eye beams under its special attacks), it can't be used at the same time the monster uses a standard action instead to use its eye beams.
It's a hazy distinction, and one that even we editors/developers took a bit to figure out, which is why we've said (erroneously, in my opinion) things like the Jabberwock COULD use Vital Strike on its eye beams.
Honestly, I wish we'd just errata the Vital Strike feat to specifically limit it to attacks with weapons. The "common sense" solution (that a monster's high-damage unusual attack does average damage more or less for it's CR indicating that doubling that just because it has Vital Strike is not the intent of the monster) doesn't seem to work.
Shocking Grasp isn't ranged. Nothing stopping it from getting 60d6 vital strikes if you allow VS for touch attacks.
No, Shocking Grasp isn't ranged, but your original assertion was that a Pit Fiend could Vital Strike a Polar Ray, which it can't.
Personally, I'm all for Vital Strikes on melee touch attacks, many GM's probably won't feel the same way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I can't speak for the Witchfire's attacks, but when I made a nearly identical argument a ways back that Vital Strike would work with a Tzitzimitl's eye beam attacks ("it's a natural attack" I said), a game developer told me that it most definitely was not ("it's a supernatural ability, not a natural attack" he said), and that it would not work with Vital Strike.
I imagine the same logic would hold true here.
EDIT: Found it.
... The [Tzitzimitl]'s eye beams can't be enhanced by Vital Strike because using them requires a standard action. Since vital strike requires an attack action (a specific KIND of standard action, and not the one used by this monster to activate its eye beams—see the entry for eye beams under its special attacks), it can't be used at the same time the monster uses a standard action instead to use its eye beams.
It's a hazy distinction, and one that even we editors/developers took a bit to figure out, which is why we've said (erroneously, in my opinion) things like the Jabberwock COULD use Vital Strike on its eye beams.
Honestly, I wish we'd just errata the Vital Strike feat to specifically limit it to attacks with weapons. The "common sense" solution (that a monster's high-damage unusual attack does average damage more or less for it's CR indicating that doubling that just because it has Vital Strike is not the intent of the monster) doesn't seem to work.
To be fair, those eye beams (Jabberwock and Tzitzimitl) both specifically call out being standard actions, while the Witchfire has no such language. If there is a monster with a touch attack ability that specifically says it's a standard action to use, it can't be combined with Vital Strike. If it doesn't have such language, it can be combined.
So, just to be clear, you can use cure spells with the Vital Strike line?
So, just to be clear, you can use cure spells with the Vital Strike line?
Maybe, it depends on whether or not held touch range spells qualify. I'm guessing most GMs are just going to say No to that though, so good luck getting it to work.
Shocking Grasp isn't ranged. Nothing stopping it from getting 60d6 vital strikes if you allow VS for touch attacks.No, Shocking Grasp isn't ranged, but your original assertion was that a Pit Fiend could Vital Strike a Polar Ray, which it can't.
Personally, I'm all for Vital Strikes on melee touch attacks, many GM's probably won't feel the same way.
A 60d6 shocking grasp or 60d6 vampiric touch would be almost as bad.
If you allow VS for any melee touch attacks, I can just see a warrior ghost doing 80d6 damage every single phase. And the only defense is being immortal...
You do realize you need BAB +16 to qualify for Greater Vital Strike right? You'd have to be something like a Magus 12/Fighter 7 in order to get BAB 16 and have a feat slot open without retraining.
A Bloodrager might be able to pull it off, I understand they are full BAB with 4th level casting.
I'm unsure where the problem begins...
Vital strike is for weapon attacks.
Weapons are manufactured and natural.
Touch Attacks: Touching an opponent with a touch spell is considered to be an armed attack and therefore does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
Considered armed and therefore you don't provoke by touching.
Seems clear to me you can't vital strike a touch spell.As for holding your charge and natural attacking, the correct interpretation has already been stated. Your vital strike affects the natural attack, not the spell.
Comon guys we have fighter threads to argue about the usability of vital strike in. Don't turn it into another caster feat.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Comon guys we have fighter threads to argue about the usability of vital strike in. Don't turn it into another caster feat.
To be fair though, it... kinda already is. The character that gets the most out of Vital Strike is a wildshaping druid.
Too late. Already Vital Striking people with shocking grasp ;)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Holding the Charge: If you don't discharge the spell in the round when you cast the spell, you can hold the charge indefinitely. You can continue to make touch attacks round after round. If you touch anything or anyone while holding a charge, even unintentionally, the spell discharges. If you cast another spell, the touch spell dissipates. You can touch one friend as a standard action or up to six friends as a full-round action. Alternatively, you may make a normal unarmed attack (or an attack with a natural weapon) while holding a charge. In this case, you aren't considered armed and you provoke attacks of opportunity as normal for the attack. If your unarmed attack or natural weapon attack normally doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity, neither does this attack. If the attack hits, you deal normal damage for your unarmed attack or natural weapon and the spell discharges. If the attack misses, you are still holding the charge.
Given what's written here, yeah, it looks as though you could. After casting the spell it becomes just a melee touch attack (assuming you held the spell) and sans targeting a friend, doesn't require a special action.
Given that weapon-like spells, such as touch attacks and rays are treated as weapons from the combat rules...
Attack Roll
An attack roll represents your attempt to strike your opponent on your turn in a round. When you make an attack roll, you roll a d20 and add your attack bonus. (Other modifiers may also apply to this roll.) If your result equals or beats the target's Armor Class, you hit and deal damage.
Automatic Misses and Hits: A natural 1 (the d20 comes up 1) on an attack roll is always a miss. A natural 20 (the d20 comes up 20) is always a hit. A natural 20 is also a threat—a possible critical hit (see the attack action).
Attack BonusYour attack bonus with a melee weapon is the following:
Base attack bonus + Strength modifier + size modifier
With a ranged weapon, your attack bonus is the following:
Base attack bonus + Dexterity modifier + size modifier + range penalty
Damage
If your attack succeeds, you deal damage. The type of weapon used determines the amount of damage you deal.
Damage reduces a target's current hit points.
Minimum Damage: If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of nonlethal damage.
Strength Bonus: When you hit with a melee or thrown weapon, including a sling, add your Strength modifier to the damage result. A Strength penalty, but not a bonus, applies on damage rolls made with a bow that is not a composite bow.
Off-Hand Weapon: When you deal damage with a weapon in your off hand, you add only 1/2 your Strength bonus. If you have a Strength penalty, the entire penalty applies.
Wielding a Weapon Two-Handed: When you deal damage with a weapon that you are wielding two-handed, you add 1-1/2 times your Strength bonus (Strength penalties are not multiplied). You don't get this higher Strength bonus, however, when using a light weapon with two hands.
Multiplying Damage: Sometimes you multiply damage by some factor, such as on a critical hit. Roll the damage (with all modifiers) multiple times and total the results.
Note: When you multiply damage more than once, each multiplier works off the original, unmultiplied damage. So if you are asked to double the damage twice, the end result is three times the normal damage.
Exception: Extra damage dice over and above a weapon's normal damage are never multiplied.
Ability Damage: Certain creatures and magical effects can cause temporary or permanent ability damage (a reduction to an ability score).
By the combat section, if an attack requires an attack roll and you're rolling damage, then it's a weapon. There are no rules for non-weapon attacks that require attack rolls. Weapon-attacks require attack rolls, can score critical hits, miss on a 1, and you generally roll damage after the attack. It even mentions magical effects as a thing that can be part of a weapon attack.
Which isn't surprising. There's nothing stopping you from vital striking with flame blade or produce flame for example.
Shadow Sorcerer CR 5
There can be a lot of oddities when it comes to holding the charge. One that I think is pretty funny is incorporeal sorcerers. For example, let's say you have a CR 3 shadow, and you add a 4 levels of sorcerer to the shadow. Sorcerers get Eschew Materials for free so the shadow doesn't have to worry about dealing with corporeal spell components.
Now that shadow can cast a touch spell, such as shocking grasp or chill touch and hold the charge. That same shadow can deliver the touch spell through its natural touch attack, and if it doesn't hit, then the spell is not discharged.
So our 4th level shadow sorcerer casts shocking grasp and holds the charge. It then catches some poor fool unawares and charges him during the surprise round. He rolls his natural touch attack at +2, hits, deals 1d6 Strength damage + 4d6 electricity damage. On his next turn, he 5 ft. steps into the ground without provoking and casts shocking grasp again, holding the charge...
Back on the witchfire,
I might be thinking this differently than all of you, but to me that witchfire bolt is a supernatural ability that mimics spells, i dont see it as a natural attack (specially because it isnt called so), and i dont think it should double by increasing the witchfire's size.
Similar to how we dont increase a fireball's damage when a caster gets enlarged.
But of course, the creature wasnt designed with increased size in mind, so i dont know.
Example, should a Balor with Giant Template applied once cause 200 points of fire/unholy damage when they die?
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you really want to get creative with manipulating the CR system, I think it's abundantly clear that it can be done.
My "favorite" CR exploit involves Leadership - technically the cohort and followers would not be worth XP since they are now just a feat ability of the "main" villain, just as if they were summoned monsters.
An encounter to make your players justifiably rage quit your game:
Please don't do the thing in the spoiler.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you really want to get creative with manipulating the CR system, I think it's abundantly clear that it can be done.
My "favorite" CR exploit involves Leadership - technically the cohort and followers would not be worth XP since they are now just a feat ability of the "main" villain, just as if they were summoned monsters.
An encounter to make your players justifiably rage quit your game:
** spoiler omitted **Please don't do the thing in the spoiler.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I dunno... since the BBEG isn't actually in the encounter, they should get XP for what they did fight.
This is a bit late, but whatever, considering how far off track this topic is.
Before everyone makes NPCs take warrior levels instead of fighter remember that taking a PC class gives you better stats and a possible favored class bonus.
I dunno... since the BBEG isn't actually in the encounter, they should get XP for what they did fight.
This.
This is a bit late, but whatever, considering how far off track this topic is.
Before everyone makes NPCs take warrior levels instead of fighter remember that taking a PC class gives you better stats and a possible favored class bonus.
Each character begins play with a single favored class of his choosing—typically, this is the same class as the one he chooses at 1st level. Whenever a character gains a level in his favored class, he receives either + 1 hit point or + 1 skill rank. The choice of favored class cannot be changed once the character is created, and the choice of gaining a hit point or a skill rank each time a character gains a level (including his first level) cannot be changed once made for a particular level. Prestige classes (see Prestige Classes) can never be a favored class.
NPC classes could be your favored class.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you really want to get creative with manipulating the CR system, I think it's abundantly clear that it can be done.
My "favorite" CR exploit involves Leadership - technically the cohort and followers would not be worth XP since they are now just a feat ability of the "main" villain, just as if they were summoned monsters.
An encounter to make your players justifiably rage quit your game:
** spoiler omitted **Please don't do the thing in the spoiler.
Honestly the only thing that would bother me, as a player, from this encounter would be the fact the GM hasn't banned Antagonize.
Up here in Alaska, Antagonize doesn't exist unless people from the states start bringing up stupid Sarah Palin jokes.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Up here in Alaska, Antagonize doesn't exist unless people from the states start bringing up stupid Sarah Palin jokes.
That's funny, I always considered Alaska part of the states. :P
That said, it wouldn't be the first time a state was embarrassed to be seen in public with the family. XD
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Up here in Alaska, Antagonize doesn't exist unless people from the states start bringing up stupid Sarah Palin jokes.That's funny, I always considered Alaska part of the states. :P
That said, it wouldn't be the first time a state was embarrassed to be seen in public with the family. XD
Saying 'the states' is easier than saying 'the continguous 48 states'. We're not embarrassed about Sarah, most people up here know that Palin was basically the common woman with common woman issues that got brought to international light.
What we are annoyed about, is the frequent jokes about 'seeing Russia from our house*', due to the Saturday Night Live crew. Some people legitimately think she said that, and not that it was a skit on SNL.
*Funnily enough, there are two places in Alaska where you actually can see Russia from your house.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Meh... newbies. We have Gotland, a huge island off the Swedish east coast. Some few tens of thousand people live there... and some of them actually say "swedes" when talking about "mainlanders".
To be fair to the people making Sarah Palin jokes she did say you can see Russia from Alaska, which while being true was used as her foreign policy credentials repeatedly. Not as funny I know but still.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As Redliska noted, what she did say was "you can see Russia from Alaska". The obvious counter-argument was made by Robin Williams: "I can see San Quentin from my back yard, but that doesn't qualify me on prison reform". IE geographical proximity doesn't necessarily mean competence.
It also implied that she apparently didn't have all that much to contribute when interacting with the countries you can't see from Alaska. Which, y'know, is most of them.
While I disagree (at times vehemently) with her policies, I think you can make a fair point in that she is an inexperienced politician who got thrown into the deep end of the pool and she was really, really not ready to go swimming yet. She got a lot of undeserved flak.
That said, the idea of Palin as president terrifies me.
Ever seen Iron Sky?
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
CR 17 Mariliths are pretty severely underpowered. Much like the Balor they're kind of all over the place. They have a few decent SLAs but not enough, or a good enough selection, to really be competent. Meanwile they kind of suck in melee. They've got a lot of attacks which accounts for something, but their attack bonuses with those attacks are really bad for their level. Their highest is +24. By 14th level (when the Marilith is APL+3 CR) with only the following items: +3 mithral full plate, +3 heavy shield, +2 amulet of natural armor, +2 ring of protection, and a +3 Dexterity modifier (so maybe a +2 Dex item), you're sitting on 10 + 12 + 5 + 2 + 2 + 3 = AC 34. That's not even trying. My 8th level party have ACs in the 30s when they start using consumables. At 14th level, this is being extremely conservative in the defenses department (assuming only the items you can purchase easily in a metropolis without rolling).
A few simple long-duration buffs (such as shield of faith or barkskin) or other methods of improving defenses (such as a cheap ioun stone) can easily push ACs into the low 40s at this level. That's not counting class features like a Barbarian's beast totem or a Paladin's smite evil (and her Charisma should be noticeably more than a mere +5 at this level). Nor is it counting feats like Dodge, Combat Expertise, or anything like that (which aren't necessary).
So assuming that her opponent isn't trying very hard with AC, has no other defenses (no DR for example) she has a 55% chance to hit with her primary attacks, putting her offense at about 50 damage per round from her swords, and another average of 5 damage from her tail slap, with about a 50% chance that they might have to make a DC 25 Fort save or get knocked unconscious.
Even a squishy wizard could tank this leader of demonic armies. A single casting of stoneskin or worse, communal stoneskin would shut her down. Even if all of her attacks hit with 100% accuracy, she'd deal about 100 damage, inflicting about 30 points of damage with her swords and the rest getting nullified by the DR, with about 40 points of damage absorbtion left over to laugh at her when you walk away and eat the AoO.
Her HP, AC, and saves are pretty meh too. She's got double treasure though, so at least we could dress up her defenses a bit and make her not quite a joke in that sense. Unfortnately, to get her anywhere near the sort of demonic super-heroine she's described as being, the kind worthy of leading armies of demons, we'd probably need to exploit consumables and such too fiercely.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
w.r.t. Vital Strike and touch attacks
The Colour out of Space (note the "u" in colour) as originally presented in Wake of the Watcher had Vital Strike with Disintegrating Touch.
In d20pfsrd, Vital Strike has been replaced with Weapon Finesse, though it makes little sense to me. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/oozes/colour-out-of-spac e)
I'm not quite sure where the Colour got it's +15 on the touch attack in the first place, but presumably with Weapon Finesse that should be +22.
I don't know where the revision in d20pfsrd comes from, BTW.
w.r.t. Ashiel's improved Witchfire, I can't see what the problem is. It can do a million d6 damage if it wants - at that sort of level, having an obliterating attack isn't unusual. The problem with the thing is that it's a one-trick pony; anything with fire immunity can ignore all those d6s and just deal with its summoned wisps (if it gets them).
Richard
@Ashiel
Teleport and telekinesis, a marilith has better abilities to be fighting in range, all those arms are just for show. :P
|
@Ashiel:
I dunno, with a CL 12 Scroll of Divine Favor and a Belt of Str +4, all those attacks go to +29, and it is 6 attacks at that level. Toss on a Scroll of Shield and a Mithral Kikko +2 and that's 41 AC. And all that is only two scrolls. And ups her average to-hit to 80% and her damage per hit by 4 per hit...so that ups average damage quite a bit.
Oh, and as mentioned, Telekinesis. That's always brutal. With the Divine Favor scroll mentioned above and a Headband of Charisma +2, she can make 15 attacks at +27 for 2d6+3 per attack. Assuming she keeps a bunch of Greatswords in a Bag of Holding for this purpose, anyway. And why wouldn't she?
DR is still a problem for her to some degree, admittedly, but that's true of anything with a large number of small attacks.
Another version you could go with is the one with an AoMF +2 plus the stuff mentioned above, a Scroll of Strong Jaw and ditching the weapons entirely. That'll be +29 on each attack, but each will do 3d6+12 damage. That's pretty solid. It'll also jack up the tail. Better if you move her Feats around.
And again, all that with two or three scrolls at most.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
As a note on the Marilith thing, in Wrath of the Righteous, there's a Marilith there that basically gets 12 attacks because she's two headed and twelve armed. Suffers from the entire problem Ashiel noted...she's probably not even going to be able to hit the PC's in that module.
Whereas the elder giant prisoner held in her prison can likely butcher her because it does enough damage to get past her DR, and she doesn't, in return.
==Aelryinth
@Ashiel:
I dunno, with a CL 12 Scroll of Divine Favor and a Belt of Str +4, all those attacks go to +29, and it is 6 attacks at that level. Toss on a Scroll of Shield and a Mithral Kikko +2 and that's 41 AC. And all that is only two scrolls. And ups her average to-hit to 80% and her damage per hit by 4 per hit...so that ups average damage quite a bit.
Oh, and as mentioned, Telekinesis. That's always brutal. With the Divine Favor scroll mentioned above and a Headband of Charisma +2, she can make 15 attacks at +27 for 2d6+3 per attack. Assuming she keeps a bunch of Greatswords in a Bag of Holding for this purpose, anyway. And why wouldn't she?
DR is still a problem for her to some degree, admittedly, but that's true of anything with a large number of small attacks.
Another version you could go with is the one with an AoMF +2 plus the stuff mentioned above, a Scroll of Strong Jaw and ditching the weapons entirely. That'll be +29 on each attack, but each will do 3d6+12 damage. That's pretty solid. It'll also jack up the tail. Better if you move her Feats around.
And again, all that with two or three scrolls at most.
That's more or less what I was getting at with the consumable thing. With sufficient out-of-monster buffing she could be a viable threat. Her SLAs aren't that special either. See, she only has a +23 bonus to hit with telekinesis for hurling stuff, and it only deals up to 15d6 damage (52.5 average). Unless you want to attempt the (often considered dubious) act of carrying around 375 lbs. worth of colossal arrows (156.25 colossal sized arrows) to throw, but if you do that, you're probably not doing much teleporting.
As for using TK for other purposes, the save DC on it and the CMB is terrible at this level. Situationally useful (depending on how many stage hazards like lava pits vs how many rogues are in the party) but not very useful.
Compare to an encounter with a pair of Nalfeshnee and a smattering of other demons (4 nabasu + 7 shadow demons). Far more frightening. Nalfeshnee by themselves are more frightening than a marilith. Their free-action AoE that has the same saving throw DC as the marilith's single-target TK threatens to daze enemies for 1d10 rounds (that's 1d10 rounds of doing nothing but getting your ass beat). A little bit of fear spammed means unless you've got immunity to fear, you are going to be wetting your pants (as in shaken->frightened->panicked) in short order.
The Maralith, to me, feels incomplete. She does not live up to her name as a general of demons, nor a queen of them as they are described. She's kind of a joke who could easily be vanquished by a smattering of her underlings, and laughed at by adventurers. Now if she had SLAs that allowed her to use things like divine favor or divine power, sure, she'd be scarier. But as is, her defenses are weaksauce, she's terrible as a hit and run monster, and her martial prowess is only worthwhile with significant buffing that isn't really viable without going over her CR budget, or being cute and giving her low level bard minions or something to use inspire courage + heroism on her, while keeping their CRs silly-low.
There are much better demons to play the hit and run game, and for the most iconic feature of the maralith - her swordplay - to be described by Shadowkras as "just for show" while having generic demon abilities (that aren't even very good on her) cited as her strengths proves that she's just kind of sad.
Tossing a couple levels of antipaladin on her would at least help her out in the defensive department, and the heroic ability boost combined with the +2 BAB would go a long way towards making her somewhat competent. However, wearing armor is something that's incredibly difficult for a maralith to do without grounding herself as she's only allowed 50 lbs. worth of equipment and still be able to teleport. She's large size which means that the weight of her swords and armor is doubled.
6 large longswords = 48 lbs. Okay well...****.
Yeah after double-checking her gear, mariliths suck extra hard, because they have double treasure values and no way to actually use it. It's viciously hard to fit 64,000 gp worth of anything into 2 lbs.
|
|
Tossing a couple levels of antipaladin on her would at least help her out in the defensive department, and the heroic ability boost combined with the +2 BAB would go a long way towards making her somewhat competent. However, wearing armor is something that's incredibly difficult for a maralith to do without grounding herself as she's only allowed 50 lbs. worth of equipment and still be able to teleport. She's large size which means that the weight of her swords and armor is doubled.
6 large longswords = 48 lbs. Okay well...****.
Well, Handy Haversacks and Bags of Holding exist for a reason...
And she may only have a +23 to hit with telekinesis, but with 15 large-sized Greatswords in a Bag of Holding, she can do 45d6 damage total. That unambiguously works, and is nasty if she can jack that to-hit up a bit.
I had so much fun with all the swords on the wall when people invaded the Nocticulan Brothel with Shadow Demons in it...
Hm... Making the swords Mithral would reduce the weight to 24 lb, but that much mithral would get expensive.
Six gloves of storing? =D
Drawing objects takes time. I sure as hell hope my NPCs have something better to do than draw 15 swords out of a bag in the middle of combat.
EDIT: Of course, you still run into the problem that swords + bags = greater than 50 lbs., effectively rendering her a slow landbound wussy.
EDIT: As per Kudaku's suggestion, you could burn 12,000 gp of her wealth to make all of her swords out of mithral, which would give her 26 lbs worth of equipment to toy around with. Even with a handy haversack, retrieving an item from the bag is a move-action.
|
In defense of the Marilith, CR isn't just about damage output (and most monsters have an AC pegged at about 10+3/4s bab at CR).
The SLAs are useful for stuff besides just 'move directly at enemy, engage, hit hit hit'
Greater teleport and blade barrier allow for the marilith to split the field, and then move in to engage enemies piecemeal, although rogues and monks will likely bypass the barrier with no trouble.
Also, the grab and weapon attacks can be direted at whatever target is nearby. While its possibly for people at this level (assuming the boss is a CR+4, this means 13th by my estimation) to manage ACs in the thirties, its still going to hit the squishier folks what don't want a constrict most of the time, and its CMB is respectable enough that it can blow some of its sword attacks on disarms.
Also, the CR takes into account potentially 1-4 hezrou, who have their own fun stuff going for them (chaos hammer, unholy blight, and nausea); 1 nalfeshee (call lightning, greater dispel, call lightning and its own +23 to hit (3d8+11 bite attack), also a 20% chance (1-5) of pulling in an entirely other marilith.
CR needs to take into account the intended tactics of the monster as well as its capabilities. Its one of the reasons I also dislike low CR monsters that are directed as if they have Ender Wiggin driving them.
CR needs to take into account the intended tactics of the monster as well as its capabilities. Its one of the reasons I also dislike low CR monsters that are directed as if they have Ender Wiggin driving them.
The summoning has a chance of failure, if the extra summons were intended to be part of th CR, then she would summon at 100%. Which, IMO, a "demon general" should.