Animated whips

[Lynos]

Hey guys

I'm preparing an encounter with potentially one or more animated whips that attack the PC's. It will be a combination of regular whip and Scorpion Whip. One to grab/grapple and one to give damage.

I have searched everywhere on how this should be done and came up with something like this:

Animated whip (small)

Reach: 15 ft
AC: 16
HP: 21
Melee slam +3
Special Ability: Grab (1 constriction point)

Animated Scorpion Whip (small)

Reach: 15 feet
AC: 16
HP: 21
Melee slam +3 (1d3 damage)
Special ability: Additional attack (1 Constriction Point)

Can you give me some feedback or let me know if I'm doing this right? This is basically improviesed and cobbled together from exisiting rules. I could not find anything specific regarding animated whips. Off the bat I can tell you that 21 hit points for a whip feel like a lot to me. But "small" is the best approximation I could go with. I don't think an average whip is "tiny".

Also, if the whips are flying through the air, would that necessitate a -4 on all attack rolls from the PC's?

Thanks.

[dragonhunterq]

A one handed weapon is treated as one size category smaller than the creature it is designed for, so small is correct for a whip,
but a scorpion whip would be tiny as it is a light weapon.

Scorpion whips do not have the 15' reach of the whip.

Strictly an animated object has it's own reach, not the reach of the weapon, but it's a neat effect. It is a bit of a boost, but I don't think it's worth increasing CR for, especially if you make it so they don't threaten.

AC for the whip should be 15.

Hardness for whips is probably less than the standard 5.

There is no inherent penalty for attacking flying creatures.

Looks good though.

[Lynos]

Thank you for the link. I missed that.

The d20pfsrd lists Small Animated Object as having AC 16. I cross referenced their numbers with the Bestiary and they seem to match. Am I getting something wrong?

I am giving the animated whips range as if they were weapons because it just makes sensee to me in context.
According to Ultimate Combat, Scorpion Whip has no reach at all. Come again?
It's also seem to be cateogrized now as a gladiator weapon. Maybe if I consider the animated version as if it's being weilded by someone with the appropriate proficency then it will have the reach ability. It doesn't make sense to me to have a whip without a reach. It's a whip!

I also made a mistake with the hit points, it should be 21 and 5, respectively, with Hardness of 5, yeah.

[dragonhunterq]

AC16 is right, I forgot the modifiers (-4 str/+2dex) for changing size.

[Pizza Lord]

I would also consider making them immune to bludgeoning damage. It's hard to destroy a whip with a hammer or beat it to pieces with a staff.

[Rajnish Umbra, Shadow Caller]

Pizza Lord wrote:

I would also consider making them immune to bludgeoning damage. It's hard to destroy a whip with a hammer or beat it to pieces with a staff.

It's also hard to poke them apart with pointy sticks. I wouldn't make them immune, though - just DR 5/Slashing or something.

[Pizza Lord]

I suppose you could, but that conflicts with Hardness 5. Usually a creature will have DR, an object will have Hardness. Even if they have both, I can't imagine they would stack, and the Hardness 5 would just take precedence anyhow (but that doesn't mean that just because you hit a rope with a hammer for 6 damage that it should be damaged). It would be a very rare case where you would use both. In this case, an animated object more closely resembles an inanimate object in terms of constitution and such so probably give it the same resistance to damage as an object would have to being sundered.

Obviously it gets weird... a magic missile can't hurt a candlestick at all... but it becomes animated and suddenly it can. But that's magic afterall. In the case of mundane, physical applications, I think keeping it at its typical resistance to certain damage is better than tacking on DR, which then leads to wandering if they stack or not. Better to just stick with saying it's an ineffective weapon against that target.

I agree with you though, you shouldn't be able to pierce it apart, but it already sounded like he was worried it was too powerful at 21 hit points, so I didn't think he wanted to make it even harder (depending on the PCs' weapon loadout.)

[Lynos]

All the PC's use slashing weapons, and there's an NPC spellcaster with spells such as Burning Hands.

To me, the jump from 5 HP for the Scorpion Whip, to 21 HP for the regular whip, seems a little extreme. It doesn't really make sense to me. How do you justify it? The PC's can take quite a while to destory a 21 HP animated whip with 5 Hardness (they are all 1st level).

[Pizza Lord]

Thankfully you can always adjust the hit points. I mean, you can just assume the whip has been damaged a bit or taken some wear and tear. As animated objects they don't heal themselves, so depending on how long they've been around, it's perfectly reasonable. Not that you need a reason as a GM to set a creature's hit points.