Black Magga Energy Draining Bite???

[bonebrah]

Am I reading right that Black Magga bite does 2d4 level drain bite and it becomes permanent if failing the fort save after 24 hours? At the level the PC's encounter it's highly unlikely to miss so basically guaranteed avg 5 levels drained on two players.

How would I calculate the DC of the fort save? CL of BM at 15? That's still pretty rough. Someone is definitely losing perma levels unless I'm looking up the wrong spell and or not reading how it works correctly. Thanks ahead of time for the clarification.

[blahpers]

Not sure where you got those statistics...?

The energy drain from Black Magga's bite bestows two temporary negative levels (four on a critical hit), not 2d4. Each negative level thus bestowed grants 5 temporary hit points to Black Maggga, though the temporary hit points from multiple hits do not stack. For each negative level so gained, after 24 hours, the victim makes a DC 22 Fortitude saving throw. Success means the negative level goes away. Failure means the negative level becomes permanent (and thus somewhat harder to remove).

Black Magga is a beast, and the PCs aren't intended to be much of a threat to her. Play her according to the tactics in her stat block. Beyond that, make sure to play up just how monstrous this thing is and how outclassed they are. If you want to play it safe, spread her tentacle attacks around, including having them grab a couple of hapless NPCS, and save the bite for the party tank. Hopefully, they take the hint and spend their actions protecting townsfolk, but it's quite possible one or more PCs gets a couple of temporary levels. They should seek a lesser restoration quickly before it becomes permanent; otherwise, it'll cost them a bit to remove it. There's a decent chance a party member already has access to the spell; if so, there's plenty of time to cast it a couple of times before things get difficult.

More problematic is if Black Magga gets lucky and lands a critical hit--between the 4d8+26 bite damage and the 20 hit points lost to negative levels, a PC might be dropped in one shot if they aren't particularly hardy. That should give the party a healthy vendetta against the thing--nothing motivates players like revenge!

Good luck! And remember, it's only a few rounds. What's the worst that can happen?

[bonebrah]

Energy drain is straight from the CRB - 2d4 levels. However, I see now that I simply had to read a bit more to see that "special attacks" energy drain says (2 levels, dc 22).

I simply looked up Energy Drain in the crb because I didn't know what it did. Thanks for the response and the link to the tv tropes! Neat stuff!

[blahpers]

Let us know how it turns out! And if the worst should happen, well, there's always the RotRL obituaries thread.... ; )