Based on stat block alone who is the most powerful? Most scary to go up against as a player? Would win in a fight against other CR 30 entities? etc.
For reference the The CR 30 Entities Are:
- Baalzebul
- Baba Yaga
- Cernunnos
- Charon
- Cthulhu
- Leviathan
- Mephistopheles
- Mordiggian
- Nocticula
- Oliphaunt of Jandelay
- Pazuzu
- Tawil at'Umr
- Lord Varklops
It depends.
Baalzebul has great defenses against everything except AOE electric damage. A crew of blue dragons can toast him, everyone else will struggle hard.
Nocticula isn't super dangerous in physical/spell, but her aura and dominate abilities are a high probability "I win" button against anyone without a hugely boosted save against mind affecting. She can take control of and coup-de-grace most of the other CR30s with a decent if small chance of success. Just teleport in, see if it works, leave if it doesn't.
All of these except Baalzebul and probably Baba Yaga are vulnerable to a tricked out level 20 spellcaster who focuses on Greater Possession.
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All of them have "weak points" that can be "exploited" to varying degrees.
But my personal pick is Baba Yaga.
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I concur with Baba Yaga. She's a 20th level witch with 10 mythic tiers in the most broken mythic path. If played to the hilt she should be practically unbeatable by anything not equally magically adept.
I mean, per her write up she not only knows all witch spells, but all sorcerer/wizards spells and arcane versions of most divine spells. So if you change up her spells prepared from the printed version, it can get silly.
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Baba Yaga is kinda cheating because PC class and mythic abilities are much stronger than monster equivalents :D
Otherwise, I'd say which every has best combination of mythic quickened spellikes, other mythic spell likes like mythic wish and mythic timestop, defenses that prevent most stun lock sort of deal and special abilities that are hard to avoid. Tawil at'Umr and Charon for example have some really hard to avoid quickened spell likes, mythic disintegration and mythic circle of death for example. Former can even be augmented.
What's with these lightweights?
Lucifer (devil)... CR39. Tome of Horrors Complete.
I think everyone is overlooking the sheer power of Cthulhu's passive abilities. Good luck keeping your character (even at 20th level) alive and sane long enough to kill him.
I also back the Black Butterfly, her defensive capabilities are so strong that she is nearly unkillable.
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Squealy Nord. He just keeps coming back!
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Technically Lucifer isn't Pathfinder monster even as 3rd party monster though, he is from older versions and Tome of Horror's pathfinder version just updates the older monsters statblock to Pathfinder :p
Either way, I think its reasonable to assume when you refer to "Pathfinder" you refer to 1st party products.
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Didn't we just have this subject a couple months ago?
I mean, I could personally write a monster that is absolutely un-killable.
It could be something akin to Caine's stat block in Vampire the Masquerade (which only said "You lose").
Just because I can make a clearly overpowered monster that breaks the rules with special abilities doesn't mean it's fair to have a comparison of it.
In general, this forum primarily talks about and discusses 1st party content, as there are dedicated forums for 3rd party content.
It should be noted that nearly every major contributor/creator/editor involved in creating Paizo published Pathfinder material has also been involved in publishing third party Pathfinder material. The quality of said material, from either Paizo or Third Parties varies, as does applicability to any particular table, what is perfect for one may vary from game breaking to "trap" level useless to others. Blanket statements tend to be facile and puerile to the point of uselessness in both meaningful and even meaning "challenged" discussions.
Perhaps also adding why you think a being/monster is dangerous would be more interesting than a simple list. What about it puts it on your list?
I also back the Black Butterfly, her defensive capabilities are so strong that she is nearly unkillable.Tawil at'Umr seems to have the edge in terms of how little being killed actually impairs it, though.
"Kill Yog-Sothoth first" is definitely the hardest "permanent death" solution, but considering how large the universe is, killing the current one and having the next one reappear in a random location elsewhere" is probably indistinguishable from death for almost everyone.
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What is 3rd party but dlc to the main pathfinder game?Umm, but Destiny 2 DLCs are by same company AND same developers.
3rd party products very explicitly aren't "official" in same
manner, they are licensed.Or in other words, they aren't "Pathfinder" products, they are "Pathfinder compatible" products.
DLC is what all Paizo products after the core rulebook are.
3rd Party is mods some dude uploaded to a file sharing site.
"Kill Yog-Sothoth first" is definitely the hardest "permanent death" solution, but considering how large the universe is, killing the current one and having the next one reappear in a random location elsewhere" is probably indistinguishable from death for almost everyone.At-will interplanetary teleport makes that less reassuring than it might otherwise be.
"The replacement Tawil at’Umr typically does not reappear where it was killed, and it usually does not seek revenge against those who slew its predecessor. Usually." is one of my favourite bits of description in all the bestiaries; makes it sound like the most important part of killing Tawil at'Umr is somehow to do so without annoying it, which, Great Old One inscrutability as get-out clause aside, seems like a really nice challenge to throw at players and see what they come up with.
I think we have to consider the role this particular CR 30 Great Old One would have in a campaign, if it *really* wants to be somewhere, then "killing it" is never going to be the right answer since it will just come back. But this is just a signpost from the GM that "there is another solution" or "you can't really win here."
But if you really want the solution to be "go fight the thing" then you just follow the "usually" clause and have it be distracted by something else.
I figure "it's impossible for the PCs to kill this thing for good" is just a function of "this thing is an avatar for a deity."
One I wonder about is that in order to kill Baba Yaga forever you have to "find her death"... what does that even mean? I get that it means "kill her once, then go on another quest to get the means to kill her forever" but "finding one's death and putting it back in them somehow" is pretty abstract.
"Kill Yog-Sothoth first" is definitely the hardest "permanent death" solution, but considering how large the universe is, killing the current one and having the next one reappear in a random location elsewhere" is probably indistinguishable from death for almost everyone.At-will interplanetary teleport makes that less reassuring than it might otherwise be.
"The replacement Tawil at’Umr typically does not reappear where it was killed, and it usually does not seek revenge against those who slew its predecessor. Usually." is one of my favourite bits of description in all the bestiaries; makes it sound like the most important part of killing Tawil at'Umr is somehow to do so without annoying it, which, Great Old One inscrutability as get-out clause aside, seems like a really nice challenge to throw at players and see what they come up with.
I think we have to consider the role this particular CR 30 Great Old One would have in a campaign, if it *really* wants to be somewhere, then "killing it" is never going to be the right answer since it will just come back. But this is just a signpost from the GM that "there is another solution" or "you can't really win here."
But if you really want the solution to be "go fight the thing" then you just follow the "usually" clause and have it be distracted by something else.
I figure "it's impossible for the PCs to kill this thing for good" is just a function of "this thing is an avatar for a deity."
One I wonder about is that in order to kill Baba Yaga forever you have to "find her death"... what does that even mean? I get that it means "kill her once, then go on another quest to get the means to kill her forever" but "finding one's death and putting it back in them somehow" is pretty abstract.
In Reign of Winter it's explained to the PCs what it means. But outside of that it seems basically impossible to make it work if you were random adventurers that didn't go on that AP.
Which is kind of the point for Baba Yaga. She's supposed to be incredibly difficult to kill, especially if you don't have the right knowledge.
Yep, agreed. In a souless way of saying it, at a certain level of decent play, you have to work the story to defeat/counter the big bad, not the stat block. This is both more effective and more demanding than murderhobo'ing it.
Yeah.
I mean if I was really wanting to write a truly magnificent ancient evil antagonist to be defeated that wouldn't be so easily defeated as reducing them to 0 hp or otherwise defeating their general stat block. Their defeat would be purely a story related item that would be basically left up to the GM to decide whether or not it was allowed to happen.
Things are much scarier when "killing" them doesn't get rid of them.
"Killing them doesn't stick" for anybody with at least 9 mythic tiers, since they just come back in 24 hours unless they are CDG'd with an artifact. I guess if you're at the level where you're fighting things with 9 mythic tiers you should have an artifact appropriate for this laying around (ideally a weapon and not, like, a drum).
"Killing them doesn't stick" for anybody with at least 9 mythic tiers, since they just come back in 24 hours unless they are CDG'd with an artifact. I guess if you're at the level where you're fighting things with 9 mythic tiers you should have an artifact appropriate for this laying around (ideally a weapon and not, like, a drum).
Works great for improvised weapon builds.
"Killing them doesn't stick" for anybody with at least 9 mythic tiers, since they just come back in 24 hours unless they are CDG'd with an artifact. I guess if you're at the level where you're fighting things with 9 mythic tiers you should have an artifact appropriate for this laying around (ideally a weapon and not, like, a drum).
See that's a problem though. If it has explicit rules for it, you can kill it. It might be challenging, but it could theoretically be done.
With things like "catch Baba Yaga's death and return it to her body" you have a hard time even beginning to know what that means or where it would be. That's pretty much the domain of "if the GM wants this to happen at all" then you can do it, and if they don't you can't even start.
Players: We look for Baba Yaga's death!
GM: Where?
Players: Do we have any clues?
GM: Nope, good luck.
Unless you're playing an AP where the relevant information is defined and so is how it can be researched."Killing them doesn't stick" for anybody with at least 9 mythic tiers, since they just come back in 24 hours unless they are CDG'd with an artifact. I guess if you're at the level where you're fighting things with 9 mythic tiers you should have an artifact appropriate for this laying around (ideally a weapon and not, like, a drum).See that's a problem though. If it has explicit rules for it, you can kill it. It might be challenging, but it could theoretically be done.
With things like "catch Baba Yaga's death and return it to her body" you have a hard time even beginning to know what that means or where it would be. That's pretty much the domain of "if the GM wants this to happen at all" then you can do it, and if they don't you can't even start.
Players: We look for Baba Yaga's death!
GM: Where?
Players: Do we have any clues?
GM: Nope, good luck.
Even the AP doesn't give you any way to research it. It's a completely arbitrary location of Baba Yaga's own choosing.
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Yeah, in the AP Baba Yaga basically guides you to location of it, but presumably after the AP she hides it in a new location. But considering that original location of it was essentially a needle in haystack(well more like ocean).... Yeah, Baba Yaga is in universe caster who is actually smart in how she hides the important stuff.
Also note that while AP does tell you how to end the Irrisen's winter, it only tells locations of the things. It doesn't actually tell you how players find out the locations of them or how to destroy them(since each of six things needs to be destroyed with different method). That is good highlight of how Baba Yaga's s@~# is really hard to destroy because there is no real way to figure it out without gm straight up telling it to you somehow
"Killing them doesn't stick" for anybody with at least 9 mythic tiers, since they just come back in 24 hours unless they are CDG'd with an artifact. I guess if you're at the level where you're fighting things with 9 mythic tiers you should have an artifact appropriate for this laying around (ideally a weapon and not, like, a drum).See that's a problem though. If it has explicit rules for it, you can kill it. It might be challenging, but it could theoretically be done.
With things like "catch Baba Yaga's death and return it to her body" you have a hard time even beginning to know what that means or where it would be. That's pretty much the domain of "if the GM wants this to happen at all" then you can do it, and if they don't you can't even start.
Players: We look for Baba Yaga's death!
GM: Where?
Players: Do we have any clues?
GM: Nope, good luck.
Egg in a fish in a goat.
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Unless you're playing an AP where the relevant information is defined and so is how it can be researched."Killing them doesn't stick" for anybody with at least 9 mythic tiers, since they just come back in 24 hours unless they are CDG'd with an artifact. I guess if you're at the level where you're fighting things with 9 mythic tiers you should have an artifact appropriate for this laying around (ideally a weapon and not, like, a drum).See that's a problem though. If it has explicit rules for it, you can kill it. It might be challenging, but it could theoretically be done.
With things like "catch Baba Yaga's death and return it to her body" you have a hard time even beginning to know what that means or where it would be. That's pretty much the domain of "if the GM wants this to happen at all" then you can do it, and if they don't you can't even start.
Players: We look for Baba Yaga's death!
GM: Where?
Players: Do we have any clues?
GM: Nope, good luck.
Which would again be up to the GM to actually give you. Just because it's in the book doesn't mean it has to make it to the players.
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Players: We look for Baba Yaga's death!
GM: Where?
Players: Do we have any clues?
GM: Nope, good luck.
That's basically the situation you're in every time you fight a lich, unless there's a Find Phylactery spell I don't know about.