Hello, I have a question about sturztromer with landslide ability that can buried a creature as in an avalanche.
Buried creatures take minor bludgeoning damage each minute, and they potentially take minor cold damage if buried under an avalanche of snow. At the GM's discretion, creatures without a sufficient air pocket could also risk suffocation (Player Core 437). A buried creature is restrained and usually can't free itself.
What is the value for the minor bludgeonig damage ?
Is it enough to suffocate or not ?
Thanks for your future answer.
Yeah, it's a pretty strong ability. At the same time, a Sturztomer has only tremorsense and no regular vision. You defeat it by flying above the ground and shooting it to death (or it runs away).
It funnily enough has a spell to counter flying, but it can't actually use it unless the creature is touching the ground.
To clarify my previous post, because the Struztomer has no regular vision only tremorsense, it is effectively blind to anything not touching the ground. Therefore, it is unable to target anything not touching the ground.
To clarify my previous post, because the Struztomer has no regular vision only tremorsense, it is effectively blind to anything not touching the ground. Therefore, it is unable to target anything not touching the ground.Well, youcouldshould allow it the usual targeting of Hidden targets I guess.
Thing is, the PCs wouldn't count as Hidden.
Hidden says:
A creature that's hidden is only barely perceptible. You know what space it occupies, but little else. Perhaps the creature just moved behind cover and successfully used the Hide action. Your target might be behind a waterfall, where you can see some movement but can't determine an exact location. Maybe you've been blinded or the creature is invisible, but you used the Seek basic action to determine its general location based on hearing alone. Regardless of the specifics, you're off-guard to a hidden creature.
The creature wouldn't even know what square a flying PC was in. The creature could use Seek to try to determine location based on hearing, I guess.
So at the start of an encounter, the creature (after it is attacked presumedly) would use the seek action to try to locate the flying PCs using hearing. They would start as Undetected and a successful Seek would make them Hidden.
So if you're fighting this creature, pack some flying and silence spells . Honestly it will probably just burrow and run away, but it can be pretty easily countered, unless you stumble upon it underground where there isn't room to fly.
Of course at 19th level advanced stealthing and a lot of concealing spells are already in action, which would make the fight trivial if PCs would want to make it so.
That's ultimately my point. If you're high enough level to be bumping into one of these things, chances are you've got the tools to trivialize the fight. It's really as simply as flying and silence. And assuming the PCs can identify that it's blind and only has tremorsense as a precise sense it isn't unreasonable to think the PCs would end there turns by using stealth. Cause yeah, if the creature does locate you and get you on the ground you're going to have a real bad time.
The way I imagine a combat going (because long lasting flight isn't easily available) is the creature will attack the party when they are in contact with the ground. Most likely it moves into the party's squares, and uses Grasping Bites trying to restrain all the enemies. It's a pretty bad start for the party. However, it also means that aside from trying to free themselves it makes sense for the party to recall knowledge against the thing. As a player, I'd say knowing that it is visual blind and only has tremorsense would be the top thing I'd want to recall about it. After that point, it's really a question of can the party free themselves and take appropriate action. Silence isn't necessary, it just trivializes the encounter when combined with flying. Silence isn't one of those spells you prepare, but it's great in a wand or scrolls. Still, if you can get flying going using stealth so the monster is wasting actions trying to find people will be very effective.
Conversely if the party knows they're going after a Sturztromer and does any preparation they are likely to be flying and have silence ready to go when needed. Trivializing the encounter from the beginning, if the party can find it. Because honestly the thing is most likely to stay burrowing through the ground.
However, it also means that aside from trying to free themselves it makes sense for the party to recall knowledge against the thing. As a player, I'd say knowing that it is visual blind and only has tremorsense would be the top thing I'd want to recall about it.The question is though whether they would ask the right question. Its senses shouldn't be given for free unless this question was asked I think.
It's not really a question players get to ask. They recall knowledge, and the GM decides to tell them what's relevant. Knowing you enemy is blind and only has a limited range tremoresense is a very relevant thing to know IMO.
Edit: Never mind, it looks like in this edition players are encouraged to ask questions about the creature, which is different from PF1 and how I remember knowledge checks working.
As a GM, depending on their successes and what they ask I'd probably still tell them about it's senses. Like if you ask "what are it's weaknesses?" Can't see you if you're not on the ground, is actually a pretty big one.
To me Recall Knowledge is one of those weird spaces. A player doesn't necessarily know (really shouldn't know) all the creatures they're going to encounter. But in theory somewhere along the way, the PC encountered bits of knowledge about creatures, that's how they're able to identify them. From my perspective, however they gained knowledge about Sturztromers one of the first things I would think would be mentioned about them is their blindness. Other big things about it would be it's weakness to area/splash damage, along with it's Earthquake, Earthbind spells, and Landslide and Grasping Bites abilities.
If a player starts asking me "does it know any languages" I'm probably going to tell the player "in the heat of battle with this obviously hostile creature, you can't recall what if any language it speaks, but you know...."
To some extent I like that players are given the opportunity to ask questions. Because in the past bad GMs would tell their players things that technically fulfilled the knowledge check success requirements, but would be relatively useless to the party. The situation here is the players ask something that they don't realize is useless and the GM giving them something much more relevant.