The LA Assignment Thread XII: the LA-bors of Heracles

[GreatWyrmGold]

Because most toxins are specced against muscles or nerves or other stuff that plants don't have. Have a spider bite a flower and tell me how well it works.

Flowers do not have stats in D&D. With few exceptions, all plants/fungi in D&D with stat blocks must have something analogous to nerves and muscles. But even ignoring that, toxins which affect all animals equally and plants not at all—the way they work in D&D 3.5—are quite uncommon.

There are plenty of toxins which target weaknesses possessed by all life-forms (or at least all macroscopic ones, for stuff like mitochondrial toxicants). Classic example: Arsenic is toxic to basically everything alive on planet Earth, because it's similar enough to phosphorus to get incorporated into a bunch of important macromolecules but different enough to screw them up. That's true for animals, plants, fungi, protists, and most bacteria/archaebacteria.

There are also toxins which only affect some species of animal, or which some species of animal are randomly immune to. Common example: Theobromine is toxic to most mammals, but rodents are resistant to it and humans basically immune. Of course, some toxins evolved to deal with specific predators and some predators evolved resistance to certain toxins. None of this is reflected in the rules.

It doesn't have to be, of course. Since D&D is a fantasy setting, most toxins come from magical creatures or substances. Even the giant spiders, arguably. The smallest monstrous spider is already the size of a cat, plenty big enough for an arthropod's respiratory system to be woefully ineffective.


You can suspend your disbelief enough to accept a spider the size of a house, and a talking tree that walks around, but not the former having venom that works on the latter??

[Tzardok]

This feels more like a failure of imagination on your part, not mine. You can't suspend your disbelief that a walking tree may not have anything like muscles?

[Debatra]

+0: Inevitaqbility, loky1109, InvisibleBison
+1: Beni-Kujaku

+0 takes it. Next up is the Guntosh.

[Debatra]

Gunthosh

Page 22

Size & Type: Medium Undead
Space/Reach: 5'/5' (Tentacles have 10' Reach)
HD: 8
Speed: 30'
Ability Scores: Str +8, Dex +4, Con -, Int +2, Wis +4, Cha +2 - Net +20, no penalties
Natural Armor: 6
Natural Weapons: Two Primary "Tentacle Bites" (2d4)
Skill List: Escape Artist, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Spot
Body Shape: Humanoid
Speech (Languages): Not Specified. Has a mouth and intelligence.
CR: 7
WotC LA: -
Our LA: -0

DR 10/magic which might possibly still be relevant for a bit, Spell Resistance 20 which definitely is, +4 Turn Resistance, and Improved Grab on its tentacles with no listed size limitation (which sadly means it defaults to smaller creatures). A decent chassis to start with.

In addition to IG, the Gunthosh can use Blood Drain every round it grapples something, dealing 1d4 Con Drain.

Finally, as a standard action it can lob a negative energy-infused Spittle of Darkness up to 30' away. With a ranged touch attack, the Gunthosh can inflict 1d4 negaive levels and blind the target until someone takes a full-round action to clean it off. These negative levels never result in actual level loss, but that will hopefully be irrelevant.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Impressive how much creatures with Spittle are NEVER good. Also, medium Undead grappler, and no actually fun ability. Definitely LA -0, but the picture is great.

Also, the Gunthosh are self-reanimated corpses of serial murderers who died peacefully. Because if you execute a serial killer you get a Mohrg, but you're still not off the hook if you only imprison them! D&D should have a special execution technique where you drown the convict in holy water.

[loky1109]

Agree, it looks LA -0.

[liquidformat]

Medium grappler, ability scores are underwhelming for 8 rhd, some ok defensive abilities, the tentacle technically mean it can't wield weapons in its hands, yeah easy -0 LA.

[InvisibleBison]

I agree with the emerging consensus. LA -0

[danielxcutter]

(*sad trombone noises*)

Undead type means no Con to HP and terrible BAB, DR/magic falls off hard, only two natural attacks without access to Rapidstrike, at-will Enervation with no-save blinding actually isn't THAT bad but the range still sucks, LA -0. Next!

[remetagross]

This ranged touch attack is actually really nasty. Too bad it's the only redeeming feature of that monster. Tell you what, with a couple less RHDs, I'd have been tented with going for LA+0. As it stands, it's too little too late. LA -0.

[danielxcutter]

Oh yeah, no save, no SR, ranged touch attack, negative levels and blindness. Not many things are immune to both. If you want to spam ranged touch attacks every turn you're probably better off with Warlock though.

[remetagross]

And it's called a "spittle" weapon, thus it qualifies for the Deadly Spittle feat. Say hello to a 15ft cone of 1d4 negative levels and blindness, no save, no SR, no to-hit roll. Every round. Mmmmh, tasty.

[danielxcutter]

This would honestly be absolutely terrifying if it was on practically anything else. Or if 3.5e undead got Charisma to hit points and stuff like in PF1. Or honestly if this thing had literally anything else besides this. It doesn't even have a use limit.

Actually how strong are these for their CR? Trying to figure out if the problem is it being designed for being a monster or if it's just underwhelming in general.

[Inevitability]

If you get Energy Drain proper (via Soul Eater), you qualify for Life Drain, which adds your charisma to the HP lost from all negative levels you inflict. With solid charisma investment, that could easily double the HP loss. What's more, the wording adds Energy Drain's temporary HP function to Spittle of Darkness, so a cone is getting you like 20-30 temporary HP per creature hit. Goes a long way towards improing survivability, not?

Of course, doing that does ask for five feats total, but two are pretty easy to obtain as bonus feats.

[danielxcutter]

...And is that build capable of doing a whole lot that other builds using Soul Eater can't do better?

[Inevitability]

...And is that build capable of doing a whole lot that other builds using Soul Eater can't do better?

It feels quite different from soul eater, other than the fact both are using negative levels. A soul eater build typically wants to stack natural attacks and attack a single opponent, intending to kill outright or at least debuff a creature so far to neuter it during its final turn. This build, on the other hand, is more of a mass debuffer: blind everyone in a cone and apply penalties to their HP/saves/attacks, setting up a rogue or caster to get the actual kills. That's not straightforwardly worse!

...also, if your table rules Soul Eater's energy drain to require a dedicated touch attack as opposed to applying automatically on every natural weapon, this becomes miles better - strictly speaking all we need is an ability called 'Energy Drain', we don't need it to do anything.

[remetagross]

Ah, but I just checked, and one of Soul Eater's prerequisite is being a living nonhumanoid. That's a no for us. Still, there must be other ways to gain an energy drain attack so that we can qualify for Life Drain.

[danielxcutter]

…man, this PrC is weird. Not bad, but weird.

[Inevitability]

Ah, but I just checked, and one of Soul Eater's prerequisite is being a living nonhumanoid. That's a no for us. Still, there must be other ways to gain an energy drain attack so that we can qualify for Life Drain.

...there's a +4 LA wight template in savage species that could be applied to a Human Heritage Gunthosh, but, well, obviously not ideal.

[remetagross]

Yeah, and the list of stuff doesn't have an "energy drain" entry. Too bad, because that Life Drain was really tasty.

I'm looking for other PrCs granting Energy drain, but I'm drawing a blank so far. Pale Master and Shadow Sun Ninja both give the ability to deal negative levels with a touch, but the specific name of their respective abilities is not "Energy drain".

[Debatra]

Gutpuppet

Size & Type: Small Aberration
Space/Reach: 2.5'/5'
HD: 4
Speed: 5', 40' When in a corpse
Ability Scores: Str -2, Dex +6, Con +10, Int -8, Wis +0, Cha -6 - Net +0, three penalties
Natural Armor: 0
Natural Weapons: One Primary Spike (Ranged, no range listed, 1 plus poison)
Skill List: Hide, Listen (+4 racial), Survival (+4 racial)
Body Shape: Small mass of muscle and shell
Speech (Languages): No
CR: 3
WotC LA: -
Our LA: __

Track as a bonus feat, and the ability to burrow into a dead body's mouth and drive it around. Unfortunately, the body doesn't retain any abilities it had in life. It's just a flesh suit, not actual reanimation. While inside of a body, it gains DR 2/- as the corpse protects it. It usually takes three to four minutes to gain full control of a corpse.

The Gutpuppet secretes a Necrotic Poison that functions differently depending on whether it is injected through its spikes or merely contacted. (I thought it was two separate poisons at first, but no. The spike's poison is noted as being dangerous to touch, acting just like the spray on contact.) When merely touched, the victim must make a Con-based Fortitude save or take 1d10 Str damage with no secondary damage. When injected, it deals 1d10 HP damage, 1d8 Strength drain, and forces a second save vs falling unconscious for 1d3 hours (the default duration for poison, as there is no time listed). Secondary damage is the same as initial. If a creature dies to this poison, the damage it does to living tissue makes their body unusable as a Gutpuppet host.

Whenever it takes five or more damage in a single blow, one of its fluid sacs ruptures, spraying a 10' burst of necrotic poison in the direction of the attack. Creatures in range must make a Dex-based Reflex save to avoid the spray. This applies even when inside a host body, as the body is pumped full of the fluid. The host body even sweats the poison, making normal contact dangerous.

Finally, it can launch its venomous spikes through the host body's mouth.

[Metastachydium]

Two quick and dirty observations:
1. the advancement line of the thing has been messed up some real bad; it implies that the thing has either 2 HD (contradicted by the entire rest of the statblock), or advances to Large at 5 HD (somehow skipping Medium it would have had if advanced to 3 or 4 HD, which ot already has (this makes an equal amount of sense in the original context)); and
2. more importantly, the descriptive text specifies that when inside a host, it will commonly steal fresh clothing and dress itself, meaning that it can use the preexisting prehensile limbs of the host creature for manipulation of objects that requires better fine motor skills than swinging a sword.

Two other even quicker and diriter observations:
a. the fluff text says it can detect a fresh corpse from a mile away; that's an odd thing to not make an ability like the Shark's Keen Scent, but hey, it's kinda there;
b. while the text says it can only wear a given corpse for a month, it further clarifies that's because it's too lazy not too eat something else instead. Might mean it can wear a good body indefinitely.

IN more general terms, +6 DEX and +10 CON is crazy good. DR 2/– at 4 HD is nothing to sneeze at either, and certainly better than some Small-size level NA. With some good advancement options, I can really see a positive LA here.

[Tzardok]

Is it just me or is the link broken?

[danielxcutter]

It takes a bit for me but it does load.

[Beni-Kujaku]

The Gutpuppet oozes with almost as much "early 3.0"-ery as it does disgustingly potent poison. It reminds the reader how ability damage works, it reminds the reader that they should read the DMG to understand how poison secondary damage works, and they didn't yet coin the term for ability drain, instead calling it "permanent ability damage" (something that was kept in french for the entirety of 3.x). Which also points to : 1d10 Str damage on each touch, are you crazy?? This thing with a level of monk or battledancer and Snap Kick could land three hits per round, dealing an average of 16 points of Str damage if the opponent fails their saves. And it can also make a ranged attack that immediately disables the opponent if they fail two Fort saves. And it's not like the defenses are lacking either, especially the DR 2/- and fluidic burst to discourage melee opponents. It is super dumb, and will definitely want Weapon Finesse, but the offensive capabilities are extremely good, and +10 Con is NOT inconsequential. I think I will vote for LA+2 as an unarmed swordsage or such. Maybe Thayan Gladiator for iteratives on its spikes, or straight up Soul Eater to make its touches even deadlier.

I like the "Since it's quite muscular, it can move much quicker than it looks like it should.". I have seen the necromantic cyst move at a 40ft speed with nothing but intestines. Your little aberrant heart moving at a 5ft speed is not "much quicker than it looks".