Bard's Gate Afya question

Ilium · Sep 29, 2006

So I ordered and received Bard's Gate from Necromancer. Very cool, lots of good stuff and it included a sort of haunted house adventure that is exactly what I need in my game right now.

The problem is that the new creature introduced in this adventure (the Afya) confuses me. Its listed type is Outsider, but the adventure says "if an Afya is destroyed by turning". ???

The critters do seem like undead, but this is far from clear. Anybody know what the intent was?

Hairy Minotaur · Sep 29, 2006

I think it's because they're cursed souls. Everytime an Afya is turned the Glimmer Gem cracks a little more, and the only way to be rid of them completely, is to turn all of them before they have the chance to reform.

Listing them as outsiders makes them immune to the damaging effects of cure/heal spells like regular undead, and raise dead won't work on them. The turning mechanic was left as a way to destroy them permanently.

The Afya are unique and their kills are transformed into shadows, so they cannot create more Afya.

Nightfall · Sep 29, 2006

What Hairy said.

The Afya are not true undead but they possess enough undead qualities to confuse a party that has experience fighting undead.

Ilium · Sep 29, 2006

Makes sense, but I couldn't find anything in the text that explicitly said "Afya can be turned as undead." It just says "If an Afya is destroyed by turning..." For the moment I'm actually making them un-turnable, since the party includes a real turning machine cleric. It would be a cakewalk if they could be turned. But that means they can't permantly destroy the Afya unless they can figure out that they need to destroy the gem rather than removing it from the house.

Thanks for the feedback.