Cold One feat, Night Caller, & charmed allies

2o-Eyed Foe · Apr 15, 2004

I had an interesting situation come up in my game tonight and thought I would run it by the regular posters here to get some opinions.

A few weeks ago a fighter in my campaign found 'Night Caller' (a magic whistle which has the ability to animate a corpse as per the animate dead spell, for those who don't know) and has since had a zombie following him around. I also have a necromancer who has taken the Cold One feat from the Ravenloft setting. Now, this is a Forgotten Realms campaign, but I let him take the feat because it fit his backstory nicely and added some great flavor to his character.

Tonight, in the final epic battle of the current adventure, the fighter with the zombie was charmed by the PC's opponents, failed the opposed CHA checks and began attacking the party. He first began attacking the Cleric in the party because the charm casting opponent perceived her to be the most immediate threat. One thing led to another and the fighter eventually attempted to attack the necromancer who had the Cold One feat. According to the feat, non-intelligent undead ignore those with this feat unless they are attacked by the 'cold one'. This is where things got a bit tricky. The fighter, while carrying out the orders of the charm casting villain, instructed the zombie to attack the necromancer as well. This raised a few questions:

1) Does a non-intelligent undead creature attack a character with Cold One when it has been instructed to?

2) And if so, where is the line drawn? For instance, a magic user raises a skeleton, creates a zombie ..etc.. and instructs it to guard a doorway, attacking anything that passes through it. Some time later the necromancer with the Cold One feat passes through the doorway. Does the mindless undead attack the necromancer or ignore him as per the feat?

I do not like to stop the action during a session to sort out these types of uncertainties in the rules, so I ruled in favor of the party and said that the zombie would ignore the command. This was just a snap decision to keep things rolling and we agreed to discuss it later and set down a house rule for it. There was some discussion and a number of different ideas; opposed CHA checks, DC 13 wisdom based roll for the undead, and so on. I am sure that this type of situation will arise again at some point, because the necromancer has this feat, so I was hoping to have a decent solution for it by next session. Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks,

2o-Eyed Foe

welby · Apr 15, 2004

I think you should give the necromancer a few artifacts to enhance the cold one feat to god-like levels. That way, if there is ever uncertainty, you can just assume that whatever works best for the necro should be the ruling.

I was reading this, and I was like, "wow, these guys are doing something really similar to us, I sure hope there's no spoilers in it. And how ironic to find a post about the cold one feat right after we had this issue come up in our game!"

Now I think I need to welcome my DM to the boards

Darklone · Apr 15, 2004

Hehehehe. I don't have the feat around... But I think if it's something similar like invis to undeads, then the fighter could ask the zombie to attack the space where the Cold One is. E.g. 50 % miss chance for the zombie.

welby · Apr 15, 2004

dont have my book with me, but I yoinked this from the web. Someone please let me know if it's correct, as I'm stuck at work.

REQ: You must have lost at least one level to an energy drain attack.

Mindless undead ignore unless you attack them first. Intelligent undead must succeed at a Wisdom check DC 13 to realize that you are not undead. Due to your slow metabolism, if you are ever dying (reduced to 1 or fewer hit points), you lose hit points at the rate of only 1 point every two rounds. When recovering from damage via natural healing, you recover ½ hit point per character level per day of rest (round down, with 1 hp/day as the minimum). This is an extraordinary quality.
Ravenloft, pg 47.

Davelozzi · Apr 15, 2004

I'd have handled it just as you did, and had the zombie ignore the necromancer, probably just making him act confused until other instructions were given.

We also use the Cold One feat in a non-Ravenloft campaign (it's a homebrew). Last night's session it enabled the scouting rogue to slip past a wraith unseen, which was key as the rest of the party was not around and he would have had to fight it by himself.

Herpes Cineplex · Apr 15, 2004

I'd probably have handled it the same way, too. If nothing else, it's easier and keeps things moving along.

But here's a little advocacy on the devil's behalf:

welby said:
Mindless undead ignore unless you attack them first. Intelligent undead must succeed at a Wisdom check DC 13 to realize that you are not undead.

The latter part of that quote suggests that the reason why mindless undead ignore you unless you attack them is because they think you're undead, too. Cold One seems to just take advantage of the undead's indifference to other undead creatures (or their sense of professional courtesy

), it's not some kind of invisibility. And I see no reason why anyone who controls an undead creature cannot command it to attack another undead creature.

Given the second example from the first post, I'd probably let the Cold One necromancer pass the skeleton-guarded door without any difficulty, unless the guy who commands the skeletons told them "attack anything (living or dead) that attempts to enter this room." If the boss screwed up and just told them to prevent "anyone" from entering, well, undead aren't anyone in particular, and the necro is free to shuffle on past just like any other zombie would.

The downside to that interpretation is that it's not as easy as just saying "nah, until you attack 'em, these guys can't see you." For the game's purposes, it's probably best to just treat it like Invisibility to Undead and leave it at that.

--
unless you're starved for more complexity, anyway
ryan

2o-Eyed Foe · Apr 15, 2004

It seems that what needs to be decided is what the undead creature's perception of the PC with Cold One is. I do not have the source text with me at the moment either, but I seem to recall that non-intelligent undead consider the PC as another undead, therefore not worthy of their attention. Welby, is this correct? (I'm going to blame you welby when I tell karen I spent yet another 30$ for the Ravenloft setting text, which I am now going to have to buy tonight)

Now, in any run of the mill, graveyard or crypt with zombies, skeletons, ghouls and such wandering around none of this would be an issue. All of the above mentioned undead would consider the PC simply yet another undead and pay him no mind. The issue, as I see it, arises with the undead creature being given a command to do something that may involve the PC with Cold One.

Situation 1: Random Mage A has commanded his skeleton to guard a doorway. Another skeleton, zombie, whatever passes through the doorway – does the commanded skeleton attack the interloper? Probably not. Unless, like Herpes suggested, the skeleton has been given explicit commands to attack anything, both living and dead, should it pass through the doorway.

Situation 2: Random Mage A is in a battle with Random Cleric B. Both of them have skeleton followers. The mage commands his skeleton to attack the cleric’s skeleton. I would assume that there would be no problem with this taking place, right?

I guess what I am having a difficult time reconciling is whether a non-intelligent undead recognizes another undead creature as being a threat. And if so, under what conditions?

Herpes Cineplex: I am leaning toward your interpretation and ideas for dealing with this situation as well. With one small exception. In the case of the undead being under the direct command of a more powerful and much more intelligent undead (lich, vampire ..etc..) In that instance I think that the powerful undead leader would have little difficulty in commanding his minions to attack the PC, which he definitely perceives as a threat. Thanks for your input, I appreciate it.

monboesen · Apr 15, 2004

Hmm. Not to steal the thread but I surely would not let a Charm person followed by a charisma check be enough to convince a character that he should attack his good friends. The charm makes him think that the caster is his friend but his companions are his friends too.

Hard for me to think of a situation where I would attack any of my friends with intent to kill because another friend ordered me to. I might try to stop a fight or hinder the percieved agressor(s) so the other(s) could run away until tempers cooled of.

Thats too much power for a 1st level spell, a Sorcerer would likely almost always win the opposed charisma check. Even at high levels this would work easily and be better than a high level Summon monster spell.

welby · Apr 15, 2004

monboesen said:
Hmm. Not to steal the thread but I surely would not let a Charm person followed by a charisma check be enough to convince a character that he should attack his good friends. The charm makes him think that the caster is his friend but his companions are his friends too.

Our fighter lost his check and was convinced that the caster was his friend. Then he lost the check to defend the caster. Then he lost the check to attack our cleric. Basically, he was doing a whole bunch of sucking

Charm person is a powerful spell...this probably deserves its own topic if we want to discuss further so as not to hijack this thread.

2o-Eyed Foe, don't get me in trouble with karen! I swear, I wont use that book again!

2o-Eyed Foe · Apr 16, 2004

monboesen said:
Hard for me to think of a situation where I would attack any of my friends with intent to kill because another friend ordered me to. I might try to stop a fight or hinder the percieved agressor(s) so the other(s) could run away until tempers cooled of.

Under most normal situations I would completely agree with you. However, there were a number of circumstances that lead to this taking place.

1) The party is a relatively evil aligned party and the fighter in question does not really have any strong allegiance to any particular PC aside from himself. The rest of the party are not really what he considers 'friends'.

2) He is very unintelligent (I believe his INT is a 7).

3) I gave him many chances to disregard the commands (a will save, a wisdom check to see if the commands were what he considered a good idea, and 2 separate opposed CHA checks - he failed every roll). At which point I decided that the idea of defeating his party members became a sound idea in his mind because he might have more to gain by helping the party’s opponent.

The point really was less about this specific situation as odds are very slim that this exact type of issue will arise again. It simply brought up a number of questions in regards to how the Cold One feat works and how undead perceive each other.

2o-Eyed Foe