Converting Oriental Adventures creatures

[Cleon]

That "Tumble" must have been some kind of brain freeze. I remember thinking about Combat Expertise at some point, anyway.

I never know if class-based bonus feats should be listed with a (B), and I don't think we've been entirely consistent. They're certainly different conceptually than racial bonus feats, and it would be good to indicate in some way that Stunning Fist isn't one that could be changed out by different "monk choices."

I fairly consistently list them as (B). We could add a hyphen to note which are "monk choices" from Martial Artistry, I suppose.

 

[freyar]

How about an asterisk and a Feats footnote instead of a hyphen?

 

[Cleon]

How about an asterisk and a Feats footnote instead of a hyphen?

What was I thinking.*

* I visualised an asterisk but it didn't type out right.

So we're talking:

Feats: Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Deflect Arrows (B)*, Improved Grapple (B)*, Stunning Fist (B), Weapon Finesse
* Monk bonus feats

 

[freyar]

Sounds good.

Environment, Org, Treasure look ok. CR 8, I guess. They're kind of glass cannons, but they do have a lot of attacks.

I think we might need to clarify how a normal attack affects the Veiled Maidens. Does it reduce the total of 84 hp or just the one body? If it's the latter, they effectively have a lot more hp than the stat block shows.

 

[Cleon]

Environment, Org, Treasure look ok. CR 8, I guess. They're kind of glass cannons, but they do have a lot of attacks.

That's agreeable.

I think we might need to clarify how a normal attack affects the Veiled Maidens. Does it reduce the total of 84 hp or just the one body? If it's the latter, they effectively have a lot more hp than the stat block shows.

Isn't that all explained in its Multiple Bodies special quality?

 

[freyar]

The question is how do you damage the Veiled Maidens as opposed to one of its bodies? For something like a hydra, it's ok to have the heads/necks have separate hp pools than the body because, well, the heads are separate from the body. For the Veiled Maidens, the bodies are the creature. How do you target the creature and not the bodies? Only particular spells? What about area attack spells?

 

[Cleon]

The question is how do you damage the Veiled Maidens as opposed to one of its bodies? For something like a hydra, it's ok to have the heads/necks have separate hp pools than the body because, well, the heads are separate from the body. For the Veiled Maidens, the bodies are the creature. How do you target the creature and not the bodies? Only particular spells? What about area attack spells?

As you said, the bodies are the Veiled Maidens, so the only way of damaging the Veiled Maidens "total hit points" is to target the individual bodies.

As for area spells, they simply affect all the bodies in the area of effect as separate targets - which means that Veiled Maidens are particularly vulnerable to such attacks.

 

[freyar]

That's just the problem. With that interpretation, the Veiled Maidens really has 182 hp (=7 bodies * 24 hp/body + 14 hp remaining after removing 10 hp/body) rather than 84 hp. This thing doesn't work like a hydra --- you can kill a hydra by hitting just the body, or you can chop off all the heads, or some combination of the two (although you do have to deal with the fast healing also). If that's what we really want, we need to be clear about it, and we may want to adjust the hp totals. But if we want it to be more like a hydra, we need to rethink it a bit.

 

[Cleon]

That's just the problem. With that interpretation, the Veiled Maidens really has 182 hp (=7 bodies * 24 hp/body + 14 hp remaining after removing 10 hp/body) rather than 84 hp. This thing doesn't work like a hydra --- you can kill a hydra by hitting just the body, or you can chop off all the heads, or some combination of the two (although you do have to deal with the fast healing also). If that's what we really want, we need to be clear about it, and we may want to adjust the hp totals. But if we want it to be more like a hydra, we need to rethink it a bit.

Actually, the last body has 24 hit points, not 14 - it loses 10 hit points per body until it only has a single body left. So the last body left after it loses the six others has 84 minus 60 hp.

So effectively it's got seven lots of 24 hit points, or 168 hp in total.

I thought about setting it so the bodies' individual hit points added up to the creature's total hit points, but that would only give each body 12 hit points - a trivial amount of damage in 3E at that level. A single 8th level fireball average more damage than that even if you make the save (although at least they've got Evasion to offer some protection from half-damage-on-a-Ref-save attacks).

Furthermore, the original creature had 18 hit points per body, so we'd be cutting its hp by a third. Normally we end up with more hit points when up-converting to 3E!

 

[freyar]

I'm ok with the hp total as is, but I think it could use some clarification. Maybe change the first paragraph of Multiple Bodies to

"The Veiled Maidens is a single being with seven bodies. Each body has 24 hit points. Destroying a body does 10 points of damage to the Veiled Maidens. If the Veiled Maidens is reduced to a single body, damage to that body also damages the Veiled Maidens. The only way to damage the Veiled Maidens is through the bodies."

Do we need any more stats at this point?