Agree on "Mark of Doom" from above. Stinking Cloud is useful for funneling the good guys, as you have to keep making saves if you stay in the cloud... and, if you're nauseated, you can't do much of anything. Plus, if you fail that first save, you stay nauseated for a few rounds afterwards.
Good lower level spells to bother a higher level party?
I was reminded of this by another thread...
Touch of Idiocy can be a real deal breaker for any build based on the Expertise feat trees. These feat trees all have Int 13+ as a prereq, and almost all of you fighter types won't bother putting more than the minimum prereq in Int (since it gives them almost no benefit to boost it higher). A hit from ToI means they won't meet the prereq, and lose access to a huge chunk of their tactics.
Touch of Idiocy can be a real deal breaker for any build based on the Expertise feat trees. These feat trees all have Int 13+ as a prereq, and almost all of you fighter types won't bother putting more than the minimum prereq in Int (since it gives them almost no benefit to boost it higher). A hit from ToI means they won't meet the prereq, and lose access to a huge chunk of their tactics.
that would be mean, since one of the group's front line fighters relies on expertise (and improved expertise, I believe) to jack up his AC to very high levels. I like it.
but, touch of idiocy is a Compulsion effect i believe, and he might be immune to it being a C/G paladin of freedom... however, the dwarf fighter also uses expertise and since it's no save, would not get the +4 for being within 10' of the paladin of freedom.
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Particle_Man
Explorer
How much does your BBEG know about the party and their tactics? This is beginning to sound a bit too much like hosing the fire-mage with fire-immune creatures.
I agree. Care must be taken. It's too easy for a DM to push the I Win button.
StreamOfTheSky
Adventurer
Forgot to check.
It's still physical damage, the spell text says to treat it like thrown weapon attacks. Except, they're melee attacks, using str to modify attack roll. And I'd assume you could use PA and Expertise with the attacks. you do not threaten or get flanking bonuses with the attacks, though. It only applies to natural and unarmed strikes for the target, so it depends on how good of an attack routine your demon has if it's worth using.
They have a pretty good idea of the party's makeup & tactics. Running an opponent, I'm still inclined to use Touch of Idiocy on a spellcaster, as I think most melee oriented bad guys would be pretty confident of their ability to overcome opponents in melee and would be more worried about magical attacks from range.
Thanael
Explorer
If the caster is a cleric how about blindness/deafness, contagion, bestow curse, shatter (on objects), sanctuary (for defense), undetectable alignment (for disguise/moral quandary), desecrate & animate dead or summon undead(Libris Mortis), enthrall on the general populace to round up victims for the Blackguard. Masochism on the Blackguard, perhaps Boneblade.
I'd definately go for a necromancer/fiend-binder cultist priest. (Maybe even make him an acolyte of the skin, and gaining poison as a spelllike ability) Then check out Libris Mortis and/or BoVD for nice spells to either boost the Blackguard or demon, put innocents in the way or afflict the PCs or people close to them with Necromancy.
Check out the Blackguard spell list for thematic spells, most are available to a cleric to.
I'd definately go for a necromancer/fiend-binder cultist priest. (Maybe even make him an acolyte of the skin, and gaining poison as a spelllike ability) Then check out Libris Mortis and/or BoVD for nice spells to either boost the Blackguard or demon, put innocents in the way or afflict the PCs or people close to them with Necromancy.
Check out the Blackguard spell list for thematic spells, most are available to a cleric to.
Touch of Idiocy on an Expertise build fighter is definetally on the RBDM side of tactics. I said it was effective, not nice.
It's also rather meta-gamey to have a caster know that lowering a fighters Int by one point can stop them from using half of their feats.That being said, it does make sense that every once in a while, a smart enemy will stand back and say "These fighters are using a lot of really smart tactics to destroy my mininions. I wonder if making them stupider would hinder their ability to make tactical decisions in battle." This makes even more sense when the enemy has been dealing with the party for a long time, and witnessed their tactics. Just as fire-mages will always have to deal with fire-immunie creatures at some point in their career, rogues will have to fight undead, and rangers will have to fight enemies that aren't favored, any fighter using an Expertise based build should expect to eventually have his Int lowered. There's a happy balance between never being challenged and always fighting the things you can't win against.
StreamOfTheSky
Adventurer
On the expertise note, I was never sure the "correct ruling" on this, I just have my own interpretation. For any feats that required CE, but NOT Int 13 explicitly in the requirements list, you would still have access to those feats. Lower Int means lost access to CE, but you still have it. Is there any RAW on this?
