Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Help Us Kill Morrus - Just updated 23/03/05
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="The_Warlock" data-source="post: 2091502" data-attributes="member: 21215"><p>Ok, sounds like you boys are in deep dung. There's been a lot of good advice, and here's my take on it. There's some questions/caveats that I'll begin with.</p><p></p><p>1) This appears to be a non-standard cosmology. Are common racial hatreds of the out-planes still at play?</p><p>2) Has anything suggested that these strange Slaad are potentially psionic?</p><p>3) I'm not up on the book of exalted deeds or some of the prestige classes, nor your items so I'm going to toss out somethings that may be irrelevant.</p><p></p><p>Ok. As a GM who routinely spanks his players when they do something stupid, but is often foiled when they do the completely unexpected, as a general rule I am going to suggest going against conventional wisdom and do the riskiest, boneheaded thing you can. If Morrus doesn't expect it, you may be able to catch a break.</p><p></p><p>Behold the Power of Bigotry: Githyanki working with Slaad? Not impossible, but generally unlikely, unless the Githyanki are using the Chaos Frogs in a ploy to get at their ancestral racial enemies the Githzerai. At least the Githyanki Mooks you describe aren't equipped with Silver Sword - vorpal is bad for PC health. Anyway, back to may racial ranting. If you have Githyanki in front of you, use a summon spell to summon up Githzerai, they are extraplanar and should be able to fall under the auspices of the spell. Drop the pugs right amidst the Githyanki warriors and their queen. Have your summoned Githz attack the queen, the Githy should give in to their natural racial hatreds and ignore you for their sworn enemies.</p><p></p><p>Alternate mode - does Morrus allow you to template normal creatures that would make them outsiders/extraplanar and thus appropriate for summon spells? If yes, go one step further on the racial hatred scale: Summon a Shadow Template Mind Flayer, or maybe a fiendish Mind Flayer with your summon spell. Not only will the Gith go butt-nutty over their MOST hated racial enemy, any mind flayer can back a wallop with brain removal, and if you work that into your bluff that the Slaad king is on your side (and the mind flayer or githz's side), the queen might be more likely to fall for it. Also, since both Githz and Mind Flayer's have natural planar travel abilities, their sudden appearance will smack less of summon monster #.</p><p></p><p>Moving on to unlikely and impossible plans - try to dispel the negative energy walls. Or better yet, even without feats a number of 3E and 3.5 books have mentioned using a clerical turning attempt to disrupt or put into abeyance negative energy effects and wards (I definitely recall a rules light section on this from back in defenders of the faith, but don't recall if it was ever updated, repudiated, or made strict by some rule). If even the slightest chance, see if you can "turn" the neg energy walls in some fashion. You have turn attempts, and you ain't gonna scare the lichy girl with them. </p><p></p><p>You basic outline of your abilities suggest each PC is very capable singly, but no mention of your group tactics. Here's my "You do what?" suggestion for the night. Bring out the tiger, summon some ugly things that are big, have reach, and are good at grappling. Fill out a 9 man pike square (yes I know you don't have pikes, the slaad do, </p><p>but...). Why you ask? Move your party as a whole into the dead middle of them - ready your actions to spin the group as a whole as needed, but unleash the fighters as a focused side of the square, spellcasters in reach to hit them with the quickened true strikes and healing effects, and keeping as many of your overlapping protection effecs on each other (paladin's circle). Target area healing spells to catch as much of your group and the Queen every time. This may sound kind daft, but with the pike slaads and mobile githyanki, if you divide, they'll start conquering your with flanking maneuvers - heaven forbid any of the mooks (slaad or githy) have rogue levels. Furthermore, by shoving yourself right in the middle of them, you make it tactically harder for the Queen and King to use general damage inducing area effects without catching their own people. While that may be a risk the baddies are willing to take with their SR, I've found that SR tends to fail when targetted by the very very high level villains (I've lost more drow shock troops that way).</p><p></p><p>Lastly, as long as signs don't point to the Slaad being psionic too, save your dispells for them - they have spell-like abilities - you can't stop those with silence, but spell-likes are still subject to dispel effects, if they put something up, take it down.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The_Warlock, post: 2091502, member: 21215"] Ok, sounds like you boys are in deep dung. There's been a lot of good advice, and here's my take on it. There's some questions/caveats that I'll begin with. 1) This appears to be a non-standard cosmology. Are common racial hatreds of the out-planes still at play? 2) Has anything suggested that these strange Slaad are potentially psionic? 3) I'm not up on the book of exalted deeds or some of the prestige classes, nor your items so I'm going to toss out somethings that may be irrelevant. Ok. As a GM who routinely spanks his players when they do something stupid, but is often foiled when they do the completely unexpected, as a general rule I am going to suggest going against conventional wisdom and do the riskiest, boneheaded thing you can. If Morrus doesn't expect it, you may be able to catch a break. Behold the Power of Bigotry: Githyanki working with Slaad? Not impossible, but generally unlikely, unless the Githyanki are using the Chaos Frogs in a ploy to get at their ancestral racial enemies the Githzerai. At least the Githyanki Mooks you describe aren't equipped with Silver Sword - vorpal is bad for PC health. Anyway, back to may racial ranting. If you have Githyanki in front of you, use a summon spell to summon up Githzerai, they are extraplanar and should be able to fall under the auspices of the spell. Drop the pugs right amidst the Githyanki warriors and their queen. Have your summoned Githz attack the queen, the Githy should give in to their natural racial hatreds and ignore you for their sworn enemies. Alternate mode - does Morrus allow you to template normal creatures that would make them outsiders/extraplanar and thus appropriate for summon spells? If yes, go one step further on the racial hatred scale: Summon a Shadow Template Mind Flayer, or maybe a fiendish Mind Flayer with your summon spell. Not only will the Gith go butt-nutty over their MOST hated racial enemy, any mind flayer can back a wallop with brain removal, and if you work that into your bluff that the Slaad king is on your side (and the mind flayer or githz's side), the queen might be more likely to fall for it. Also, since both Githz and Mind Flayer's have natural planar travel abilities, their sudden appearance will smack less of summon monster #. Moving on to unlikely and impossible plans - try to dispel the negative energy walls. Or better yet, even without feats a number of 3E and 3.5 books have mentioned using a clerical turning attempt to disrupt or put into abeyance negative energy effects and wards (I definitely recall a rules light section on this from back in defenders of the faith, but don't recall if it was ever updated, repudiated, or made strict by some rule). If even the slightest chance, see if you can "turn" the neg energy walls in some fashion. You have turn attempts, and you ain't gonna scare the lichy girl with them. You basic outline of your abilities suggest each PC is very capable singly, but no mention of your group tactics. Here's my "You do what?" suggestion for the night. Bring out the tiger, summon some ugly things that are big, have reach, and are good at grappling. Fill out a 9 man pike square (yes I know you don't have pikes, the slaad do, but...). Why you ask? Move your party as a whole into the dead middle of them - ready your actions to spin the group as a whole as needed, but unleash the fighters as a focused side of the square, spellcasters in reach to hit them with the quickened true strikes and healing effects, and keeping as many of your overlapping protection effecs on each other (paladin's circle). Target area healing spells to catch as much of your group and the Queen every time. This may sound kind daft, but with the pike slaads and mobile githyanki, if you divide, they'll start conquering your with flanking maneuvers - heaven forbid any of the mooks (slaad or githy) have rogue levels. Furthermore, by shoving yourself right in the middle of them, you make it tactically harder for the Queen and King to use general damage inducing area effects without catching their own people. While that may be a risk the baddies are willing to take with their SR, I've found that SR tends to fail when targetted by the very very high level villains (I've lost more drow shock troops that way). Lastly, as long as signs don't point to the Slaad being psionic too, save your dispells for them - they have spell-like abilities - you can't stop those with silence, but spell-likes are still subject to dispel effects, if they put something up, take it down. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Help Us Kill Morrus - Just updated 23/03/05
Top