Rakshasa Question

[Arcturus_Rugend]

In a recent attempt to convince one of my players not to become a rakshasa via SS ritual magic, I came across some rather ambiguous language concerning the rakshasa's vulnerability to blessed crossbow bolts.

From the MM:

"Vulnerable to Blessed Crossbow Bolts (Ex): Any hit scored with a blessed crossbow bolt instantly slays a rakshasa."

Does this mean any hit that causes damage or is it ANY hit? If it's ANY hit, then should you use the rakshasa's AC vs. touch?

If you use the AC vs. touch approach, that would assume that the bolt need only make contact with the raksaha's armor or clothing, and that seems a bit extreme.

If the bolt needs to hit AND cause damage, only a +3 or better weapon will work (unless its a larger than standard crossbow).

And if the bolt just needs to hit, not hit and cause damage, does that mean the rakshasa can't touch a blessed crossbow bolt at all? How about a rakshasa with the deflect arrows feat?

 

[maddman75]

Well, I found this on the SRD under damage reduction.

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact. Attacks that deal no damage because of the target’s damage reduction do not disrupt spells.

While its far from clear cut, I'd say that a hit indicates a roll against his armor class. If they meant touch AC, they would have said touch AC. As far as the damage reduction goes myself I'd put the blessed crossbow bolt into the same category as energy attacks, poison, disease, etc. It is an extra effect delivered by the weapon, so a +1 blessed crossbow bolt would kill a rakshasa.

 

[Arcturus_Rugend]

I assume that by +1 blessed bolt you mean either a regular bolt that has been blessed that overcomes the 20/+3 DR or a +3 or better blessed bolt.

That rationale seems to make sense, but the rakshasa just got a lot tougher to kill. Ah, well. Thanks for the input!

Game on!

 

[Alchemist]

Why are you trying to convince him to not take a path you allowed him? The onus is on you to disallow stuff before you have to talk your players out of using it, IMHO.

 

[Arcturus_Rugend]

I DO want to encourage the use of the SS rules, as well as the possibility of becoming new races via ritual transformation. I don't even have a problem allowing a rakshasa to be played.

Two problems arise in this instance, however:

The party is primarily good aligned so I was attempting to encourage good role playing by nudging the players away from races that could pose an involuntary alignment change problem within an otherwise cohesive gaming group. Having them make a good roleplaying decision seemed like a better idea than simply saying "no."

Also, this particular instance seems rather unbalancing as I indicated in this thread. But it seems unfair to simply Rule-0 the rakshasa out completely.

If you have any suggestions on how to handle it, I'm more than open to constructive criticism. Thanks for the input!

 

[Alchemist]

Hmm. Does the racial change induce an alignment change? If so, that should be disincentive enough for a thinking party member. And would his friends stand by if he wanted to undergo some crazy ritual to become a demon?

Is there specific components required to undergo the ritual? Perhaps you could introduce things that are indicative of the species to be turned into. Something evil and unpleasant (sacrifice of an innocent?) to become an evil and unpleasant race would be in order, and deter a good party if they care at all.

That's all I have at the moment.

 

[Arcturus_Rugend]

There's the possibility of an involuntary alignment with the save DC being based upon the ECL of the new form. It only applies where the target creature is ALWAYS of a particular alignment, IIRC. The party member is willing to take the risk (as he is NOT one of the good aligned characters) and is confident that if he should fail and become evil, he can use the ritual of alignment to fix the problem. I like to see new rules used, but there is a fair amount of possibility for abuse here.

The cost of rituals as written only include gold and any XP to be spent, but I like the idea of introducing material components related to the goal creature. Seems like a good way to tweak the ritual system without causing major problems. Thanks for that one!

As a somewhat related question, if a creature (lets say a rakshasa, for example ) has a particular alignment subtype (in this case Evil, Lawful) and the character being transformed into the creature succeeds at his save vs. the involuntary alignment change, does the resulting creature sill have those same subtypes even if they do not match the creature's actual alignment?

 

[Alchemist]

It sounds to me like there is more than a fair amount of possibility for abuse from these rules.

Would the character really be willing to undergo alignment change? The player might be, but I doubt the character woul be so eager. That seems like an involuntary thing to me, since you're altering the core belief system of the character.

As for the subtypes, I would say that the character takes on the subtypes of his alignment.

Something else to bear in mind: The character becomes an outsider. Outsiders can't be brought back from the dead. So if he bites it, he's done. And he's susceptible to protection from evil and the like, despite the immunity to most magic.

 

[Arcturus_Rugend]

Would the character really be willing to undergo alignment change? The player might be, but I doubt the character woul be so eager. That seems like an involuntary thing to me, since you're altering the core belief system of the character.

This is exactly the kind of "encouraging" I was doing to make sure role-playing is first served. Both the player and character are a bit power hungry, so it's at least up for a little debate.

Also, good call on the outsider issue.

Would the character really be susceptable to protection from evil, though? If he fails the save for the alignment change, that would make sense, but would he need to worry about it if he doesn't become evil?

The spell description says it affects summoned or conjured creatures, and I don't think that he would be considered either. And since he'd retain his neutral alignment, I don't know if this spell would have any effect.

 

[Alchemist]

Yeah, I was assuming he's already evil or will become evil when I used protection from evil.

Unless he's true neutral, he's going to be affected by at least one of the protection from x spells once he becomes an outsider. If he manages to hang onto that true neutral he won't be.

I still doubt his good aligned associates would stand aside if he were to try to become a demon, and they sure wouldn't associate with him if he did. Why would this race be any different?

Peer pressure could work wonders.