Quickleaf
Legend
OK, transitioning from the general question to more specific encounter design...
I omitted a lot for brevity to focus on my rules question. The eidolon is an incorporeal possessing spirit that inhabits sacred statues (same monster in MToF, two stat blocks). In this case, statues of allosaurus dinosaurs (thematically tied to the god Ubtao, but they lack hands & lack sacred statue's ability to throw rocks). When it possesses a statue, the only way it can reclaim the McGuffin is for a dinosaur statue to swallow up the person with the object. At least, that's how I am interpreting the eidolon (since it has incorporeal movement, no actual attacks, and is described as a ghostly spirit) – that its only way of physically interacting with the world is through the sacred statues.
Yeah, my sense is that it would depend on whether the foe has the McGuffin or not. If the foe has the McGuffin, I'd imagine the sacred statue would attack until it swallowed the McGuffin (possibly along with the foe).
Yeah, I needed rules clarification to understand just how deadly it is. I'm fine with putting a deadly monster into play; it just requires some forethought. For example: the party will be very fresh coming into this, once in the mini-dungeon there is foreshadowing of the risk, they have NPC support, there's a way to avoid the monster entirely, there is an escape route & door they can seal behind themselves, there are rival NPC targets for the monster, and the reward is very significant (a diamond which can be used in a ritual to strip all zombies of Undead Fortitude, among other things).
So, I'm introducing the NPC party for story reasons, but also to address this. The 3 scouts in the NPC party are essentially redshirts who I can have die spectacularly to show off just how lethal this monster is. Additionally, the six-man 5th level party has significant NPC support:
Dragonbait (CR 5)
A Mage with alternate spell selection (probably CR 5)
And two NPCs in the rival party may become temporarily allied with the PCs:
Gladiator (CR 5)
Lizardfolk Shaman (CR 2)
EDIT: Also, I've placed 6 sacred statues in the mini-dungeon...each with 95 HP (and resistance to nonmagical weapons), so 570 HP for all the statues and another 63 for the eidolon itself. So there's plenty of HP on the monster side of things; no risk of it being utterly destroyed in a round or two.
Good point! Yeah, they have Dragonbait who has 120 hp the eidolon could deliver a walloping to.
I omitted a lot for brevity to focus on my rules question. The eidolon is an incorporeal possessing spirit that inhabits sacred statues (same monster in MToF, two stat blocks). In this case, statues of allosaurus dinosaurs (thematically tied to the god Ubtao, but they lack hands & lack sacred statue's ability to throw rocks). When it possesses a statue, the only way it can reclaim the McGuffin is for a dinosaur statue to swallow up the person with the object. At least, that's how I am interpreting the eidolon (since it has incorporeal movement, no actual attacks, and is described as a ghostly spirit) – that its only way of physically interacting with the world is through the sacred statues.
Yeah, my sense is that it would depend on whether the foe has the McGuffin or not. If the foe has the McGuffin, I'd imagine the sacred statue would attack until it swallowed the McGuffin (possibly along with the foe).
Yeah, I needed rules clarification to understand just how deadly it is. I'm fine with putting a deadly monster into play; it just requires some forethought. For example: the party will be very fresh coming into this, once in the mini-dungeon there is foreshadowing of the risk, they have NPC support, there's a way to avoid the monster entirely, there is an escape route & door they can seal behind themselves, there are rival NPC targets for the monster, and the reward is very significant (a diamond which can be used in a ritual to strip all zombies of Undead Fortitude, among other things).
So, I'm introducing the NPC party for story reasons, but also to address this. The 3 scouts in the NPC party are essentially redshirts who I can have die spectacularly to show off just how lethal this monster is. Additionally, the six-man 5th level party has significant NPC support:
Dragonbait (CR 5)
A Mage with alternate spell selection (probably CR 5)
And two NPCs in the rival party may become temporarily allied with the PCs:
Gladiator (CR 5)
Lizardfolk Shaman (CR 2)
EDIT: Also, I've placed 6 sacred statues in the mini-dungeon...each with 95 HP (and resistance to nonmagical weapons), so 570 HP for all the statues and another 63 for the eidolon itself. So there's plenty of HP on the monster side of things; no risk of it being utterly destroyed in a round or two.
Good point! Yeah, they have Dragonbait who has 120 hp the eidolon could deliver a walloping to.
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