Astral Deva character concerns

[gfunk]

Before you ask, yes, I'm asking for opinions on this with my fellow gamers, but I thought I'd ask here if others have experience with an astral deva in play.
Comments?

Before I reply in detail, I would first like to pimp "JollyDoc's Shackled City" Story Hour where the character I am about to describe is documented.

I have played a Trumpet Archon with my group, straight out of Savage Species, for the first 6 levels. It has many powerful advantages, IMO, is clearly the most powerful character. However, at mid- to high- levels, this becomes less and less of a problem.

Here are some concerns:

1) Both the Astral Deva and the Ghaele Eladrin gain +1 HD for the first 5 character levels. This is not a good idea. Considering all the special abilites they get, they should follow the Trumpet Archon's progression where they only have 4 HD after 5 levels.

2) If you are playing 3.5, the DR needs to be modified to 5/evil and 10/evil. IMO, this is considerably more powerful than DR 5/+1 or DR 10/+1 because the only people who can penetrate your new DR are devils/demons and beings wielding unholy weapons.

3) Your extraplanar subtype can present a serious problem, b/c if you die you cannot be brought back by conventional ressurection spells. For this reason, my DM house-ruled my Archon to the native subtype until I hit 20th level. Note that this means I have to eat and sleep which extraplanar outsiders do not have to do.

4) Your HD will present serious problems at high level. The only think preventing your instant death by a Blasphemy spell is your SR. I'm still not sure how this problem can be resolved.

5) Observing the other posts on this thread, you seem to have a borderline irrational view of the veracity of the Astral Deva's progression in Savage Species. IT'S WRONG and WotC will NEVER errata it. The electricity resistance, for example, is all screwed up. You become immune THEN gain electricity resistance 15? Obviously a typo. Also Astral Deva's base size (for 12 HD) is Medium, not large. Some poor schlub probably saw character level 19 and saw that a 19 HD advanced Deva was large and screwed it up. You'll need to change these, as well as other new aspects that were introduced in 3.5.

Good luck!

 

[Kershek]

Ok, I see what you were talking about now. At 2nd level I saw electricity/fire resistance at 5, then at 3rd level came the immunity. That's as far as I went. I didn't notice that at 9th level there's electricity/fire resistance 10. I'm guessing they meant to say acid/cold there, since there's no other place it lists acid/cold resistance.

Thanks for your response.

 

[cptg1481]

Savage Species

The group for which I DM just lost it's SS character and I can't say that I am at all sorry since for the most part the character - a mind flayer dominated the game.

I tried it once don't think I'll be allowing it again unless the person comes in as a full fledged monster of his level. The way it was broken down was just too powerfull. I mean unless I screwed up something he leveled as a mind flayer just as fast as the players since when one advances with monster class levels there is no penalty. The insane SR was like 23 so to give any caster a chance he needed to be like 10th level at least. He was able to charm, stun and otherwise inable any fighter type (low will save) up to like 15th level with regularity.

In retrospect, however, allowing a full fledged monster in would be fine since they suffer the exp penalty. Of course I should have seen it comming since the player is my resident munchkin, um I mean power gamer. Also, I biffed the warning that the mind flayer is in the difficult to DM category call. Anyway good luck with the deva hope it turns out better than the mind flayer.