Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 929056" data-attributes="member: 1210">Heh... well, that particular avolakia ultimately survived all the battles with the party through its trickery, and keep in mind that the party in my game was between 10th and 18th level at the time with fairly massive numbers, so they outpowered it by dint of all that... Also, he was desperately trying to get out of the beholder warrens, knowing full well that Red-Eye was eventually going to destroy him otherwise.&nbsp; But he's still out there, craftily planning his weird plots, and may appear again sometime.The thing about creating undead- it doesn't have to kill a pc first, the pcs just have to kill one of its zombies first.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />&nbsp; And the Ghoul Touch/Spectral Hand combo from stealth or surprise is actually fairly likely to take out a wizard or rogue.The party imc also fought several other avolakia without at first realizing they weren't humans, and each time had trouble with them due to the regeneration- that polymorph doesn't go away when they fall unconscious, after all.&nbsp; And the doubled-up Enervation, Vampiric Touch, etc. all add up to about a 20% hit on the resources of a 10th level party imho.&nbsp; YMMV, as always, but my rough 'playtesting' in-game seemed to validate the CR 10... of course, the avolakia clan was hanging out with mind flayers as suggested in the MM2, a trick I just couldn't pass up!I do think that the key to making an avolakia earn his CR 10 is the same as with many other tricksy monsters- they have to use tactics.&nbsp; Strike from afar and flee (polymorphed into a humanoid form with a decent speed, for instance).&nbsp; Use all those undead (the whole create them and get them to serve thing should be done day after day in its lair until it gets some willing servants, before it ventures out to cause problems for the pcs in the first place).&nbsp; Etcetera.Just my 2 cp worth...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="the Jester, post: 929056, member: 1210"] Heh... well, that particular avolakia [i]ultimately survived all the battles with the party[/i] through its trickery, and keep in mind that the party in my game was between 10th and 18th level at the time with fairly massive numbers, so they outpowered it by dint of all that... Also, he was desperately trying to get out of the beholder warrens, knowing full well that Red-Eye was eventually going to destroy him otherwise. But he's still out there, craftily planning his weird plots, and may appear again sometime. The thing about creating undead- it doesn't have to kill a pc first, the pcs just have to kill one of its zombies first. :) And the Ghoul Touch/Spectral Hand combo from stealth or surprise is actually fairly likely to take out a wizard or rogue. The party imc also fought several other avolakia without at first realizing they weren't humans, and each time had trouble with them due to the regeneration- that polymorph doesn't go away when they fall unconscious, after all. And the doubled-up Enervation, Vampiric Touch, etc. all add up to about a 20% hit on the resources of a 10th level party imho. YMMV, as always, but my rough 'playtesting' in-game seemed to validate the CR 10... of course, the avolakia clan was hanging out with mind flayers as suggested in the MM2, a trick I just couldn't pass up! I do think that the key to making an avolakia earn his CR 10 is the same as with many other tricksy monsters- they have to use tactics. Strike from afar and flee (polymorphed into a humanoid form with a decent speed, for instance). Use all those undead (the whole create them and get them to serve thing should be done day after day in its lair until it gets some willing servants, before it ventures out to cause problems for the pcs in the first place). Etcetera. Just my 2 cp worth... [/QUOTE]

Verification