Chillborn Zombie rules questions

[DanmarLOK]

I'd say the immobilized damage applies to everything based on the verbiage.

 

[Caliber]

I do like the idea of a bunch of chillborns clustering together, slowly freezing each other solid though. I'm kinda sorry I didn't think of it before.

 

[Otterscrubber]

Weird, seems poorly written if the mobs can kill each other accidentally over dinner. When I've used them I only added the extra damage to their slam attack. Seemed the balanced thing to do, but I didn't base that on any specific rule.

 

[lin_fusan]

So it looks like my DM is right by RAW, but it seems that the RAW is poorly written.

My only concern is that this stacking aura + extra damage effectively took our Warden out of the fight, since she only had melee powers. The rest of us all had main or back-up ranged abilities. It definitely increased the amount of unfun for the Warden's player...

Thanks for the replies, all!

 

[ThirdWizard]

Soemthing to keep in mind, though: Chillborn only have Resist 10 Cold. So, if you have 3 with overlapping auras, that's 15 damage - the chillborn are going to take damage from one another's aura. So don't overlap too much.

I don't think that's how it would work.

3 chillborn zombies wouldn't have an aura that deals 15 damage. They would have three auras that deal 5 damage each. Since they're separate instances of cold damage, they would resist each one separately. No matter how many chillborn zombies you have, they could never get past Resist 5 cold (barring possible immobilized creatures taking 10, in which case, replace Resist 5 with Resist 10).

 

[OakwoodDM]

So it looks like my DM is right by RAW, but it seems that the RAW is poorly written.

My only concern is that this stacking aura + extra damage effectively took our Warden out of the fight, since she only had melee powers. The rest of us all had main or back-up ranged abilities. It definitely increased the amount of unfun for the Warden's player...

Thanks for the replies, all!

Was that the point where the Warden's player cursed the fact that he didn't have Form of Winter's Herald? Because that's one heck of a leveller against Chillborn Zombies.

 

[webrunner]

I don't think that's how it would work.

3 chillborn zombies wouldn't have an aura that deals 15 damage. They would have three auras that deal 5 damage each. Since they're separate instances of cold damage, they would resist each one separately. No matter how many chillborn zombies you have, they could never get past Resist 5 cold (barring possible immobilized creatures taking 10, in which case, replace Resist 5 with Resist 10).

It specifically uses the wording that the auras are cumulative.. that suggests that the damage is actually together.

 

[Caliban]

It specifically uses the wording that the auras are cumulative.. that suggests that the damage is actually together.

True. What get's hard to adjudicate is when you have multiple overlapping auras from them.

The Chillborn Zombies are spaced such that you hit one zombies aura, then two overlapping auras, and then 3 overlapping auras if you keep moving. How is the cumulative damage calculated?

You enter the first zombies aura, but are not in the other zombies aura yet. You take 5 damage

You keep moving, you hit the 2nd zombies aura. Does it deal 10 damage because it's cumulative with the 1st aura (meaning that you have now taken 15 cold damage)? Does it deal only 5 because you have already taken 5 from the 1st aura?

And then you hit the 3rd aura which is just overlappting with the other two - 15 damage? or 5?

Do you count it as one big aura and deal the 15 damage once? Or as seperate aura's that each deal the cumulative damage if they are overlapping?

And how does it interact with cold resistance 5 in this case (it's cumulative, so does the 5 you resisted the first time not stop the additional cold damage for entering a 2nd aura?)

The last time I ran into this situation I had the aura's doing damage for each one you entered, incresed to 10 or 15 damage if it was an overlapping aura, but had cold resistance resist each instance of damage seperately. Not sure if that was correct (as it meant you effectively took damage from the same aura twice - once when entering, and again when entering the square where it overlapped with another cold aura), but the PC's were mauling the zombies anyway.

 

[Colmarr]

I'm not convinced that "cumulative" means "add them all together and apply them once".

My personal interpretation would be that it means "you take this damage from each chillborn whose aura reaches you". In other words, 3 chillborn do three lots of 5 damage, rather than just one.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not convinced that "cumulative" means "add them all together and apply them once".

My personal interpretation would be that it means "you take this damage from each chillborn whose aura reaches you". In other words, 3 chillborn do three lots of 5 damage, rather than just one.

That would be my interpretation as well. The auras can overlap and each do damage, but they are still just following the normal damage rules. I think the choice of the word 'cumulative' was a bit unfortunate. You could interpret it either way, but it is only a level 6 monster after all.

Likewise I'd personally only apply the +5 damage for Ice Reaper on the slam. Again you could interpret it either way, but again it is only a level 6 monster.

If you interpreted both of these rulings the OTHER way, then two of these things are just beyond lethal at that level. You'd have the first aura doing 10 damage, and what would the second one do, 20!!!??? That's automatic 30 damage per round and if you consider it one source of damage there's no damage resistance a 6th level PC is going to have that will do much about that. The character is just basically plain dead. A max con fighter will be gone in the second round just for standing there, and being immobilized they really have no choice BUT to just stand there and die.

OTOH if its ruled my way, then the PC takes 10 damage from the auras and an attack from each zombie for 1d6 + 9 damage, which still totals out on average to 24 points total, which is a pretty decent amount of damage for 6th level. If the character is lucky enough to have resist 5 cold, then they'd only take on average around 14 points a round, which is fairly reasonable.

After all, zombies are generally meant to be cannon fodder. The thing is a level 6 soldier and its defenses are pretty unspectacular. Seems odd for a soldier to do massive damage every round.