Converting Planescape monsters

[Cleon]

The originals are pretty clear that the normal melee attack of the lightning quasi is an touch attack that does electricity damage. It is a bit weird, but I kind of like it as a distinguishing feature. You're welcome to change my mind, of course.

Yes, I know.

My problem is any opponent with a decent energy resistance is practically immune to their attacks. Their ability to produce ball lightning doesn't help, since each globe does rather low damage so will be even easier to block with resist energy.

If its attack did some damage of a different type, at least it wouldn't be wholly useless against a lightning-resistant opponent, just a lot less effective.

On a theoretical level, is a "punch" from a being made out of fire like a Fire Elemental that much different in impact from a "touch" from another being made out of lightning? They're both "living energy" of sorts.

Maybe the "touch" is a mixture of electricity and positive energy? The Xag-Ya has a similar energy lash attack based on positive energy rather than lightning, which does typeless damage in 3E. How about modifying that a bit and making the attack something along the lines of "energy discharge +X touch (Y + X electricity)"?

In any case, I'd like to make it a touch attack, not a melee attack like it is in the 3.0 version.

 

[freyar]

A mix of electric and untyped/positive energy damage would work for me. And I do like it as a touch attack, also. Make the damage take the same values as for fire (maybe using the Con to modify the damage?).

 

[Cleon]

A mix of electric and untyped/positive energy damage would work for me. And I do like it as a touch attack, also. Make the damage take the same values as for fire (maybe using the Con to modify the damage?).

I'd be fine with using Strength for the damage modifier... depending on which is higher.

 

[freyar]

I'd prefer Con since it makes a bit more sense for a positive energy touch. But I'm also fine with letting Con > Str.

 

[Cleon]

I'd prefer Con since it makes a bit more sense for a positive energy touch. But I'm also fine with letting Con > Str.

That'd be problematic since all our Quasi-Elementals ought to have the same Con as each other at their various sizes, and even the Air & Fire Elementals end up with higher Str than Con, and they're the most "lightweight" of Elementals.

 

[freyar]

I'd prefer sticking with Con just for sense. Or maybe Cha. Or we could stick with Con and just boost the damage dice a bit. Str just doesn't make sense for a touch attack.

 

[Cleon]

I'd prefer sticking with Con just for sense. Or maybe Cha. Or we could stick with Con and just boost the damage dice a bit. Str just doesn't make sense for a touch attack.

Strength makes just as much if not more sense to me. It's presumably generating the power somehow, so it's could be using its quasi-elemental equivalent of muscles to do so. Much like how an electric eel generates electricity with specialized muscles.

Well we can always have a dodecahedral dice-off to decide the issue if we can't decide the issue by debate, but in the meantime perhaps we can agree how much damage it does. Then at least we can have some numbers to reverse-engineer the damage dice.

 

[freyar]

I'd almost rather have no damage bonus and just make the base damage higher. Anyway, I note that the Fort DC for the Pathfinder electric eel electricity attack is Con-based.

As for total damage, both original versions have 1d6 + 1 hp/HD. How does that compare to other elementals?

 

[Cleon]

I'd almost rather have no damage bonus and just make the base damage higher. Anyway, I note that the Fort DC for the Pathfinder electric eel electricity attack is Con-based.

As for total damage, both original versions have 1d6 + 1 hp/HD. How does that compare to other elementals?

Well HD-varying damage was a distinctive feature of the Quasi-Elementals in AD&D that regular elementals didn't have. An AD&D Fire Elemental did 3-24 damage regardless of whether it had 8 HD, 12 HD or 16 HD.

 

[freyar]

Well, ok, I went and looked back at a couple of the other quasis. The vacuum originally had 1d4+1, and we gave it a progression 1d4, 1d6, 2d6, 2d8, 2d8, 2d8, 4d8 + Str. Salts originally had 1d8+1, and we gave them 1d6, 1d8, 2d8, 2d10, 2d10, 2d10, 2d10, 6d8 + 1-1/2 Str or Str. Seems like we should go in between, though that's a bit tough at the lower end. How do you want to try to squeeze in there?