Hydra's Combat Reflexes

[Hypersmurf]

A hydra can make an attack of opportunity with each of its head, each round.

Are the heads considered to act as separate creatures, or is the hydra still subject to the one-AoO-per-opponent rule?

eg, if an archer takes a shot from within the threatened zone of a 6-headed hydra, is he subject to one AoO or 6?

Do we assume all six heads can attack the same 5' square in one round?

Tangential hydra question : Does it seem odd that a Lernean Pyrohydra and a Lernean Cryohydra have the same CR? Sever a head and deal fire or acid damage is harder when one of them's immune to fire...

(Random thought - a skeletal Lernean Pyrohydra, taking half damage from slashing weapons, could get dangerous...)

-Hyp.

 

[green slime]

How deadly do you want the encounter to be to your characters?

Personally, I'd assume that each head has a brain of its own, and that as a multibrained creature, that is not killed by decapitating a head, it would seem likely that each individual head gets an AoO against a foe who gives them the...opportunity.

 

[Hypersmurf]

How deadly do you want the encounter to be to your characters?

Personally, I'd assume that each head has a brain of its own, and that as a multibrained creature, that is not killed by decapitating a head, it would seem likely that each individual head gets an AoO against a foe who gives them the...opportunity.

I ran a CR5 Hydra and a CR5 Ettin against 7 4th level characters, but I did limit the Hydra to one AoO per opponent, and the number of heads which could attack a single square at a time. Generally it had enough targets that that didn't prevent it using all its attacks, but it did cut down its AoOs.

The PCs survived, but over half of them went negative... so I think it fitted at the time... but since the hydra is an exception to a few rules already, I wondered what others thought...

-Hyp.

 

[green slime]

Hi Hypersmurf...

Well, that seems to have worked well for you. I had no idea about the rest of the (insert_variety)-hydra's capabilities, without the books here.

Really one doesn't want more from a good combat than to give the PCs a good run for their money... Sounds like a great encounter.

I mean it could also come across as a bit too nasty, should the party cleric provoke an AoO and get chomped on by 6 heads at the same time... I probably couldn't sell the concept to my players, no matter how much I like the idea myself.

Probably would take some legendary foregrounding, before throwing it at the PCs.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Really one doesn't want more from a good combat than to give the PCs a good run for their money... Sounds like a great encounter.

I've managed to push them to the edge a few times of late, but haven't killed anyone yet.

Despite the monk that keeps throwing herself single-handedly into the middle of things before the rest of the party can catch up

I mean it could also come across as a bit too nasty, should the party cleric provoke an AoO and get chomped on by 6 heads at the same time... I probably couldn't sell the concept to my players, no matter how much I like the idea myself.

Probably would take some legendary foregrounding, before throwing it at the PCs.

I've wondered about that sort of thing. Is it ever really fair to throw trolls at a party for the first time without having had someone let the characters know how to beat regeneration?

The players will all know, obviously, about fire and acid... but if they're trying to stay in character, why would people who've never encountered regeneration before suddenly think to try fire?

-Hyp.

 

[green slime]

Yeah, we used to have this problem, with fire and acid against trolls and the like.

As the DM, you know what lies ahead of them. If it is a monster that is fairly common in the DnD menagrie (as trolls are, most players will instantly recognize a troll), I let them meet a grizzled old-timer who knows about these things, sometimes as an NPC who comes along for tracking purposes or the like. Or with the skill system, let someone roll a Knowledge (arcana) or such-like.

With rare monsters about which there is almost no legends, they don't know. Mostly the PCs will try fire after a while. But genereally at that level, they have a myriad of spell affects, and after retreating (if the battle went badly) they reconsider their optunes and get stuck back in. The real difficulty lies in getting your players to learn that their characters cannot handle everything all the time, and that sometimes it is better to retreat, recoup, boost-up with spells, and then get stuck in. Mine are starting to learn this after a decade of gaming...

Hey, BTW, where in New Zealand are you (Kiwi myself, stuck in "sunny" Sweden).

 

[Altalazar]

I would think that a Hydra would get one AoE per round for each head, but could still only do one per opponent per opportunity.

Then I was playing in a game where the DM ruled that all heads could attack at once, so I got something like 8 AoO for just moving into a threatened square. I survived, but it wasn't pretty - I thought it was kinda cheesy, but I didn't die and it was a first time DM so it worked out ok.

But let's not talk about the 4 AoO done by the hidden ogres that I failed to notice because I was moving silently (with a +19 spot) and ended up in a position with all four surrounding me - I did not notice a single one of them, then later, when I tried to move a differernt direction, the all attacked with AoO - that DID kill me. So now we have a running joke that if you are moving silently, you are blind.

This was my running, jumping, super genius poet Vanaran Rogue (OA - Vanaras are those monkey like humanioids) named Tiki

I even wrote a poem about it:

Death Comes Knocking

Silence.
Bold, fleet of foot.
Listen carefully;
Just don't look.
Run away, no one's around.
Oh wait! They surround.
Opportunity knocks -
four times, right away.
Tiki's dead.
How gay.

 

[Altalazar]

No one appreciates poetry anymore! Heh.

 

[Ketjak]

So, to clarify...

Do hydras get

A) N AoO per round, where N = number of heads, and still only one AoO per character

B) 2 or more AoO per round with all heads participating in each AoO

C) 1 AoO per round, with all heads participating?

 

[Brekki]

I vote A ...

have seen three stupid character death's already by DM's using option C ... option B would be an even more overpowered non-option.