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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6976698" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>Actually it's even worse than that, because the extra action could itself be a multi-attack with Soul Rend instead of just a Soul Rend.</p><p></p><p>So, every round after the first it does this:</p><p></p><p><strong>Action:</strong> Multi-attack, two 8d6+5 claw attacks and a Soul Rend for 8d10+10 (or more). Soul Rend kills the creature currently in its rib cage, recharging Soul Rend and healing it for 25 HP, and giving it an Extra Action for next round.</p><p><strong>Bonus action:</strong> discharge a zombie.</p><p><strong>Extra Action:</strong> Multi-attack, two more claw attacks, and Imprison another soul. (Or another Soul Rend.)</p><p></p><p><strong>Total:</strong> 32d6+8d10+30 (186) HP of potential damage. (32d6+16d10+30 (230) if it does two Soul Rends.)</p><p></p><p>I see two potential difficulties with the Devourer though:</p><p></p><p>(1) Its special abilities don't work on anything except humanoids. A Moon Druid can conjure a bunch of wolves to rip it to shreds, and they are completely immune to its Soul Rend. Kind of weird.</p><p></p><p>(2) More importantly, its abilities are gimmicky and not well-telegraphed. It's fun for us to speculate about these combos on the Internet, but all a player is going to see is a monster which somehow makes four huge attacks per turn and does two huge AoEs on top. They don't have any way of knowing that Soul Rend, for example, has a slow recharge rate, because they never witness the slow recharge rate, only the instant recharge.</p><p></p><p>From a game design perspective, as a DM intending to have some fun with the skeletal meat-wagon combo, you'd probably want to work out a way to present enough information to the players so they can make an informed choice about whether or not to kill the helpless guys in the corpse-wagon: maybe they read stories about previous encounters with Devourers, make a History or Arcana check, or watch in horror as an elite squad of NPCs get shredded by the Devourer and its corpse-wagon.</p><p></p><p>If you don't telegraph its abilities, then all that happens is that the players fight a really tough monster with loads of HP that likes to spit out zombies. No moral dilemma there.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6976698, member: 6787650"] Actually it's even worse than that, because the extra action could itself be a multi-attack with Soul Rend instead of just a Soul Rend. So, every round after the first it does this: [B]Action:[/B] Multi-attack, two 8d6+5 claw attacks and a Soul Rend for 8d10+10 (or more). Soul Rend kills the creature currently in its rib cage, recharging Soul Rend and healing it for 25 HP, and giving it an Extra Action for next round. [B]Bonus action:[/B] discharge a zombie. [B]Extra Action:[/B] Multi-attack, two more claw attacks, and Imprison another soul. (Or another Soul Rend.) [B]Total:[/B] 32d6+8d10+30 (186) HP of potential damage. (32d6+16d10+30 (230) if it does two Soul Rends.) I see two potential difficulties with the Devourer though: (1) Its special abilities don't work on anything except humanoids. A Moon Druid can conjure a bunch of wolves to rip it to shreds, and they are completely immune to its Soul Rend. Kind of weird. (2) More importantly, its abilities are gimmicky and not well-telegraphed. It's fun for us to speculate about these combos on the Internet, but all a player is going to see is a monster which somehow makes four huge attacks per turn and does two huge AoEs on top. They don't have any way of knowing that Soul Rend, for example, has a slow recharge rate, because they never witness the slow recharge rate, only the instant recharge. From a game design perspective, as a DM intending to have some fun with the skeletal meat-wagon combo, you'd probably want to work out a way to present enough information to the players so they can make an informed choice about whether or not to kill the helpless guys in the corpse-wagon: maybe they read stories about previous encounters with Devourers, make a History or Arcana check, or watch in horror as an elite squad of NPCs get shredded by the Devourer and its corpse-wagon. If you don't telegraph its abilities, then all that happens is that the players fight a really tough monster with loads of HP that likes to spit out zombies. No moral dilemma there. [/QUOTE]
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