Need help with a monster

[aladorn]

Hey all,

I came up with a fun monster/encounter for my home brew Eberron game, and my PC's are going to finally square off and end this creature. The thing is I haven't actually made any stats for this creature yet and for some reason I'm having writers block.

The idea behind the creature is from the Mark of Prophesy adventure from the back of the Eberron campeign guide. There was an NPC in that adventure known as Alric Blacktree that was chained to this mark on the floor that forced visions on him. He goes insane and tries to kill the PC's and destroy Sharn. In my game the PC's didn't get to the bomb in time and a huge tower went down. When they found Alric (who now has an abberant dragonmark) they made sure he couldn't get away and killed him. When he died his mark disapeared. Then just to mess with them when they took a sky coach back to their base of operation the pilot of the coach changed into Alric and barrell rolled the coach and dumped them into a ravine.

The session ended there. After the fact I thought up a reason why Alric changed bodies. His dragonmark allows him to change bodies, so in otherwords Alric is his dragonmark and he just grabs hosts to control.

The idea I have for the encounter involving Alric is going to be a fun hostage situation. Alric and his cult has taken hostages and dressed them just like the cult members. The cult all wear masks and the hostages are all gagged. The cult members are going to make attacks on the PC's then try to hide within the hostages. Alric will be jumping from body to body to prevent the PC's from finding him. No matter what body he is in Alric will have the same powers to pick from. This whole fight is a delay tactic so other cultests can finish a summoning ritual for some monster that Alric will take over.

So some of the things I'm trying to come up with is

1. What kind of monster to make Alric

2. How to work his transfer from host to host

3. How to give the PC's a window to strike at Alric and not his host

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Oh and I forgot to mention the party will be level 6 when this happens.

 

[Ebylon]

What exactly is the goal of the hostages being there? I understand hostage taking is bad kthx and all, but what mechanic are they going to serve for the fight? The PCs will surely be able to tell who's a cult member and who's not, unless all the hostages are also immobilized and forced to stand still, with the real cult members hidden amongst them. Sort of like the scene from Batman Begins where Ra's hides in the assembly of ninja and strikes out at Bruce. You could let the cultists roll stealth checks to make an attack on the PCs; if they beat the PCs' passive perception, maybe they make an attack but aren't singled out amongst the hostages, staying hidden.

If that's what you're going for, you'd want the cultists to make their attack in a room before the hostage room, and have them retreat in... otherwise, how exactly are they going to 'hide' within the hostages unless there's dozens and dozens packed together? The PCs would just see them dart in.

I'd almost suggest keeping the hostages out of the fight in general. Maybe they're the ultimate reward. One hostage is sacrificed per round of combat as a necessary component of the summoning ritual? If the players don't beat down Aric before they can stop the ritual, they've truly lost something in allowing the hostages to perish, and then have to suffer through fighting an Aric-possessed monster.

As for Aric himself... make the 'bouncing' a standard at-will action if you want him to be able to do it at will, or an encounter that he can do x amount of times before being too strained to continue bouncing at will. Make all the cultists minions, or level 1 or 2 or something (easily dropped). If you use them in this part of the encounter, make all hostages minions (and if you do use hostages, make sure the cultists aren't minions as well, give them enough HP to survive a hit or two... or make them two-hit minions). When Aric possesses one of the cultists/hostages, they get whatever powers you want them to have to represent Aric's possession. Don't modify their HP.

Whenever Aric's host dies, make Aric himself lose a chunk of health. Maybe he takes half of the cultist's HP in damage. If he possesses a hostage and it dies, make him take the equivalent of half of the cultist NPC's hp in damage as well. Then he's forced to randomly transfer to the nearest cultist/hostage body.

To give PCs a chance to do direct damage to Aric, try this. When he leaves a body (be it willingly or upon the host's death) let nearby characters (either adjacent to the body or burst 2 from it, your choice) make an Arcana or Religion (being flexible, as not every character has Arcana trained) check. If they succeed versus a DC of your choice, Aric's soul manifests itself in a square adjacent to his previous host's body. The PC has essentially 'grabbed' his soul and forced it to hang out in a corporeal form. Until Aric's next turn, or when he takes damage (whichever comes first) he is targettable. Give him some defensive stats, vulnerability to psychic or something, and give the PCs a chance to wail on him directly. Once he's taken x damage (or any at all,) or it's his turn again, he zaps into the body he was going for.

If you want, I could take some time and try and actually stat up the whole encounter in Monster Builder for you? Or did I give you enough ideas?

 

[Quickleaf]

I like the idea of forcing corporeality! My first thought about your Alric monster was to make him a staged solo. So there is Alric at full hp in body #1. Once that body is slain (say he sustains 25% damage) he jumps to body #2. When bloodied he jumps to body #3. When down 75% hp he jumps into body #4. At 0 hp Alric dies...or does he? At each stage he could gain new powers or even switch roles entirely, up to you. I'm assuming he can only possess evil cultists who bear the same dragonmark. However, if Alric can possess *anyone* then the PCs may want to spare as many innocents as they can... If that's what you're aiming for I suggest modeling it after ghostly possession (see "trap haunt") which is melee based recharge power. I think it would be fun if they have to isolate him from the cultists so his spirit can't reach them in time to possess anyone - this is Alric's achiles heel.

 

[Mesh Hong]

I’m thinking opportunity attacks and readied actions.

When Alric jumps bodies he becomes an insubstantial creature that the PCs can see and takes a free move action (or the body jump could actually be a move action), this gives the PCs a brief window of opportunity which they can make opportunity attacks in or if they are clever, readied actions. This mechanism would also allow them to know who he is inhabiting which might alleviate some of the annoyance from the encounter design.

Of course with this set up it is possible for a PC to ready an action that includes a daze, stun, slow, immobilise or push/pull/slide effect which could all prove very useful in stopping Alric getting to his intended possession target.

The crowd of hostages set up is a little trickier. Maybe you could have the hostages as large zones, the cultists could enter the zones and make stealth checks to become invisible while in the zone. The zones themselves could be difficult terrain (for the PCs only) to simulate a crowd of people not getting out of the PCs way.

With this you could maybe introduce an in combat skill challenge to disperse or move one of these zones in order to level the playing field and also reduce the efficiency of Alric’s body jumping choices.

One benefit of this zone approach would be you could have the cultists as lurkers who attack by leaping out of the crowd (gaining combat advantage) then scuttle back in to regain invisibility. This makes them actually operate as lurkers and they would be at a disadvantage if they were caught out in the open which is probably the whole theme you are going for.

Getting back to Alric you could have an arcane or divine PC come up with a quick ritual for disrupting Alrics possession. This could be a skill challenge over a couple of rounds that forces him to leave his current host immediately, this could give your group a clear shot at him, maybe every 3 rounds?

Anyway they are my initial thoughts, I hope they give you some ideas. If you want help stating this thing up just let me know.

 

[aladorn]

First off thanks for all the replies.

I was going for a hostage situation more like a mix of the Dark Knight (where the PC's aren't sure who is innocent and who is a cultist) and the ninja scene from Batman Begins (where the boss is hiding among the people). I like the idea making Alric corporal and stopping him from bouncing with an Arcana/Religion/maybe Nature. I also like the idea of making the hostages a zone. What I picture is all the hostages are dressed in cultist robes and wearing masks so they all look identical. Maybe have daggers tied to their hands so it is really hard to see any difference. Not sure but I'll probably have the hostages magically held so the cultist can move the groups however they want. I'll probably go with the zones of hostages so the cultist can lurk from one zone to the next doing attacks on the fly. The map I had planned on using is probably gonna need to be changed to give the cultist some room to run. Alric will probably be an artillery/lurker because during the last fight he was shooting lightning all over the place. He can jump into cultist but likes to jump into innocents since then the PC's have to (according to Alric) kill the host to have a shot at him. Basically I wanted to make the PC's feel like they are being forced to kill a couple of innocents to save many more. If they can be clever about saving all of the hostages then kudos to them but it isn't going to be easy.