Running a marilith - strategy

[Elder-Basilisk]

I think a violent thrust tossing 3-4 PCs into the blade barrier is a pretty good use of TK. With 5 PCs and 2 NPCs, though, I'm not sure how useful disarming one opponent would be, unless only 1 is engaged in melee with the marilith... which may be near suicidal if it can do a full attack on the PC.

The disarm function is more for ranged attackers. Archers tend to be the most dangerous opponents for demons like a marilith because they can full attack without having to get in range of the marilith's deadly full attack, they can easily combine the necessary special arrows with a holy bow to defeat its DR, and they tend to have very high attack bonuses and thus defeat its AC--they also have lots of attacks to stack static damage bonuses onto. Taking the standard greater magic weaponed holy bow away from such an opponent will really neuter his damage output and, since such a character is likely to account for 30-50% of the offense of even such a large party, it can be worth a standard action. Not always, of course, but it's worth considering.

 

[Bungus]

I would say keep 2 arms in "reserve" and have them exclusively disarming the PCs to prevent them from getting full attacks (if they do disarm)

I don't think that is a valid manuever. It's all attack or all disarm, unless I'm reading the rules incorrectly.

 

[frankthedm]

I don't think that is a valid manuever. It's all attack or all disarm, unless I'm reading the rules incorrectly.

You can use several of the Combat maneuvers as part of a Full Attack routine. Disarm, Trip and Sunder work this way. Although some folks will try to argue otherwise about sunder to protect their belongings even though errata and reprints have been quite clear on this.