Vrock cheese

[Grog]

The spores are a free action. So it can release a cloud of spores and teleport out in the same round, which means the PCs will only get one round of attacks against it, and remember, it's always coming in with a full-strength mirror image.

 

[Sejs]

If you're fighting demons that can Teleport at will and you DON'T dimensional anchor them, you deserve what you get.

Or, you know, in the rounds that the Vrock is popping in and out they could ... leave. I'd put it at a max of two iterations before the group moves and the Vrock teleports back in to find an empty battleground.

 

[Grog]

If you're fighting demons that can Teleport at will and you DON'T dimensional anchor them, you deserve what you get.

PCs don't always know what they're going to run up against on any given adventure, and how many 9th level casters prepare Dimensional Anchor as a matter of course? Not many IME.

Plus, even if a PC has the spell prepared, it requires a ranged touch attack (and thus can be easily thwarted by the Vrock's mirror image) and it also has to beat the Vrock's SR. It's not guaranteed to work by any stretch of the imagination.

Or, you know, in the rounds that the Vrock is popping in and out they could ... leave. I'd put it at a max of two iterations before the group moves and the Vrock teleports back in to find an empty battleground.

How far could they get in three rounds?

 

[Baron Opal]

A bless will counter the spores and a magic missile will wipe out the images. That leaves the fighter and the thief to beat the snot out of it with readied actions. This isn't to say that move -> spore -> teleport isn't a good idea. It is, but not quite a complete screw-over. By the second or third iteration the PCs will have their act together and the vrock will have some damage. Enough, perhaps, to consider a different tactic.

I think that it would make a great first move, however. Zap them with spores, wait a round or two, and then send in the minions. Then, zap them with spores again when the minions are getting mopped up and eat the weak mortal.

 

[Baron Opal]

Vrock cheese

You know, what would it taste like and how do you milk a vrock? They're avian, not mammilian. But as a chaos demon I suppose it could have whatever kind of anatomy it wanted.

I imagine it would be a deep orange, almost red. Each wheel probably has some vines growing out of it due to spore contamination. That might be part of the preservative rind, however.

Vrock milkers must be really tough. Retired Cincinatus tough, I mean.

Imagine a whole aviary of vrocks, and farmer Cincinatus coming in for the morning milking. The help are too terrified to help after what happened to poor Jimmy last week. But those vrock fly down obediently and get milked by Cincinatus because they don't wanted to get smacked with the holy stick, now do they?

OK, I'm going to bed now.

 

[Darklone]

Magic Missile actually won't wipe out the Mirror Images if you go by the rules... see a recent thread on the topic. Yet most DMs I know allow this.

Bless is the easiest counter to the spores but there's an even better tactic: Spread out. The spores only affect PCs adjacent to the Vrock, so if the PCs don't stand back to back and wait till the Vrock pops in between them, the Vrock will at most affect two PCs at once for ca 30 points of damage (e.g. one or two good Cure spells)... for getting hammered a full round by spells and charges.

I tried this tactic with two Vrocks vs a group of level 8 PCs... the Vrocks died pretty quickly even though one of them always used the Stunning Screech. Their AC was simply too low and the Vrocks didn't exactly know how the PCs moved and positioned since their last attack.

 

[hong]

You know, what would it taste like and how do you milk a vrock? They're avian, not mammilian. But as a chaos demon I suppose it could have whatever kind of anatomy it wanted.

I imagine it would be a deep orange, almost red. Each wheel probably has some vines growing out of it due to spore contamination. That might be part of the preservative rind, however.

Vrock milkers must be really tough. Retired Cincinatus tough, I mean.

Imagine a whole aviary of vrocks, and farmer Cincinatus coming in for the morning milking. The help are too terrified to help after what happened to poor Jimmy last week. But those vrock fly down obediently and get milked by Cincinatus because they don't wanted to get smacked with the holy stick, now do they?

OK, I'm going to bed now.

That's not the kind of cheese I was thinking of.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Somehow I don't think Vrocks are the type of creatures who would utilize such tactics. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? No.

 

[Nail]

Somehow I don't think Vrocks are the type of creatures who would utilize such tactics.

Why?

Chaotic = Stupid?

 

[Darklone]

Honestly, t-porting into the middle of the party, using stunning screech (first one, then the second) and then whacking the PCs to pieces in addition to using the spores worked a lot better than trying to use Wuss attack tactics with teleport.