Bodak CR and death gaze
Realistically, by the very nature of the beast, it is difficult to pin down the CR of a Bodak.
If you spring a Bodak (or multiple bodaks for a high level party) on a group of characters, without even a hint that they should have Death Ward up, then expect casualties. Lots of casualties.
OTOH, the Bodak is a one trick pony, at least in 3.0. Low armor class, and almost no melee damage worth mentioning means that if the party goes in prepared they will get ripped to shreds in a hurry.
In 3.5, Death Ward and Negative Plane Protection were merged, so I suspect we'll see it show up on the memorized spell list of more Clerics. When I was in Swack-Iron's campaign, I always considered it a secondary spell (that is, something to memorize if we had a hint that the group needed it, but more commonly replaced with a more generally useful spell. Had I been a scroll-monkey, I'd probably have made scrolls of it.)
So I guess one way to look at it is that creatures like Bodaks justify having a Bard in the party to gather intel on the group's next adventure ahead of time.
RigaMortis, you say the group should run away, but likely, by the time they can realize that they need to run away, someone is probably already dead. So the group gets dinged the cost of a Raise Dead, someone in the group gets screwed over, and the party eventually comes back with the right spells and crushes it, assuming they successfully get away AND can buy a Raise Dead in town before a day goes by and their friend is turned into a bodak. Not something I would probably do in my campaign, either.
I have no idea how they may have changed bodak in 3.5, but a few easy options spring to mind:
1) Have the gaze attack do straight damage rather than slaying outright. This effect was used in the Monsters of Faerun for an alternative Lich special ability, and I used it on a Lich in my campaign to good effect.
2) Have the gaze attack damage the target's CON. In large numbers, Bodaks are still quite capable of scaring a higher level party.
3) One of the demonic critters in Book of Vile Darkness had a level draining gaze attack. That one went over really well in my group.
The key to any of these last 3 is, indeed, that the save or die nature of the effect goes away, and gets replaced with something that weakens the character with the potential to still kill them if they just sit and take it.
Of course, if you do drop the death gaze, the CR of this creature should drop at least 3 levels since the average level 4 party will likely will have better attack rolls, damage rolls AND armor classes.
All this is 3.0 of course...I expect it to change significantly in 3.5.
