Author Topic: [Creature] Bone Spire  (Read 3898 times)

Offline Garryl

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[Creature] Bone Spire
« on: March 08, 2016, 02:21:57 AM »
Bone Spire creatures

Bone spires are emplaced necromantic fortifications. Unlike other undead, bone spires are created in a single locations that they cannot move from.

Uncontrolled bone spires typically attack any living creature that enters their range, or anything that attacks them or another nearby spire. Otherwise, they remain retracted and hidden within their necromantically reinforced bases.

Bone Spire Traits
Most bone spires possess the following traits (unless otherwise noted in the creature's entry).

  • Emplaced: Bone spires are usually built into the surrounding fortifications. Until they are destroyed, they cannot move or be moved from their space separately from the object, vehicle, or structure to which they are attached. Even magical movement and teleportation is ineffective. Some bone spires have a limited ability to move across the surface of the fortification to which they are attached.

    Because emplaced bone spires are immovable, certain attack forms function differently against them. An emplaced bone spire cannot be knocked prone. Bull rush, overrun, and trip attempts against them automatically fail. A bone spire can be grappled, but not pinned, and remains grappled only while the grapple remains in its space; consequently, a creature with Improved Grab cannot pull the bone spire into its space and must move into the bone spire's space in order to maintain the grapple. A bone spire cannot be swallowed whole. A bone spire can be engulfed, but only while the engulfing creature occupies its space.

    An emplaced bone spire must be animated at the location it is to be emplaced.

    An emplaced bone spire attached to a vehicle uses that vehicle's effective Dexterity score or its own, whichever is higher.

  • Retract: Each bone spire is a tower of animated bones with necromantically fortified base. A spire can extend itself from this base or retract back into it as a standard action that provokes an attack of opportunity.

    While retracted, the bone spire is like a turtle hiding within its shell, hidden and protected from attack. However, the spire is unable attack or interact with anything outside its base. It has improved cover (+8 to AC, +4 on Reflex saves, and the equivalent of improved evasion), hardness 6 (reducing the damage from any source by 6), and takes half damage from all ranged attacks (before applying damage reduction and hardness). A DC 20 Spot check is required to notice that the spire's base is more than just a pile of bone. This may increase to 25 or 30 depending on how well the spire's base is hidden or camouflaged within the surrounding terrain. While retracted, other creatures can move through the bone spire's space, but it counts as difficult terrain.
Creating a Bone Spire: A bone spire can be created with the animate dead spell. Creating one uses the corpse of a creature possessing a skeletal structure of at least one size category larger than the spire, or two corpses of the same size. Smaller corpses can be used, but for each size category smaller twice as many corpses are needed to substitute (ie: two Small corpses can substitute for a Medium corpse, four for a Large corpse, eight for a Huge corpse, and so forth). Bone spires count as having half their actual HD when determining how many creatures that can be controlled through the animate dead spell and similar effects that share the same control limit.

A bone spire becomes emplaced in the space it is created. A bone spire cannot be created in a space unsuitable for emplacement.



Lashing Spire      CR 1
Always NE Medium Undead
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +0, Spot +0
Languages None
_________________________________________
AC 18, touch 12, flat-footed 16; Deflect Arrows
   (+2 Dex, +6 natural armor)
hp 26 (4 HD); DR 5/bludgeoning
Immune cold; emplaced, undead immunities
Fort +1, Ref +3, Will +4
_________________________________________
Speed --; emplaced
Melee bone lash +7 (2d4+7)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 10 ft. with bone lash (5 ft.)
Base Atk +2; Grp +6
Atk Options Combat Reflexes
Special Actions retract
_________________________________________
Abilities Str 20, Dex 15, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 1
Feats Combat ReflexesB, Deflect ArrowsB, Improved InitiativeB
SQ emplaced
Advancement 5-11 HD (Medium)
_________________________________________
Bone Lash: A lashing spire's bone lash is a natural weapon that otherwise functions as a spiked chain.



Stinging Spire      CR 1/2
Always NE Medium Undead
Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +0, Spot +0
Languages None
_________________________________________
AC 16, touch 11, flat-footed 15
   (+1 Dex, +5 natural armor)
hp 19 (3 HD); DR 5/bludgeoning
Immune cold; emplaced, undead immunities
Fort +1, Ref +2, Will +3
_________________________________________
Speed --; emplaced
Melee bone spike +5 (1d10+6/x3 and bleeding wounds)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Base Atk +1; Grp +5
Special Actions retract
_________________________________________
Abilities Str 19, Dex 12, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 1
Feats Improved InitiativeB
SQ emplaced
Advancement 4-9 HD (Medium)
_________________________________________
Bleeding Wounds (Ex): Any living creature damaged by a stinging spire's bone spike continues to bleed, losing 1 hit point per round thereafter. Multiple wounds result in cumulative bleeding loss. The bleeding can be stopped by a DC 10 Heal check or the application of a cure spell or some other healing magic.
Bone Spike: A stinging spire's bone spike is a natural weapon that otherwise functions as a halberd.



Wicked Spire      CR 1/2
Always NE Medium Undead
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +0, Spot +0
Languages None
_________________________________________
AC 17, touch 12, flat-footed 15
   (+2 Dex, +5 natural armor)
hp 26 (4 HD); DR 5/bludgeoning
Immune cold; emplaced, undead immunities
Fort +1, Ref +3, Will +4
_________________________________________
Speed --; emplaced
Melee bone blade +5 (1d6+4/19-20 and bleeding wounds)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Base Atk +2; Grp +5
Atk Options Hobble, Sneak Attack +1d6
Special Actions retract
_________________________________________
Abilities Str 17, Dex 14, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 1
Feats Improved InitiativeB
SQ emplaced
Advancement 5-10 HD (Medium)
_________________________________________
Bleeding Wounds (Ex): Any living creature damaged by a wicked spire's bone blade continues to bleed, losing 1 hit point per round thereafter. Multiple wounds result in cumulative bleeding loss. The bleeding can be stopped by a DC 10 Heal check or the application of a cure spell or some other healing magic.
Bone Blade: A wicked spire's bone blade is a natural weapons that otherwise functions as a short sword.
Hobble (Ex): Any living creature damaged by a wicked spire's sneak attack with a bone blade is hobbled. Treat this as if the creature stepped on caltrops; the creature’s speed is reduced by one-half because its foot is wounded. This movement penalty lasts for 24 hours, or until the creature is successfully treated with a DC 15 Heal check, or until it receives at least 1 point of magical healing.
Sneak Attack (Ex): A wicked spire deals an additional 1d6 points of damage with any attack that qualifies as a sneak attack. This functions as the Rogue ability by the same name.



Change Log
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« Last Edit: March 07, 2024, 09:26:50 AM by Garryl »

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #1 on: March 08, 2016, 07:50:08 AM »
For the CR1 spire, what's stopping the other side from just using a reach weapon? Also, given they're bone creatures, I'd think they get the usual 50% pierce slash resistance too...

Offline Garryl

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #2 on: March 08, 2016, 01:19:36 PM »
For the CR1 spire, what's stopping the other side from just using a reach weapon?

Absolutely nothing. Nor is there anything stopping the other side from plinking away with ranged weapons. One of the reasons that they're low CR for their stats. Although it might even be reasonable to drop them to CR 1/2.

Quote
Also, given they're bone creatures, I'd think they get the usual 50% pierce slash resistance too...

It's DR 5/bludgeoning in 3.5e. Probably appropriate to add that, too.

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #3 on: March 08, 2016, 01:47:43 PM »
For the CR1 spire, what's stopping the other side from just using a reach weapon?

Absolutely nothing. Nor is there anything stopping the other side from plinking away with ranged weapons. One of the reasons that they're low CR for their stats. Although it might even be reasonable to drop them to CR 1/2.

I would, honestly. They are an enemy you can literally walk around and thus defeat them if the corridor is wide or they're badly placed.

Quote
Also, given they're bone creatures, I'd think they get the usual 50% pierce slash resistance too...

It's DR 5/bludgeoning in 3.5e. Probably appropriate to add that, too.

Sigh. That's what 7 years programming 3.0e gets you.

For the Wicked Spire, much as I like the idea of Hobble, how it is it ever supposed to land that? It doesn't have any form of surprise on its side (aside from possibly a very blind group of adventurers for one round), and presumably there aren't many flanking options, unless there's multiple spires and a PC is silly enough to stand in the one bad spot.

Also, if you want to scoot these posts into the discussion thread to keep the individual ones clean, feel free.

Offline Garryl

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #4 on: March 08, 2016, 02:17:43 PM »
For the CR1 spire, what's stopping the other side from just using a reach weapon?

Absolutely nothing. Nor is there anything stopping the other side from plinking away with ranged weapons. One of the reasons that they're low CR for their stats. Although it might even be reasonable to drop them to CR 1/2.

I would, honestly. They are an enemy you can literally walk around and thus defeat them if the corridor is wide or they're badly placed.

Done.

Quote
For the Wicked Spire, much as I like the idea of Hobble, how it is it ever supposed to land that? It doesn't have any form of surprise on its side (aside from possibly a very blind group of adventurers for one round), and presumably there aren't many flanking options, unless there's multiple spires and a PC is silly enough to stand in the one bad spot.

Well, there is this maneuver that summons a whole bunch of them in flanking positions...

For more independent purposes, put a pair of them on the far side of a door, or combine them with a mobile creature that can enable flanking or that has abilities to deny Dex. If you want surprise, who looks at the ceiling? (Well, probably a lot of adventurers.) Retracted bone spires in a necromancer's lair filled with discarded bones will either blend in and be unnoticed until they strike from surprise, or make some paranoid adventurers waste a lot of time smashing up or dancing around every pile of bones they see.

The main practical effect of bone spires is area denial. They create a 15 (or 25) foot square where you don't want to be. They're impractical to remove from range in any reasonable time frame or without blowing limited magical resources (most ranged weapons won't penetrate their DR, and between hardness and half damage, they're basically immune to low-level ranged attacks while retracted). They're like having part of the room be trapped.

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #5 on: March 08, 2016, 04:52:45 PM »
Sneaky add on the maneuver ;)

Have you ever considered creating a necromancer's lair location using them? Or a monarch's tomb that has undying defenders crafted from his most notable warriors after death?

Offline Garryl

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #6 on: March 08, 2016, 05:43:14 PM »
Still tweaking the stats of the Wicked Spire a bit. Removed the second attack, dropped Str by 2, and reduced the CR to 1/2. Before that, napkin math said that the 8 wicked spires summoned by Cage of Stinging Bone would do 176 avg. damage if all their attacks hit (roughly equivalent to 50d6 damage). Yes, they get eaten alive by anything with DR, but otherwise it's still way higher potential damage than intended for the maneuver.

Sneaky add on the maneuver ;)

Have you ever considered creating a necromancer's lair location using them? Or a monarch's tomb that has undying defenders crafted from his most notable warriors after death?

I haven't thought about actually making such a campaign location, but I have had some thoughts how they might fit into something like that (like the provisions for retracted bone spires "hiding" among the terrain).

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #7 on: March 08, 2016, 06:25:49 PM »
Still tweaking the stats of the Wicked Spire a bit. Removed the second attack, dropped Str by 2, and reduced the CR to 1/2. Before that, napkin math said that the 8 wicked spires summoned by Cage of Stinging Bone would do 176 avg. damage if all their attacks hit (roughly equivalent to 50d6 damage). Yes, they get eaten alive by anything with DR, but otherwise it's still way higher potential damage than intended for the maneuver.

How many monsters at the designed level have DR? Because it sounds like this maneuver could be wildly fluky, between the different monster types and just occasional quirks of the dice.

Offline Garryl

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #8 on: March 08, 2016, 11:44:09 PM »
Still tweaking the stats of the Wicked Spire a bit. Removed the second attack, dropped Str by 2, and reduced the CR to 1/2. Before that, napkin math said that the 8 wicked spires summoned by Cage of Stinging Bone would do 176 avg. damage if all their attacks hit (roughly equivalent to 50d6 damage). Yes, they get eaten alive by anything with DR, but otherwise it's still way higher potential damage than intended for the maneuver.

How many monsters at the designed level have DR? Because it sounds like this maneuver could be wildly fluky, between the different monster types and just occasional quirks of the dice.

Yeah, it definitely still needs adjustment. Having 8 attacks makes the numbers very volatile. I hope I don't wind up having to do something like "only one spire can attack any given creature".

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #9 on: March 09, 2016, 02:04:27 PM »
Have you considered something that treats all the different spires as one monster for the strike? It'll remove a fair bit of the DR-based randomness.

Something like "The bone spires make a combined attack with an attack bonus of 5 + your initiator level, and deal 8d6 + 40 damage on a successful hit." It's a little lower average damage than if they were all able to hit with sneak attack, but also cuts down on the dice rolling and the variability DR would add. It also means that they punch through DR much more successfully, since it's one big attack instead of lots of little ones.

Offline Vladeshi

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Re: [Creature] Bone Spire
« Reply #10 on: March 10, 2016, 11:16:48 AM »
If they can be animated onto a vehicle, then it would be useful to have weights for all of them.
The following explanation has been removed due to time constraints, character limits on posts, and the DC 30 Spellcraft checks to understand large portions of it.