I’m currently writing about Friday’s last game and chances are the post will be massive. So I’m taking this one “Aside” I had plan to write and making it into a separate crunchy mini-post.
While I was preping last week’s adventure, I had a strong arachnid theme going (I looooooove spider monsters!). At a certain point, I needed a demonic Guardian in the CR9-10 range and the Bebilith came up.
Thing is, the Bebilith is an armour destroyer creature that got somewhat nerfed in the 3.0 to the 3.5 ‘upgrade’. Witness the latest ability:
Rend Armor (Ex)
If a bebilith hits with both claw attacks, it pulls apart any armor worn by its foe. This attack deals 4d6+18 points of damage to the opponent’s armor. Creatures not wearing armor are unaffected by this special attack. Armor reduced to 0 hit points is destroyed. Damaged armor may be repaired with a successful Craft (armorsmithing) check.
I don’t know about you, but I never did find the Armour HP and Hardness table in D&D 3.5. Granted an enterprising DM can tackle this by extrapolating from the Breaking Items table, but quite frankly, just how thick is Chainmail vs Full Platemail? What material do you use for Studded leather armour? You see where I’m going with this?
The original 3.0 rule was more straightforward, if bebilith hits with both claw, armour is destroyed. Yay!
More straightforward, yes, but boy does it suck! Along with Save or Dies and Level Drain, unilateral equipment destruction is one of the killjoys of D&D.
So I was faced with either an inapplicable rule or a sucky one….
That’s why I contacted Graham during my prep session and exposed the problem to him as I really wanted to use this monster.
Borrowing from Mike Mearl’s Re-design of the Rust Monster, he proposed a rule that I’m putting in ‘rulsey’ with the following (Notice my use of the American spelling of armour) :
Rend Armor (Ex)
If a bebilith hits with both claw attacks, it pulls apart any armor worn by its foe. This attack reduces the bonus to AC provided by an armor by 2, to a minimum of 0. Creatures not wearing armor are unaffected by this special attack. An armor whose bonus (armour+enhancement) is reduced to 0 is destroyed. Damaged armor may be repaired at a cost equal to (Reduced Bonus/Total Bonus)X Cost of New Armor. A character can repair an armor with a successful Craft (armorsmithing) check (DC 10+ Armour & Enhencement bonuses) for half that cost.
Now anything short of an unenchanted leather armour (no one wears padded armour right?) will survive at least one hit. The player will be worried but will have the choice to adjust his strategy accordingly (like adopting a hit and run tactic to prevent a full attack from the bebilith).
And choices in a game are, I believe, a fundamental element of the Rule of Fun (back me up here Dave!)
I tried it and it worked beautifully as I’ll explain in my DM log.
Of course, an Evil DM could create a variant Bebilith with the ability to make a full attack on a charge… 🙂
How difficult is the craft check to repair the armour? 10+AC (magical or mundane?) or something else?
I assume the price of repairing is (the amount the bonus was reduced by)/(total bonus)*blah so that the price increases as the armour gets more shredded.
Does the price include magical enhancements? I’m assuming yes, otherwise it is pretty meaningless at the levels Bebiliths may be encountered and fought.
(Also: See armour hp, hardness.)
For the Craft DC check I’d go with 10+Bonus including magic enhancement bonus as per Craft.
Yes for cost and magical enhancement.
As for materials table actually referring to armor, I take the blame for shoddy research and retort that it’s still a clunky mechanic that requires to either log hp/hardness in advance or look it up during a fight…
I’d stick with the re-write of the ability.
And here I thought you didn’t know d20 all that well! 🙂
At one point I knew 3rd ed. almost by heart. I’m a bit rusty nowadays. (d20srd.org also has a functional search feature.)
It is a clunky mechanic, that much is evident. Add to it the magical enchancements adding bonus hardness or hp and making the item immune or resistant to damage with lesser enhancements or lack of them (IIRC), and you have a cumbersome heap of rules nobody will ever use.
which is why, when Chatty brought the issue up to me, my response was “We can try to find the rules, or we can just make better ones anyways.”
Hey look! I can post comments with + signs in them now!
+ + + + + + + + + + + +!!!
Whee!
Yay you! +++!
“And choices in a game are, I believe, a fundamental element of the Rule of Fun ”
Interesting and Meaningful choices, to be exact!
Yeah, what he said!
For some reason I thought this was going to be about Invisibles.
Mearls monster makeovers were excellent. I used his variant beholder
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20061028a
from that series and variations of it quite a bit in a high-level beholder adventure I ran (which also utilized the Complete Guide to Beholders – awesome book). Changing up antimagic, eliminating facing, and adding that extra initiative turn really helped make it easier to run without taking away from the feel of the creature. It also completely wrecked my players preconcieved notions of what a beholder could do, and I always enjoy messing with their heads a little bit.
I think the monster makeover articles provide an insight into Mearl’s mindset of 4th edition – make monsters easier to run and speed up combat. I think that extra initiative turn is similar to what they have the new 4E dragon doing from what little I’ve seen of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if these makeovers turned out to be early drafts of 4E monsters.
Sorry for late response Lone and Shadow… I had a post to write before doing the rest of the fun stuff.
Lone: What made you think it would be about invisibles? I’m confused!
Shadow145: Yes I really liked Mike’s re-designs. I only used the Rust Monster, although to very good effect! Have you seen the new stats for the Pit Fiend? I can’t wait to DM one!
Whatchoo talkin’ bout, Willis? I wear Padded Armor +5.
Is it because your Character has a Dex Score of 24?
🙂