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monstersdownthepath · 10 hours

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Milestone Monster: Ragathiel, General of Vengeance

CR 26

Lawful Good Huge Outsider

Bestiary 6, pg. 114-115 (image taken from the cover of Chronicle of the Righteous)

There are many things in common between this Empyreal Lord and the last one we looked at on this blog. In most ways, Ragathiel and Vildeis couldn't be more different; Vildeis was born a perfect angel, while Ragathiel was born a devil and fought against his own nature and his very being to become one. Vildeis was so traumatized by the existence of Evil that she tore out her own eyes so she wouldn't have to see it, while Ragathiel's only wound of note was caused by his father, the Archdevil Dispater. Vildeis bears her scars openly and eschews any armor but the miles of bloodstained bandages over her form, while Ragathiel shields himself in gleaming golden armor to give the impression of an impervious, faultless soldier. Vildeis wields a simple dagger with terrifying effectiveness against single foes, while Ragathiel wields a dramatic two-handed, flaming blade.

But at the end of the day, both of them have the same goal: The eradication of Evil. And they both have the same problem: They're worryingly single-minded about it. Other Archons even worry about Ragathiel's bloodlust, something possibly justified considering how unfortunate his Divine Obedience is, demanding a death every time it's invoked. Despite whatever worry they may have for him, though, Ragathiel seems wholly committed to the battle against fiends of all forms, but especially against the devils and their ilk, whom he executes with impunity and without mercy. His mission is tireless, but one he performs without hesitation or regret. So long as Hell continues to reach its greasy little hands beyond its borders, Ragathiel will be there to stab at its fingers until it retreats... and, on occasion, venturing into the infernal lands to strike it directly.

The General of Vengeance is among the fiercest of all the Empyreal Lords, not afraid to lead his armies from the front at every opportunity, but his approach has some key differences from Vildeis'; she tirelessly wanders with no home or lair of her own, striking down Evil as it crosses her, effectively launching spontaneous campaigns which last only as long as they must in order to eradicate immediate foes before moving on to the next target. Ragathiel is more careful and arguably more thorough, retreating to a grand military base in Heaven to carefully plan his every assault to maximize its impact and the length of time it will take Hell to make another move. He's noted to be a brilliant tactician whose plans have rarely failed, but his prowess truly shines on the battlefield. Once he's landed in the fray he's a sight to behold, as though holy fire itself took up a sword to burn away the corruption trying to infect the world.

Let's see just what that looks like...

Let's start with the basics, since I feel like I have to bring it up every time I spot it: as an angel, Ragathiel projects a 20ft Protective Aura which shields everyone inside (himself included) from the forces of Evil, granting a +4 deflection bonus to AC and a +4 resistance bonus to saving throws against them. The aura also hedges out Evil summoned creatures, grants additional saving throws against charms and compulsions, and blocks hostile spell effects if they're 3rd level or less. No Fireball, no Slow, no Magic Missile, no targeted Dispel Magic, Blindness/Deafness, Silence... The list goes on, with both Ragathiel and any of his nearby allies benefiting from the protection.

It goes without saying that his allies aren't restricted by this; they can throw out all the Fireballs they want! In fact, Fireball specifically is encouraged, but we'll get to why in just a moment...

For now we'll continue with the basics, and it's hard to get more basic than Ragathiel. You take one look at him, and you can immediately tell what he is and what he's going to do: respectively, he's an angelic Paladin in specialized full-plate (Golden Armor, in fact; +5 full-plate with no downsides to his speed or checks!), and he's going to hit you very, very hard with a very, very big sword. His +5 Evil-Outsider-Bane Flaming Burst Holy Bastard Sword is a paragraph of a weapon created for the express purpose of beating devils back to Hell, dealing 3d8+21 damage at base, +2d6 vs Evil creatures and an extra 2d6+2 against Evil Outsiders specifically, and 1d6 Fire damage (1d10 if the sword critically hits, and it threatens a critical on a 17 or higher) as a ribbon on top. In addition to swinging his sword upwards to four times a round, he's got five Burning Wings that can be used as part of his Full-Attack, each one dealing 1d8+5 plus 1d6 Fire damage per hit and forcing a struck enemy to succeed a DC 39 Reflex save or burst into flames for 1d6 more damage a round.

And of course, he wouldn't be a Paladin if he didn't have Smite Evil. He's got it 7 times a day, in fact, and any of his allies within his Primal Aura can expend 2 uses to give all of his allies within the 30ft aura the benefits of Smite Evil against a single target. That's +9 to AC, +9 to attack rolls, and +20 to the first damage roll a given creature makes each round for a whole battalion against one specific target, +40 to damage if the target is an Evil Outsider (and ONLY Evil Outsiders; Ragathiel doesn't get bonus damage against Dragons and Undead!). If the General of Vengeance is leading a charge against a specific diabolic power, all his allies need to do is invoke his Primal Aura, and suddenly even meager footsoldiers can be hitting the main boss as hard as a Barbarian five levels above them! With health to match, as he can freely use Shield Other to help tank hits his more fragile companions would normally fold to.

Even if he has no reinforcements to invoke this power, he's got Gate 1/day to open a doorway right to Heaven to bring them in, shielding and empowering them with his auras. A quick Time Stop also lets him run around and use his 3/day Blessing of Fervor with no lost time to give two dozen plus Turbo Hastes out with each use, and throw out his 3/day Quickened Blade Barrier between each use to trim the battlefield into something more accommodating and prevent an easy enemy retreat.

Ragathiel fights best when surrounded by allies, for more reasons than just his long list of buffs and auras. His Righteous Mantle directly notes his bloodline relation to a demigoddess of fire, granting him numerous fiery blessings; namely, he absorbs Fire damage, treating all incoming Fire damage as healing instead, AND his Fire damage completely ignores any Fire Resistance and Immunity possessed by devils while dealing double damage to them! This is an INCREDIBLE ability... and would be far more useful in a vacuum if he had more than just token Fire damage on his attacks. Indeed, Ragathiel has only one bit of fire in his kit that isn't attached to his wings or weapon, a 1/day Meteor Swarm he's incentivized to drop directly into his own space once he's in melee with a bunch of devils, damaging them (and everything around them) while restoring a good chunk of his own HP. It also means his allies can freely throw Fireballs, Walls of Fire, Meteor Swarms, and other such effects of their own directly at him, which not only harms enemies, but restores his health!

No, his at-will Fire of Judgment doesn't deal any Fire damage, I checked; it burns an Evil creature for 1d6 (1d10 if they're an Outsider, Dragon, or Undead) damage each round with 'cleansing positive energy.'

At the very least, absorbing Fire damage means a great deal of devils suddenly have portions of their arsenal taken from them... though it, ironically, doesn't aid him against his own father, Dispater, who has no Fire damage in his kit. Rather, his Devil's Bane kicks in; this ability gives him +4 to caster level checks against devils, to his own saving throws when saving against diabolic magic, and to the save DCs of all his spells when a devil is being targeted, and this bonus becomes +8 when against Dispater. Dispater actually cannot affect Ragathiel with any of his spells thanks to this, and the General himself has a small chance of landing his own abilities against his father's otherwise towering saving throws!

And while we're on the topic of resilience, why not see how sturdy Ragathiel is? Because, as you may have guessed, the man's nearly impossible to harm in a way that matters. His DR 20 can't be pierced unless the weapon is Epic and Evil, while his Regeneration can only be suppressed by the powers of a deific or Mythic being. He's got the Demigod Suite of status immunities (notably NOT immune to disease, fear, paralysis, stun, or sleep, but those will be rendered non-issues soon) as well as immunity to Acid and Cold damage, and though his saves are ALREADY high, just look back upwards at everything he's got to bolster them!

And then. there it is, the penultimate quality listed on his statblock right before it gets into the rest of his abilities: Lay on Freaking Hands. 10 times a day as a swift action, Ragathiel can give himself an encouraging slap on the chest to restore 17d6 health to himself. Except it's not just 17d6! Righteous Mantle grants him +2 HP per healing dice rolled whenever he magically regains any health, which has no effect on his own healing spell (because it's freaking Heal at 3/day), but it means every LoH use grants him 17d6+34 HP. He can also apply ANY Paladin Mercy to his ability without restriction! And... well, here's the best part:

He can use Lay on Hands no matter what. There is NO condition or effect in the game which prevents him from using this ability as a swift action to wipe away whatever is inhibiting his actions. This means even if he's nauseated, stunned, paralyzed, asleep, staggered, or unconscious due to HP damage, he can wipe the condition off with all the difficulty of a particularly stubborn scab. Thanks to his empowered Lay on Hands and his own demigod immunities, there is NO status ailment in the game besides outright death that can inhibit him unless all 10 of his uses for the day are burned through, because he can use his swift action to break himself out of the effect and still have his entire turn afterwards.

It is probably not surprising that most of Ragathiel's enemies view him as an unkillable juggernaut, ridiculously durable even by the standards of demigods. In high level Pathfinder, rocket tag is ever-prevalent; you need to be able to shut down your enemies before they do the same to you. Well, when battling the General of Vengeance, it's likely you can't. He's all but guaranteed to get his round off, especially if he's high in the initiative order. Unless, I suppose, you put him to sleep, then nauseate, stun, and paralyze him in a single round, since as-written he can only wipe off one a round. Good luck with that, especially if you're a devil!

You can read more about him here.

#Milestone Monster #Monster Spotlight #CR 26 and up #Pathfinder #dungeons and dragons

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monstersdownthepath · 1 day

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@thewordywarlock Woah-woah-woah, you mean this thing used to be Verex?! Yeesh, the guy looks like he got in a teleporter accident with a seafood buffet!

#body horror in the link obv

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monstersdownthepath · 1 day

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Having read through the entirety of Monster Core twice now, I mourn the loss of the basic Aboleth, the Quasit demon, Night Hags, Rust Monsters, the Mimics and Doppelgangers, and many more...

more than most, though, I'm going to miss Tarrasque, but I eagerly await the replacement slated to be coming in War of Immortals. Perhaps Agohbindi will get its chance to shine and shine and shine and shine and shine...?

However, I welcome ALL the replacement monsters (out with Locathah and Sahuagin, in with the Athamaru and Sedacthy!) with open arms, the lore changes to orcs and gnolls kholo, the brand new myriad flavors of Elementals, all the new minions in the Dominion of the Black, the adorable and supremely strange lore of kobolds, all the new Hags, and I especially welcome how god damn weird the Archons have gotten, which has shot my opinion of them up several notches!

Looking forward to see what comes out of the next few bestiaries!

#Pathfinder

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monstersdownthepath · 2 days

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Hi, been a big fan of your work for quite some time now and thought I would reach out to ask a question. Do you have any ideas for non-evil outsider demigods such as Primal Inevitable or Empyreal Lords? I have always felt that Pathfinder focused much more on the evil demigods and very little on the embodiments of the other alignments, most only getting a sentene or two before being never mentioned again, and I feel they can have just as much of a role as a demon lord could in a story.

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Pathfinder proper and myself, I'll admit; I have a habit of making far more evil (or at least neutral) creatures than good. My own homebrew contains precisely two fully Good entities, and this comes with the territory of me enjoying the eldritch and alien.

I DO have at least a few ideas for more good-aligned creatures, such as Oa-Imago, a Great Old One who is Chaotic Good I've mentioned a few times on this blog already, and a thus-far unnamed Empyreal Lord presiding over exorcisms and other wards of the soul, whom I only recently started to develop. Another reason I haven't made any Empyreal Lords is, admittedly, a petty one: my main difficulty with creating new ones is that there's already a whole lot of them!Chronicles of the Righteous alone gives names, areas of concern, and Domains to 54 Empyreal Lords, and Boons to 36 of them! Finding a niche that hasn't been filled is a big hurdle for me, one I don't really get when I'm making some selfish evil fiend or some weirdo outsider god.

I agree with you that there should probably be more Primal Inevitables and Protean Cantors. Maybe I can shift some of my brainpower towards that... hmmmm...

#asks #professorsmolbork

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monstersdownthepath · 2 days

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I think it was you, but you created a spell that makes a person completely unkillable for a time. In exchange for complete destruction when the duration ended. Am I correct? It seemed inspired by Cultist Simulator.

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That was me, and it was indeed an overt reference to CultSim! Including a mention of the Sun-In-Rags.

#asks #pantherlord3

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monstersdownthepath · 3 days

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Idea: an Infernal Duke obsessed with hygiene and cleanliness. To the point of scrubbing someone clean of potentially magic

Or free will.

Perhaps have a theme of scrubbing out "stains" of society.

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I like it! An obsession with hygiene could make one very lawful evil very quickly; a lot of lawful evil people in real life conflate cleanliness with godliness to the degree of believing anyone who's physically dirty must be therefore be sinful and bad and thus must be punished. A Duke who takes that to a horrific extreme, scrubbing out entire facets of society or whole "imperfect" societies, could work!

#asks #pantherlord3

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monstersdownthepath · 3 days

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A weird but curious question similar to one I asked you a long time ago about Outsiders with alignment subtypes that shift alignment, but since the Aeons are supposed to be more or less a cold, unfeeling cosmic collective consciousness/immune system, how do you think What would an Aon with personality would be like? (yes, like an actual individual personality, perhaps even with deep thoughts and feelings beyond his purposes and goals).

Asking this because, at least in my campaign, there is a case of an Aeon whose whole purpose for being summoned is to act as a persistent, free-willed, cosmic observer of certain creatures, but to observe and record the stories and adventures of the creatures he observes, he needed to understand them. He needs to be able to know what they feel and how they feel it, something in which a normal, cold Aon and calculating, it would not be totally good. At least I've played it as someone growing up; At first he was childish, impulsive and curious, but as he distanced himself and learned, he quickly became colder, more mature and wiser, but always referring to himself in plural forms ("we").

Weird question I know! But I would like to read your opinion and response anyway.

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This is a difficult answer, but not an impossible one. Aeons with so much as individual names are nearly nonexistent, with Concordance of Rivals describing them as though they were forces of nature or wind-up toys rather than individual creatures. Indeed, they essentially are; as you stated, aeons are shed by the Monad as an immune response to an imbalance in the cosmos (or an imbalance fated to occur), and when their duty is complete, they fade back into quintessence to rejoin their creator. Not exactly conducive to the development of individuality or a personality!

Even in cases where their mission takes many decades or centuries to complete, aeons rarely deviate from acting as they've been programmed, spend very little time interacting with other beings (one gets the sense that they communicate only out of obligation, rather than any desire), are incredibly difficult to communicate with due to their Envisaging ability, and are nearly impossible to reason with in any meaningful way.

They possess no society and no individuality. The one named aeon I recalled from the Extinction Curse Adventure Path was given a name by someone else, and its "personality" a mere anthropomorphized projection by that person, rather than the aeon itself having any part in it beyond accepting the name.

However, with the recent retcon revelation that axiomites and, thus, inevitables are themselves descended from aeons sent on a specific mission and grew into an independent society, it lends a lot to your proposed aeon gaining a name and personality for itself. Given enough time and with enough interactions with other beings, one could expect an aeon to change in the same way an emergent AI would if exposed to the same stimulus, with all the same qualities.

... In fact, as I type this with one hand and hold open Concordance of Rivals with the other and stroke my chin thoughtfully with the third, I believe describing aeons as programs, as well as cells, is also an apt summary. I've already called the Monad the "win32 of the multiverse," so it's not that much of a logical leap. I might have to make a second post about this, actually, because the comparison of aeons and machine-learning-AIs is hitting me like a ton of bricks.

#asks #alexvrex

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monstersdownthepath · 4 days

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Sending in a separate ask because it has basically nothing to do with the other one I sent, but: Do you think some Adventure Paths don't really give certain monsters that appear a fair shake, instead just having them be a monster in a room for the party to beat XP and loot out of? I have a distinct memory of doing Crimson Curse, seeing the Immortal Ichor in the last book, and just assuming it was some dangerous (very dangerous) but relatively standard Ooze, and mostly ran it as ordered with a Charm and whatnot. I had no idea until I read your entry on it that it had no mental Ability Score lower than friggin 20, and was legitimately smarter than Ileosa herself and compared to what it could have done I basically ran it as if it were brain-dead. Been trying to be more prescient ever since.

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Yes. Off the top of my head...

Without spoiling to much, there's a lot of creatures in the Abomination Vaults Adventure Path which are doomed to sit in their rooms and not do anything which particularly leans into their strengths or intelligence, literally twiddling their thumbs until the party finds them. Most exist as jumpscares to Get the party when they open specific doorways. Some of these have plot reasons and general excuses, but most do not, and it's one of many things about the AP I've taken to correcting as I run the party through it.

Also, oof, that poor slime! I'm glad you're giving monsters more of a chance!

#asks #arch-arsonist

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monstersdownthepath · 4 days

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How much interplanar travel can a party engage in before they get noticed? If there is a 'frequency' limit? Writing / running a very long thing with a friend (challenge: Run through all of the Adventure Path stories and see how things shake out) and wanted to ask. All of the references I could find just involved 'volume / magnitude' of travel, like an outright interplanar invasion a la Worldwound that gets the wrong kind of attention from Inevitables, with no clauses for frequent but small-scale travel in the vein of a few people a day. Also wanted to ask how difficult it is to track people and find intel across planar borders - efforts have been taken to try and keep a relatively low profile, but that only gets you so far when you've annoyed an Archdevil who may be willing to feed the other enemies you've made information. For such a relatively low-stakes, low-impact AP (just one city, really), Council of Thieves has a weirdly high danger level in the post-campaign.

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However much the DM allows before things get silly.

If you want a more solid answer, the question I have to ask is "how big is the trail of destruction the players are leaving in their wake?"

In the normal day-to-day, a handful of people using Plane Shift to get to a new plane with their friends and luggage is, on a cosmic scale, no more unusual than an American packing their bags and heading to Europe. The fact most Inner Sphere planes (and a few Outer Sphere ones) have designated areas specifically for interplanar travelers means that, despite the fantastical magic being involved, it's still considered mundane and not especially noteworthy.

However.

If your players are getting up to the level of shenanigans an average adventuring party typically gets up to when they're high enough level to be casually Plane Shifting around, it's very likely that their tomfoolery is going to attract a lot of attention from a lot of interplanar cops in short order! And I don't just mean the likes of Inevitables; if the party is making big enough messes, they may attract the attention of not only the Inevitables, but things higher up on the chain that are ready to put them in the Time-Out Dimension until they behave.

On more mundane notes, local genies upset with the party likely have access to Sending (which pierces planar barriers and allows brief 2-way communication) to put their friends in other planes on lookout, and the spell Trace Teleport exists and works against Plane Shift. If the caster has enough of a heads up (like, say, a message from the mentioned Archdevil, who can likely freely scry on the party since every Archdevil has Scrying at-will), they can track down the party and use Trace Teleport to find out where they've gone, then alert their allies (or enemies) in the area to the party's presence.

In a normal campaign, tracking someone across planar boundaries is basically impossible without some severe DM fiat or the aforementioned niche tracking spell. They are, after all, hopping into a new universe; just hopping onto a new planet would have been confounding enough. Planets are big! There's a lot of places to hide! But any demigod is a rough enemy to make, because once they know your face and name, it's very hard to hide from something that can scry at will.

#asks #arch-arsonist

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monstersdownthepath · 4 days

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How do you feel about the new Rakshasa lore in 2e?

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I... I don't know, to be honest. In 1e, Rakshasa were the results of mortals binding their souls to totems and nature spirits, living on the world as parasites. Whenever they died, through violence or through time, they would push a newborn soul from its vessel and take its place, being reborn again and again. It exemplified how terribly selfish they were, so awful and twisted that it physically twisted their bodies. A good rakshasa is practically unheard of, because the ritual to become one is so vile and the method to remain one so terrible that no soul with any goodness in it would dare to undertake it! Much like with Hags, a rakshasa isn't evil because it's a fiend, it's a fiend BECAUSE it's evil, its monstrous behavior transforming it into a literal monster.

But in 2e, this is no longer the case at all. In 2e, Rakshasa are primordial spirits born at the moment the gods decided what was Good and what was Evil. They were born, created by the gods, to specifically fulfill the purpose of enacting Evil in its every form, to give solid and unambiguous definition to the question of "what is Evil?" They do evil because they're supposed to exemplify it, to serve as an example to mortals of what not to do. They literally exist to be evil until good rises to stop them! They're directly compared to actors forced into their role, with some Rakshasa even growing to detest it (though most revel in it), but performing it nonetheless because it's all they've known to do. They rise, they act the part of the villain, they perish at the hands of heroes risen to stop them, and then they are reborn to do so again and again and again.

It's a cool idea, certainly, but with so much solid and interesting lore already dedicated to them, it feels... bad? to just throw it all out? Rakshasa felt special in that they all used to be a mortal who was willing to perform the ultimate profanity in order to secure immortality. That each one, from the lowly Raktavarna to the highest of the Immortals, was born because someone was terrified of what death held for them. Now they just... literally exist to be the villain of whatever story NEEDS a villain. It could be good, but I wish that doing it didn't come at the cost of everything else before it, which was ALSO good.

#anonymous #asks #i have a few thoughts on how to merge the two backstories #but this post is already so long

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monstersdownthepath · 4 days

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Seeing Fortunato in your Daemon Harbinger dossiers made me wonder what other public domain figures could make good demigods, and it led me to thinking that Velstrac would love the style of Dr. Moreau stitching up different animals together without anesthetics because he can. It would be deliciously ironic for his guise as a god to become real in death as a Demagogue that focus on reshaping wild creatures into 'higher' life. Tough I'm not sure what his domains would be besides 'medecine'.

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The weirdo in question, for those curious

I love the idea! The focus on creating animal hybrids makes it different enough from Kaikyton and Morrobhan that those two likely won't mind, though keeping Morby from infesting Not-Moreau's creations would likely take up more of his time than he'd like.

As for Domains, my suggestions are: Animal, Evil, Healing, Law

Subdomains: Fur, Kyton, Medicine, Tyranny

#asks #alexcoene

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monstersdownthepath · 4 days

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Monster Spotlight: Sandman

CR 3

Neutral Evil Medium Outsider

Bestiary 2, pg. 236

These cruel elemental spirits are found most often in sun-bleached deserts, where their sandy forms are nearly impossible to differentiate from an errant dust devil or sand flow until they resolve into a humanoid form. Their lore leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not Sandmen exist at all when they're not being summoned into the Material Plane by an elemental binder, but once they've been formed, they're in no hurry to return to any sort of elemental quanta and will voluntarily remain in the plane they've been called into long after the spells binding them expire to continue wreaking havoc.

Why, exactly, Sandmen all seemingly possess a malevolence other Elementals typically lack, going out of their way to harass, terrify, and even kill other beings for amusement alone, is left unsaid. It may be that the nature of their creation instills a certain amount of misanthropy in them, or perhaps the "blueprint" for calling a Sandman into being comes with an unfortunate flaw built in. Perhaps, as their lore hints at, they're fiercely independent but malicious spirits who leap on the opportunity to gain a malleable body at the minor cost of temporary service. Whatever the case may be, Sandmen are dangerous entities to summon in despite their comparatively low CR, as no force or spell exists to bind them fully and completely to the will of the caster. Much like a bound demon, Sandmen will consistently find ways to maliciously interpret all but the most direct, thorough, and unambiguous orders, fulfilling their mission in ways which amuse and benefit them the most.

It's a pity that they're so damn handy despite the danger they present to their summoners. Their amorphous bodies and ability to shift back and forth between a strong humanoid form and a featureless mass of sand (in which they're treated as a Small Earth Elemental, becoming more fragile but gaining access to the immensely powerful Earth Glide) make them excellent spies, able to slither through the tiniest cracks or keyholes and swim effortlessly through anything but solid rock. Of course, if a summoner wanted an elemental spy, there's better choices... so Sandmen are typically used as assassins and kidnappers that are nearly impossible to keep away from their target, a task they excel at in chilling ways.

Just at base, a Sandman is far more resilient than they look. Sand isn't exactly hard to hit, but ask any child digging holes in a beachfront how easy it is to keep those holes empty when waves wash sand in from one direction and the wind blows even more in from another. The propensity for sand to flow in every direction it can get away with translates to DR 10/Bludgeoning, all but the largest of two-handed bladed weapons wielded by the burliest of Barbarians effectively useless against them (to say nothing of most ranged weapon damage at this level), but a single critical hit from a two-handed greatclub swing that passes by its 15 AC will scatter its 30 HP to the four winds... or it would, if Sandmen weren't both Elementals and Amorphous and thus immune to both Sneak Attack AND critical hits. Their shifting shapes also render them immune to being flanked, and their lack of any bodily systems makes them impervious to bleed, poison, paralysis, stunning, and sleep.

Take note of that last one.

While Sandmen are immune to being put to sleep, they're very adept at wielding sleep as a weapon for reasons unfathomable (if Golarion has equivalent tales of Sandmen putting children to sleep, they're likely far more gruesome than even the earliest tales we have on Earth). They're surrounded constantly by a cloud of soporific sand 20ft wide that causes any creature within it to fall soundly asleep if they can't succeed a DC 14 Will save; success renders the victim immune to the aura for 24 hours, but there is no 24 hour immunity clause against the Sleep effect caused by its slam attack. Being hit directly by the Sandman not only causes 1d6+3 damage, but forces another DC 14 Will save versus being put right into naptime. It, thankfully, can only attack once per round, but that's a cold comfort for the person receiving that one attack.

Any creature with a disabling aura is already one disastrous series of rolls away from ending combat the instant initiative begins, if not just forcing the party to waste their initial actions undoing the aura and ruining whatever plan they had, but the fact the Sandman can also potentially knock out anyone it encounters with a single punch means anyone who passes the initial aura save may STILL be rendered completely helpless! Its Sleep effects last for eight minutes, giving it enough time to take its pick of who to rob, who to coup de grace, and who to kidnap, putting the slumbering victims completely out of the fight unless their allies waste time slapping them awake.

Even if the hostile elemental isn't out to kill the whole party, anyone who survives the initial encounter will be several minutes behind the thing as it makes off with stolen loot and lives... and given their ability to burrow or even Earth Glide when needed, you may simply not get that stuff back until you track down the Sandman's summoner and beat it out of them.

I'm actually impressed that there aren't more low-level horror stories about the Sandmen; a group of them seems almost unfair for lower-level parties, given how the party has to make saves against each aura and each Sleep slam...

You can read more about them here.

#monster spotlight #CR 1 to 5 #Pathfinder #dungeons and dragons

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