Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Torpedo 04-28-07, 01:16 AM	I run an Age of Worms campaign. I allowed my players to build characters using the point-buy system with 28 points. I allowed many different options. I'm a big fan of psionics. One of my players made an elan psion (kineticist). In a recent game session he used the Larval Flayers power from Complete Psionic to make really short work of a sub-boss, Grallak Kur. As I said, I'm a fan of psionics. But I am concerned about this power. Would anyone who has game experience with this power care to comment about its balance or lack thereof? I don't have the Complete Psionic with me, but as I remember it: The power is available to all psions regardless of speciality. It's short range, but the flayers get to move and attack the same round they are summoned (thereby extending the range somewhat). Manifestation time is a standard action. Up to three flayers can be summoned. Each can drain up to 4 points of Intelligence by making touch attacks (usually the easiest AC to hit) in addition to normal damage (1d4 hp). There is no save and power / spell resistance does not protect the target. The flayers levitate through the air at a decent speed towards their target. Do I have any of the above information wrong? Against Intelligence reliant spellcasters the power is devastating in that it can deny spell levels to the would-be caster. Against non-intelligence relying spellcasters (for whom Intelligence may be a dump stat), it can be nearly as devastating. A human has an intelligence of at least 3. Lower than that and speech, and probably spells with verbal components, gets difficult if not impossible. Against any foe with an above-average Intelligence score of 12 or less, summoning 3 flayers can put the target in a helpless coma (see 3.5 DMG page 290). Please educate me as to any balancing features to this power I'm missing (or misunderstanding). The party will encounter The Faceless One, a wizard, next and that fight could be over even quicker than the previous one. Thanks!
BloodSpill 04-28-07, 01:54 AM	Just to correct a few things you've got there: The manifesting time is 1 round. Larval flayers do not fly, they move at 15ft. They have a levitate power, but levitate is vertical movement only. They are tiny and thus must enter an opponent's space to attack/attach. This provokes an attack of opportunity. Each flayer can only deal a maximum of 4 intelligence damage. (check) A larval flayer must be attached for an entire round to deal intelligence damage. Victims that have their intelligence dropped to 0 by larval flayers die. When attached the larval flayer loses its dex bonus to AC and thus has AC 14 only. Larval flayers deal only 1d3hp damage with a touch attack. Also. 1d3 flayers * 1d4 intelligence damage ~ 5 intelligence damage per round. So just give your wizard boss some minions. They can attack the larval flayers when they get summoned!
crizhII 04-28-07, 09:37 AM	Just to correct a few things you've got there: The manifesting time is 1 round. Larval flayers do not fly, they move at 15ft. They have a levitate power, but levitate is vertical movement only. They are tiny and thus must enter an opponent's space to attack/attach. This provokes an attack of opportunity. Each flayer can only deal a maximum of 4 intelligence damage. (check) A larval flayer must be attached for an entire round to deal intelligence damage. Victims that have their intelligence dropped to 0 by larval flayers die. When attached the larval flayer loses its dex bonus to AC and thus has AC 14 only. Larval flayers deal only 1d3hp damage with a touch attack. Also. 1d3 flayers * 1d4 intelligence damage ~ 5 intelligence damage per round. So just give your wizard boss some minions. They can attack the larval flayers when they get summoned! Dimension Hop. Larval Flayers can move up to 20' as a swift action. They can move into someone else's space and they do not provoke when doing so. Additionally, grapplers do not lose their DEX bonus relative to the grapplee. Attacking into a grapple attacks a random target. Larval Flayers is a hugely overpowered ability which is bizarrely out of place in the book that nerfed Astral Construct.
Nephlite 04-28-07, 11:18 AM	Attacking into a grapple attacks a random target. . Where did you read it is random?
Xaxor 04-28-07, 11:37 AM	The part about randomly attacking creatures in a grapple only applies to ranged attacks. Table 8-6 on page 151 of the PHB has the note stating that. Tricky place to put that.
CrimsonDeath 04-29-07, 03:47 AM	Well, since you asked for game experience... I was in a party that was attacked by larval flayers when an enemy manifested the power. As I recall, nobody actually took any Int damage from them-- everyone who was attacked either won the grapple check to prevent the grapple or got them off in the next round. It might've just been lucky rolls, but I don't think their grapple bonus was that great. The size penalty cancels the racial bonus (or comes close to it), they don't have many HD, and their Dex (which I believe is what they apply to the grapple) isn't that great, or at least it wasn't quite good enough. We had a bit more trouble with the guys who called them in, but that's mostly because the place they were camped was really hard to ambush.
crizhII 04-29-07, 11:38 AM	Well, since you asked for game experience... I was in a party that was attacked by larval flayers when an enemy manifested the power. As I recall, nobody actually took any Int damage from them-- everyone who was attacked either won the grapple check to prevent the grapple or got them off in the next round. It might've just been lucky rolls, but I don't think their grapple bonus was that great. The size penalty cancels the racial bonus (or comes close to it), they don't have many HD, and their Dex (which I believe is what they apply to the grapple) isn't that great, or at least it wasn't quite good enough. We had a bit more trouble with the guys who called them in, but that's mostly because the place they were camped was really hard to ambush. Yup, your pretty safe against a dim opponent who spreads them out. Removing one is pretty trivial. Removing five is nearly impossible...
CrimsonDeath 04-29-07, 03:51 PM	Good point, assuming multiple creatures appear in the first place. But they still have to hit (even with a touch attack, not a sure thing) and they still have to attach (with a largely unimpressive grapple check at higher levels). As for defenses against it, Freedom of Movement allows you to resist or escape grapples automatically, and a desperate caster could hit his own space with a stilled area-of-effect spell (or, if his HD are high enough, a spell like Color Spray that won't even affect him). I think there are magic item abilities that give you DR or immunity against ability damage, although the only one I've heard of is expensive. There's a soulmeld that does it too, as well as the Cleric/Druid spell Sheltered Vitality. Also, if you had normal DR that negated the HP damage, would that also prevent the larval flayer from attaching in the first place? (I seem to recall that if DR eats all the damage it can prevent venom from affecting you...)
Fromost the Grimm 04-29-07, 07:34 PM	Yeah, am a player in a campaign where one of our party Psions pulled them out a few sessions ago, and I don't think I've ever seen the DM mutter 'br0ken' any faster. To me, the kicker is the augment that allows some of the lill' buggers to manifest pre-attached. I mean, the creatures are fine balanced as far as creatures go -- they're essentially Stirges with Int drain instead of Con -- but being able to manifest them pre-attached is essentially an auto Int-drain. So whether you're targeting the Int-dump-tank or the BBEG wizard, that Int drain very quickly becomes something the target simply can't shrug off. My suggestion was to do away with the auto-attach augment. As with Stirges, a gaggle of these things can be a handful neat, even when needing to hit past an AtOp for a grapple, etc. They don't need the auto-attach, and when targeting an arcane caster hit/attach suitably easy anyways. Rather sagaciously, our DM has decided to do nothing as yet, let them be played RAW, and see how they feel after a few encounters to get a better perspective of balance. In the session mentioned, the target -- ummmn, more a tank than an arcane caster, IIRC -- essentially ignored them. Next round, they all had an attack, and with some lucky rolls, hit and drained quite heavily. So whilst we were all taken aback at their effectiveness, it was the target's straight-out ignoring them and those subsequent lucky rolls on our part that contributed to the outcome. Also, we feel that a target dismissing them as but an annoyance smells a little of metagaming. If a whole lot of Stirge-type things suddenly appeared in front of you and started looking for veins, one would think you'd look to swot a few into puddles of goo. Quickly. Stirges suck. Pun intended. Any target that choses to so blithely ignore them faces real consequences. And perhaps that is the real impetus of the power, more of a 'battlefield control' utility that's gonna tie-up a target de-Flayering for a round or two? Doesn't seem too unbalanced in itself compared to other spells and abilities at this level . . . . . . speaking of which, take into account that by the time this power sees use, you're just starting to enter that power level where immunities are on the up. And first on that list is generally undead, constructs, and things that ain't affected by ability drain. This then limits the power significantly, as without the Int drain they're simply little balloons full of free, easy xp. So all-in-all, it feels like this power is pretty potent, but taken in the context of all situations when it isn't ideal, the lack of versatility dilutes it out a lot. Against a few big, dumb squishy meat-shields, it's gonna p0wn. Against anything else -- be that more intelligent tanks, arcane casters with quick/cheap local area-effect damage, and/or targets with Int-drain immunity -- I can see it's worth scaling down very quickly, with very little middle-ground, until it's Reformation-bait.
Scion of Coldshard 04-29-07, 08:41 PM	It is definately a rough power. I dont really care for it. It is basically either really powerful or nearly useless, depending on the situation. Now many abilities fit into that sort of category but this one special in the way that things from that book tend to be. 2nd level power, spend a round to pop out d3 guys. If you spend 2 extra pp you get 1 extra guy or make one guy to show up already sucking. Of course that guy who shows up sucking gives a reflex save to avoid being sucked right away, or does the reflex save make them not appear attatched? So confusing! Too bad it wasnt written very well. Bah. Dire weasel is a whole lot worse but those are not available until well after this power has shown up. If they do not start attatched they are mostly useless until they start attacking in a swarm. So, if you summon only 1 (1/3 of the time on a normal manifestation), you just wasted a whole round as the various aoo's will take it out most likely. Any more means that most likely 1 will get a chance to attach but after the touch attacks and then opposed grapple checks many creatures will simply be fine. After that area attack abilities just fry them all. Some charactes might even blast the area and cause damage to the one effected to save them, which is kindof fun. Any creatures who deal damage back when attacked probably fry them as well, although that is a lesser condition. Overall, I just dont like it. Run across a foe with a really low int? He is almost definately dead if he fails a few reflex saves. Of course it takes a lot of time to get off and has a large chance of just failing to do much. It is bad in almost all of the ways I dislike things being bad ;/
baltasar_basilius 04-30-07, 10:39 PM	I have used this power in my campaign also, and I will unashamedly admit it is awkwardly overpowered. I ended up single handedly killing an aboleth with an intelligence of 20 in only 3 rounds by manifesting this twice. Yet I would hate it if my DM outlawed the power completely because then I would have one less option for my psion, but I probably won't use that power often except for special occasions simply because it isn't fun. With my personal playing style, I usually like to execute well calculated or unique maneuvers that work just right for the situation I am in. For example, using telekinetic thrust to hurl those 5 greatswords you have curiously been lugging around with you for the past 4 levels is fun once. It gets clique if you do it every game. Hopefully the player in question realizes that also. Although this only applies to mature gamers, the best deterrent against abuse is boredom. On another note: If player X insists on using larval flayers every encounter.... "What is good for the goose is good for the gander." So assuming that this character is a psion, going up against a few larval flayers himself wouldn't be too enjoyable to his intelligence score. ;) Just something to think about.
CrimsonDeath 05-01-07, 02:59 AM	Y'know, it'd be hilarious to manifest this power when you're fighting Illithid...