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Skeletal Creatures Retaining Special Attacks?

T

ThirstyBob

New member
Hi I recently purchased Hero Lab and the Bestiary I for use with my DMing of an ongoing pathfinder game. I love the program by the way, but I did have one problem.

I was needing a troll skeleton to assist an orc cleric in his nefarious and undead deeds, so I created new character, select race troll, then added the skeleton template. This should have worked I thought, so I went ahead and printed the sheet out and went on with the session.

The problem came when my troll skeleton hit a PC with both claw attacks, thus triggering it's Rend ability, adding another 1d8+12 damage and killing the PC. The PC was rather upset with this, understandably, and he wanted to make sure everything was correct. When he looked up the skeleton template he discovered that skeletal creatures do not retain any special attacks and Rend is quite clearly depicted as a special attack in the troll entry of the Bestiary.

My question is this: Is this a problem with the program, or is Rend possibly wrongly entered in the Bestiary. Any and all help is appreciated.

I was considering putting this in the bug report, but I'm not sure it is one, so I thought I'd put it here first, apologies if this is the wrong choice.
 
Actually, I think it is correct. From Paizo's online PRD:

"Special Qualities: A skeleton loses most special qualities of the base creature. It retains any extraordinary special qualities that improve its melee or ranged attacks."

The second sentence is not in the original Bestiary (not sure when it was added...an errata perhaps?), but is the key to this. Rend is an extraordinary special quality, and I think we can safely say it improves melee attacks. IMO, HL handles it correctly.
 
This is posted on the d20pfsrd as an example skeleton.
At the very bottom of this page
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/skeleton

Troll Skeleton CR 3
NE Large undead (giant)
Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +0

AC 19, touch 12, flat-footed 16
(+3 Dex, +7 natural, –1 size)
hp 27 (6d8); DR 5/blunt
Immune cold; undead traits
Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +5

Speed 30 ft.
Melee bite +8 (1d8+5), 2 claws +8 (1d6+5)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.

Str 21, Dex 16, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +4; CMB +10; CMD 23
Feats improved initiative
Skills none
Languages Giant

No mention of rend anywhere. I realize that this is an unofficial example and they could have easily left out the rend ability or somehow thought it should not apply in this case. Another player in the group put it this way "I'd also vote no rend, since it'd be something a troll does instinctively. No more mind, no more instincts. But ultimately, you are DM, what you say goes."

There was also a discussion during the game about whether Skeletons and Zombies get Attacks of Opportunity, because they technically have no mind and would be using their entire concentration on attack the target at hand. I temporarily ruled that if something has no int score then no AoOs from it and I was going to look it up. I would appreciate feedback on that as well, I have been able to find little help online about it.

EDIT: One thing that Hero Lab didn't do was add the giant subtype which it should have done. Adding a skeletal template to a creature just removed the basic type and change it to Undead, any subtypes stay the same.
Type: The creature's type changes to undead. It retains any subtype except for alignment subtypes (such as good) and subtypes that indicate kind (such as giant). It does not gain the augmented subtype. It uses all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.
 
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Rend on a troll that has the Skeleton Template should be removed. The way HL handles Rend makes it a little harder. It bootstraps a natural attack called Rend not a Special Ability. But yes the Rend should have been removed when the Skeleton template was applied to the Troll. :(

That said other than maybe giving more XP for a more dangerous creature I see nothing wrong with a unique Skeleton Troll that can Rend. Guess that is a different subject. :)

ThirstyBob said:
There was also a discussion during the game about whether Skeletons and Zombies get Attacks of Opportunity, because they technically have no mind and would be using their entire concentration on attack the target at hand. I temporarily ruled that if something has no int score then no AoOs from it and I was going to look it up. I would appreciate feedback on that as well, I have been able to find little help online about it.
Click to expand...
Unless their is some rule exception somewhere that I don't know about all creatures get AoO's. If they really didn't want zombies to have them they would have put the note in the Staggered (Ex) special ability.

Now at the same time I have played with groups where the DM ruled this way and it sort of works. Especially if you have lots of zombies but it does make it really easy for players to cast spells and move into flanking. So as rogues can sneak attack undead I would want to have some challenge when fighting zombies so I personally would leave it as is and give them AoO's.
 
Thank you for the quick responses, I think this has been cleared up satisfactorily. Should I report the issue to the bug report list? The skeletal troll issue that is, not the aoo one.
 
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