What are you kaorti experiences in game play?

[LordVyreth]

Conceptually, I think they're great. Visually interesting, impressive background, genuinely creepy, the whole nine yards. But I'm a little worried that they might not hold up in combat. Despite having unique weapons, they don't seem especially dangerous in terms of melee combat. They are described as being more focussed on magic, admittedly, but then there's the resin suits to contend with. Am I mistaken, or does it seem that whenever not in their cysts, they'll fail on their magic about one out of every five times or so?

 

[Pyrex]

There are workarounds.

Check out the Planar Handbook (or previous sources) for spells like Avoid Planar Effects. No mid-level caster Kaorti should be without them. Resin suits are for fighters. Casters protect themselves with spells.

Also, for shorter trips out of the cyst, just let them roll the saves and take the damage for a day or so. Serious protection is only needed for longer trips / infiltrations.

 

[gnfnrf]

I ran a kaorti wizard mounted on a skybleeder against my party a few years ago...

they killed the wizard with area of effect spells before noticing he was there.

--
gnfnrf

 

[LordVyreth]

Yeah, I find that nearly evrything is a problem. Wizards and sorcerers have the spell failure, clerics don't exist, and besides many classes like that (druid, psionic warrior, etc.,) use Wisdom, totally failing to use the kaorti's three best stats.

Given all that, there seems to be three classes they could excel at:

1) Bards. Their spells are charisma based and have no arcane spell failure in light armor, which the resin suit is. It makes for an odd image, though.

2) Psions. Intelligence is one of the kaorti's best stats, and they have no somatic components to interfere.

3) Warlocks. They have the same light armor deal as bards, though even that makes no sense, as the Warlock's powers are supposedly spell-like abilities, which I believe have no actions by definition even though Complete Arcane claims otherwise. Better yet, Dexterity is another high kaorti stat, making their eldtrich blasts more accurate.

 

[Nifft]

I build them as a race of Sorcerers or Battle Sorcerers who use all sorts of Aberrations as their thralls. The Corrupt Creature template (BoVD) also sees some use.

Basically, make them rare "mastermind" guys. When you see a lot of them together, they're at the head of a veritable army of Aberrations.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Evilhalfling]

I used them as "the Committee" a group of high level (14-16th) Wizards and Sorcerers as the BBEGs for a campaign. The parties mentor eventually went mad and joined them, after the party had successfully collected too many far realm tainted items for him.

It was great - lots of intrigue, many puzzeled players when the Kaorti would announce they had completed their objective and vanish. Several dramatic PC & ally deaths due to hails of fireballs and prismatic sprays.

Eventually the committee was whittled down to one, and the PCs used the last of the far realm items to trap the survivor below the ground for a thousand years. They also managed to turn the cyst a 100' diameter smoking crater with them hiding in anti-magic shell at the bottom.

Oh as for the resin suits? I had each Korti take a HR feat called "resin armored caster", and ignored them - only the mentor and had spell failure, and he was punked in 2 rounds (after dialog.)