Ravenloft Golems and Apparatus problem

[Solan]

Hi! First, I wanted to say how much I was impressed by the flavor and power of the Ravenloft Golems! Truly thematic adversaries which can seriously threaten, and thus frighten, almost any group of players! Unfortunately, it seems the designers went TOO far in the interest of theme, when they set the rule that each Ravenloft Golem created gets a saving throw to break the wizard or cleric's control, once at the time of creation and once each month. This is an Achilles heel which seems to me to completely negate all of the possibilities offered by having villains use Ravenloft Golems.

Golems require a truly tremendous amount of time, talent and treasure to construct. It thus beggars belief that anyone in the entire demiplane would ever bother to invest all the effort required to build one if they are going to go out of control that easily and that inevitably (note here that I'm talking about wizard and cleric creators, not the obsessive madmen detailed in VRGttC)! What a colossal waste, especially given that the builder will then have to face his formidable creation! If this rule was actually adhered to then Vlad Drakov himself should probably be long dead by now at the claws of one of the Gargoyle Golems adorning his home! So do the rest of you just ignore this rule or what?

A similar problem exists in the newer rules for the Apparatus, the ones which require an insanity check every day for an entire week after being transposessed! As with Golems, this rule basically makes the Apparatus useless for the purposes of the villain switching his minions into other bodies. I would definitely use the older rules, which mandate no such check; am I alone?

Finally, because Dione Fernandez was kind enough to provide the smiley, I'll end this post with the mark of one of my favorite characters in Ravenloft: !

[Resonant Curse]

I imagine that unlike in say the Forgotten Realms, making a golem in Ravenloft is far more often a one time "live and learn" (or don't survive) experience and since there are probably few survivors, and most wizards and clerics in RL are not going to freely share that they failed at something, word is not well spread that it isn't a good idea.

[The Lesser Evil]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Azalin never seemed to have any problems with the constructs under his control. In general, there's a bunch of different little rules that Ravenloft had that designers didn't always follow really well. (You could grant Azalin special exceptions since he's a darklord, but that's handwavium.)

[nothri]

Frankly, those rules should only come into play for Player Characters. NPCs should have their golems go beserk if it serves the purpose of the story. Sometimes you just want some powerful servants at the beck and call of your villains. Sometimes you want the hubris of your NPCs to catch up with them in a dramatic fashion. Let the story determine if the golem goes mad. Hell, the Dark Powers probably play a hand in all of this anyway- some golems just aren't going to turn against their dark masters because the unspoken gods don't WANT them to.

On the other hand, if a PC has taken the questionable route of creating a golem via magic then by all means let the dice decide whether or not it remains loyal. They know the risks inherent in bringing unnatural life into a dark place like Ravenloft. If they want to hang themselves, by all means give them the rope they need. Letting the dice determine when and if things go south does make a certain amount of sense in this case. But again, all things take a back seat to the story you want to tell.

[Mangrum]

I'm honestly too lazy to go downstairs and check right now, but I'm pretty sure that in 3E we included two methods of creating constructs:

1) The normal method, which is incredibly expensive and requires potent magical character resources, but which produces "normal" constructs. (Monster Manual golems).

1) "Golems of obsession," or dread golems, a process which requires faaaar fewer resources to create, but produces unstable constructs that inevitably rebel. (Van Richten's Guide to the Created golems.)

Azalin sticks to the former; Mordeheim sticks to the latter.