VIII Great Old Ones and Outer Gods In every moment of every day they come from planets belonging to stars whose dying light is too far away to be seen From infinity they come Meteors! —The Monolith Monsters (1957) can manifest again and again as the conditions allow Resistances and Immunities: If an influence can At best, adventurers can achieve fleeting victories be damaged, attacks (be they melee or ranged, magical against the influence, preserving the world for a time or mundane) must be directed at the influence’s nucleus before the next, inevitable incursion This section at the center of its area An influence is immune to all only lists the most typical and common method of spells and effects that don’t inflict raw hit point damage defeating the influence—typically, by combating the (including effects that arbitrarily reduce a target to a set influence directly or by defeating its proxy In some number of hit points, such as phantasmal killer), unless cases, other, more obscure and complex methods for otherwise specified in the specific influence’s stats defeating an influence may exist, often requiring long Armor Class: Attacks against an influence always and dangerous rituals or quests to complete This is left resolve against a fixed AC, regardless of whether the to the GM’s discretion attack is a touch attack or a flat-footed attack Influence Effects: Finally, any of the influence’s effects are detailed in full here Running an Encounter with an Elder Influence For the most part, influences function more like environmental effects than monsters For most influences, inflicting damage can be a method (if desperate) of driving the entity off, at least temporarily Initiative: An Elder Influence always goes first in a combat round, moving its speed if it wishes to position itself in a more advantageous location Saving Throws: When an attack allows a saving throw to reduce or negate the damage the attack inflicts, an Elder Influence uses a static modifier for its save as listed in its stats, regardless of whether the effect calls for a Fortitude, Reflex, or Will saving throw Hit Points: An Elder Influence takes half damage from all sources Due to its lack of discernible anatomy, an Elder Influence does not suffer additional damage from critical hits, nor from precision-based damage, such as that from a rogue’s sneak attack In certain cases, specific forms of damage might have no effect or might have an augmented effect on an Elder Influence (such as inflicting normal damage), as noted in its statistics 207