Unique Monsters, Part 2

Yesterday I made a quick post about Unique Monsters™ in which I listed a handful of creatures you won't find in a manual of monsters or book of beasts. But I also described a method of creating Unique Monsters™ of your own using a simple method. Combine the physical forms of two different monsters, and add the special ability of a third monster.

So today, instead of just giving you another list of Unique Monsters™, I'm going to give you three lists that you can use to make your own beasts!

Body Form

1. Dragon (any color)
2. Troll
3. Medusa
4. Spider
5. Wolf
6. Hawk
7. Bear
8. Demon/Angel

Body Type

1. Made of stone
2. Covered in spines
3. Made of acidic slime
4. Skeletal
5. Incorporeal
6. Mechanical
7. All limbs separate from and hovering near torso
8. Roll twice and combine

Special Ability

1. Aura of electricity and lightning attack
2. Command of plants
3. Can grow to enormous size
4. Deadly shriek
5. Psychic blast
6. Hypnotism and mental command
7. Drains life with a touch
8. Can animate shadows

Unique Monsters

Do elementals exhaust you? Are you tired of trolls? Does the idea of dealing with dragons drain you? Then you need to add some Unique Monsters™ to your roster!

A Unique Monster™ is one that brings not only a fresh sight to your table, but also fresh abilities. But if the idea of coming up with these kind of monsters from scratch is intimidating or fatiguing, I suggest creating a quick patchwork of existing beasties. Take the form of one monster, mash it up with the form of another monster, and add the ability of a third monster. Voila! Something new and fresh for your table.

And speaking of tables...

Unique Monster

1. Half-elf, half-orc mage-knight mercenary
2. Blind albino black dragon
3. Blue half-dragon storm giant lich
4. Ooze dragon
5. Glass half-dragon succubus
6. Vampire beholder
7. Golden bear
8. Ash elemental

You may recall a similar table from back in February, this one is related to that one. Literally related, in fact, in the case of the glass dragon and the glass half-dragon succubus.

Reskinning Mechanics

One of my favorite activities of late has been taking existing game mechanics and reskinning them into something else. I was particularly inspired when I read this article a few months ago. It goes into some very cool examples of how simple reskins can have a profound effect on the feel of the game.

With that in mind, I began with some pretty minor reskins myself. I had an upcoming paranormal action game coming up, and hadn't decided what system to use. My players were familiar with D&D, but not much else. So, with my new fervor to try reskinning, I set to work.

The player with the cheerleader-turned-slayer wanted to focus on modern mixed martial arts, so I started with something easy. I reskinned the 1st-level maneuvers available to a swordsage from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords. Suddenly, that Buffy analogue could choose her moves from such categories as: dance karate, zen fu, sumo judo, ninjutsu, cage fighting, and bare-knuckle boxing.

Another player was interested in playing a MacGyver-esque, jack-of-all-trades troubleshooter. I immediately thought of the factotum class from Dungeonscape and set to work reskinning. The most intriguing challenge was changing the Wizard/Sorcerer spell list (which the factotum gets access to early on). I ended up with spells like "Blueprint App: Reveals hidden doors within 60 ft." and "Flashbang: Knocks unconscious, blinds, and/or stuns weak creatures." The most drastic change was to magic missile, which became traps! The mechanic stayed the same, but instead of lobbing a bolt of energy (or summoning the motes or firing the elf bow), the player would describe in detail a number of traps that they had set up earlier, like a scene out of Home Alone.

There's also another benefit to reskinning mechanics: you can use it as a GM! Low-level spellcasters are pretty worthless as enemy combatants; they have few hit points and fewer spells, and they're usually the first targets of the PCs. So, for my current game, I decided to avoid that problem entirely in at least one instance by reskinning a fighter as a mage. The practical upshot is that my enemy mage is more durable, can make more than one attack (if she gets the chance), and can have a different flavor than other spellcasters.

The downside is that since some equipment becomes spells (chain shirt becomes lesser warding, longsword becomes spirit slash, etc.), the treasure is on the low side, but I can compensate easily by adding additional loot that can be taken by the PCs. Furthermore, I can transform a simple longbow into a "sparkwand." It has the same damage, type, range, etc. as a longbow, and since I don't track normal ammunition, it can have unlimited charges. Now I have a unique magic item to hand out to my PCs, and I don't have to worry about it being any more unbalancing than a regular longbow.

So, next time you're trying to wedge a unique or complicated character into a rules-heavy system, whether it's a PC or an NPC, don't reinvent the wheel or dig through 39 rules supplements. Just find something that already fits the bill and reskin it.

Hideouts and Lairs

Across the spectrum of fiction, anytime there is a villain, criminal, or fugitive from authority, there must be a lair or hideout to shelter them. In RPGs, these locations are at least as important as the figures themselves because many times the PCs will spend much more time investigating and exploring the lair or hideout than they do in the final encounter with the antagonist.

When designing a hideout or lair, it's important to think about a few key aspects and make some basic decisions.

Access

How can the PCs get to the lair? Once they find it, how do they get in?

1. Remote – The lair is far, far off the beaten trail and is thus difficult to find.
2. Hidden in plain sight – The lair is right in the center of action, but is so innocuous that it goes unnoticed.
3. Disguised – The lair is nearby, but it purports to be something else entirely.
4. Secret entrance – The entrance to the lair is actively camouflaged and in an unexpected environment.

Size

How big is the hideout? How many rooms might it have?

1. Cavernous – The hideout has more than half a dozen rooms and corridors, each with a specialized purpose.
2. Cozy – The hideout has several multipurpose rooms along a central corridor.
3. Compact – The hideout has at most two rooms; probably one room functions as an entryway or guard chamber while the other room is where all of the rest of the activity goes on.
4. Cramped – The hideout is a single, small room. The exterior or the door itself are likely the focus of the hideout's defenses, and the single room is crowded when in use.

Defense

Aside from the difficulty of accessing the lair, how else is it defended from nosy intruders?

1. Minions – The villain's subordinates provide the bulk of the defense, patrolling the lair and perhaps the outside region as well.
2. Traps – The lair is filled with cunning traps, puzzles, and obstacles to intruders.
3. Natural – The lair is located somewhere with a naturally occurring defense, either in the form of a dangerous locale or dangerous neighbors.
4. Personal – The villain provides the bulk of the lair's defenses herself, either by use of her abilities to add defenses or by virtue of her ability to deal with any intruders personally.

Dragons

Dragons are the end-all be-all of the fantasy genre, for good or ill, and lots of players dream of facing up to a dragon, even if they never reach the high levels or tiers of power. And even players with high-powered PCs might relish a good encounter with a dragon now and then.

Today, I'm going to present a few short dragon ideas for various stages of PC power. In the future, I plan to go into detail for each dragon (probably using the d20 system).

Dragons

Senswhillik the Vast

Senswhillik is an enormous, dark blue dragon that lives in a desert canyon. She spends much of her time sleeping in the sun, like a titanic housecat, but when she is roused she is as deadly as a storm.

Brinilak Dorduna

Brinilak is quite small for a green dragon, though young as he is his draconic intellect and reasoning skills are still at least equal to that of an average adult human. He is teaching himself to master the powers of nature, and he soon expects to be able to leave his cave and plunder the nearby towns.

Ordax Gardith aka "Devourer of the Sixth Sea"

Ordax is a monstrous red dragon who lives in a cliffside cave overlooking a barren valley. The valley was once a large inland sea, but the legend is that Ordax drank the whole sea up in order to plunder the many merchant ships at his leisure.

Harkog Deathless

Harkog is a large, but skeletally thin, blue dragon. She has mastered many magical arts, and is rumored to have developed a serum to grant eternal life. Her lair is hidden in a labyrinthian series of craggy canyons, and she only rarely ventures forth for food and arcane resources.

The Wandering Plague

The Wandering Plague is a sinuous black dragon priest of the goddess of disease. He has no permanent lair, preferring to travel the lands and take temporary residence in fetid swamps and urban sewers. He believes that the spread of disease empowers his deity and that he will be granted great power of his own for being the emissary of her power.

Ixallikan of the Lightning Peaks

Ixallkian is a small, but incredibly cunning, white dragon who lairs among the deadly Lightning Peaks. Many years ago she mastered the zen arts, making her far deadlier than other dragons of her size. So great is her ability that they say she dodges the very lightning itself, making her lair at the top of the peaks among the deadliest storms.

Rural Quests

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a list of villages and the oddities you could drop into those villages. But what if you want a normal village with normal people and normal problems? Maybe you're trying to make your world feel alive, maybe your PCs are level 0 and are off on their first quest (no matter how trivial it may seem), or maybe you're just using this as an opportunity to introduce people and places so that you can hold them hostage or destroy them later.

No matter your purpose, these tables are for you! The first two tables will randomly generate a plausible village name, and the third will give you a seemingly innocuous quest, which you can leave as is or fill with danger and excitement.

Village (part 1)

1. Stone-

2. Wood-

3. Wheat-

4. Gold-

5. Silver-

6. River-

7. Hill-

8. Black-

9. Iron-

10. Kings-

11. Queens-

12. East-

Village (part 2)

1. -hold

2. -bury

3. -ton

4. -field

5. -way

6. -burrough

7. -shire

8. -water

9. -ham

10. -ford

11. -port

12. -vale

Peasant Quest

1. Rescue 2d6 stranded sheep
2. Tend to an injured horse
3. Help bring in the harvest before the cold ruins it all
4. Find the chicken thief
5. Build a barn by nightfall
6. Fill the box with firewood
7. Calm the rampaging bull
8. Find 1d4 missing cows

Using Injuries and Wounds

Durability is handled very differently across the vast array of RPGs. Some use hit points or health, some use stamina or chi, and other simply layer on drawbacks or consequences. If your system of choice is one that represents durability with health or hit points, might I suggest occasionally adding an injury or wound instead?

Dungeon World has this type of mechanic, where players can choose for their characters to sustain an injury rather than lose health points. I'm a fan of that concept, and thought I'd share some of my own ideas here for implementing that in the d20 system.

Injures and Wounds

• Fractured arm makes it difficult to hold items or cast spells (-2 attack, worth 10 hp)
• Fractured leg makes walking or running difficult (base speed -10 ft., worth 10 hp)
• Fractured ribs make it hard to do anything (-2 Str and Dex penalty, worth 10 hp)
• Mild head trauma impedes focus (-1 attacks, skills, saves, and ability checks, worth 15 hp)
• Broken arm cannot hold weapons or shields or cast spells (arm cannot be used in actions, worth 30 hp)
• Broken leg cannot support weight (base speed = 5 ft., worth 30 hp)
• Broken ribs impede nearly all actions (-6 Str and Dex penalty, worth 30 hp)
• Severe head trauma halves capability (take either a move or a standard action each round, worth 50 hp)