Monster Request Thread!!!

I'm requesting a "Zodiac" template that changes a the base creature into an incorporeal Fine swarm with the Outsider type, but retains the base creature's space and reach. I'm not sure what abilities to give them though. Uncanny Positive Energy Mastery, perhaps? I don't know what sort of special qualities and attacks a miniature embodiment of a constellation would have.

However, I don't want to give them the traditional designations and variants of Taurus, Cancer, Gemini, etc. It just doesn't feel right giving a Cogent the Scorpio zodiac sign. Furthermore, there should supposedly exist a zodiac sign for every type of creature imaginable (as much as the concept of constellations is absurd in a setting where everybody can be on different planets), and each Zodiac creature should be a reification of that constellation.

The attached pictures (courtesy of Guild Wars: Factions, a phoenix and a dragon) are what I had in mind for their appearance: a faint golden outline of the base creature with star-like motes of light in its body, making up its "skeleton". However, I would make the lights a bit smaller, and I would also add golden lines connecting each one (making a sort of "connect the dots" wireframe).

I think we'd need more detail on that. What level of power is such a template to have, what abilities, ect. =^.^= You left it all rather vague.

I'm not sure, around the ECL +60 to +80 range (roughly intermediate deities) maybe? They do remind me of Akaliches with the incorporeality and motes of light though, so maybe a neutral version of them with a "light" theme would be a good start.

Sadly, the creatures that were like that in Guild Wars didn't even have any special abilities, and you could just chop them up like any other monster.

What would this template be applied to, just anything or...? And should this be magical or psionic in nature, or maybe both? It sounds like a cool idea, but what kind o powers should it really have. I kinda see something like this having cold, darkness, fire, light, and shadow based powers. Kinda representative of the most commonly thought of things in a celestial body.

Or maybe Atomic energy? You could do almost anything with this.

I'd think maybe DR = 1/2 HD/ - ?

What about immunities and resistances.

K' Krusty

Here is a wax golem revised by Krustian rules.

What modifications need to be made to make more appropriate? Is it missing anything? Perhaps some form of damage reduction?


Golem, Wax
Medium Construct
Hit Dice: 2d10+20 (31 hp)
Initiative: +0
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 11 (+1 natural), touch 10, flat-footed 11
Base Attack/Grapple: +1/+5
Attack: Slam +4 melee (1d4+4)
Full Attack: 2 slams +4 melee (1d4+4)
Face/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: —
Special Qualities: Construct traits, lifelike, low-light vision, magic immunity, melt down
Saves: Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +0
Abilities: Str 18, Dex 10, Con —, Int —, Wis 11, Cha 1
Skills: Disguise +10 (+5 if made to look like a specific individual)
Feats: —
Environment: Any land
Organization: Solitary or gang (3–4)
Challenge Rating: 2
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 4–6 HD (Medium)
Level Adjustment: —

This unremarkable looking human is garbed in a heavy cloak and appears unarmed. He has a blank expression devoid of any emotion.

Wax golems are designed to be as lifelike as possible and sometimes, if the creator is skillful enough, to appear as a specific individual. Careful examination of such a construct reveals its artificial nature, and thus wax golems are often garbed in heavy clothing with wigs or jewelry added to maintain a sense of realism. Wax golems are typically employed to act as “doubles” for prominent politicians, wizards, or generals. In some cases, enhanced wax golems are used to infiltrate enemy positions and either attack from within or commit acts of sabotage. Wax golems can only comprehend basic commands and cannot speak themselves.

Combat

Wax golems have only basic combat abilities, but they often have the element of surprise to give them an advantage.

Lifelike (Ex): Wax golems can appear exceptionally lifelike from a distance. The wax golem effectively receives a +15 racial bonus on any Disguise skill check to conceal its true nature. This bonus is reduced to +10 if made to look like a specific individual. Any creature succeeding on an opposed Spot check sees the true nature of the golem. Ignore penalties for gender, race, and age category, but the Spot check bonuses for seeing through the disguise of a known individual apply. Once created, a wax golem’s appearance cannot be changed.

Magic Immunity (Ex): A wax golem is immune to any spell or spell-like ability that allows spell resistance. In addition, certain spells and effects function differently against the creature as noted below.

Fire damage (whether magical or not) slows the golem for 3 rounds (as the spell). Fabricate allows the caster to permanently alter the appearance of the golem (although a new Craft check is required as described below).

Melt Down (Ex): When a wax golem is destroyed it melts into a pool of liquid wax that quickly dissolves completely, leaving only clothes and accessories behind.

Construction

Most of the time spent creating a wax golem is in the carving and forming of the creature’s body from a single, massive block of wax. After this numerous reagents must be added to the body, hardening it and coloring the wax appropriately (costing a total of 500 gp). Carving the body requires a DC 15 Craft (sculpting) check. The creator recieves a +2 circumstance bonus on this check if he possesses 5 or more ranks in the Disguise skill.

CL 5th; Craft Construct, alter self, endure elements, caster must be at least 5th level; Price 2,500 gp; Cost 1,500 gp + 80 XP.

I just read up on an interesting creature from the TYPE-MOON universe (same 'verse that O.R.T. comes from) named the "Forest of Einnashe", aka the "Disembowelling Sea of Trees".

It's a mobile, sentient forest approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) in diameter. It normally appears as a mundane forest located anywhere in the world, with nothing to identify it as unique due to its powerful illusion magic. Every 50 years, however, it activates itself and rips itself from the ground in search of blood.

It engulfs everything in its path, and any poor creature in its reach is swarmed and sucked dry by thousands of vampiric trees and plants. This vegetation in turn flows blood through the ground of the forest, giving all the plants a blood-red color. The forest can engulf just about anything that fits in it, and even a 660-foot-long and 250-foot-tall divine beast was able to be swarmed and nearly felled. Additionally, it drains the air all around it of magical and psionic energy, thus making it impossible to cast spells or manifests powers while inside or near it.

The forest originated from a vampire sorcerer named Einnashe (I'd peg him at around lesser/intermediate deity-level). He specialized in enchantment magic, specifically, hypnosis and memory modification. He wasn't capable of deleting memories, but he could alter them substantially, and thus could hide his existence from anyone who encountered him. However, another sorcerer who specialized in memory modification was able to bring back the memories of Einnashe in a powerful vampire named Arcueid Brunestud (I'd put her at about greater deity-level), and the two were able to track down Einnashe and put an end to him. The sorcerer's corpse was left by a great tree, whose roots sucked his supernatural blood as the years passed by. The tree inherited his vampiric and magical power, and it spread to the nearby vegetation, thus swelling into the 50-kilometer monstrosity that is the Disembowelling Sea of Trees. The tree that Einnashe's corpse originally laid by bears fruits that supposedly grant the bearer Transmortality.

So the Forest of Einnashe would be a Mega-Fine Plant creature since it is 31 miles in diameter, and spherical creatures have their dimensions in Table 1-3: Expanded Size of the Epic Bestiary cut in half, so a spherical Mega-Fine creature would have dimensions of roughly 24-48 miles. It would have Vampiric [Effect], a constant Antimagic Field and Null Psionics Field, the ability to summon vampiric shamblers and treants, and of course an engulf attack. I have no idea how you'd set its HD at a feasible number though, since Mega-Fine creatures have a minimum of 131,072 HD and a maximum of 262,143 HD. It was eventually defeated by a pair of greater deity-level combatants, so it can't be THAT powerful.

The whole thing kind of reminds me of a super-Genius Loci, now that I think about it. Only without the enslaving and with vampiric powers instead.

Just do it as a lot of smaller creatures, instead of one uber-big one.

WarDragon said:

Just do it as a lot of smaller creatures, instead of one uber-big one.

Click to expand...

That might be a bit hard to do. The forest was brought down by a pair of greater deity-level creatures, but not without a challenging fight. There's going to be a major "mook effect" if it's just a bunch of divine shamblers and treants, and U_K's research (www.immortalshandbook.com/freestuff18.htm) shows that low-CR enemies become irrelevant after a certain point, even if you send literally thousands of them.

However, I'd still want there to be a unifying factor. Perhaps the real "creature" is a Titanic-sized, Greater Deity, 115 HD Orcwort (Monster Manual 2), or alternatively, a Great^9 Wyrm Timber Dragon. The 50-kilometer mobile platform of soil that forms the forest itself could be one of its artifacts (or even all of its artifacts together), just as how Galactus has a planet-sized spaceship as a technological artifact. Einnashe's grave tree could specialize in using Adjuration to summon all sorts of paragon plant creatures, and its divine aura could extend to the entire platform.

Wait, how about if a 115 HD Greater Deity took enough Divine Immensities to bump its size up to Mega-Fine? It's going to have TERRIBLE AC and attack rolls with that -32,768 size modifier though. How does Algol, supposedly the size of a star being a sentient star himself, manage to pull it off? Or is he simply just a regular-sized Old One with a divine aura the size of a star?

Yea, Algol isn't really star sized, but his Aura is. Could work for a plant monster. (Aura of entangle?) Algol just has a couple instances of the Enlarge Aura divine ability. (Doubles aura size, with double of a double equaling a quadrupling, meaning it doesn't take many applications to get the correct size)

Ltheb Silverfrond said:

Yea, Algol isn't really star sized, but his Aura is. Could work for a plant monster. (Aura of entangle?) Algol just has a couple instances of the Enlarge Aura divine ability. (Doubles aura size, with double of a double equaling a quadrupling, meaning it doesn't take many applications to get the correct size)

Click to expand...

A 160 HD Old One has a divine aura with a radius of [160 × 40 + 400 feet] or 6800 feet. The sun has a radius of 6.960e8 meters or 2,283,000,000 feet. In order for a 160 HD Old One to get a divine aura radius around that size, he would need to take Enlarge Aura 18 times, giving him a divine aura with a radius of [6800 × 2^18 feet] or 1,782,579,200 feet. Algol needs to spend 3 cosmic abilities to get his divine aura to a size slightly smaller than the sun.

Let's try this with the Forest of Einnashe. A 115 HD Greater Deity has a divine aura with a radius of [115 × 40 + 400 feet] or 5000 feet. A radius of 25 kilometers is roughly 82,021 feet. A mere 4 applications of Enlarge Aura will result in a divine aura size of [5000 × 2^4 feet].

So Einnashe's grave tree will probably be a 115 HD Greater Deity constructed from scratch by taking a human and piling on divine abilities and abnormalities to turn him into a great tree. Alternatively, it could be a Great^9 Wyrm Timber Dragon (just one age category shy of Yggdrasil and being an Elder One) with modified abilities, such as the Crown of Vermin instead being a Crown of Vampiric Vegetation... alright, so maybe "Crown of Vampiric Vegetation" sounds silly.

How would the 50-kilometer-diameter platform work as an artifact? That's going to be tricky to adjudicate under the artifact rules.

EDIT: I'm going to go see how much havoc a mere 120 HD Elder One can wreak with Enlarge Aura. He's got a measly divine aura radius of exactly 5200 feet before any applications of Enlarge Aura. We're going to make it so that his divine aura radius is equivalent to the diameter of the supercluster/universe, so he can stand on one end and still affect the whole thing.

Diameter of the Virgo/local supercluster = 200 million light years = 1e21 miles = 6e24 feet
Diameter of the observable universe = 93 billion light years = 5.5e23 miles = 2.9e27 feet

Enlarge Aura ×70 = 5200 feet × 2^70 = 6,139,076,427,730,538,777,804,800 feet = 6.1e24 feet
Enlarge Aura ×79 = 5200 feet × 2^79 = 3,143,207,130,998,035,854,236,057,600 feet = 3.1e27 feet

A Human Fighter 120 Elder One (ECL 240, CR 160) without any artifacts will have 103 feats (1 human + 1 first level + 30 HD progression + 11 fighter bonus feats + 50 fighter epic bonus feats), 12 divine abilities, 2 cosmic abilities, and 4 transcendental abilities. With that, he can easily afford Enlarge Aura ×79 and a Perfect Quantum Telluric Vampiric Vengeful Cosmic Storm to destroy the universe.

EDIT EDIT: Sorry, I just couldn't resist sharing this with you guys. The... Slowpoke of Pain? I hope I don't get mazed for this.