Breathing New Life into your Monsters

Whizbang Dustyboots · Dec 8, 2007

Rechan said:
When I started this thread, I said to myself that harpies are in dire need of it, yeah. But I couldn't come up with something.

I have used ghouls as the poor man's vampire: The Unkindness, a secret society pretending to be nobility, wearing death masks, while researching dark powers. They were the descendants of the Bloodthirsty Ravens, lapdog skirmishers for the Lady of Plague. They worship the Lady, and protected her site of death, trying to bring her ghost back.

Wow, I love ghouls and I think this is a really strong take on them.

Rechan · Dec 8, 2007

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
Wow, I love ghouls and I think this is a really strong take on them.

Shoot me an email and I'll give you some more details on them.

Trench · Dec 8, 2007

Rechan said:
Shoot me an email and I'll give you some more details on them.

Oh WONDEFUL. Whiz is already planning on running some of us through the blender of Empire of the Ghouls... Last thing he needs is more inspiration on how to murder us.

I have some ideas on this thread... Love making up cultures for the monster-types.

Tonguez · Dec 8, 2007

szilard said:
Here is my take owlbears

Harpies could use a makeover (in more ways than one). Any ideas?
-Stuart

I reimagined 'Owlbears' as natural creatures ,a robust type of feathered dinosaur related to Griffons and Velociraptors. They are more sleek then usually portrayed, although not as gracile as the velociraptor, they also lack the wings of the true griffon.

Compare

I've used Harpies once using them as the Akaanas (of Solomon Kane fame), I also gave them the ability to wrap their wings around a victim (grapple) and strip the flesh from its bones (like the and the Birdmen of Beastmaster)

Akaana by REHoward Wings of the Night

The thing was like a man, inhumanly tall and inhumanly thin; the head was long, narrow, and hairless -- the head of a predatory creature. The ears were small, close-set and queerly pointed. The eyes, set in death, were narrow, oblique and of a strange yellowish colour. The nose was thin and hooked, like the beak of a bird of prey, the mouth a wide cruel gash, whose thin lips, writhed in a death snarl and flecked with foam, disclosed wolfish fangs. The creature, which was naked and hairless, was not unlike a human being in other ways. the shoulders were broad and powerful, the neck long and lean. The arms were long and muscular, the thumb being set beside the fingers after the manner of the great apes. Fingers and thumbs were armed with heavy hooked talons. The chest was curiously misshapen, the breast-bone Jutting out like the keel of a ship, the ribs curving back from it. The legs were long and wiry with huge, hand-like, prehensile feet, the great toe set opposite the rest like a man's thumb. The claws on the toes were merely long nails. But the most curious feature of this curious creature was on its back. A pair of great wings, shaped much like the wings of a moth but with a bony frame and of leathery substance, grew from its shoulders, beginning at a point just back and above where the arms joined the shoulders, and extending half way to the narrow hips. These wings, Kane reckoned, would measure some eighteen feet from tip to tip

Rechan · Dec 8, 2007

Tonguez, is the pic on the left supposed to be your imagining of an owlbear, or is that what you're saying a velociraptor kinda looks like?

Also, the birdmen from Beastmaster have totally slipped my mind.

Trench said:
Oh WONDEFUL. Whiz is already planning on running some of us through the blender of Empire of the Ghouls... Last thing he needs is more inspiration on how to murder us.

Oh pish.

The Unkindness don't necessarily have any mechanical geegaws that make them dangerous. They're just a proto-vampire secret society pretending to be aristocrats. Hint: you don't want to be invited to their dinner party.

Actually, I haven't looked at Empire of the Ghouls... I do have "Rise of the Ghouls" from Clockwork Golems Workshop.

Tonguez · Dec 8, 2007

Rechan said:
Tonguez, is the pic on the left supposed to be your imagining of an owlbear, or is that what you're saying a velociraptor kinda looks like?

Yeh the pic is not mine just something I googled when looking up feathered dinosaurs - I straight away said to myself shorter neck more robust that would pass for an owlbear

Dannyalcatraz · Dec 8, 2007

Back in 2Ed (and inspired by the original M:tG Hurloon Minotaur art), I revamped Minotaurs into a plains-inhabiting, chariot-using quasi-Native American culture, with albinos being the mystics- wizards, druids & shamen. Those large sized bows & arrows were deadly, and nobody expected spell-slinging longhorn-heads. Today, I might consider using Half Giants or Goliaths in the same role.

My current campaign W.I.P. will feature (among other races) Sylvaiinen- fey-elves who are actually plants- using the Woodling template and some features from the Geomancer and Verdant Lord PrCls*, and "The Inheritors"- (Warforged-inspired) living constructs who have adopted the cultural identity of their extinct Dwarven creators. I'm also merging either gnomes (or possibly halflings) with mephlings as an example of a Gnomish divinity sabotaging an evil plot.

*In fact, all fey races will be using the Geomancer Drift rules, and Fey Drift will stack with the Geomancer Drift.

szilard · Dec 8, 2007

Tonguez said:
I reimagined 'Owlbears' as natural creatures ,a robust type of feathered dinosaur related to Griffons and Velociraptors. They are more sleek then usually portrayed, although not as gracile as the velociraptor, they also lack the wings of the true griffon.

Nice. I wanted to keep the mad-wizard thing for nostalgia, but wanted it to make at least some sense.

I've used Harpies once using them as the Akaanas (of Solomon Kane fame), I also gave them the ability to wrap their wings around a victim (grapple) and strip the flesh from its bones (like the and the Birdmen of Beastmaster)

Cool idea. How did you model that? Constrict?

-Stuart

Aus_Snow · Dec 8, 2007

Dannyalcatraz said:
Woodling template

eh?

Verdant Lord

what?

I get the feeling I should know, but. . .

Anyway, your stuff sounds cool. Nice work.

Carpe DM · Dec 8, 2007

I have also been able to get some traction out of the Fey races, which are under-used because fey have been cast as "good guys" by the monster manual for some reason I cannot fathom.

A Blair Witch style dryad would be just plain cool.

I have also done some cultural equivalences, for player races.

Dwarves: Spartans. Underground tunnels are one big Thermopylae. And axes in tunnels never made sense to me. Spears, now, that makes sense. Dwarves as Hoplites really meshes well with Dwarven Defender and a lot of other classes. Plus, it explains how (in my world, at least) Dwarves have not only fought the greenskins to a standstill, but are winning. They enslave each tribe as they beat it, install secret police, terrorize them through the rites of agoge and crypteia.

One really cool move: You know how Spartans exposed imperfect children. I melded that with changeling myths. The Dwarves swap their imperfect children for perfect human children, then raise the stolen children as full Phalanx citizens. These children, raised in the Phalanx, think of themselves as Citizens, not human or dwarven. In fact, human and dwarven Citizens often marry. The fact that dwarves and humans are genetically incompatible doesn't matter -- Spartans often encouraged wives to have children by other men, in order to produce more Citizens.

So from the human point of view, Dwarves are these things that come in the dead of night, steal your children, and leave behind deformed changelings. From the Dwarven point of view, they are the last line of defense against the ravening hordes of greenskins. Each Citizen is an army in his own right. But there are so terribly few of them against their endless enemies.

It has really worked well.