We still need to hammer out precisely what skills we're giving him, and then divide up the available skill ranks among them, along with ability bonuses and whatever racial bonuses it gets.
True. Should we go with the even-divide-by-four idea? Or should we focus say, half on Jump, and the rest on others, just to be more sure that the beast can Go Really High when it springs? I must say that from the movie, I didn't get the impression that Clover has particularly keen senses, but it's also true that it doesn't show up on screen through more than about a fourth of the movie time (and most of those times you only get fleeting glimpses).
I'm not sure what other skills could be reasonable to give it, besides the four we listed before- Jump, Listen, Spot, Swim. Survival, perhaps, purely for hunting purposes, though really it hardly needs to with such a concentration of tiny morsels scampering about under its feet through most of the movie.
Beyond that, we still haven't decided on exactly what feats to give Cloverfield.
There are a few obvious ones: Improved Critical, possibly Weapon Focus though I honestly would prefer to avoid that one (it's a weak option for a monster of this caliber and CR), Improved Natural Attack, various selections descending from Power Attack. We also might be able to justify giving it a racial bonus feat or two.
Also, one thing I'm curious about: does v6 mention guidelines for granting monsters Divine Abilities at all? There are a few that could be quite handy for this beast, particularly Squamous (though that is an expensive option).
I'm a bit concerned that the monster's AC might not be high enough, but other than spending feats on Improved Natural Armor, I'm not sure what to do about that.
DR. It occurs to me that if we give it a high enough DR, it won't really
matter that it's getting hit so often, because few hits will do more than scratch it. We might spend feats on that, in fact, if we have no better uses for them, though that may be a bit wasteful. Having high DR would also square quite well with the movie version, though admittedly most kaijus fight whole armies throwing every conventional weapon in their arsenals at them without apparently getting significantly hurt. Now, getting DR high enough to be meaningful to 100th-level characters isn't exactly easy, but it can still (at least help) solve the problem if handled properly.
That is, of course, besides the idea of giving it one or more of the divine abilities increasing natural armor.
Attacks seem to be coming along nicely, since they're largely standardized by type and size.
I do think that Improved (Tail) is a must-have, for verisimilitude with both the movie and UK's 4E version (the tail is specifically called out as one of its attacks in that version, so you
know it's important), but yes, no real issue there.
Special attacks should probably be one of the last things we focus on, particularly since the idea of feeding tubes is one we'll have to work out largely from scratch.
Agreed, particularly with the feeding tubes.
I wonder if it'd be worth working that into some sort of integrated Swallow Whole attack, since those tubes basically let Cloverfield eat creatures.
Good thought. We'll want to come back to that.
That said, the focus should be mostly converting what U_K's written, so Frightful Presence is definitely in - but at some point there does need to be some level of interpretation, so possibly Trample also.
Trample is just obvious for a monster this size, plus, it again matches one of the 4E version's attacks pretty closely.
The minion creatures should probably be the very last thing we focus on, since they're going to require an independent conversion of their own.
Oh, no question of that- it was just bugging me that I can't remember which company introduced the "mob" idea before WotC included it in DMG2. I'm fairly certain I even have the book, in my library, but let's face it- there were a
lot of third-party 3.X books published. I personally have over 100, I'm sure (though I've never actually counted them all). I was looking at the mob with an eye to duplicate the Infestation attack of the 4E Clover. But I do tend to be scattershot and stream-of-consciousness when designing a new monster; chalk it up to my Chaotic alignment if you like.
