Converting Greyhawk monsters

[freyar]

Agreed to no frenzy. These seem to be basically out of control at all times anyway, so there's really no need. Let's just play up their menace in the flavor text. Maybe rather than following the commands of their creator, we should say that their creators have never learned how to control them, so they are effectively always berserk.

Construction: animate dead and bull's strength from the flesh golem? Anything that can summon or control oozes in core?

 

[Shade]

No ooze-controlling or ooze-summoning I can find in the core rules. Maybe some spell that deals acid damage (acid arrow, for example)?

 

[freyar]

Sounds reasonable to me. We may also want to add a craft (alchemy) check.

 

[Cleon]

Sounds reasonable to me. We may also want to add a craft (alchemy) check.

I'd say ranks in the Craft (alchemy) skill rather than a skill check.

Making them uncontrollable is fine by me, although it begs the question of why Lyzandred would make seven of the things after being unable to control the first. Well, he was mad you know. Unless you can make them in batches...

 

[Leopold]

I'd say you'd make them in batches, oozes are rather big, you can just split them apart and drop them in the body and it grows. Are we stating out the creation process as well? Mini Frankenstein monsters these are.

 

[Shade]

Craft ranks only would be quite a departure from the standards for construct creations.

 

[freyar]

Yeah, let's keep it to a check. DC 20?

As far as controlability, let's say it's unknown how to control them for more than a short period of time. That would allow Lyzandred to have been tricked. What I really want to know is how he got killed by a bunch of 3HD monsters, though. He must have been pretty high level.

 

[Shade]

It's not really clear that Lyzandred was the creator of, or was killed by, the greymen. It just says "The wizard succeeded in creating a strange new creature, but his creations were not under his control and they slew him."

Taking out of context from the module, it could have been another wizard underling, or one that moved into the area after Lyz moved on.

 

[demiurge1138]

They killed him in his sleep, obviously. Or overpowered him when he was low on spells.

 

[Cleon]

Yeah, let's keep it to a check. DC 20?

Oh all right, if we're bothering with by petty concerns like consistency.

DC20 is too high going by the SRD examples:

9HD, CR7 Flesh Golem - Leatherworking DC 13.
11HD, CR10 Clay Golem - Pottery & Sculpting DC 15.
14HD, CR11 Stone Golem - Sculpting & Stonemasonry DC 17.
18HD, CR13 Iron Golem - Armoursmithing & Weaponsmithing DC 20.

So, that looks like the Craft DC is CR plus 5-7 or half Hit Dice plus 9-11.

That suggests a DC around 10-12 for the Craft (alchemy) check.

I'd also consider a Craft (leatherworking) check, since a lot of cutting & stitching seems to be involved in a Grayman's creation, like with a Flesh Golem.

As far as controlability, let's say it's unknown how to control them for more than a short period of time. That would allow Lyzandred to have been tricked. What I really want to know is how he got killed by a bunch of 3HD monsters, though. He must have been pretty high level.

I suspect he just thought he was safe so had a lot of research spells in his repertoire that day, and they got into melee before he react. (Poor surprise check, no doubt).

I'd also note that there is no mention of there being a wizard's corpse in the laboratory with the greymen. I can see only one likely explanation.

They ate him to feed their oozes.