Converting Monsters from Polyhedron Magazine

[Cleon]

Cleon, I agree with your suggested mental ability scores and favored class.

Added to Homebrews.

Looks like a good start. You've left a couple of lines of Bugbear text at the beginning of "Houyhnhnms as Characters".

Going through the x's that remain:

Attack: I'd put the hoof damage at 1d4, same as a light warhorse, 1d4+3 once its 17 Strength is included. (Spiked horshoes do 1d6, armour spikes 1d8)

Skills: Autohypnosis, Jump, Listen, Spot, Swim, Survival?

Listen, Spot should definitely be among them as all the SRD horses possess those skills. Autohypnosis or Concentration, Jump, Swim and Survival seem appropriate as well.

Hey, if we give them Autohypnosis that would explain their resistance to fear, since they can substitute a skill check instead of a Will save. Then we wouldn't need the 'Brave' special quality!

Feats: I'm strongly tempted to give them Endurance and Run like a light warhorse, they do have all those "Exercise Races" for their children.

Organization: Solitary, team (2-20) or herd (10-100)?

Challenge Rating: 2, they're about as tough as bugbears.

Treasure: A bit tricky. Going by Swift's description they're not big on material possessions. No coins or gems, standard goods and items?

Alignment: Usually lawful neutral seems most fitting.

Level Adjustment: Around +2? They've got good ability scores across the board. There are too many exploits to circumvent their trouble wielding weapons for it to be worth a LA cut.

Size and weight: Well a typical horse is roughly 8 feet long and 1000-1200 pounds, that seems about right to me. A destrier or carthorse may weigh 1500-2000 pounds, but I'm thinking Houyhnhnm are not that heavy (except for the Schwarzenegger equivalents amongst them).

Special Qualities:

Brave: As I said earlier, how about dropping Brave and giving them Autohypnosis.

Darkvision: I know it gets this from being a Magical Beast, but a Houyhnhnm that can see in pitch-black conditions doesn't feel right to me. Could we drop it and just have Low-Light vision?

Nonproficiency: OK by me.

Skills
Should we have any racial skill bonuses? Regular horses don't have any. Maybe a +2 on Autohypnosis.

 

[Cleon]

Oops, I double-clicked and got a double post.

Never mind, I though of another thing. Do we include armour & weapons in the default Houyhnhnm (leather and spiked horseshoes?), or have a 'Houyhnhnm Warrior' tagged on to the end (1st level warrior or fighter with armour-spiked studded leather and a light crossbow?)

 

[freyar]

Thinking about it a little more, I'd like to have a plain version without weapons/armor with a "[ or weapons]" "[or armor]" in the attack and AC lines. That should give them racial proficiency.

I don't mind Autohypnosis as a skill, but I don't like replacing Bravery with it, since skills aren't racial/societal traits.

The feats are good, though! Not every one would have those, but a "standard" one in that culture would.

 

[Cleon]

I don't mind Autohypnosis as a skill, but I don't like replacing Bravery with it, since skills aren't racial/societal traits.

The feats are good, though! Not every one would have those, but a "standard" one in that culture would.

Well I'll agree about skills not being racial traits (or at least skill points aren't, as opposes to racial bonuses to skill checks), although I'd think they are societal traits - you can easily have societies that do/don't have a particular skill.

However, we don't know whether the philosopher-horses' courage is down to biology or culture, so we can choose to go either way.

 

[Cleon]

The feats are good, though! Not every one would have those, but a "standard" one in that culture would.

Yes, well I'd think that's pretty well assumed for most sapient creature's feat-selection and many sentient ones, except for creatures that are built to a fixed blueprint (Inevitables et cetera).

Neither Endurance or Run have much of a direct impact on the Houyhnhnms' combat-worthiness, but they certainly fit the flavour.

 

[freyar]

Well I'll agree about skills not being racial traits (or at least skill points aren't, as opposes to racial bonuses to skill checks), although I'd think they are societal traits - you can easily have societies that do/don't have a particular skill.

However, we don't know whether the philosopher-horses' courage is down to biology or culture, so we can choose to go either way.

True enough. I guess I got the impression that their courage (or arrogance, however we should put it ) was more nature than nurture, but it could go either way.

 

[Shade]

Updated.

I dropped darkvision and added scent, like horses.

 

[Cleon]

Updated.

I dropped darkvision and added scent, like horses.

Looks good, I like the added Scent SQ and dividing its 18 skill points evenly amongst the skills makes sense.

So what's left: Bravery bonus, languages and cleric domains.

Most SRD races with saving throw bonuses get +2, except for the halfling which is +1 or +3 vs fear (+2 morale plus +1 racial). How about giving Houyhnhnm the same +3 saving throw bonus againts fear? Should it be a racial bonus or a morale bonus? I guess that gets us back to the nature vs nurture question.

Languages. Well in the book they spoke their own tongue, but 3E doesn't favour language proliferation so I think we should pick something else. How about Sylvan, with most or all the 'non-evil humanoid' languages as additional languages to pick from (Common, Dwarven, Elven, Giant, Gnome, Halfling)?

Do we really need to set their cleric domain options? We could just let them pick whatever two they fancy fits the character. I suppose Animal, Law and Knowledge are good fits. Do my compadres fancy any of the other domains?

 

[freyar]

+2 or +3 works, and I don't mind either morale or racial, really. Perhaps since the "base model" has Autohypnosis, there's less of a need for a big bonus, so +2 would work?

Sylvan makes sense, though I'm not shy about giving them their own tongue. In the Swiftian original text, they don't know other languages, but I'd say your proposals would work. We could note in the flavor text that they don't always learn other languages. As an alternative, since they're scholarly but don't seem to associate much with other species, we could give them things like Draconic, Celestial, and Infernal. But that doesn't seem quite right either.

Those domains sound good to me.

 

[Cleon]

+2 or +3 works, and I don't mind either morale or racial, really. Perhaps since the "base model" has Autohypnosis, there's less of a need for a big bonus, so +2 would work?

Sounds OK by me. If we give it +2 it will end up with a +5 Will save vs fear, the same modifier as if it substitutes its Autohypnosis skill.

Sylvan makes sense, though I'm not shy about giving them their own tongue. In the Swiftian original text, they don't know other languages, but I'd say your proposals would work. We could note in the flavor text that they don't always learn other languages. As an alternative, since they're scholarly but don't seem to associate much with other species, we could give them things like Draconic, Celestial, and Infernal. But that doesn't seem quite right either.

Well Sylvan and Draconic sounds alright to me as far as their default languages go. They don't seem Good/Evil aligned enough to have Celestial or Infernal as bonus languages.

Those domains sound good to me.

Yes, I toyed with the idea of Strength or Protection, but they didn't seem to fit quite as well.