Converting Creatures from Other Campaign Settings

[Cleon]

I like it!

Updating the Gladiator Lizard.

Any thoughts on description or flavor? Should we perhaps save some of the flavor until after we do the Bleak One to tie them together?

I'm fine leaving the background text until we've finished the Bleak One.

As for the description, that's pretty straightforward:

In poor visibility, this creature resembles an enormous armored warrior several feet taller than an average humanoid who wields twin swords. Seen clearly, it is nothing so ordinary; this is no humanoid foe, but a shambling reptilian horror shaped like a mockery of a fighting man. Its armor is thick scaly hide, plated like a rhinoceros, with bony spikes on its shoulders, and what looked like a crested helmet is its broad keratinous head. The monstrous thing's "hands" are yard-long talons as deadly as the blades they resemble. Its feet are clawed like a lizard's.
​

The above is basically a reworking of the description in the original short story, just a bit wordier.

 

[freyar]

That's all good for me. So shall we tackle the Bleak One/Egg Guy now?

 

[Cleon]

That's all good for me.

Updating the Gladiator Lizard.

So shall we tackle the Bleak One/Egg Guy now?

Sure!

The first question, is are we doing it as a complete monster entry or just a hazard?

I recall arguing for Hazard, since "he" never leaves the egg in the original story, but used some kind of astral projection voodoo to geas victims to come to the Bleak Shore and get attacked by Gladiator Lizards that "hatched" from giant stone eggs.

Come to think of it, do we want to give the Lizards an ability to form a shell around them and hibernate? The AD&D monster couldn't do that, but the story implies they either cocoon themselves or hatch full grown from their boulder-eggs.

 

[freyar]

Hazard makes sense to me.

What if we make the eggs something that the Bleak One does to the gladiator lizards?

 

[Cleon]

Hazard makes sense to me.

Works for me.

What if we make the eggs something that the Bleak One does to the gladiator lizards?

So the Lizards can't put themselves in shells, but a Bleak One can "cocoon" them to await prey.

That's a good idea.

It means we're not adding an ability to our Gladiator Lizard that wasn't in the AD&D versions.