Converting monsters from Dragon magazine

[Cleon]

By the way, what are we calling these things?

The Creature Catalog has Fachan for the weird Forgotten Realms version and Lesser Fachan for the Celtic version.

Which seems off to me, wouldn't they be better as a Faerûn Fachan and just Fachan?

Never mind, it's too late to change it.

So if the Medium sized "Celtic" Fachan is called a Lesser Fachan shall we call this Large version a Greater Fachan or Fachan Giant?

 

[freyar]

Those abilities sound good to me.

With the Dex and size penalties, it looks like we should have armor bonuses of +8. That's not as good as the 3.5 ogre; how does the AC compare to the older edition ogre? They don't mention any armor, so does making it all NA sound right? Or do you want to go with a chain shirt or similar like the 3.5 ogre?

 

[Cleon]

Those abilities sound good to me.

With the Dex and size penalties, it looks like we should have armor bonuses of +8. That's not as good as the 3.5 ogre; how does the AC compare to the older edition ogre? They don't mention any armor, so does making it all NA sound right? Or do you want to go with a chain shirt or similar like the 3.5 ogre?

In AD&D a standard Ogre is AC 5, one point worse than the Fachan's AC 4.

The 1E illustration shows two fachan that are bare-arse naked, while the 2E illustration's Fachan is dressed in normal clothes that have been ripped up to fit its inhuman anatomy. It has a jacket with the front open so its arm can fit through and a hulk-sized pair of shorts worn sideways to accommodate its single leg.

That suggests this Fachan Giant has tougher skin than a common ogre and it might have a higher Dexterity too.

Scrub that, it's mentioned in the flavour text: "They move about with a sort of hopping run and are quite agile" and "despite this bulk can leap from a prone to a standing position in one segment."

Sounds like we should kick the Dexterity up from 8 to something that provides a Dex bonus.

The more dexterous SRD Giants are the Cloud (Dex 13), Storm (Dex 14) and Stone (Dex 15).

How about going for the middle of those with Dex 14 for the Fachan?

If we're keeping the point better AC than a standard Ogre, those are AC 16 in 3E so the Fachan would be AC 17. With Dex 14 that'd be:

Armor Class: 17 (–1 size, +2 Dex, +6 natural), touch 11, flat-footed 15​

 

[freyar]

Oh, I missed the bit about the name before. Let's call these the Greater Fachan.

Dex 14 and NA +6 works for me.

One-eyed (Ex): Fachans take a -2 attack penalty to any ranged attack (including Rock Throwing) due to their poor depth perception.

Standard giant rock throwing with a short range increment? The original converts to 60 ft, which is half that of a Hill Giant. That seems ok to me.

 

[Cleon]

Oh, I missed the bit about the name before. Let's call these the Greater Fachan.

Works for me.

Dex 14 and NA +6 works for me.

Agreed.

Will include that in the next update.

One-eyed (Ex): Fachans take a -2 attack penalty to any ranged attack (including Rock Throwing) due to their poor depth perception.

There are one-eyed creatures in official sources such as Cyclopes. Do they have a SQ we can "borrow"?

Standard giant rock throwing with a short range increment? The original converts to 60 ft, which is half that of a Hill Giant. That seems ok to me.

Nope.

An AD&D Hill Giant can hurl a rock up to 200 yards, which is considerably further than the 60 yards of a Fachan.

A 3E Hill Giant's Rock Throwing has a 120 foot range increment. Five of those makes 600 feet, which matches the earlier editions' 200 yards.

If the Fachan's Rocks go 60 yards, that's 180 feet. Divide by five makes 36 feet, suggesting a Rock Throwing range increment of either 30 or 40 feet.

 

[Cleon]

There are one-eyed creatures in official sources such as Cyclopes. Do they have a SQ we can "borrow"?

A quick check of official sources isn't having much luck.

There's a Special Quality called Poor Depth Perception but can't find an official creature with it.

The CC version of the Cyclopskin was a pertinent ability:

Monocular Vision (Ex): Since the single eye of the cyclopskin gives it poor depth perception, it suffers a –2 penalty on ranged attacks. This penalty has been factored in to the statistics block above.

Want to use that if we can't find anything better?

 

[Cleon]

One-eyed (Ex): Fachans take a -2 attack penalty to any ranged attack (including Rock Throwing) due to their poor depth perception.

Standard giant rock throwing with a short range increment? The original converts to 60 ft, which is half that of a Hill Giant. That seems ok to me.

Also, if we're giving it standard giant Rock Throwing it'd have a +1 racial bonus to attack rolls so we'd need to make its poor depth perception penalty –3 if we want it to have a –2 total penalty like the original.

It'd be simpler to just not give it the racial bonus to attack when chucking rocks. They appear to prefer melee.

Furthermore, the AD&D version's rocks do 2d4+2 damage but it has a +4 bonus with hand-held melee weapons.

Will we be doing anything with that?

My preferred solution is to have its single arm be superstrong in melee so it's equivalent to a normal creature wielding two-handed for a 150% Strength bonus, but it just has the normal Strength modifier when chucking rocks.

We could include that in its Strange Anatomy but we've already developed a fine solution for the ENworld Creature Catalog:

Monodextrous (Ex): A nasnas may wield two-handed melee weapons in its single hand with no penalty. It applies one and one-half times its Strength bonus as normal for two-handed weapons. When wielding a one-handed melee weapon, a nasnas treats it as if wielded two-handed, allowing it to apply the additional half of its Strength bonus. A nasnas wielding a double weapon always treats the weapon as if it were wielded one-handed.​