Converting monsters from Dragon magazine
- Thread starter Shade
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Cleon
Legend
Updating the Chocolate Golem Working Draft.
Yup!
It ought to be pretty straightforward since they're edible noncombatant ornaments.
Creatures with an Int score get skills and feats; it looks like the chocolate golem should be mindless or give it some feats and skills. According to the article the larger ones can be ordered to attack so combat feats would make sense. Just my 2 cents.
I have the original article from Dragon Magazine if that helps. The lesser ones just have one hit and are basically used like a piñata.
I have the original article from Dragon Magazine if that helps. The lesser ones just have one hit and are basically used like a piñata.
Last edited:
Cleon
Legend
Yup, the original monster has "Intelligence: Non- (0)" so the Working Draft ought to have a "—".
Probably just forgot to change the Int stat from whatever creature I copy-pasted for the base stats. I think it was the Sa'ir, but can't recall for sure.
Hold on a moment. The saves are completely wrong - it ought to be Fort +2, Ref +2, Will -3, not Fort +5, Ref +6, Will +5.
Updating the Chocolate Golem Working Draft.
My thinking was the same.
How's this:
Lesser Chocolate Golem
Small Construct
Hit Dice: 1d10+10 (15 hp)
Initiative: -1
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares)
Armor Class: 10 (+1 size, -1 Dex), touch 10, flat-footed 9
Base Attack/Grapple: +0/-5
Attack: Slam -5 melee (1d2-1)
Full Attack: Slam -5 melee (1d2-1)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: —
Special Qualities: Cold hardening, construct traits, darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, susceptibility to heat
Saves: Fort +0, Ref -1, Will -5
Abilities: Str 8, Dex 8, Con —, Int —, Wis 1, Cha 1
Skills: —
Feats: —
Environment: Any
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 1/3 [?]
Advancement: —
Level Adjustment: —
These novelties are sometimes used to amuse the children of the wealthy at parties, so are often called "party golems". A lesser chocolate golem is a halfling-sized version of a chocolate golem whose hollow interior is stuffed with sweets and trinkets. The golem is meant to be smashed to pieces like a piñata, so the goodies inside can be enjoyed by the party-goers.
A typical lesser chocolate golem stands 3 feet tall and weighs 25 pounds, its hollow interior can hold up to 15 pounds of filling.
Combat
Lesser chocolate golems are designed to be victims of "playful violence" rather than opponents. They are normally ordered to run around in circles when attacked to prolong the "game" of smashing them apart. If a lesser chocolate golem is ordered to fight, it can only feebly slap at an opponent with one of its limbs. Its slam attack is treated as a secondary attack and adds only half the golem’s Strength bonus to damage.
A lesser chocolate golem's cold hardening and susceptibility to heat traits are identical to those of a standard chocolate golem.
Construction
To create a lesser chocolate golem 25 pounds of the finest chocolate must be melted, mixed with special spices and flavorings, and then cast into a mold carved into the shape of the golem's body. The materials cost 50 gold pieces. The mold is broken to remove the golem so cannot be reused. Creating the body requires a DC 12 Craft (sculpting) or Craft (cooking) check.
CL 3rd; Craft Construct, bull's strength, caster must be at least 3rd level; Price 700 gp; Cost 375 gp + 26 XP.
I guess I could boil the above down to a couple of paragraphs of text without the stat-block if you think it necessary.
Cleon
Legend
We've got a fair few creatures in the CC with multiple monsters in one entry, such as the Harrier and their Larva.
So I'd be fine including the Lesser Chocolate Golem in the standard version's entry.
Besides, it saves us calling it "Golem, Chocolate, Lesser". That just seems cumbersome.
Hmm… now that I think of it, the original description called the two versions "Deluxe" and "Lesser" chocolate golems, so maybe we could include a call-back to that. Maybe we can tweak the Variant Filling text to mention these are sometimes called "deluxe chocolate golems"?
Variants could be white chocolate golems and dark chocolate golems. Also, shouldn't these start to melt and move slower if they take 1/2 or more of their total hit points from fire damage? I know that wasn't part of the original but these little ones should be 1/4 CR.
Debby
Cleon
Legend
I'd suggested including different sorts of chocolate when we were doing the Variant Chocolate Golems but freyar preferred restricting the variants to fillings. I'm game for adding such variants if he's OK with it.
As for being slowed by damage, as you said that wasn't part of the original. The Lesser Chocolate Golems are already really wimpy. There doesn't seem much point in adding a weakness that wasn't in their Dragon #228 article to make them even wimpier.
The Challenge Rating is rather tricky. The closest comparison in the SRD is likely a Small Animated Object, which has the same HD and hp, but has significantly better speed (30-70 ft. vs 20 ft.), AC (14 vs 10), attacks (+1 (1d4) vs -5 (1d2-1)), saves (Ref +1 vs Ref -1) and abilities (Str 10, Dex 12 vs Str 8, Dex 8).
The question is how many Lesser Chocolate Golems is one Small Animated Object worth in a melee with a typical PC party? That's hard to figure out due to the wild variables in what a "typical PC party" is.
It's pretty easy to calculate how they'd compare in a fight with each other, though.
A Small Animated Object averages 1.5 hit points of damage per round to a Lesser Chocolate Golem (60% chance for 2.5 damage), so it takes an average of 10 rounds to destroy a single Lesser Chocolate Golem.
Contrariwise, a Lesser Chocolate Golem averages 0.1 hit points of damage per round to a Small Animated Object (10% chance for 1 damage), so it takes an average of 150 rounds to destroy a single Small Animated Object.
That's a quarter of an hour! Ouch!
So for a bunch of Lesser Chocolate Golems to destroy a Small Animated object in the same average time as it takes said object to destroy one of them, you have to have 15 of them doing damage to it simultaneously - which is impossible, since the spacing rules only allow 8 of them to be within melee range of the target.
Hmm… that rather suggests we should reduce the Challenge Rating.
We could rebalance it a bit by making the Lesser Chocolate Golem's slam attack a standard attack (so +0 melee instead of -5) or giving it the same Strength 10 as an animated Object, but these are supposed to be effectively useless in combat in the first place.
Maybe it's a quirk of the Animated Objects stats though. How would it compare to, say, a standard Kobold Warrior.
The Kobold averages 1.5 hit points of damage per round to a Lesser Chocolate Golem (60% chance for 2.5), so it takes an average of roughly 9.5 rounds to destroy a single Lesser Chocolate Golem.
Contrariwise, a Lesser Chocolate Golem averages 0.0525 hit points of damage per round to a Small Animated Object (4.75% chance for a 1 damage regular hit, 0.25% chance for a 2 damage critical), so it takes an average of 19 rounds to kill a single Kobold.
That means that on average two Lesser Chocolate Golems can kill a Kobold in the same time that the Kobold can kill one of the golems, which suggests a Lesser Chocolate Golem ought to have a fractional CR one-half of a Kobold's if we consider them purely on a damage-per-round basis.
A Kobold Warrior is CR 1/2, so if the Lesser Chocolate Golem is half that it ought to be 1/4.
That's ignoring other factors like the Golem having useful resistances and immunities compared to the Kobold having a ranged weapon and faster speed, but overall I think we'd better reduce the Lesser Chocolate Golem's Challenge Rating to 1/4.
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