Converting monsters from First Edition modules

[Shade]

i'm not sure about the whole flanking thing. i was going with the whole "no clear front or back" idea. elementals and oozes are immune to flanking, so that's where i was coming from.

Oh, gotcha. That would be good to give them, then.

as far as temporary hit points... well, how exactly do those work? is there a set forumla we can emulate instead of making up our own?

Here's what the SRD says about temporary hit points:
"Certain effects give a character temporary hit points. When a character gains temporary hit points, note his current hit point total. When the temporary hit points go away the character’s hit points drop to his current hit point total. If the character’s hit points are below his current hit point total at that time, all the temporary hit points have already been lost and the character’s hit point total does not drop further."

"When temporary hit points are lost, they cannot be restored as real hit points can be, even by magic."

"Increases in Constitution Score and Current Hit Points: An increase in a character’s Constitution score, even a temporary one, can give her more hit points (an effective hit point increase), but these are not temporary hit points. They can be restored and they are not lost first as temporary hit points are."

Note that the blood drain of vampires gives them temp hp. The blood drain of stirges and dire weasels gives them no hp, temp or otherwise.

 

[thom99]

Hey BOZ! anything you need help on figuring out? I don't want to step on any toes here! <sg>

thom

 

[BOZ]

no, not at all, post your thoughts. don't let my lack of time or attention make you think i'm not interested in this one! i love all my babies. heh, seriously, all things in due time, but as shade has no doubt learned, posting even when i'm not active on a thread has its benefits as i always come back to it later.

 

[BOZ]

And, as promised, here I am. I didn’t mean to leave this thread (and the others) for so long, but hey, sh*t happens.


Borrowing a bit from the shark, how about:

Sense Blood (Ex): A vampiric mist can sense the presence of warm-blooded creatures in a 50-foot radius and can detect spilt blood at ranges of up to (a mile?).

I’m going to leave it up to DMs to determine what constitutes a warm-blooded creature.


Thom99 (hope you’re still with us, sorry about the delay) brought up a point about attacking engulfed beings. Here is how we handled that with the noviere eladrin:

If the noviere is able to maintain a hold on the victim, the victim will be at risk of drowning (see Water Dangers in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for the risks and effects of drowning). A trapped victim can attack the noviere or make additional grapple checks to escape its grasp. The character cannot cast spells with a verbal component or use any other item or ability that requires speech. If other characters use edged weapons to attack the noviere while it is holding a victim, those attacks have a 25% chance of hitting the trapped character, and they do no harm to the noviere.

While holding a victim, the noviere cannot attack other creatures with its slam, nor can it shift to its humanoid form. It can, however, use its spells, spell-like abilities, and water bolt attack.


OK, shade is probably right about the whole temporary hp thing. I don’t want them to start out with any extra hp though, but we can have them starting with the listed hp and wanting to add to that. We could say that a hungry vampire mist is one that has less than 8 hp per die.

So, we’d need to add this line to the blood drain attack: “On each successful attack, the vampiric mist gains X temporary hit points.” I’d want the X to be maybe 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, or 2d4 rather than a set value.

Some ideas that I posted earlier:
A vampire mist loses 1 hit point for every 12 hours it spends without feeding. When a vampire mist has 16 or fewer hit points, it becomes ravenously hungry and begins searching for a victim to drain.
A vampire mist reaches satiation when it has a total of 27 hit points, and can never have more than 27.
At the beginning of any encounter, a vampire mist is likely to have 1d4 fewer hit points than listed above.
A vampiric mist that reaches 0 hit points due to starvation dies immediately.
A vampiric mist that loses hit points from damage suffered must regain those hit points through healing and cannot regain them from draining blood.

We could rule that the temporary hp remain indefinitely, but do drain away as a result of its normal 2 hp/day loss.

 

[thom99]

Welcome back BOZ!

I like the sense blood writeup, AND the way you've got attacking engulfed beings handled.

So, we’d need to add this line to the blood drain attack: “On each successful attack, the vampiric mist gains X temporary hit points.” I’d want the X to be maybe 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, or 2d4 rather than a set value

A vampire mist loses 1 hit point for every 12 hours it spends without feeding. When a vampire mist has 16 or fewer hit points, it becomes ravenously hungry and begins searching for a victim to drain.
A vampire mist reaches satiation when it has a total of 27 hit points, and can never have more than 27.
At the beginning of any encounter, a vampire mist is likely to have 1d4 fewer hit points than listed above.
A vampiric mist that reaches 0 hit points due to starvation dies immediately.
A vampiric mist that loses hit points from damage suffered must regain those hit points through healing and cannot regain them from draining blood.

We could rule that the temporary hp remain indefinitely, but do drain away as a result of its normal 2 hp/day loss.

I would definitely go with the 1D4 for gain of temporary hit points, any more would be too powerful, IMHO...grumble, grumble, I still like the idea of max hit points minus a certain amount determined at the start, but I defer to your greater experience in converting these suckers. Everything else on the hit points sounds pretty good to me.

Thanks for all the hard work you're doing, Boz!

thom

 

[BOZ]

what i meant was that the default encounter would be a vampire mist of the listed hp, now of course a creative DM can always give it more or less hp than that to start with.

 

[Shade]

Sense Blood (Ex): A vampiric mist can sense the presence of warm-blooded creatures in a 50-foot radius and can detect spilt blood at ranges of up to (a mile?).

I’m going to leave it up to DMs to determine what constitutes a warm-blooded creature.

I'd stick with a mile for range.

Engulf description

The info ported over from the noviere should work for the mist.

OK, shade is probably right about the whole temporary hp thing. I don’t want them to start out with any extra hp though, but we can have them starting with the listed hp and wanting to add to that. We could say that a hungry vampire mist is one that has less than 8 hp per die.

So, we’d need to add this line to the blood drain attack: “On each successful attack, the vampiric mist gains X temporary hit points.” I’d want the X to be maybe 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, or 2d4 rather than a set value.

I agree with Thom99 on 1d4.

Some ideas that I posted earlier:
A vampire mist loses 1 hit point for every 12 hours it spends without feeding. When a vampire mist has 16 or fewer hit points, it becomes ravenously hungry and begins searching for a victim to drain.
A vampire mist reaches satiation when it has a total of 27 hit points, and can never have more than 27.
At the beginning of any encounter, a vampire mist is likely to have 1d4 fewer hit points than listed above.
A vampiric mist that reaches 0 hit points due to starvation dies immediately.
A vampiric mist that loses hit points from damage suffered must regain those hit points through healing and cannot regain them from draining blood.

This should be added to the blood drain ability, particularly the point at which it is sated. Look to the stirge for inspiration for wording.

We could rule that the temporary hp remain indefinitely, but do drain away as a result of its normal 2 hp/day loss.

That should work.

 

[BOZ]

i'll need to go over how the whole blood drain/satiation thing works in my mind for awhile to see how exactly it should work now.

you want to keep all of this, editing as necessary?

If the noviere is able to maintain a hold on the victim, the victim will be at risk of drowning (see Water Dangers in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for the risks and effects of drowning). A trapped victim can attack the noviere or make additional grapple checks to escape its grasp. The character cannot cast spells with a verbal component or use any other item or ability that requires speech. If other characters use edged weapons to attack the noviere while it is holding a victim, those attacks have a 25% chance of hitting the trapped character, and they do no harm to the noviere.

While holding a victim, the noviere cannot attack other creatures with its slam, nor can it shift to its humanoid form. It can, however, use its spells, spell-like abilities, and water bolt attack.

 

[Shade]

I'd eliminate the references to drowning and speech, as they don't apply to a creature made of mist as they do to a creature made of water. Otherwise, I think editing the remainder would work.

 

[BOZ]

While engulfing a victim, the vampire mist cannot attack other creatures with its tendrils or envelop another character. An engulfed victim can attack the vampire mist normally with physical attacks. If other characters use edged weapons to attack the vampire mist while it is holding a victim, those attacks have a 25% chance of hitting the trapped character, and they do no harm to the vampire mist.