Converting Monsters from Polyhedron Magazine

[Shade]

How do these look?

Noisome Odor (Ex): Animals, whether wild or domesticated, fear the unnatural odor of a bole-undead. They will not willingly approach nearer than 30 feet and if forced to do so, must succeed on a Will save or become panicked as long as they are within that range. Animals with the scent ability suffer a -4 circumstance penalty on their saving throws.

Sickening Strike (Ex): A creature struck by a bole-undead's natural attacks must succeed on a Fortitude save or be sickened for 10 rounds. Creatures that successfully save cannot be affected by the same bole-undead's sickening strike for 24 hours. A delay poison or neutralize poison spell removes the effect from the sickened creature. Creatures with immunity to poison are unaffected, and creatures resistant to poison receive their normal bonus on their saving throws.

 

[freyar]

Is fear a mind-affecting effect always? Well, here's a rough version. I've broadened the effect a little to distinguish some from unnatural aura.

Noisome Aura (Ex): Bole-undead emit a strong odor that unnerves natural creatures. An animal, vermin, humanoid, or giant that is either mindless or has Int 1 or 2 within 30 ft of a bole-undead must make a DC X Will save or become frightened of the smell for 1d6 rounds. Regardless of the result of the save, the creature is unaffected by the same bole-undead's Noisome Aura for 24 hours.

Edit: Man, ninja'd by Shade! I must not have refreshed my browser... In any case, Shade's version is fine, but I think I'd like to add a sickening to Noisome Odor to further distinguish it from Unnatural Aura.

 

[demiurge1138]

I think that the penalty for scent is enough of a differentation. Shade's writeups look quite good.

 

[Shade]

Updated.

Do we want to do anything with this?

In each group of bole-undead, no more than four will be automatically turned. Turned bole-undead return to melee 3 rounds after the original turning.

 

[demiurge1138]

Greater turn resistance (Su): In addition to its +2 (?) turn resistance, a bole-undead recovers from being turned or rebuked in only five rounds, rather than ten as in most undead.

 

[freyar]

Greater turn resistance (Su): In addition to its +2 (?) turn resistance, a bole-undead recovers from being turned or rebuked in only five rounds, rather than ten as in most undead.

Just drop the +2 in case the base undead already has turn resistance, and it's golden.

 

[Shade]

Zombies have limited speech ability, akin to a magic mouth spell-they can parrot anything their commander says, up to 25 words.

Something like this?

Magic Mouth (Su): Formerly mindless undead gain a limited ability to repeat short messages from their master. This functions like the magic mouth spell, except the message is permanent until the master chooses to give it a new message (or orders it to give no message).

 

[freyar]

Also excellent! I don't think we're missing anything else.

All the suggestions in the homebrews entry look good. This is probably CR +1, do you agree?

 

[Shade]

I agree.

Updated.

Are we ready to apply it to some sample undead?

 

[freyar]

Yes! Given the original text, maybe a skeleton, zombie, and wight if that's not too many. Should be pretty simple to do, at least.