Converting Monsters from Polyhedron Magazine

[Cleon]

Seems like an ok start. We can look to cavelings and troll mutate lists for inspiration. Besides the extra limbs and sensory organs, I'm fond of the internal organ from the troll mutate (like caveling modified anatomy), tail whip (from both), and acidic blood from the caveling.

OK, let's make a start. I'm going to add a Reflex save to the Acidic Blood to make it less nasty, in the hope that it won't affect LA/CR.

Assuming we use all the proposals so far, we're only short two mutations.

1 - Mass Plane Travel (see 3-5) plus two other mutations (roll 1d12+8 for each), The kobalt gains a +6 racial bonus on Charisma and a +4 racial bonus on Diplomacy checks against other kobalts. its LA increases by 2 and its CR increases by 1.
2 - Mass Plane Travel (see 3-5) plus one other mutations (roll 1d12+8). The kobalt gains a +4 racial bonus on Charisma and a +4 racial bonus on Diplomacy checks against other kobalts. Its LA increases by 1 and its CR increases by 1.
3-5 - Mass Plane Travel - functions like a 1/week plane shift, except the kobalt can shift itself and up to 40 other kobalts between two Prime Material planes. Caster level X. The kobalt gains a +4 racial bonus on Charisma and a +4 racial bonus on Diplomacy checks against other kobalts. Its LA increases by 1.
6 - Three mutations (roll 1d12+8 for each mutation, the kobalt's LA increases by 1 and its CR increases by 1.
7-8 - Two mutations - roll 1d12+8 for each mutation, The kobalt's LA increases by 1.
9 - Heightened Senses - roll 1d6 twice and consult the following sub-tables:

Number of Senses
1 = +2 racial bonus to one sense
2 = +2 racial bonus to two senses
3 = +2 racial bonus to three senses
4 = +4 racial bonus to one sense, -4 racial penalty to another sense
5 = +4 racial bonus to one sense
6 = +4 racial bonus to one sense, +2 racial bonus to another sense

Affected Sense (reroll duplicates)
1-2 - Vision (bonus to Spot checks)
3-4 - Hearing (bonus to Listen checks)
5 - Touch (bonus to Search)
6 - Intuition (bonus to Sense Motive)
​

10 - Carapace - Increase natural armour by 1d4 (1d4+1 if rolled twice, 1d4+2 if rolled three times)
11 - Vomit Acid - 1/day. 20 ft. line of acid doing 2d4 damage, Con-based Reflex save for half, duplicate rolls allow 3/day if rolled twice, once every 1d4+1 rounds if rolled thrice.
12 - Extra Arm - Gives an additional off-hand attack each time this mutation is rolled.
13 - Claws - Each hand can do 1d3 claw damage. (reroll duplicates)
14 - Long Legs - Increase base land speed by 10 feet each time this mutation is rolled.
15 - Tail - Secondary attack for 1d6 damage with 1.5 times Strength bonus.
16 - Redundant Organs - Gives Ability Asymmetry (see below), granting a +2 bonus to Constitution and a -4 penalty to another ability score, determined randomly. If this mutation is rolled a second time it grants light fortification (25% chance to negate critical hit), if Redundant Organs is rolled a third time it grants moderate fortification (75% negation of critical hits).
17 - Acid Blood - Deals 1d4 points of damage to any creature attacking it with a slashing or piercing weapon who fails to succeed at a Reflex save. The save DC equals 10 plus the kobalt's Con bonus. (reroll duplicates)
18 - Ability Asymmetry - A randomly determined ability receives a +2 bonus and another ability score receives a -4 penalty. (1=Str, 2=Dex, 3=Con, 4=Int, 5=Wis, 6=Cha)
19 -
20 -

 

[freyar]

Somehow this seems a bit fiddly, rolling all the sensory mutations into one (and giving so many options). I'd like to prune the table a bit, maybe just cutting the heightened senses to a +2 bonus to one sense (that stacks if rerolled). We could additionally cut back to sight and hearing probably. I'm also not entirely fond of haivng redundant organs being sort of the same as ability asymmetry; why not make it light, moderate, and heavy fortification?

 

[Cleon]

Somehow this seems a bit fiddly, rolling all the sensory mutations into one (and giving so many options). I'd like to prune the table a bit, maybe just cutting the heightened senses to a +2 bonus to one sense (that stacks if rerolled). We could additionally cut back to sight and hearing probably. I'm also not entirely fond of haivng redundant organs being sort of the same as ability asymmetry; why not make it light, moderate, and heavy fortification?

I don't mind simplifying the senses, although I quite like the horrible complexity.

As for the redundant organs, I prefer it starting out with a Con bonus and then becoming Light/Moderate Fortification for several reasons.

1) Its set up so that the LA/CR adjustment is set by the number of mutations, so I wanted the mutations to be all more or less the same value. e.g. moderate fortification is a "triple mutation" worth +1 LA, +1 CR.
2) I didn't fancy giving them 100% immunity to criticals. They're not oozes or constructs, they still have vital organs even if they're hard to harm.
3) It seems fitting that a creature with Fortification has a better Con that its unfortified brethren.

Maybe we could have Redundant Organs be its "Con boosting" mutation, and have other mutations for Dex-boosting, Strength-boosting or Mental-attribute boosting (the classic "giant throbbing forehead syndrome"?

 

[freyar]

That last suggestion might work, though fortification would be fun. Hmmph.

 

[Cleon]

That last suggestion might work, though fortification would be fun. Hmmph.

I think you're misunderstanding me, I'd like to keep the Fortification that multiple "Redundant Organs" results gives, but replace Ability Asymmetry with separate mutations for each ability. We could even make "Heightened Senses" the Wisdom-boosting mutation.

Something like:

Redundant Organs (Con) -
1st mutation - +2 Con bonus and -2 to another physical stat (determined randomly)
2nd mutation - Add Light Fortification
3rd mutation - Add Moderate Fortification

Grotesque Musculature (Str)
1st mutation - +2 Str bonus, -4 Dex bonus?
2nd & 3rd mutations - Increases Str bonus to +4 and +6 respectively?

Accelerated Reflexes (Dex)
1st mutation - +2 Dex?
2nd mutation - +4 Dex, -2 to another physical stat?
3rd mutation give it a few rounds of haste every day?

Bulging Forehead (Int)
+2 Int, -2 to a randomly determined physical stat?
Racial bonuses to some Int-based skills?

Heightened Senses (Wis)
1st mutation - +2 racial bonus to Listen and Spot?
2nd mutation - +2 bonus to Wisdom, +2 racial bonus to Search and Sense Motive?
3rd mutation - Scent SQ and +4 racial bonus to Listen, Search, Sense Motive and Spot?

I've left out Charisma-boosting, because my proposed Plane Travel mutation already boosts Charisma.

 

[freyar]

Having this kind of complicated stacking just seems too complex to me. We haven't done anything this messy with other random tables. Why not just say that each mutation either stacks or not (ie, reroll duplicates)? Like we did for the troll mutates and cavelings?

 

[Shade]

Agreed. Way too much bookkeeping.

 

[Cleon]

Agreed. Way too much bookkeeping.

But you play 3rd edition D&D, I thought you liked bookkeeping.

Feel free to trim it down to taste.

Do you like the idea of having a separate mutation for each ability score bonus?

 

[Shade]

Do you like the idea of having a separate mutation for each ability score bonus?

Sure, I'd be fine with that.

 

[freyar]

Looking back at the original text, I think we've got quite an abundance of mutations already (it seems there should be 20% with planar travel and only 1% for everything else), so I think we don't need mutations that stack at all (ie, there shouldn't be multiple mutations and certainly not 3 of them at a time). So I'll propose (with rejiggering probabilities and adjusting numbers to match caveling/troll mutate better):


1-5 - Mass Plane Travel - functions like a 1/week plane shift, except the kobalt can shift itself and up to 40 other kobalts between two Prime Material planes. Caster level X. The kobalt gains a +4 racial bonus on Charisma and a +4 racial bonus on Diplomacy checks against other kobalts. Its LA increases by 1.
6 - Carapace - Increase natural armour by +2
7 - Vomit Acid - 1/day. 20 ft. line of acid doing 2d4 damage, Con-based Reflex save for half.
8 - Extra Arm - Gives an additional off-hand attack.
9 - Claws - Each hand can do 1d3 claw damage.
10 - Long Legs - Increase base land speed by 5 feet.
11 - Whiplike Tail - Secondary tail slap attack for 1d6 damage with 1.5 times Strength bonus.
12 - Redundant Organs - The kobalt's extra organs grantslight fortification (25% chance to negate critical hit).
13 - Acid Blood - Deals 1d4 points of damage to any creature attacking it with a slashing or piercing weapon who fails to succeed at a Reflex save. The save DC equals 10 plus the kobalt's Con bonus.
14 - Strong - +2 racial bonus to Str.
15 - Agile - +2 racial bonus to Dex.
16 - Tough - +2 racial bonus to Con.
17 - Smart - +2 racial bonus to Int.
18 - Zen - +2 racial bonus to Wis.
19 - Strong Willed - +2 racial bonus to Cha.
20 - ??
21-100 - No mutation

I'm not sure planar travel requires the +4 to Cha, though the bonus on Diplomacy is good. What if we just made it a +4 circumstance bonus to all Cha-based checks against other kobalts?

I'm also not sure I like the plain ability score bonuses. They're boring.