Converting original D&D and Mystara monsters

[freyar]

Fair enough. Let's go with Knowledge (dungeoneering) and the regular Spot.

 

[Cleon]

Fair enough. Let's go with Knowledge (dungeoneering) and the regular Spot.

Dungeoneering and Spot are good ideas. I quite like the idea of Appraise, though. Maybe it also changes its appearance like a mimic, and Appraise tells you those "coins" are really congealed discs of yellow slime?

 

[Shade]

Let's just keep it "sticky", rather than make it mimic-like.

Updated.

CR 8? Downsizing a purple worm 6 HD and one size category yields CR 9, and I'd knock off another CR for the lack of deadly poison.

The body of a mature slime worm is 5 feet in diameter and 30 feet long, weighing about x pounds.

 

[freyar]

CR 8 is ok.

15,000 lb based on the purple worm.

 

[demiurge1138]

CR 8 seems appropriate. Tell me, what was the rationale behind Improved Overrun?

 

[freyar]

Just to let them knock people over. And to add a little variety, I suppose.

 

[Cleon]

Let's just keep it "sticky", rather than make it mimic-like.

CR 8? Downsizing a purple worm 6 HD and one size category yields CR 9, and I'd knock off another CR for the lack of deadly poison.

Even CR8 seems a bit high, I'd say 7.

A hill giant is CR7 and looks like it's roughly the same level of nastiness.

I'm thinking a Purple Worm could be a bit over-challenged.

As for the hiding under the treasure, at first I thought it was fine but then I roughed out an idea of how much its horde actually covers.

Let's assume CR8 with triple coins, the standard treasure table says that's a maximum of 36,000 coins (assuming three 12's on 1d12 × 10,000 copper pieces), but its more likely to be in the thousands (2d6 × 1,000 sp). Call it 10,000 coins. Each coin only covers about a third of a square inch (if not less - precious metal is dense and they only weigh 1/50th of a pound). That's 23 square feet, which isn't enough to cover a 5' square, let alone its entire body.

Some kind of treasure-accented mimicry makes more sense to me.

15,000 lb based on the purple worm.

I made it 15,000 pounds too.

 

[Shade]

I think the hill giant is the one that's actually over-CRed. The purple worm's poison is just plain sick. These things can burrow relatively fast, pop up, and swallow whole. The hill giant can, uh, throw rocks.

While I see where you're coming from on the realism of the coins stuck to it, the mimicry would make it a whole new creature. The sticky coins is essentially what makes a slime worm a slime worm. If you want to introduce a bit more realism, maybe it's natural coloration is a mottled metallic, filling in the spaces between the actual coins, which are more sparsely distributed along its surface?

 

[freyar]

I'm going to agree with Shade here. Besides, there are probably bits of rock and broken metallic weapons and things mixed in with the coins.

 

[demiurge1138]

Agreed with Shade. Weapons, pottery, armor, dungeon dressing in general are stuck to this thing.