Converting original D&D and Mystara monsters

[Cleon]

That's fine for me! It's definitely ok to drop the "creatures" in the table.

Agreed.

I'm with you on wanting to reduce summoners summoning, but I'm not entirely sure how unless you just drop the example. But I think we can wrap up this ability, agreed?

Not quite, we haven't declared what rank summons a caprine of a given Hit Dice is capable of. Since the Caprine Working Draft starts at 3 Hit Dice, we can either start with Rank 1 summoning for that or have the summoning rank match the Hit Dice and make it Rank 2. I prefer that since (a) the HD will then match the caster level of a Wizard or Cleric casting a summon monster/nature's ally of that rank and (b) the ability to summon a mixed group will kick in earlier at 5 Hit Dice.

Revision…

Summon Sylvan Folk: A caprine with a resonance score of 21 or more can summon fey or woodland beings to its aid. Unless otherwise stated, this power works like a summon nature's ally spell. This power cannot summon entities tied to a specific area or object such as dryads or shargugh. The number and power of the sylvan folk is limited by the caprine's Hit Dice as follows:

Sylvan Summoning Level Table

Caprine Hit Dice	Maximum Summoning*
1–2	summon sylvan folk I
3–4	summon sylvan folk II
5–6	summon sylvan folk III
7–8	summon sylvan folk IV
9–10	summon sylvan folk V
11–12	summon sylvan folk VI
13–14	summon sylvan folk VII
15–16	summon sylvan folk VIII
17 or higher	summon sylvan folk IX

*Caprines can also summon sylvan aid of any level lower than this maximum down to summon sylvan folk I.

A caprine can summon a uniform group of the same creature or a mixed group of two different creatures.

When summoning a uniform group, a caprine with summon sylvan folk IX can summon any selection from the following table:

Sylvan Summons Table for Uniform Group
1 rank IX
1d3 rank VIII
1d4+1 rank VII
2d4+2 rank VI
4d6 rank V
6d6 rank IV
8d6 rank III
10d6 rank II
12d6 rank I

When summoning a mixed group, a caprine with summon sylvan folk IX can summon one selection from Column A plus one selection from Column B of the following table:

Sylvan Summons Table for Mixed Group

Column A	Column B
1 rank VIII 1d4+1 rank VI 2d6 rank V 3d6 rank IV 4d6 rank III 5d6 rank II 6d6 rank I	1d3 rank VII 1d4+1 rank VI 2d6 rank V 3d6 rank IV 4d6 rank III 5d6 rank II 6d6 rank I

A caprine using sylvan summoning at levels lower than IX adjusts the rank of the sylvan creatures downwards by however many levels their summoning is below IX. For example, a summon sylvan folk VI uniform summons produces the same number of rank III creatures as a summon sylvan folk IX produces rank VI creatures, namely 2d4+2.

The following table groups representative sylvan creatures by their summoning rank, additional creatures can be added at the DM's discretion:

 

[Cleon]

Hmm, alternatively we could have the summoned creature rank listed by summoning level, like so:

Summon Sylvan Folk: A caprine with a resonance score of 21 or more can summon fey or woodland beings to its aid. Unless otherwise stated, this power works like a summon nature's ally spell. This power cannot summon entities tied to a specific area or object such as dryads or shargugh. The number and power of the sylvan folk is limited by the caprine's Hit Dice as follows:

Sylvan Summoning Level Table

Caprine Hit Dice	Maximum Summoning*
1–2	summon sylvan folk I
3–4	summon sylvan folk II
5–6	summon sylvan folk III
7–8	summon sylvan folk IV
9–10	summon sylvan folk V
11–12	summon sylvan folk VI
13–14	summon sylvan folk VII
15–16	summon sylvan folk VIII
17 or higher	summon sylvan folk IX

*Caprines can also summon sylvan aid of any level lower than this maximum down to summon sylvan folk I.

A caprine can summon a uniform group of the same creature or a mixed group of two different creatures.

When summoning a uniform group, a caprine can summon any selection from the following table (down to a minimum of rank I creatures):

Sylvan Summons Table for Uniform Group
1 creatures of summons level rank
1d3 creatures of summons level rank–1
1d4+1 creatures of summons level rank–2
2d4+2 creatures of summons level rank–3
4d6 creatures of summons level rank–4
6d6 creatures of summons level rank–5
8d6 creatures of summons level rank–6
10d6 creatures of summons level rank–7
12d6 creatures of summons level rank–8

When summoning a mixed group, a caprine can summon one selection from Column A plus one selection from Column B of the following table:

Sylvan Summons Table for Mixed Group

Column A	Column B
1 creature of summons level rank–1 1d4+1 creatures of summons level rank–3 2d6 creatures of summons level rank–4 3d6 creatures of summons level rank–5 4d6 creatures of summons level rank–6 5d6 creatures of summons level rank–7 6d6 creatures of summons level rank–8	1d3 creatures of summons level rank–2 1d4+1 creatures of summons level rank–3 2d6 creatures of summons level rank–4 3d6 creatures of summons level rank–5 4d6 creatures of summons level rank–6 5d6 creatures of summons level rank–7 6d6 creatures of summons level rank–8

The following table groups representative sylvan creatures by their summoning rank, additional creatures can be added at the DM's discretion:

Which do you prefer?

 

[freyar]

I like the second one! Let's just split the last line into two sentences:

"The following table groups representative sylvan creatures by their summoning rank. Additional creatures can be added at the DM's discretion:"

And I think we had an ok list of critters at each level, so this should now be good to go, at last!

 

[Cleon]

I like the second one! Let's just split the last line into two sentences:

"The following table groups representative sylvan creatures by their summoning rank. Additional creatures can be added at the DM's discretion:"

And I think we had an ok list of critters at each level, so this should now be good to go, at last!

That's fine by me!

Updating Summon Sylvan Folk Rough Draft.

Updating the Resonance Working Draft.

Okay, since we're doing these in the Resonance Abilities Table order, that means Killer Cheese is next!

The original text is:

Killer Cheese: the caprine needs a vat or bucket of milk of any kind. His music turns it to cheese. Although its taste and consistency are outstanding, it begins to exude concentrated fumes 1d4+1 round after it is made. Its smell is strong enough to be detected within 200' in a dungeon, or within a mile outdoors, possibly attracting monsters.

Fumes are highly inflammable (unless the cheese is consumed) and, if within 10' of an exposed source of fire, the cheese explodes, inflicting 1d6 points of battering damage per level of the caprine. Unexploded cheese may be cut into chunks, as many as one creamy morsel per level of the caster or any combination thereof, and handled in anyway the caprine or his companions desire. Can be empowered.​

 

[freyar]

This is such an amazing ability (mostly just for the name)!

We might be able to use the ability almost as is, though we need to change "battering damage." I'm assuming that converts to bludgeoning, which just doesn't seem right. Fire damage, right? I guess we need a range for the explosion, probably dependent on the number of "creamy morsels" that explode. Sound ok to you?

 

[Cleon]

This is such an amazing ability (mostly just for the name)!

Yup! This looks like a fun one to me. The wording is a bit confusing as to whether these creamy morsels are explosive or just deliciously edible. It could be interpreted that the cheese is only explosive during the 1d4+1 rounds it is fuming. That rather reduces its utility, since the caprine has to rely on his opponents waiting for him to fill a container with milk and play music to it for however long it takes to curdle into cheese.

However, if each cheesy chunk retains its detonation ability, we'll have to (a) decide how it's triggered (a fuse? 1 or more points of fire damage?); (b) how long it remains explosive for - I'd favour a few days or so, with a proviso that preservatives (natural, alchemical or magical) only extend the period of edibility and don't prolong the morsel's explosive properties; and, most importantly (b) specify how morsels from multiple resonances and/or caprines stack. I wouldn't want them to be able to pile several hundred lumps of cheese together and produce a 200d6 explosion!

Oh, and we'll also need to say how much milk is required to produce each morsel and how much that morsel weighs. We should probably also say what it's nutritional value is too!

I'm thinking enough killer cheese to feed an average humanoid for a day should weigh about 2 pounds (so it's twice as heavy as a day's worth of trail rations), which could be either one or two cheesy morsels.

A gallon of cow or goat's milk produces roughly a pound of cheese according to cheeseforum.org - the harder the cheese the lower the yield, but killer cheese is "creamy" and produced very quickly so it seems likely to be a soft brie or camembert like product.

Sheep's milk has about 50% more fat by the way, so a gallon produces about a pound and a half of sheep's cheese.

Making a morsel of killer cheese weigh a pound seems simpler, then you get one morsel per gallon of milk (on average) and a day's worth of food for every 2 caster levels.

We might be able to use the ability almost as is, though we need to change "battering damage." I'm assuming that converts to bludgeoning, which just doesn't seem right. Fire damage, right? I guess we need a range for the explosion, probably dependent on the number of "creamy morsels" that explode. Sound ok to you?

I'd be more inclined to make the damage half fire and half bludgeoning, if only to prevent fire resistance / fire immunity being a simple way to counter it.

Presumably the explosion is a blast with a radius that might vary with the amount of cheese. If it follows more-or-less real world explosions the effect will be an inverse-square, so if one morsel is a 10 ft. radius, four is required for 20 ft., nine for 30 ft., sixteen for 40 ft. and so on.

The damage might trail off with distance from the centre as well, and as mentioned above we'll want to limit or cap the maximum damage.

Alternatively, killer cheese could be some kind of "cheese air explosive" with the vaporized cheese spreading out in a cloud of fumes that explodes with fairly uniform effect over that area, maybe with a secondary effect that does lower-level damage over a single outer radius?

Ideally we want to come up with something that does all that while remaining relatively simple, but you know what I'm like!

I guess we ought to start with by deciding on a baseline. The good old fireball seems appropriate: a 20-ft. radius AoE attack that does between 5d6 (min CL) and 10d6 (max spell limit) of damage.

 

[Cleon]

Boy, that was a long post about cheese!

 

[freyar]

Wait, the way I read it, it starts fuming after 1d4+1 rounds (after it's "aged") and continues indefinitely.

Let's just deal with the explosion first. In D&D damage is generally not distance dependent (ie, everything inside the fireball takes the same damage), so I'd just stick with that. I guess I'd make the area of effect a spread, like a fireball. But I can see making the size depend on the number of morsels. We can even go with the inverse square if you like, though maybe something more incremental would be easier for the DM to work out. Like a 5 ft cube per morsel or something.

Maybe 1d6 fire/bludgeoning per caprine level? Do you want to put a max? There isn't one in the original, and the ability should be fairly good.

 

[Cleon]

Wait, the way I read it, it starts fuming after 1d4+1 rounds (after it's "aged") and continues indefinitely.

Yup, that makes more sense. Although I wouldn't have it fume indefinitely but just remain explosive for "a few days or so" as indicated above.

Let's just deal with the explosion first. In D&D damage is generally not distance dependent (ie, everything inside the fireball takes the same damage), so I'd just stick with that. I guess I'd make the area of effect a spread, like a fireball. But I can see making the size depend on the number of morsels. We can even go with the inverse square if you like, though maybe something more incremental would be easier for the DM to work out. Like a 5 ft cube per morsel or something.

Yes I'm aware that's how explosions usually work in D&D, I just don't care for the unrealism!

Hold on, you reckon figuring out the volume of a circumstance-dependent area made up of 5 ft. cubes is easier to work out compared to a spread or burst with a radius proportional to the square root of the number of morsels?

How does that make sense? In normal circumstances it'd be a hemisphere (volume = 2/3πR³), which if anything is more complicated to figure out.

Also, 125 cubic feet per morsel would result in way too small explosions - the presumably maxed out 20d6 explosion of a 20 HD caprine would be 2,500 cubic feet, which matches a hemispherical radius of 10.6 feet!

Maybe 1d6 fire/bludgeoning per caprine level? Do you want to put a max? There isn't one in the original, and the ability should be fairly good.

As indicated above, I'm concerned about a scores of caprines all making killer cheese and then piling the resulting several hundred morsels together for one jumbo bang.

Maybe we should just start doing rough drafts so we have some details to actually argue about.

 

[freyar]

I was just thinking the DM could stack 5 ft cubes next to each other filling up an appropriate type area, rather than doing any math! While I think we're both on good terms with the square or cube root, I've seen enough people complain about multiplication to want to avoid that.

Are we tying the damage done to the number of morsels? I guess we could instead make the size of the explosion in feet independent of the number of morsels (maybe it just has to do with how far the fumes spread), but the damage is 1d6 per morsel or whatever. How's that?

I'm not sure how to avoid the giant pile of killer cheese problem. Maybe caprines don't like to work together that much? Or maybe it would be fun to have a giant explosion! Giving the cheese a 1 day expiry date might help mitigate the problem a bit.