Converting Planescape monsters

[freyar]

The dust storm is good so far, though I don't think I understand the Height and Weight columns in the table. What are they for? I do agree with allowing saves. Fort save is ok, including to negate (rather than for half).

Just saw something in the original monster: Engulf only happens on an attack roll of 19 or 20. How about we trigger the engulf only on a crit?

 

[Cleon]

The dust storm is good so far, though I don't think I understand the Height and Weight columns in the table. What are they for? I do agree with allowing saves. Fort save is ok, including to negate (rather than for half).

They're for the height and weight of the elemental itself. All the SRD 'X Elemental Sizes' have them.

Come to think of it, did we remember to give heights and weights for the Ash Quasi-Elemental?

...

Oh I yes, we quoted "same height and weight as a water elemental of the same size" for the Ash Quasi.

We could do the same for the Dust one too, I suppose, but I fancy tweaking the weight upwards. These are ex-earth elementals, after all, so ought to be at least a bit heavier than the other Negative Quasis. For that matter, I'm rather the Ash Quasi be lighter than a Water Elemental.

Hmm... that sounds like I want the "same height and weight as a water elemental of the same size" for the Dust Quasi and have a height & weight table for the Ash.

Just saw something in the original monster: Engulf only happens on an attack roll of 19 or 20. How about we trigger the engulf only on a crit?

I thought we'd already considered that and decided on standard Grab & Engulf.

We've seen other "grab on a 20" type monsters converted as Improved Grab, although I can't recall what their names were off the top of my head.

 

[freyar]

Oh, you're right, we should have height and weight in tables for all of them. We can let the Ash be a little lighter than Water and Dust the same as Water. But we should separate the table from Whirlwind a bit to remind the reader (like me ) that height and weight have to do with the normal form. Let's also put "Whirlwind" above Blindness, Damage, and Diameter.

Blindness lasts for 1d4 rounds?

I think you're right about the Engulf, let's leave it as is.

 

[Cleon]

Oh, you're right, we should have height and weight in tables for all of them. We can let the Ash be a little lighter than Water and Dust the same as Water. But we should separate the table from Whirlwind a bit to remind the reader (like me ) that height and weight have to do with the normal form. Let's also put "Whirlwind" above Blindness, Damage, and Diameter.

I don't mind taking the height and weight columns out and leaving it to the description, I'd just like to be consistent.

Besides, if we did put Height and Weight columns in the Ash Quasi, which of the three tables would we add them too?

Using "An ash elemental has the same height and weight as a water elemental of the same size" has the benefit of simplicity.

We could cut the height and weight columns from the Dust Quasi and put, say, "a dust quasi-elemental has the same height as a fire elemental of the same size but weighs 20 times as much." to put its weight between a Fire Elemental and a Water Elemental.

e.g.:

Elemental	Height	Water	Ratio	?Dust?	Ratio	Fire
Small	4 ft.	34 lb.	1.7	20 lb.	20	1 lb.
Medium	8 ft.	280 lb.	7	40 lb	20	2 lb.
Large	16 ft.	2,250 lb.	28.125	80 lb	20	4 lb.
Huge	32 ft.	18,000 lb.	112.5	160 lb	20	8 lb.
Greater	36 ft.	21,000 lb.	105	200 lb	20	10 lb.
Elder	40 ft.	24,000 lb.	100	240 lb	20	12 lb.
Monolith	? ft.	? lb.	?	? lb.	?	? lb.

Hmm, that could work. It does make the Dust Quasi proportionally lighter and lighter as it gets given.

Maybe making it "a dust quasi-elemental has the same height as a water elemental of the same size but weighs one tenth as much" would work better? It should give it a more even relationship to an Earth Elemental's weight at least.

Let's see:

Elemental	Height	Water	Ratio	?Dust?	Ratio	Earth	Fire
Small	4 ft.	34 lb.	10	3.4 lb.	23.53	80 lb.	1 lb.
Medium	8 ft.	280 lb.	10	28 lb	26.76	750 lb.	2 lb.
Large	16 ft.	2,250 lb.	10	225 lb	26.67	6,000 lb.	4 lb.
Huge	32 ft.	18,000 lb.	10	1,800 lb	26.67	48,000 lb.	8 lb.
Greater	36 ft.	21,000 lb.	10	2,100 lb	25.71	54,000 lb.	10 lb.
Elder	40 ft.	24,000 lb.	10	2,400 lb	25	60,000 lb.	12 lb.
Monolith	? ft.	? lb.	?	? lb.	?	? lb.	? lb.

Yes, I like the 1/10th the weight of water approach better.

Blindness lasts for 1d4 rounds?

The original lasted 1d10 rounds, which is considerable more. We could scale it so the duration dice depends on the size?

e.g.

Small - d4 rounds
Medium - d6 rounds
Large - d8 rounds
Huge - d10 rounds
Gargantuan - d12 rounds

I think you're right about the Engulf, let's leave it as is.

Agreed. I shall now demonstrate my superbly honed talents at doing nothing to something...



...were you impressed?

 

[freyar]

I'm impressed!

In any case, your proposed solution for height and weight is fine. I'm also happy with the duration for blindness. Are we then done with the dust storm?

 

[Cleon]

I'm impressed!

You should be, it took years of inactivity to perfect those skills at doing nothing.

In any case, your proposed solution for height and weight is fine. I'm also happy with the duration for blindness. Are we then done with the dust storm?

Maybe.

I'll update the Dust Quasi-Elemental Working Draft and see what it looks like...

...it looks fine now.

I needed to tweak the sentence with the "blinded for X rounds" and redid the table to remove the Height and Weight.

 

[freyar]

Agreed, this looks good. Are we done with the SAs and SQs?

We were going to use the base slam damage from the Earth elemental. Are you still in agreement?

 

[Cleon]

Agreed, this looks good. Are we done with the SAs and SQs?

Well the current draft seems to cover everything in the original monster, so I guess we're OK.

We were going to use the base slam damage from the Earth elemental. Are you still in agreement?

The original did the same damage as an Ash Quasi, so we'd better do a side-by-side to see how they match up:

e.g.:

Elemental	Ash	Average	Dust	Average
Small	1d3+1+1d4 cold	5.5	1d6+1	4.5
Medium	1d4+3+1d6 cold	9	1d8+3	7.5
Large	1d10+4 plus 2d6 cold	16.5	2d8+4	13
Huge	2d6+6 plus 2d8 cold	22	2d10+5	16
Greater	2d6+7 plus 2d8 cold	23	2d10+6	17
Elder	2d6+8 plus 2d8 cold	24	2d10+7	18
Monolith*	3d6+13 plus 4d6 cold 4d6+13 plus 4d6 cold	37.5* 41	4d8+12 6d8+12	30* 39

*Top row is the damage without Improved Natural Attack (slam), which Monoliths tend to get as standard.

Hmm, using the Earth/Water slam damage doesn't make a very good match if we want the Ash and Dust's slam damage to be the same like the original versions (or as close as we get get in the 3E ruleset).

We'd either need to greatly increase the damage dice, give it a higher strength, or do something inbetween.

For example, if we increase the Strength to match a Water Elemental's and tweak the damage dice so the averages are pretty close to the Dust Quasi, it could be something like:

Elemental	Target Average	Dust	Strength	Average
Small	5.5	1d6+3	14	6.5
Medium	9	1d8+4	16	8.5
Large	16.5	3d6+5	20	15.5
Huge	22	4d6+7	24	21
Greater	23	4d6+8	26	22
Elder	24	4d6+9	28	23
Monolith*	37.5* 41	4d8+14 6d8+14	38	32* 41

*Top row is the damage without Improved Natural Attack (slam), which Monoliths tend to get as standard.

Monkeying around with the Strength would require a good deal or recalculating of the stats though. Increasing the damage dice is simpler, but I'm not sure I'm fond of that solution, since it'd require some rather unusual dice combinations for a good match:


e.g.:

Elemental	Target Average	Dust	Average
Small	5.5	1d8+1	5.5
Medium	9	1d10+3	8.5
Large	16.5	2d10+4	15
Huge	22	3d10+5	21.5
Greater	23	3d10+6	22.5
Elder	24	3d10+7	23.5
Monolith*	37.5* 41	6d6+12 8d6+12	33* 40

*Top row is the damage without Improved Natural Attack (slam), which Monoliths tend to get as standard.

 

[freyar]

Here's what I said in post 1326:

Well, we took a few liberties with the Ash's slam, which was originally a cold-damage-only touch attack, at least the way I read some of the text, so I don't feel like we need the slam damage needs to be quite the same. I'd go with base slam damage like Earth or Water; the CR will probably work out the same as the Ash quasi since the disintegrating engulf seems fairly strong. And yes, it's time to look at that dust storm.

I'd rather keep the slam damage lower than Ash since, like I said, we played around a bit with the Ash's attack compared to the original monster AND the engulf is nasty enough to make up for a few points of extra slam damage. So I prefer your first table.

 

[Cleon]

Here's what I said in post 1326:


I'd rather keep the slam damage lower than Ash since, like I said, we played around a bit with the Ash's attack compared to the original monster AND the engulf is nasty enough to make up for a few points of extra slam damage. So I prefer your first table.

Well I guess a few points here and there doesn't make much difference, and there is the fact that a simple resist energy spell drastically weakens the Ash Quasi's damage-dealing potential.

Although what most persuades me to use the first option is not it means I don't need to change all the stats that would be affected by a change of Strength.

Oh heck, let's just stick to the original Table 1 plan.

Updating the Dust Quasi-Elemental Working Draft.