Converting prehistoric animals

[BOZ]

ok, i'll leave marsh out.

Or maybe you could give it Stamp attacks like an elephant has?

you know, i was actually thinking about that before i saw your post. i got to thinking "isn't there an animal that just stomps on creatures?" and then i thought, "d'oh, sounds like Stampy from the simpsons." i think i'll give it a 5d8 stamp+str damage.

 

[Shade]

Bart: Wow! I wish I have an elephant!
Lisa: You did. His name was Stampy. You loved him.
Bart: Oh yeah!

We should stat out Stampy and some of the other Simpsons creatures on April Fool's Day.

 

[BOZ]

heheh

as far as putting this off for later... well, how about if we go through the module X1 dinos (and prehistoric mammals), and then wait to see what comes about in Dragon.

 

[BOZ]

posting in homebrews...

 

[Zaster]

posting in homebrews...

I love it. Shouldn't Initiative be +0, though?

As far as using up the remaining skill points and feats are concerned,
here is what the 3.5 updated Seismosaurus gets:
Listen +22, Spot +21
Alertness, Awesome Blow, Diehard, Endurance, Improved Bull Rush, Power Attack, Run, and Toughness X4

Based on this and on the other herbivorous dinos, maybe Bronto's remaining skill points should all be pumped into Listen and Spot. Kinda boring, I admit. Maybe someone has a better suggestion.

For the remaining 3 feats I'd add another Toughness, and then maybe Power Attack and Improved Bull Rush. But I'm not that much of a Feats guru.

 

[Shade]

For the remaining feats, how about Ability Focus (thunderous slap), Power Attack, and Run?

I'll defer to the dino-experts on that last one, but I remember at one time scientists speculated that despite their size, the brontos actually ran rather quickly.

If not Run, then I like either Improved Overrun or Improved Bull Rush.

 

[BOZ]

Shouldn't Initiative be +0, though?

hmm, guess i raised the Dex but forgot to fix that...

 

[BOZ]

I agree with dropping the rest of the skills into Listen & Spot (mostly, those are the main skills that dinos have – some will have others, but these are not known to be a smart lot!)
How about raising them evenly to Listen +15, Spot +22?

For the three additional feats, well…
Thunderous Snap has a pretty high DC already, though improving that with Ability Focus couldn’t hurt.
Run might be nice, but only if that seems to be a good one for the Apatosaurus based on scientific evidence.
Power Attack or Awesome Blow would be excellent ways to take advantage of its size.
Toughness, always popular with dinosaurs, but we don’t have to rely on it.

 

[Zaster]

Ooh! I really like Shade's "Improved Overrun" suggestion, and I agree we don't have to rely on more Toughness if we don't want to.

Awesome Blow and its feat tree are tempting as well.

I searched around on the net for sauropod running speeds, but didn't have much luck. Here are a couple of typical, unscholarly links that suggest they were fairly slow. There might well be better info out there that I can't find.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/anatomy/Locomotion.shtml
http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2003Oct/msg00061.html

 

[BOZ]

so then one option is Power Attack, Improved Bull-Rush, and Awesome Blow.
failing that, we could take Improved Overrun, Power Attack, and Ability Focus. (or substitue one of those with something else).