Spelljammer Converting Spelljammer creatures

[freyar]

Anyone else with thoughts about that? It's not clear to me from the original text that there should be any other penalties, but we could add some (like temporary Con loss or something).

 

[Cleon]

Hmm, maybe they drop a size category as per reduce person every week? month? that they don't eat?

Well the smallest "starved" version is 10' across, a third the standard 30' diameter, so we might only need one size category penalty.

What about the proposal of them gaining temporary negative levels if they don't feed?

It doesn't say how often they must eat, but I'd rather be a pretty long time. They wouldn't be much use as explorers for I if they died of starvation a few days after they set out.

 

[freyar]

Let the 10 ft diameter one be Large (ok, it's a big Large), and we get 2 size categories.

Negative levels appeal pretty well, actually, but mixing that with the size shrinkage might get a bit weird. Probably easier to pick one or the other.

 

[Shade]

Negative levels appeal pretty well, actually, but mixing that with the size shrinkage might get a bit weird. Probably easier to pick one or the other.

Agreed. I'm fine with either, but not both.

 

[freyar]

Anyone else: what do you prefer?

 

[Big Mac]

I don't mind some kind of "Phlogiston Death Throes" ability, but would prefer to scale down the original's nuclear-level blast.

We could have it be based on a multiple of the Blazozoid's hit points, like a staff of the magi, but I'd prefer something like 2d6 fire damage per Hit Dice up to 20 ft., with one fewer d10 per 20 ft. beyond that (e.g. a 13 HD specimen does 26d6 at 0-20 ft, 25d6 at 21-40 ft. et cetera down to 1d6 at 501-520 ft.

I've always thought that was a bit OTT too, especially throwing things 1d10 miles out and taking a highly unpredictable 1d10 x 1d10 damage! But I do like the idea of it exploding like a supernova, as it is made from a living sun.

Perhaps it could explode with a grenade like effect and toss everything a mile away from its location. Or perhaps the size of the explosion could be tied to the quantity of the damage.

With the old rules the minimum damage is just 1hp, while the maximum damage is 100hp. I think that is unworkably random.

I think that the sidebar on pages 32 and 34 of Lorebook of the Void (which is also reprinted on page 20 of SJR4 Practical Planetology is similar to what you say, so we should check that and try for something that ties in with it:

The danger to star travellers on fire worlds is the inhuman heat, such that their ships will be destroyed unless protected. In game terms, think of the fire worlds as being surounded by rings or zones of heat. As the characters move closer to the centre, the heat increases. At the farthest zone there is no heat or fire damage. One zone in, living creatures take 1d6 points of damage per round, and this doubles with each ring moved into, to a maximum of 30d6 per round. Hulls take similar damgage with 10 hit points of damage equalling 1 point of hull damage, and at futher zones even rock will liquefy and steel will melt. The size of these zones depends on the size of the fire body, but as a rule of thumb, a body falling uncontrollably towards the sun will pass through one ring per round.

I would say dropping the reference to hull damage (the SJ3e conversion crew can add that back in if required) and making this explosion only cause a single round of damage.

If a sun can only do a maximum of 30d6 hit points in a single round, I would suggest that the central area of a blazozoid nova only does a maximum of 30d6 hp damage too. Although with you making these things have up to 45 HD, I think it would be worth calculating the size of the 0hp damage area, as if they had 45 zones.

From what LotV says, those zones can be any size we like. I just fed 45 x 100 feet into Google and got that at 0.85 miles. So perhaps the blazozoid could explode into nova that was 100 times its HD in feet and damage could be 1d6 for the first 100 feet in rising at 1d6 per 100 foot zone up to a maximum of 30d6 or the HD of the critter in d6s (whichever is the lowest).

I think the "Melt Weapons" ability would kick in on everything inside that nova. (After all the original text talks of it destroying everything within a mile.)

If I has AD&D stats we can convert it, and then the PCs can try to kill it!

I'm guessing it would have similar stats to a deity. But the illithids would try to kill I as they have a "Darken the Light" philosophy. They have actually managed to extinguish other suns, but then other suns could not instantly create blazozoids to attack them.

I doubt cooling plasma is very valuable as loot, though.

Maybe you could bottle it and sell it to azer or efreet.

I knew you two would get along.

Let the 10 ft diameter one be Large (ok, it's a big Large), and we get 2 size categories.

I'm all for a slight bit of additional variation with these guys (both big and small) to represent the way that energy expands them and a lack of energy contracts them.

Having re-read the monster entry it does say that "one that has not eaten in some time may be less than 10 feet across" and also says a starving blazozoid has a slightly yellow tinge to its flame.

Negative levels appeal pretty well, actually, but mixing that with the size shrinkage might get a bit weird. Probably easier to pick one or the other.

Agreed. I'm fine with either, but not both.

My reading of the original 2e text is that you lock them in a fireproof box and take them through the Phlogiston (which according to page 54 of Concordance of Arcane Space takes between 10 and 100 days) and then they come out shrunken and if you don't feed them they burn you up to create the energy to refuel.

After just re-reading the Blazozoid page, I can't see any mention of them taking on hit points as they eat (I must have imagined that ) so I would concentrate on them loosing the yellow tinge from their flames. They might not even expand in size during the time they are in front of the PCs.

But the time taken to shrink down needs to be in the order of 10-100 days. I don't think they need to shrink down much, but they need to come out wanting to eat.

Given that it is going to come out hungry, we might need to work out how much stuff needs to be tossed into a Blazozoid in order to "refuel" it. Perhaps fire spells could work like heal spells, but I'm not sure of the hp value of physical stuff that is burned (especially as these guys can actually burn both air and water).

How about dropping the idea of them loosing hit points but making them shrink at some sort of rate that would sometimes cause problems if they are taken from sphere to sphere.

If you want to make a minimum size then perhaps they could start taking non-permanant constitution damage, like Freyar suggeste, but only have that start when they hit the lowest size. At that size they could get more and more yellow and then fizzle out and die if they hit 0 Con.

 

[Cleon]

Why don't we cut to the chase and decide what stats they lose when the "shrink".

Size seems pretty obvious.

The three main options I see are ability score loss, hit point loss and negative levels.

Which do you people fancy?

 

[freyar]

They're already going to suffer ability score loss with standard size advancement rules. So if we're set on dropping size categories, let's just do that.

 

[Shade]

They're already going to suffer ability score loss with standard size advancement rules. So if we're set on dropping size categories, let's just do that.

Agreed.

 

[freyar]

Ok, then. Are we all satisfied if they shrink one size category (with all attendant ability changes??) per month (or longer?) that they don't eat?