Creativity by modification (w. WotC article)

[kigmatzomat]

I've been known to apply the fiendish or celestial templates to things to give it a boost without actually making it fiendish or celestial. I think of them as a "lesser paragon" or some magically augmented variation.

I also routinely take cool but very well known creatures and reshape it physically for my own uses. No point in reinventing the wheel and if I'm not going to use said creature in my campaign, why not?

Of course I've found that having the locals give a name based on on another, similar creature can work wonders. I pulled a creature from the ELH, had the NPCs describe the "Ank-kill" as a "smarter, meaner, possibly fiendish ankheg" and the players were none the wiser, despite having fought one of those creatures in a different Epic game.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

Things like this are how I always compensated for not having access to a bunch of monster books, or how I "fooled" players who had memorized the monster manual.

 

[pogre]

Yep, I often substitute stats all the time.

 

[Darkness]

Monte Cook suggested this very thing in an article (in 2002, I think), using a winter wolf modified to be a bony creature with a "breath weapon" of bone spikes.

Yeah, I was thinking of that too - it was called "Stretch your monster dollar" or something like that. I can't find it on his site right now though.

 

[Klaus]

In (one of my many) upcoming campaign, I'll take Sean K Reynolds' Half-Dragon Savage Progression (from the WotC site) and apply it to a paladin's special mount. At 5th level, it will have the 1st level of the template and none of the special mount abilities. At 6th and 7th levels it will gain the other two levels of the template. When the paladin reaches 8th level, it will start accruing the special mount benefits (and it will work just like a Paladin at -3 levels, like a dragonnel).

But it won't be a half-gold dragon horse. No, it's a Gold Dragonsteed, a dragon specially bred to serve mighty paladins. This way I can run a Dragonlance-esque setting with dragonriders without worrying about a true dragon's forbidding CR...

 

[M.L. Martin]

I wouldn't call this "HEROisation" of a game. This is just an old GM trick, though other games bring this to the player's side. BESM and Savage Worlds comes to mind.

And where do you think they learned it from? The idea of splitting special effect off from rules is one of the HERO System's most noteworthy contributions to the hobby; while it may not have strictly been the first game to do so, it was definitely the first to have a major impact.

It's shown up in *D&D before, too; DRAGON #200 had an article entitled "The Color of Magic" that gave suggestions for doing the same thing with spells.

Matthew L. Martin

 

[Andre]

Yeah, I was thinking of that too - it was called "Stretch your monster dollar" or something like that. I can't find it on his site right now though.

I can't find the link, but here's the text:

Stretch That Monster Dollar!

Want to get more for your monster dollar?
Here's how.

The secret that game companies don't want you to know! Just modify the ones in the Monster Manual (or wherever) a little bit, and viola! New monster. For example, in my campaign, I use miniatures a lot.

I painted up a cool miniature of this four-legged doglike thing that was all covered in scales and plates, and had lots of bony teeth pointed every which way (this was a Games Workshop figure, for those that care). There's really nothing like it in D&D, so I decided to stat it up. Time was short, though, so here's what I did.

I opened up my Monster Manual to the winter wolf stats. I stuck a post-it note on the page and wrote: "AC additional +5 natural armor (19 total)." This was because the monster I wanted (based on the miniature) had lots of bony plates and scales. Then, I wrote "bite damage 2d6+6," because the mouth was oversized and full of really large teeth.

Lastly, I noted that the breath weapon was actually "a hail of bony spikes rather than cold damage" (a scary and disturbing visual, I thought).

And I was done. Thus was born the Shard Hound. In my campaign, it was the pet of an ettin and a stone giant. The players were surprised and frightened by the thing. Longtime D&D veterans all, not a one knew that they were really fighting a winter wolf. And this took me all of three minutes.

Lastly, when it came time to hand out XP, because the AC and bite damage were higher, and there was no chance for something like protection from elements to shield anyone from its "spike breath," I went ahead and increased the CR of the Shard Hound to 6 rather than the 5 of a winter wolf.

 

[shilsen]

Oh! Me too! I haven't beaten Hong with a stick for far too long!
*beats Hong with a stick*
Why a Christmas-only ritual, I ask? There are Hong-beating opportunities every day!

Can't argue with you there

But to go back on topic, you can look at threads like this one.

Thanks. I'd completely forgotten about that one, even though it's the one where I originally posted that half-dragon/special warforged story.