Creature Catalogue Overhaul Project Revisited

[Cleon]

Well, the swarms appear to be done, so do you prefer to write up the honey or the individual beetles first?

I think it makes sense to do the honey first then we'll have completed the swarm entry.

 

[freyar]

OK, the original text is

Inside the hive there is a 75% chance of finding 1 to 6 ounces of whiz-bang “honey”. This honey has some very unusual properties. Roll percentile dice to determine its effect.

01 to 25: No effect
26 to 75: 1 oz. will give one person double speed for 1 turn.
76 to 90: 1 oz. will give one person double speed for 1 turn plus 1 side effect for the next turn*
91 to 100: 1 oz. will give one person 1 side effect for 1 turn with no increase in speed.
*side effects can include such things as half-speed, alignment change, explosive indigestion, food poisoning, etc.

Whiz-bang beetles can usually (75%) be subdued if found in their hive and kept from seeing light. In order to keep them alive outside the hive they must be fed 1 oz. of Whiz-bang honey per 50 beetles per day. In this manner they can be kept for up to two weeks. Queens cannot be removed from the hive without killing them.

Let's see. The "you have to feed them honey to keep them alive" can add to the flavor text, I think. I'm ok with the percentile rolls for the effects of eating the honey, but I'd just pick a side effect. Food poisoning and explosive indigestion suggest making the victim nauseasted. If it works, I guess we're talking about the effects of either haste or expeditious retreat for something like 2d10 minutes. Any thoughts?

 

[Cleon]

OK, the original text is


Let's see. The "you have to feed them honey to keep them alive" can add to the flavor text, I think. I'm ok with the percentile rolls for the effects of eating the honey, but I'd just pick a side effect. Food poisoning and explosive indigestion suggest making the victim nauseasted. If it works, I guess we're talking about the effects of either haste or expeditious retreat for something like 2d10 minutes. Any thoughts?

Hmm… wouldn't normal 3E procedure to be to allow a Fort save to avoid the side effect?

I also wondered about making the side effects a primary/secondary affair like a poison - i.e. sickened if you fail the first Fort save, nauseated if you fail the second.

And yes, I guess we'd better add a line or two to the original text about them needing honey to live in captivity.

 

[Cleon]

And yes, I guess we'd better add a line or two to the original text about them needing honey to live in captivity.

Oh, and I guess we'd better include an explanation of its treasure value there as well.

Anyhow let's give it a first shot:

Whiz-bang beetles live of a diet of whiz-bang honey. While these beetles have no interest in treasure, their honey is prized for its unusual properties (see Whiz-Bang Honey for details) and worth 100 gold pieces [?] per ounce. A hive typically contains 4d6 [?] ounces of whiz-bang honey per swarm of beetles. Nests too small to contain a swarm usually contain 1d3 [?] ounces of honey. Captive beetles never produce honey so must be fed with whiz-bang honey gathered from the wild. A single ounce of honey is enough to feed 50 normal beetles or 6 queens [?] for a day, a swarm of whiz-bang beetles consumes 8 [?] ounces of honey per day.

How whiz-bang beetles produce their honey is unknown. Scholars theorize they make the foodstuff from tiny fungi and molds scraped off stones or grown inside the hive or they gather nectar and pollen of weird underground plants. Some sages think these creatures feed off heat somehow, a theory which might explain their attraction to fire sources.


Whiz-Bang Honey
If a living creature who is not a whiz-bang beetle eats this magical foodstuff it causes peculiar and unpredictable symptoms, determined randomly on the Whiz-Bang Honey Effects table. One ounce of whiz-bang honey is enough of a dose to affect a Small or Medium creature, larger or smaller creatures may require different doses before they are affected by the honey.

As soon as the creature eats a dose of whiz-bang honey they will be affected by the result in the Initial Effects column. When the initial effects have passed, the creature will be affected by the result in the After-Effects column. If the effect lists two entries divided by a slash, the creature must attempt a DC 15 Constitution check. If it fails this check it is affected by the first entry, if it succeeds it is affected by the second entry.

Creature that have recently eaten a dose of whiz-bang honey are unlikely to benefit from additional doses. Any creature that eats more than one dose of whiz-bang honey within an X hour period uses 1dX when rolling on the Whiz-Bang Honey Effects for the subsequent doses.

Then we just need to work out a table of effects. Maybe something along these lines?

Whiz-Bang Honey Effects

Roll	Initial Effect	After-Effect
1-X	No effect	??
X-X	Nauseated X / Sickened X	Sickened/None
X-X	Sickened X / None X	Hasted 1 round / Nauseated X
X-X	Hasted 1d6 rounds ?	Nauseated X / Sickened X
X-X	Hasted 2d4 rounds ?	Sickened X / None ??
X-20	Hasted 2d4 rounds	None ??

 

[freyar]

The descriptive/flavor text looks good.

The mechanics would be ok, but they're a bit complicated especially with the table _and_ a Con check. Treating it like a poison with primary and secondary effects is a bit fiddly, too. And I do like your notion of using a Fort save. What if we do a percentile (or other) roll for whether it works and how many rounds the person is hasted and a Fort Save vs nausea? For example, we could have

"If a living creature who is not a whiz-bang beetle eats this magical foodstuff it causes peculiar and unpredictable symptoms, determined randomly on the Whiz-Bang Honey Effects table. One ounce of whiz-bang honey is enough of a dose to affect a Small or Medium creature, larger or smaller creatures may require different doses before they are affected by the honey. Additionally, the creature must make a DC X Fortitude save or be nauseated for XX rounds.



Whiz-Bang Honey Effects

Roll	Effect
1-X	No effect
X-X	Hasted 1 round
X-X	Hasted 1d6 rounds
X-X	X-20	Hasted 2d4 rounds

[TR]

"

We could mix in something besides haste or add a line where they are sickened also, if we like.

 

[Cleon]

The descriptive/flavor text looks good.

Well at least we're agreed on that!

Updating the Whizz-Bang Beetle Working Draft.

I'll leave the ? after the price of the honey for the moment.

The mechanics would be ok, but they're a bit complicated especially with the table _and_ a Con check. Treating it like a poison with primary and secondary effects is a bit fiddly, too. And I do like your notion of using a Fort save. What if we do a percentile (or other) roll for whether it works and how many rounds the person is hasted and a Fort Save vs nausea? For example, we could have

"If a living creature who is not a whiz-bang beetle eats this magical foodstuff it causes peculiar and unpredictable symptoms, determined randomly on the Whiz-Bang Honey Effects table. One ounce of whiz-bang honey is enough of a dose to affect a Small or Medium creature, larger or smaller creatures may require different doses before they are affected by the honey. Additionally, the creature must make a DC X Fortitude save or be nauseated for XX rounds.

*SNIP*

We could mix in something besides haste or add a line where they are sickened also, if we like.

I'd rather keep the sickened and something besides haste option but am happy dropping the primary/secondary idea.

How's this revision:

Whiz-Bang Honey
Any living creature who is not a whiz-bang beetle that eats this magical foodstuff exhibits peculiar and unpredictable symptoms determined by rolling on the Whiz-Bang Honey Effects Table. One ounce of whiz-bang honey is enough of a dose to affect a Small or Medium creature, larger or smaller creatures may require different doses before they are affected by the honey.

A living creature who eats a dose of whiz-bang honey immediately experiences the result listed in the Initial Effects column. As soon as this initial effect wears off the creature must succeed at a DC 15 Constitution check or suffer the consequences listed in the After-Effects column. If the listed Initial Effect is "None" the After-Effect (if any) begins the moment the honey is eaten.

Creature that have recently eaten a dose of whiz-bang honey are unlikely to benefit from additional doses. Any creature that eats more than one dose of whiz-bang honey within a 24 hour period uses 1d10 when rolling on the Whiz-Bang Honey Effects for the subsequent doses.

Whiz-Bang Honey Effects Table
Roll . Initial Effects . . . . After-Effects^
01 . . None . . . . . . . . . Nauseated 1d10 rounds
02 . . None . . . . . . . . . Sickened 1d10 rounds
03-07 . None . . . . . . . . . None
08-09 . speeded* 1d10 rounds . Sickened 1d10 rounds
10-12 . hasted** 1d10 rounds . Nauseated 1d10 rounds
13-15 . hasted** 1d10 rounds . Sickened 1d10 rounds
16-20 . hasted** 1d10 rounds . None
^ A creature who eats whiz-bang honey can exhibit all manner of bizarre side-effects, not limited to vomiting, hallucinations, frenzied dancing and flopping like an asphyxiated fish. For mechanical purposes these are treated as the nauseated and sickened conditions, but even creatures who are immune to nausea and sickness will be affected.
* All of a speeded creature’s modes of movement (including land movement, burrow, climb, fly, and swim) increase by 30 feet, to a maximum of twice the subject’s normal speed using that form of movement. This increase counts as an enhancement bonus and affects the creature’s jumping distance as normal for increased speed. It does not stack with other speed increases.
** effect identical to a haste spell.

That look OK to you?

 

[freyar]

If you change the bit starting "larger or smaller creatures" in the first paragraph to a new sentence, it looks good!

As for the price, a potion of haste at minimum CL is worth 750 gp and lasts 5 rounds. This has a chance to be much better but usually comes with a fairly bad side effect and is quite often worse. 100gp is probably fair, but I could go as high as 200gp, I guess.

 

[Cleon]

If you change the bit starting "larger or smaller creatures" in the first paragraph to a new sentence, it looks good!

As for the price, a potion of haste at minimum CL is worth 750 gp and lasts 5 rounds. This has a chance to be much better but usually comes with a fairly bad side effect and is quite often worse. 100gp is probably fair, but I could go as high as 200gp, I guess.

I'd be OK increasing the value but would reduce the number of doses of honey in a hive proportionally. A Challenge Rating 5 creature average treasure is 1,600 gp. If we make it 200 gp per dose I'd reduce the number of ounces from 4d6 per swarm to 2d6 or 2d8 per swarm.

We could make the honey more perishable I suppose. Maybe have it lose its effectiveness 1dX weeks or months after being it harvested.

Also, if it works like a potion shouldn't we give it a caster level?

 

[freyar]

Let's keep the price at 100gp and give it an expiry date of 1 month --- less randomness is better in this case, since it's easier for the DM to track.

Using it as a potion means the only CL-dependent variable in haste is the duration, and that's set by the effects table. And while even wondrous items have a CL, this isn't created by a caster, so I say no need for a CL.

 

[Cleon]

Let's keep the price at 100gp and give it an expiry date of 1 month --- less randomness is better in this case, since it's easier for the DM to track.

One month is fine. It'll make these critters even more of a pain to keep in activity, although I suppose you could always use preservative magic on it. Something like gentle repose that prevents decay in objects other than corpses.

Using it as a potion means the only CL-dependent variable in haste is the duration, and that's set by the effects table. And while even wondrous items have a CL, this isn't created by a caster, so I say no need for a CL.

The most salient point of treating it as a potion is that those work like spells so the effect could be dispelled, and you need a caster level to determine if a dispel magic or the like works.