Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5808300" data-attributes="member: 92305">...This post relates to a homebrew creature I devised for my Conan RPG game, but if you like the critter, I'm sure you can easily use it in any D&D game...     Here's a new critter for you to use in your games, and I'll explain how I came to create the beastie.Remember (for those of you who don't know), my game centers around two Cimmerian Barbarian PC's, exploring their lives as they live and breathe in the lands around their village. Unlike many Conan RPG games where a lot of globetrotting is involved, my game is set up as a sandbox featuring the characters' clan lands and surrounding area. The village serves as a "base of operations" for the two Cimmerians, and there are a ton of NPCs that come and go from the spotlight as the story moves on. My PCs are young, just 15 and 16 years old at this point (we started the game with the PCs at age 11 and 12), and they've reached 3rd level.To catch you up to speed, the clan's biggest festival was just celebrated. At this time, the village swells as clansmen from the outlying homesteads make the journey to partake of the festivities. Just afterwards, the PCs are sent to gather firewood to replentish what was burned during the 3 day festival. Out, alone in the woods, they hear the far distant sounds of battle echoing off the mountain sides. Investigating, the PCs find a wagon pulled by two mules--the wagon upturned and the mules dead. The wagon carried the PC's clansmen--an old woman and children--that were returning to their homestead after the festival. They were hit by another Cimmerian clan--a clan without honor who stand with a Blood Feud with the PC's clan.Long story short: This encounter led to a chase and several game sessions as the PCs realize that one of their clansmen--a little 4 year old girl--was taken by the enemy clan. The PCs overcome several obstacles--a wood where Time is not constant and encounters with proto-Cimmerians that never advanced racially after the Great Cataclysm--to track their enemy and the little girl to a cave complex.For this complex, I adapted the low-level introductory D&D adventure SCOURGE of the HOWLING HORDE to the Hyborian Age. If you've never seen that adventure, don't fret. It's your standard goblins-in-the-cave style of intro adventure for 1st level characters.The adventure features golbins, hobgloblins, a bug bear, giant spider, giant weasle, gelatinous cube, zombie, skeleton, young black dragon, a goblin shaman, and a few other "regular" low level beasties.Of course, I had to jettison all of that for my Conan game. I populated the place with Grath clansmen (the bad guys in my campaign--the Cimmerian clan fighting the Blood Feud with the PC's clan). To do this, I basically looked at the goblins and hobbies and other beasties, and I said to myself, "If this creature were human and a Cimmerian Barbarian, what kind of stats would he have?" It was a fun exercise transmuting standard D&D baddies into my Grath foes. If there were six goblins in a room, this became three 1st level Grath. Or, I might have a 2nd level and a 1st level Grath--and once, I made a 3rd level foe.I ended up with a guard dog, several 1st level Grath, two 2nd level foes, and one 3rd level foe. I kept the Giant Spider, too. I stocked the dungeon with more than enough baddies to capture the two PCs--in fact, I thought that there was really no way that the PCs would prevail. My goal was to capture them. I wasn't going to ensure that any outcome happened--I'd leave that up to fate, dice throws, and the players' actions. But, I knew what I had put in the dungeon, and I knew that the two PCs were only 2nd level (at that time). And, I figured that they'd either die or get captured (with a slight chance that they were stealthy enough to avoid encounters, sneak in, and sneak out). The Giant Spider, I felt, was very "Conan". If the Grath captured the PCs, the PCs would be stripped down to their loin cloths and thrown in with nothing but their bare hands to fight the Giant Spider. I even considered throwing one of them in there at a time--I'd decide as the game progressed.To my utter and complete surprise (and some hot dice throws plus some well time Fate Point use), the two PCs enter the complex as Conan would. They were slayers, their blades dripping with blood, stalking the corridors. Everyone they met, they dispatched in a hail of swings and throws, slices and bashes.They were death itself, looking for their missing clansman.It was fantastic. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like an epic climax in a good Conan story. For two game sessions, the players fought, pushing their PCs through the heart of the dungeon. I wasn't easy on them, either. I used Listen checks to bring PCs from different areas, and I played the Grath "smart", using pre-set intruder tactics and sending runners to gather help.Didn't matter.Fate was on the PC's side.They did what Cimmerians do. They blasted their way in and killed everything in sight.Well....</blockquote>

Verification