Dragon #349

[frankthedm]

ASPECT OF DAGON CR 10

Oh, thank you!

Your article was good. Logical adaptations of the HPL concepts to the D&D world and some really nice expansion on the abyss. The numerous crippling will saves might get a few boos and hisses from the tanks, but hey, I won’t blame you.

BTW, Do you think the deep ocean Kuo-toa are served well enough by the stats of the ones presumed to have been in the underdark for millennia? Other than snagging the Deep ones right from d20CoC, any tweeks recommended for the oceanic Kuo-toa?

It is a shame gold is so tied in with game balance in 3E. I think an adventure hook of Kuo-toa / Deep ones slowly and intentionally flooding a nation’s economy with gold in an effort to ruin that county would be a cool idea.

 

[James Jacobs]

The stats for the kuo-toa as is should be find for the deep ocean versions. After all, deep ocean trenches are similar in a lot of ways to the Underdark, what with the no light and the scary monsters. I'd be tempted to give the deepwater kuo-toa cold resistance rather than electricity resistance, though, since the water down there's pretty frigid. Which would argue for replacing their lightning attacks with cold attacks, but then you'd have all sorts of blocks of ice rising up from the bottom of the sea where they live, so maybe that's all a bad idea...

 

[delericho]

Other than snagging the Deep ones right from d20CoC

I might be mis-remembering, but weren't the stats for the CoC Deep Oness essentially a direct lift from the D&D Sahuagin?

 

[frankthedm]

I might be mis-remembering, but weren't the stats for the CoC Deep Oness essentially a direct lift from the D&D Sahuagin?

Skum come fairly closer, rather than SahaginNot really. Deep ones were built as aberration beat sticks in the d20CoC book. The Dagon article got me started on advancing some of them, below is a fiendish deep one. I also have some "Space Creature" & "Xenomorph template" Green Dragons planned for my monster advancment thread for Starspawn.

Fiendish Mutant fish man
Size/Type: Medium aberration (aquatic, Extraplanar)
Hit Dice: 2d8+4 (13 hp)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), Swim 40 ft.
Armor Class: 16 (+4 natural,+2 dex), touch 12, flat-footed 14
Base Attack/Grapple: +1/+4
Attack: Claw +5 melee (1d4+4) Rear claw +5 melee (2d4+4) or Long spear +5 melee (1d8+6).
Full Attack: 2 Claws +5 melee (1d4+4), 2 Rakes +5 melee (2d4+4) & bite +3 melee (2d4+2) , or Long spear +5 melee (1d8+6] 2 Rakes +3 melee (2d4+2) & bite +3 melee (2d4+2)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Smite Good 1/day [+2 to damage] Special Qualities: Darkvision 60’, Low light vision, Resist fire and cold 5, SR 7
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +3
Abilities: Str 19, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 11, Wis 10, Cha 6
Skills: Climb +5, Hide+7, Listen +6, move silently +6, Spot +6
Feats: Multiattack(1HD)
Environment: Any evil-aligned plane.
Organization:
Challenge Rating: 2
Treasure: None
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Advancement: 3-6 medium, 7-13 HD Large, 14-26 huge

When walking, a Mutant fish man cannot use it’s legs for rake attacks.

A mutant fish man’s rake attacks are treated as claws when determining primary attack and damage bonuses

 

[Jason Bulmahn]

Dragon 349 Web Supplement

Just a quick FYI,

We have just posted the large web supplement for Dragon 349 containing a bunch of information about the Horde we just could not fit into the issue. Also included are a bunch of horselord magic items, perfectly suitable for adventures set in their lands. The web supplement pdf can be found here down under resources.

Jason Bulmahn
Managing Editor of Dragon

 

[Alzrius]

Thanks for the heads-up Jason! I'm downloading it right now!

 

[joshhg]

The thing is, a being of the far realm most likely would not even understand, let alone feel, pain. It might observe its tissue dissolving and scattering across the multiverse and might try and find a way to stop it, or it might not even care. There is even a chance it would remain semi coherant through it's scattered particles and make an effort to scatter them further.

I don't think Shem (Hope you don't mind me using a shortened name) wasn't talking about physical pain, or at least not totally. I think he meant that they would be confronted with something so wrong, not in a evil sense, but in a totally alien and unknown sense. That it would find this world so other that it would either be driven insane or be so repulsed that it would attack everything in sight (or whatever it uses to perceive, if even that can be attributed to them).
I don't think the Far Realm is chaotic, but rather as lawful as our world is. But their laws are not our laws, their very physics are totally different. They don't have nor not have gravity. They have something so terribly different that they are nothing alike but are still the same.
I would suggest trying Stephen King's From a Buick 8 for an idea of what I'm trying to convey here.
Thanks for your time;
Josh

 

[Shemeska]

But no matter the cause, that is when Chaos shows it’s real face.

The Slaadi, and all of Limbo, of course would have strong words about true chaos being personified by an alternate multiverse like the Far Realm. The Far Realm isn't chaos, it isn't law, nor good nor evil, it's alien.

The Far Realm doesn't necessarily even have a conception of Chaos, or Law, or many of the other universal abstracts that comprise the raw stuff of the Great Wheel. It might have salinity, or polarity, transparency, or Xvb67.1dL as some of its abstract concepts, assuming that it has any relation whatsoever to the structure of the Wheel (which it probably doesn't). Take our RL universe, go back to the pre-inflation big bang and tweak the physical constants and then see what developed and compare to the RL universe, except make the differences more jarring and bizarre; that might be a decent analogy in some ways to the Far Realm versus the Great Wheel versus the Macrocosm (another seperate multiverse hinted at) or the unknown multiverse the Keepers were drawn up out of.

For all we know the Far Realm is governed by rigid Law, just a form of Law entirely divorced from our own conceptions of it personified by Mechanus etc. I feel it's more than a bit of misnomer to attach Chaos to the Far Realm's description.

 

[Shemeska]

I don't think Shem (Hope you don't mind me using a shortened name) wasn't talking about physical pain, or at least not totally. I think he meant that they would be confronted with something so wrong, not in a evil sense, but in a totally alien and unknown sense. That it would find this world so other that it would either be driven insane or be so repulsed that it would attack everything in sight (or whatever it uses to perceive, if even that can be attributed to them).

Absolutely.

I don't think the Far Realm is chaotic, but rather as lawful as our world is. But their laws are not our laws, their very physics are totally different. They don't have nor not have gravity. They have something so terribly different that they are nothing alike but are still the same.

Bingo.

I would suggest trying Stephen King's From a Buick 8 for an idea of what I'm trying to convey here.

Another book I need to read.

 

[joshhg]

Yay! A aggrement from the Maulder!
. . .
Just what is that going to cost me?

It's far from the best of King's books, but a couple of scenes are just how I would expect a real Far Realms encounter would go like. And the rest isn't bad, just not high adventure.