duckbill platerpuss?

[QuaziquestGM]

I need the stats for a duckbilled plyaterpuss.

The sorc in my game has taken some wisdom damage and now wants one as his falmilar

I'm also going to need stats for a kiwi. (both the fruit and the bird)

As a throw away line I had a street vender offer the cleric one, and he went and bought it, and the druid is taking a liking to it....

The sad thing is, i'm serious guys!

 

[Legildur]

For the duckbilled platypus, I'd just use the stats for a cat or weasel and modify it accordingly: add a swim speed (and possibly burrow speed), maybe scent ability when in water, and spike attacks (rearward facing spikes (not the claws) on the hindlegs.

For the Kiwi bird... I'll let Hypersmurf answer that one

 

[Stormrunner]

For the platypus I'd use weasel stats, with land speed 10' and swim speed 30', renaming the "bite" attack as a "claws" attack. Its familiar benefit would probably be a bonus to Swim checks.
Their "see in muddy water" sense is not scent, they detect the electrical current of nerve impulses. Call it 5' blindsense, but it only detects living creatures, and only underwater.
The "spurs", despite the term, are not like those of a fighting and do not stick backward from the leg - they're basically enlarged "big toe" claws and protrude more inwards and slightly forwards. Call it a "rake" attack, doing 1 pt of damage. Males (and ONLY males) deliver poison with a spur rake - non-fatal but it causes extreme pain (call it Sickened 5 minutes if first save is failed, Nauseated 1 minute if second save failed).

Kiwi - flightless, no attacks - I'd use the stats for a rat, but with no attacks and no climb speed. What benefit it would give as a familiar I have no idea. (bonus to Hide checks?)

 

[Klaus]

Download the Unfamiliar Familiars PDF from www.fierydragon.com website (go Products > Counter Collection 5) and use the stats for an otter.

For the kiwi bird, use the stats of a toad.

For the kiwi fruit, it costs 1cp where it is common and 3cp where it's uncommon. It's very acidic, so eating a large quantity of it might make someone mildly nauseated for 2 hours. If it's smeared against someone's eyes, the victim is blinded for 1 minute or until he washes his eyes with water (a full-round action).

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Call it a "rake" attack, doing 1 pt of damage. Males (and ONLY males) deliver poison with a spur rake - non-fatal but it causes extreme pain (call it Sickened 5 minutes if first save is failed, Nauseated 1 minute if second save failed).

Apparently, being poisoned by a platypus is about one of the worst things that can ever happen to you. It causes swelling of the affected limb and excruciating pain that is often followed by a long period of extreme sensitivity to contact. The pain itself can incapacitate the victim. It is apparently also particularly resistant to treatment by painkillers.

The way I've heard it described is that on the onset of the poison, the victim starts screaming and keeps screaming until unconsciousness sets in, and possibly for a little while thereafter.

I'd probably set the primary and secondary damage at 1d6 Dex/1d6 Dex. A regular human has a chance of being incapacitated, but it isn't certain. That puts its poison strength somewhere around the tiny viper's, so it's probably balanced as a familiar. 5' blindsense is a much larger sensory range than a platypus has. Best to just ignore it, since it's mostly good for locating arthropods in mud. I'd give it a 10 ft. land speed and a 30 ft. swim speed.

 

[Brimshack]

This was still in my rough draft files from a year ago, so I assume there was something wrong with it, but...
Platypus
(2/26/05)
Daniel S. Wall

Type: Tiny Animal
Hit Dice: 1d8-2
Initiative: +0.
Speed: 10’ (25’ in the water).
Armor Class: 14 (+2 Size, +2 Natural) Touch 12, Flat-Footed 14.
Base Attack/Grapple: +0/-11.
Attack: Bite +2 Melee (1d3-3).
Full Attack: Bite +2 Melee (1d3-3) and 2 or 4 Claws -3 Melee (1d2-3 + Poison in some cases).
Space/Reach: 2.5’/0’
Special Attacks: Poison Hind Claws (Male only).
Special Qualities: Blindsense 30’ which operates only under water.
Saves: Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +1.
Abilities: STR 4, DEX 10, CON 6, INT 2, WIS 12, CHR 4.
Skills: Listen +2 , Search* +2, Spot* +2, Swim +5.
Feats: Weapon Finesse.
Environment: Freshwater Bodies in Temperate Forests and Deserts.
Organization: Single, or Female with 1-3 babies.
Challenge Rating: Female 1/4, Male 1/2.
Treasure: -
Alignment: Always Neutral.
Advancement: -
Level Adjustment: -

Okay, so we all know about this weird little creature, right, a duck billed mammal that lays eggs, and by the way, it is venomous. It lives in lakes and streams, and it will generally keep to itself. It’s two layers of fur give it one of the thickest coats of the animal world, hence the unusually high Natural Armor bonus for a Tiny creature.

The Platypus may not normally use its hind legs on an attack. It may do so, however, if it is fighting in the water.

Blindsense: Under water a Platypus is able to sense and locate creatures up to 30’ away. They still count as concealed to the Platypus.

Skills: A Platypus has a racial bonus of +4 to Swim checks. If searching through mud, it has a +4 racial bonus on Spot and Search checks.

Poison: The Male Platypus has spurs on its hind feet. (Both male and female Platypuses start out with them, but these drop off the females before reaching maturity.) Those struck by the hind feet of a male must make a Fortitude save (DC 7) or suffer intense pain for 1-6 hours, during which time the victim will operate at a penalty of -2 on all die 20 rolls. The DC for the save is strength based.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Poison: The Male Platypus has spurs on its hind feet. (Both male and female PLatypi start out with them, but these drop off the females before reaching maturity.) Those struck by the hind feet of a male must make a Fortitude save (DC 7) or suffer intense pain for 1-6 hours, during which time the victim will operate at a penalty of -2 on all die 20 rolls. The DC for the save is strength based.

This is a pet peeve of mine. The plural of platypus is not platypi, but platypuses. The same goes for octopus. Here's an explanation as to why this is, snagged from the Wikipedia entry "octopus":

Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses", and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic. Octopi derives from the mistaken notion that octōpūs is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is (Latinized) Greek, from oktṓpous (ὀκτώπους), gender masculine, whose plural is oktṓpodes (ὀκτώποδες). If the word were native to Latin, it would be octōpēs ('eight-foot') and the plural octōpedes, analogous to centipedes and mīllipedes, as the plural form of pēs ('foot') is pedes. In modern, informal Greek, it is called chtapódi (χταπόδι), gender neuter, with plural form chtapódia (χταπόδια).

If platypus were a Latin word, rather than a Latin transliteration of a Greek word, you could pluralize it platypi. Since it's Greek, it's properly pluralized platypodes. But that might be considered a bit in poor taste, since nobody throws ancient Greek into regular conversation anymore, and by doing so you might be perceived as a know-it-all. So the standard pluralization for borrowed foreign words ending in s, "-es" works best.

[/pet peeve]

---The board software doesn't seem to like all the Greek characters. I'm not sure how to fix that, so I'll just leave them as is.

 

[Brimshack]

Point of Calirification: Again, this is a ROUGH draft of an OLD project, submitted in the hopes that it might be useful to the OP. I never gave this one the thumbs up myself, and I would be very surprised if a mispluralization was the only error conatined in it.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Point of Calirification: Again, this is a ROUGH draft of an OLD project, submitted in the hopes that it might be useful to the OP. I never gave this one the thumbs up myself, and I would be very surprised if a mispluralization was the only error conatined in it.

Oh, don't worry about it. This is just something that personally gets under my skin, and which comes up every time someone brings up either platypuses or octopuses.

 

[QuaziquestGM]

Oh, come on guys...
You can do better than this.

Pile it on!
Let's see exactly how GEEKY we can make this tread!

SO, should the platerpus have a confusion ability?
" Mage!, I've come to cleave your head from you....What the *Beeb* is THAT ---> _thing_ on your shoulder?????"

Should it count as an abberation or an abomination for purposes of special attacks?

What spell components could be havested from it?