Messenger Snake MCA III

[freyar]

Silly me, just needed to look in the SRD, not the Draconomicon. Well, I don't understand that table; the distance a dragon can fly is not linear in its fly speed (?!). However, if I scale down the 120 miles a dragon with a 100ft fly speed can fly in a day, I get 72 miles per day for the messenger snake. Do we just want to leave it at that?

 

[Shade]

I get the impression that the dragon overland flight table doesn't follow the exact formula, but is another way of making dragons special.

What if we just make is a special ability?

Strong Flier (Ex): Messenger snakes are exceedingly strong flyers and can cover vast distances quickly. Its overland flying speeds are 25 miles per hour at a normal pace, and 50 miles per hour as part of a hustle. It can travel 200 miles per day with overland flight. Messenger snakes do not tire as quickly as other creatures when moving overland on the ground. If a messenger snake attempts a hustle or a forced march, check for nonlethal damage once every 2 hours instead of every hour.

 

[freyar]

This gave me an idea! What if we revise as so:

Strong Flier (Ex): Messenger snakes are exceedingly strong flyers and can cover vast distances quickly. Its overland flying speeds are 12.5 miles per hour at a normal pace, and 25 miles per hour as part of a hustle. It can travel 200 miles per 8-hour day when flying at a hustle. Messenger snakes do not tire as quickly as other creatures. If a messenger snake attempts a hustle or a forced march, check for nonlethal damage once every 2 hours instead of every hour.

So they get 100 miles if they don't need to rest, but they normally hustle to cover 200 miles per day and generally need to rest sometime in the middle due to nonlethal damage. How's that sound?

 

[Shade]

Yeah, I think that'll work.

Here's the revenant-magna's ability for finding things:

Find the Guilty (Ex): So long as the revenant-magna and its killer are on the same plane of existence, the revenant-magna knows in which direction its killer can be found and how far away he or she is. Depending on the magical abilities of the base creature, this extraordinary sense may even be made to work across planar boundaries. The revenant-magna's thirst for revenge is so strong that should its killer be slain, its find the guilty ability extends to its killer's killer (and so on, should that creature be slain, until this chain of vengeance can be completed).

 

[freyar]

Ok, should be easy enough (but why oh why did we make this Ex for the revenant-magna?):

Locate Recipient (Su): So long as the messenger snake and the intended recipient of its message are within 100 miles, the messenger snake knows in which direction its recipient can be found and how far away he or she is.

We should remember to give these a discern lies SLA at will, CL 3(?).

 

[Shade]

I think we went with Ex because that's what the official revenant did.

Updated.

For the poison, initial damage 1 Con, secondary paralysis for 1d4 hours?

 

[freyar]

Huh, wonder why WotC went with Ex for that?

That sounds good for the poison.

We might want to note that a light load for these is 5 lb.

The snake's coloration shifts and changes as necessary, making it 50% undetectable by casual sight. Add to this the fact that the snake's flight is 75% silent, and it makes for a very effective messenger. The snake can even blend in with the color of an overcast sky, so that persons looking up from the ground would have a hard time telling that one of the snakes was flying above their heads.

Some sort of camouflage and a Move Silently racial bonus (+8?)?

 

[Shade]

Going with the usual snake skill modifiers, it gets +4 on Hide. We could increase that, or give them concealment due to the constantly-shifting scales.

They mimic human speech, speaking in a soft, hissing voice.

However, the snake is also able to repeat a verbal message of up to 100 words, giving it only to the one person it was intended for.

Rumor has it that the reason the Zhents are so frantic to find information on the origins of messenger snakes is that the snakes are becoming more intelligent, developing their own language, and refusing to serve. No one has ever been able to get a messenger snake to speak a word on its own, though, to confirm this.

Messenger snakes speak their own language, but never do so when creatures of any other race are close enough to hear them?

How's this?

Perfect Messenger (Ex?): A messenger snake may perfectly recall a message of up to 100 words, which it will deliver only to its intended recipient. Any attempts (magically or otherwise) to coerce the snake to repeat the message for anyone else automatically fails. The snake repeats the language in the same language as spoken by the sender, even if it cannot understand the language itself.

 

[freyar]

I like the idea of giving them concealment. I also like the language and Perfect Messenger (which should be Ex, I think).

 

[Shade]

How's this?

Blending Scales (Ex): A messenger snake's coloration shifts and changes to match its environs, granting it continuous concealment (20% miss chance).