New Monster Swordwing!

[incantator]

As I was reading the comments, I was thinking to myself "what is so aberrant and creepy about a few giant insects?" Then I thought, "they live in a hive; that could be made very Lovecraftian and even fairly epic by giving it impossible geometry." You start heading east down a corridor and take a south door only to end up in the north room, you then try to backtrack and end up in a deeper level of the dungeon. The doors lead to different areas depending on the time of day or whether you walk forward through them or backward.

 

[hong]

Tell the truth, these things strike me as being more Feywild than Far Realms.

 

[zoroaster100]

I really liked the racial traits excerpt, but this one just made me go ... "Why?"

This seems like one of the silly random monsters from the original Fiend Folio. Why do we need a bug with a blade for one arm? What purpose does it serve? Why are we being shown this one monster in a preview? Does it illustrate some particular design point of 4E?

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Well, the WotC- crew said that they are going for Germanic naming- conventions, and when you do that you get that kind of names. Both my language and German have many, many combined words in names.

For me, it feels like home

You're right, I'm sure most languages name things by combining basic descriptive terms. It's just that English, being a hybrid of so many disparate languages, exposes these words in their original language (or in a bastardised form at least), so to an English speaker, these terms, although banal in their original tongue, seem mysterious and exotic.

 

[Voss]

Blood makes them angry?

"You are bleeding. That makes me Sooooo angry!"

"Stop stabbing me then"!

Incensed seems to be a funny word to use here.

btw, chalk me up as 'not very inspired by' these as epic tier monsters.

I know it has been said before, but I want epic tier creatures to have MORE CAPABILITIES, damn it! I'm a big boy, I can handle epic creatures having 3-4 options each round to keep things interesting.

Agreed, these things are boring on about every level.
Ooo Bugs that totally stab people! And... thats all. But wait, they're humanoid bugs with swords for arms that makes them totally awesome, right?

...

No it does not.

Maybe these things are the fodder of the epic tier and therefor supposed to be really dull. I don't know, but they have the dubious honor of beating out the smoky temporal cat-centaur for winner of least interesting epic monster.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I sure wasn't expecting the swordwings. Are they an entirely new monster?

Reminds me an awful lot of the Sabreclaw, from CM3: Sabre River.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

"Stop stabbing me then"!




Agreed, these things are boring on about every level.
Ooo Bugs that totally stab people! And... thats all. But wait, they're humanoid bugs with swords for arms that makes them totally awesome, right?

...

No it does not.

Maybe these things are the fodder of the epic tier and therefor supposed to be really dull. I don't know, but they have the dubious honor of beating out the smoky temporal cat-centaur for winner of least interesting epic monster.

The Swordwing still looks less goofy. In fact, it looks really good to me.

These compound names will be a real boon for translating.
Swordwing => Schwertschwinge in German.

 

[hong]

Schwing!

 

[hong]

Schwing!

SWORDschwing!

 

[Stogoe]

Which is basically normal damage + normal crit damage. Any idea if PCs will be able to do something in league with this? I'm guessing (if it is PC getable) it'll be a feat. Maybe feats that allow it with certain weapons? Lend me your thoughts!

Yeah, it's armblade's just got the High Crit property - roll weapon damage again on a crit. I think picks and maybe axes have it as a base weapon ability.