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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 3592233" data-attributes="member: 18363">Interesting - both the idea and the bit about the hyena's shadow. I like the idea of making the folklore a part of the animals' abilities, although in most instances this would requiring changing the animals into magical beasts instead. But then I've done something similar in the past. I once took the stats for a leopard, gave it the ability to see perfectly to 120 ft in normal darkness (half that for magical darkness), +2 magically enhanced claws which allowed it to climb up even stone walls with ease (more or less spider climb at will along vertical surfaces, but not across ceilings, as an SU ability, along with the increased damage and ability to ignore DR / magic), an aura that decreased sound and light w/n 20 ft of it (more or less a +10 to Move Silently and Hide along with Hide in Plain Sight (Su)), and Camouflage. Its coat was changed to pure black - as were its eyes as well. Indeed, the easiest way to tell at a (short) distance if you were facing a black panther or *this* beast was by making a Spot check (DC 20 + 1/10 ft) to see if its eyes were completely black orbs. If so you had a problem. This presumed it hadn't snuck up on you before you noticed it, for it was an ambush predator. Most of what I did was just enhance the traits typical to felines: stealth, keen senses, climbing, sharp claws. Nothing else, really, but it was enough to significantly increase the threat of the creature. Once I created a serpent whose bite required both a Fort save vs Stun (1 round) and a Will save vs Modify Memory (forget the last 10 rounds). Against diminuative creatures the stunning allowed it a chance to swallow whole as a coup d'gras, but against larger creatures the modify memory and stun gave it a chance to escape. Often a human thus stung would find themselves coming to their senses not quite sure how they got where they were - sometimes just assuming that they had got lost in thoughts as they walked along the path or into the room. ^^ The serpent was considered something of a ghost by commoners because no one ever saw it, but in fact they just forgot that they had seen it. Sometimes adding just a single ability - or enhancing an ability already present and commonly associated with the beast - can be enough to notably increase how interesting and useful a creatures may be. But I like the idea of granting folkloric abilities to some animals - even if these beasts are just the magical beast paragons of their species (not in the template sense).</blockquote>

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