monster overhaul Archives - Neitherworld Stories

January 12, 2009

Boredom and Undeath

Yesterday, Angela and I went out for brunch and had a chat about the undead. In her game, a minor theme that’s continually crept up has been that undeath is boring. A necromancer had a recreation room for his ghouls (kept in a portable hole, which we stole… filled with ghouls. Yes… the same portable hole that now has an...

August 22, 2008

The Hydra: an alternate view

Here’s a slightly odd take on a solution to the hydra problem for 4e. A standard level 12 encounter for 4 PCs would feature (1) Hydra, (1) Skulking Hydra Head, and (4) minion Hydra Heads for a 6-headed hydra. I had to create a new mechanic for multiple monsters sharing a single body. It should, I hope, be self-explanatory. Hydra...

July 9, 2008

4e: Rethinking the Dragonborn

The Dragonborn are a new PC race in 4e D&D. There was a quasi-race called the Dragonborn in 3.5 (introduced in Races of the Dragon). These were members of other races who were called upon by Bahamut and answered his call, becoming transformed into draconic creatures who hunted evil dragons. The 4e Dragonborn aren’t like this. Instead, the new Dragonborn...

May 12, 2008

Monster Overhaul: Secret Weaknesses

It is a bit weird how, in D&D, Vampires have a bunch of weaknesses: garlic, holy symbols, running water, etc. Few other monsters, have any such weaknesses; a few are blinded by strong light, and that’s about it. The reason that vampires have such weaknesses, of course, is because they are a part of real-world folklore. We have a lot...

March 24, 2008

Against my better judgment…

I give you a giant, flying, cave dolphin. …a special bonus monster overhaul on the Yrthak. This one can keep all the stats the same, I think. Here’s the flavor text: Ages ago, the aboleth began cultivating blind cave dolphins as slaves, food, and subjects for their bizarre experiments. The yrthak is the product of one such experiment: a breeding...

March 21, 2008

Krenshar: the less stupid version?

The Krenshar. Along with the Yrthak (which I won’t even link to), it embodies the worst in 3e monster design: “We need a CR [X] [creature type Y] with an attack of [type Z].” In the case of the KrensharX=1Y-magical beastZ=fear It is a big-ish cat-like monster that can pull its skin off of its face to scare you. Lame.Jeff...

October 8, 2007

The Owlbear, Revisited

The Owlbear is a classic D&D monster: a goofy hybrid of owl and bear. Its origin is similarly goofy; along with the bullette and rust monster, it was one of the creatures that was based on some plastic toys that Gygax and friends used as miniatures. Growing up, I had a plastic rust monster and bullette, but I don’t remember...

Tag: monster overhaul