The Hecatohedral Monk: August 2017

Friday, August 11, 2017

Bestiary: Clamorous Newt

During the previous session of the game I'm running, my players had a very odd OOC discussion about “weaponized newts". I told them I might write that up... so I did.

Buckle in for some pictures of amphibians. They're adorable and you can't convince me otherwise.
(Source)

Clamorous Newt

An amphibian small enough to hold in one's hand, with sharp teeth and an exceptionally large mouth over a bulging air-sac.

CR 1; XP 400

Neutral Diminutive Aberration
Init +2; Senses low-light vision, Perception +1

⸻Defense⸻

AC 15, touch 15, flat-footed 13 (+3 size, +2 Dex)

hp 13 (2d8+4)

Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +3

⸻Offense⸻

Speed 10ft, swim 20ft

Melee bite +2 (2d4-4)

Special Attacks clamor 6/day

⸻Statistics⸻

Str 3, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 2

Base Atk +0; CMB +0; CMD 4

Feats Weapon Finesse

Skills Stealth +4

⸻Special Abilities⸻

Clamor (Ex): Six times a day, a Clamorous Newt can emit a 10-foot cone of focused sound from its enlarged throat. Anyone caught in the cone takes 2d6 sonic damage and is deafened for the next hour. A successful Fortitude save (DC 12, Con-based) halves the damage, and the target is dazed for 1 round rather than deafened for 1 hour.

⸻Ecology⸻

Environment aquatic or coastal
Organization solitary or pair
Treasure none

Newt!

Description

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the aboleths were masters of the world, and shaped many of its inhabitants to suit their needs. The Clamorous Newt is a minor bit of detritus from that era of prehistory -- an early amphibian¹, modified to act as a small personal weapon. Exactly why the need for such a thing arose, considering the powers the aboleths had at their command, is unclear, but here we are.

Though the Clamorous Newt has only animal intelligence, it is mildly telepathic. It also retains its ancestral memory that it is meant to ride along on a more intelligent creature and follow their orders; a sufficient effort of will can convince one that you are its master, and it will behave like a loyal pet -- a loyal pet that can also be commanded to deafen one's enemies. It usually insists on riding on the shoulder (or similar) of its “master", and will obey simple telepathic commands. So long as you maintain the bond with a Clamorous Newt -- by feeding it often and having it remain near you -- it will not be possible for anyone else to form a bond with it; the “effort of will" trick only works on Newts who are not loyal to anyone at the time. The terrible exception, however, is the aboleths. It rarely comes up, of course, but an aboleth can take control of any Clamorous Newt within several yards, as an inherent loyalty to the aboleth species is built into the Newts at a fundamental level.

Bonding with a Clamorous Newt
In order to convince a Clamorous Newt that you are its master and not, for example, something it should be clamoring at, you must roll under your Intelligence score while standing within five feet of it. This will only work on a wild Clamorous Newt -- one that already has a master is unshakably loyal. If you fail your roll, you cannot try again that day. If you already have a Clamorous Newt bonded to you, you take a penalty of +1 to the roll,² as thinking at two of them at the same time requires slightly more focus; this effect stacks. A bonded Newt will obey telepathic commands, but nothing too complex -- they're slightly less intelligent than your average dog. The bond can erode if the Newt feels mistreated; if the GM feels that you are not giving it enough tasty mollusks or putting it in excessive danger, there is a chance that it will simply wander off. This chance is represented by a reroll of the original check to bond with it; a failed check means the Newt leaves, and a successful check means that it stays. These checks can be rolled daily if you do not start treating your Newt better. Try giving it a nice shrimp. In addition, the Newt might sever its bond with you if it thinks you have left it; for each day you are more than a mile away from your Newt, you must reroll your check.

Wild Clamorous Newts are not uncommon in certain coastal areas; after they were abandoned by the aboleths, the Newts still had the advantages of being able to tolerate saltwater -- most amphibians can't, but the aboleths needed something that didn't mind being in the ocean -- and a powerful natural weapon. They have spread to fill a number of ecological niches throughout the oceans, and are generally doing well for themselves. Having been allowed to “grow wild" for a few hundred million years has also given them enough time to split into many different species and subspecies, and in recent centuries, some of the weirder segments of upper-crust society have developed groups of “newt fanciers", who breed the creatures for ever-more-outré traits in an attempt to outdo their peers. For these reasons, a proper description of the Clamorous Newt requires use of the included table on the traits possessed by newts of that particular species, subspecies, or bespoke breed.

Makes a heck of a lot more sense than “pigeon fanciers".

d100 table -- “Yeah, But MY Newt..."

Roll 1d4 times for a given Clamorous Newt or (sub-)species thereof. For a particularly unusual specimen that might be displayed by a newt fancier, roll 2d4 times.

Bites like hell; will attack anything in reach other than its master.
Can break glass or crystal with its Clamor.
Can cause permanent deafness with its Clamor.
Can change color like a chameleon.
Can create hypnotic patterns on its skin.
Can croak like a frog.
Can echolocate.
Can form hive-minds with other Clamorous Newts (does not work if the Newts are bonded to two different people).
Can generate an electric shock; 1d4 damage, touch only.
Can glide through the air on skin flaps.

Image source.
Can hiss like a snake.
Can jump several feet in the air.
Can see in the dark; replace low-light vision with darkvision.
Can see into the infrared.
Can see into the ultraviolet.
Can shoot its tongue out of its mouth to catch insects.
Can spit jets of water with frightening precision; 10ft range, 1 damage.
Can spit mucus ten feet.
Has a boomerang-shaped skull that protrudes on either side of its body.

Art by Dmitry Bogdanov.
Can squeak like a mouse.
Can track prey by body heat.
Can walk up walls.
Digs a lot; add a burrow speed of 5 ft.
Doesn't sleep.
Engages in parrot-like mimicry.
Feeds by sucking the blood out of its prey.
Generates infrasound; instead of deafening or dazing targets, its Clamor has an effect like that of cause fear.
Has a crest along its back.

Art by Nobu Tamara.
Has a forked tail.
Has a large, bulbous head.
Has a large, flat, paddle-shaped tail; double swim speed.
Has a neck frill.
Has a parasitic relationship with a larger sea creature, and spends most of its time attached to its host.
Has a sense of smell like a bloodhound.
Has a tail at least twice the length of its body.
Has a long, thin, gharial-esque jaw.

Image source.
Has a taste for human(oid) flesh. Watch your fingers.
Has alligator-like bony plating; +3 natural AC.
Has an especially high-pitched tone; the area of effect of its Clamor is a 20-foot line.
Has an especially low-pitched tone; the area of effect of its Clamor is a 5-foot radius.
Has an expandable stomach and swallows things many times its own size.
Has an extra head.
Has an extra minor magical ability; pick a 0-level spell off the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list at random; it's a 1/day spell-like ability.
Has an extra pair of eyes.
Has an extra pair of legs.
Has an extra tail.
Has bulging eyes.
Has developed a particularly complex skin pattern.
Has fiendish blood.
Has celestial blood.
Has long, feathery external gill stalks. Look at the pretty little guy!

Image source.
Has horns.
Has long legs; double speed.
Has long, webbed digits; double swim speed.
Has no sense of loyalty and might attack at any time.
Has particularly big eyes.
Has scales; +1 natural AC.
Has sharp claws. Rar! (Add two 1-damage claw attacks.)
Has spines; add a melee attack for 1d4 damage.
Has the Ability Focus feat.
Inflates like a blowfish.
Has transparent flesh.
Has very long fangs; increase bite damage by one die type.
Has very thick scales; +2 natural AC.
Has wee tentacles on either side of its mouth.
Is albino.
Is all warty.
Is from a cave-dwelling subspecies and has evolved beyond the need for eyes. (No vision, but gain the Blind-fight feat.)

Image source.
Is bioluminescent.
Is bioluminescent and can flash complicated light-shows on its skin.
Is bioluminescent and slightly magical; casts light on itself 3/day as a spell-like ability.
Is especially long and thin, like a snake. Or a shoelace.
Is extra friendly.
Is extra slimy.
Is from a legless subspecies. Look at it slither!

Image source.
Is highly social; always encountered in groups of four or more.
Is incredibly poisonous. With patience and care, one can collect enough of its skin secretions to make one dose of Newt Poison each day. (Newt Poison, which is more poisonous to people than it is to newts, is administered by ingestion. Fort DC: 12, onset: 10 minutes, frequency: 1/minute for 10 minutes, effect: 1d4 Str, cure: 2 saves.)
Is of an especially striking hue.
Is from a neotenous subspecies; under the right conditions, it might metamorphose into a forgotten "adult" form that is larger and more dangerous.

Much like an axolotl.
Is particularly attentive; +2 Perception.
Is particularly loud; add 1d6 to Clamor damage and increase the save DC by 2.
Is segmented like an earthworm.
Is silent; Clamor deals force damage rather than sonic, and always dazes rather than deafens.
Is technically more of a frog; double its move speed on land.
Is unusually large; increase size category by one.

Image source.
Is unusually fast; increase Dex by 2.
Is unusually smart; increase Int by 2.
Is unusually strong; increase Str by 2.
Is unusually tough; increase Con by 2.
Is unusually small; decrease size category by one. Tiny baby!

Image source.
Is venomous; can use its fangs to inject Newt Poison.
Is very vocal, and mutters to itself constantly.
Makes complex whistling noises.
Secretes awful-smelling muck when disturbed.
Secretes hallucinogens. Wanna lick?
Sings like a tree-frog.
Spits acid; 10-ft range, 1d4 damage.
Stings if you touch it; 1d4 damage.
Uses rippling fins on the side of its body to swim around.
Roll twice and combine; reroll contradictions.

Newts!

1. Which means Clamorous Newts aren't technically newts; their creation was fairly early in the evolutionary history of the amphibians, and therefore they may have since speciated into forms that resemble any sort of extant or extinct amphibian that you care to name. I like the idea of them looking like newts, but you could make them more frog-like if you want... or, you know, caecilians don't get nearly as much press as they deserve.
2. It feels weird to write “penalty of +1", but I really want to bring back the “roll under" mechanic.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

So You've Been Tainted by the Unknowable Far Realms II

Some years ago, I posted a table of mutations as part of a template. I've since changed the way the tables are organized and the way they work; now a Tainted character gets to pick as many mutations as they want off of each table, with the caveat that for each one they pick, they have to roll one at random off the same table. I'm posting the re-organized tables here so I can refer to them in future posts.

It should be noted that I cribbed some ideas from the wonderful Scrap Princess, whose blog, “Monster Manual Sewn From Pants", is linked over there on the right.

d100 -- Minor Mutations

1d12 pairs of vestigial humanoid legs on torso.
1d12 pairs of vestigial insectoid legs on torso.
1d12 pairs of vestigial tentacles on torso.
1d12 tentacles instead of legs.
1d4 extra fingers & toes (roll separately for each limb)
A cluster of 2d12 small tentacles (about six inches long) can be found on your… [roll 1d6. 1: shoulder 2: knee 3: chest 4: neck 6: spine]
Acrid green smoke drifts upward from your apparently-empty eye sockets at all times. This does not affect your ability to see.
Alcohol is like acid to you.
All of your bodily fluids are replaced with quicksilver. It can be used for magical or alchemical purposes, but you have to purify the hell out of it first, lest you inadvertently open portals to places where you really don’t want to go.
All of your voluntary motions are accompanied by flickers of bale fire.
Ashen skin, milky eyes, gaunt appearance.
Batlike ears.

Townsend's Big-Eared Bat
(Wikimedia Commons)
Beak.
Birdlike legs.
Cat eyes.
Chitinous segmented tongue.
Complex network of cartilaginous tubes in respiratory system constantly produces eerie music at the edge of hearing.
Compound eyes.
Covered in cilia. They keep you clean and occasionally pass morsels of food into your mouth. They do so completely autonomically.
Covered in protruding veins.
Cuttlefish eyes.

Cuttlefish Eye
(Wikimedia Commons)
Double normal number of legs. Arranged in radially symmetrical manner.
Every so often, something twitches or wriggles under your skin.
Eyes are an unnatural color of the player's choice.
Hair replaced with chitinous tendrils. Yes, that includes body hair and facial hair. Yes, they grow at a normal hair-growth rate. Cutting them hurts like hell. They spasm uncontrollably at all times.
Hair replaced with chitinous tendrils. Yes, that includes body hair and facial hair. Yes, they grow at a normal hair-growth rate. Cutting them hurts like hell. You have complete control over their movement.
Hallucinogenic saliva.
Infested by symbiotic insects. 1d6 Con damage per day if they are killed off. Generally creep everybody out if they aren’t.
Insectoid abdomen.
Instead of eyes, you have a hole in your head the size of your fist that seems to open onto the blackness of space. Looking at it makes people dizzy. A natural wall of force keeps stuff from falling in. Oddly enough, you can see just fine.
Irritating buzzing noise accompanies you everywhere you go.
Lamprey-like mouths on your palms.

Lamprey mouths.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Legs atrophied and useless; you float a foot above the ground at all times.
Light pours from your mouth whenever you speak.
Light sensitivity.
Mirrors don’t work when you’re within 100 ft.
Mouth can distend like a snake's.
Mouth full of long, thin fangs. Anglerfish fangs. So long they look like they can't possibly fit in your head. Your mouth distends impressively when you open it.
Neck frill.
No neck -- head hovers a few inches above body. You can rotate your head 360 degrees with ease.
No nose -- you breathe through a pair of wide, squat tubes on the sides of your neck.
No teeth -- you suck food through a quartet of stiff proboscii that resemble fangs.
No teeth, inconveniently small mouth. Cannot eat solid food, super good at lapping up nutritious soup with tongue.
Occasionally, tiny faces appear in relief on your skin, as if very small people were trapped inside you and were trying to push their heads out to the air. Usually they look humanoid, but not always.
One eye, cyclops-style.
Prehensile teeth. Or possibly a mouthful of thin, bone-colored tentacles about three inches long that can snap into a rigid position and chew food when necessary. Same difference.
Radial symmetry.
Radula.

Snail eating tasty blue stuff with its radula.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Rivulets of fine black sand trickle constantly from all of your facial orifices.
Six eyes clustered at front of face.
Skin repels water.
Smell like smoke at all times.
Spots on your skin shift color with your mood.
Swarms of harmless but annoying insects gather whenever you stay in one place overnight.
The top of your skull has a ring of working fingers around it that form the appearance of a crown.
There’s a tiny mouth on the nape of your neck. You have no control over it. Sometimes it whispers to you.
Thick black blood.
Thin spires of bone protrude from the top of your skull to form the appearance of a crown.
Third eye on forehead, fully functional
Third eye on forehead, nonfunctional
Third eye on forehead, seems functional but definitely does not transmit information to your brain.
Transparent skin.
Very large mouth takes up most of the space between your sternum and your pelvis. No mouth on your head.
Vestigial insect wings. Way too small to fly, way too big for you to cover them up with clothing. (They’re very tender -- compressing them is quite painful.) Player can choose what type of insect the wings resemble.
You are totally squamous.
You can squirt ink from an orifice in the small of your back.
You cannot perceive any of the colors others can. You’re not colorblind, though -- you see an entirely different range of color.
You exhale sulfuric gas.
You exude foul-smelling black slime from all your pores constantly.
You exude foul-smelling black slime from all your pores when asleep.
You have 1d4 extra mouths scattered all over your body. None of your mouths are on your head.
You have 1d8 extra eyes scattered all over your body. None of your eyes are on your head.
You have a pair of mandibles at the back of your throat. They are both visible and audible when you speak.
You have a second head. It’s vestigial and underdeveloped; it doesn’t move or do anything; it’s just there.
You have a song in your heart. By which I mean your heart is literally singing. It produces eerie chanting in no particular language audible to anyone standing within ten feet of you.
You have an overlapping pattern of bioluminescent rings all over your body. Player can choose what color they are. -5 to Hide.

Blue-Ringed Octopus
(Wikimedia Commons)
You have seven long, thin tongues. They don’t quite fit in your mouth and tend to stick out the sides.
You only eat live plants. Right out of the ground.
You only eat tree bark. You need lots of it, though -- your daily rations weigh twice as much.
You shed your skin once a month.
You smell like death: -1 penalty to Charisma.
You take gelatinous form when sleeping.
Your body is bloated and pustulent. It’s not fat… it looks more like you’re full of tumors. This does not seem to pose a health risk.
Your eyes are large & bulging, and set on the sides of your neck.
Your footprints do not match your feet. Not even close. Player can decide what their footprints look like during character creation.
Your hair grows by 18 inches every day, then falls out at night.
Your hands and feet resemble those of a tarsier: +1 to Climb.

Tarsiers.
(Wikimedia Commons -- left, right)
Your head is stretched vertically into a four-foot-long tentacle. Your facial features are still present.
Your legs bend the wrong way.
Your limbs branch into two at the elbow, knee, or other halfway point.
Your mouth is set vertically in your face rather than the normal horizontal configuration.
Your mouth is vertically oriented, and runs from your chin to the back of your head. Any eyes on the front of your face are moved to the sides of your head, and your brain is somewhere in your torso.

Abyssal Maw, from the 3e Monster Manual II.
Your mouth wraps entirely around your head -- you open it by causing the top of your head to levitate a few inches with no visible means of support.
Your neck is three feet long. There's an elbow-like joint about halfway up that lets you bend your head forward.
Your nose is replaced with a cluster of tentacles.
Your shadow leaves smears of blood. Small ones, hard to notice. The blood isn’t human.
Your skin always takes on the color and texture of the last thing you ate.
Your skin and hair resemble that of a juvenile aye-aye.

Shamelessly re-using this image from the Hallucinations table.
Your skin looks like layers upon layers of damp, rotting cloth.
Your teeth are thick wedges of translucent keratin instead of bone. They require regular trimming.

d100 -- Medium Mutations

1d12 pairs of working humanoid legs on torso.
1d12 pairs of working insectoid legs on torso.
5% chance of interrupting any conversation in which you are a participant with uncontrollable, somewhat sinister, laughter.
Antennae instead of eyes -- technically blind, but you get Blindsight as a free feat.
Bone spurs protrude from flesh. Add 1d4 damage to all unarmed attacks.
Born with no brain -- skull contains hundreds of tiny translucent silverfish operating as a hive mind. You are completely unaware of this condition, since you have no way of checking inside your head, so you generally behave normally. Unfortunately, you make the occasional social misstep due to a different set of natural instincts: -2 on Diplomacy. In addition, spells that target vermin tend to temporarily screw up your brain-bugs.

Silverfish.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Compel hostility at will.
Compulsive liar -- introduce elaborate falsehoods into every conversation.
Compulsively adorn yourself with bones at any opportunity.
Compulsively confirm veracity of mundane details -- “And we all agree that this chair is made of wood, right?"
Conflict tends to happen in your presence. All Diplomacy and Bluff checks made while you are observing are at a -5 penalty.
Covered in dozens of small spinnerets. They spin cobwebs whether you want them to or not. You tend to wake up inside cocoon-like structures.
Covered in thick, thick fur. Totally comfortable with non-magical cold; take heat penalties if it is over 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
Direct sunlight causes you excruciating pain and 1 damage per round.
Every night at midnight, every animal (Int 1-2) within a mile’s radius of you howls, bleats, or otherwise loudly vocalizes for exactly twenty-three seconds. It took you an embarrassingly long time to figure out that this wasn’t just what animals did.
Every time you enter a building, there is a 3% chance the walls start bleeding.
Exhale insanity mist 1/day, save DC = your Constitution score.
Exoskeleton -- you are always considered to be wearing half plate.
Exoskeleton -- you are always considered to be wearing leather armor.
Eyestalks: +1 to Spot.
Fingernails replaced with barbed stings -- 1d4 extra unarmed damage.
Gelatinous flesh -- can squeeze through spaces as if one size category smaller.
Gills -- take the Aquatic subtype and the Amphibious special quality.
Gnat-sized pterodactyls live in your sinus cavity, teeth, throat, &c. They help you digest food and occasionally sing heartbreakingly beautiful, wordless songs.
Hollow bones -- you weigh half as much and take a -2 penalty to Con.
Huge bulging eyes -- +2 Spot.
Huge frog-like legs. +20 Jump.
If any of your bodily fluids fall on the ground, the next day, strange thorny plants will grow there.
Intelligent centipedes live in your skin. People can see them moving around. If one is killed, take 1d4 Con damage.
Irrational phobia of [player choice / GM approval]
Magpie-like acquisitiveness.
Mold and mildew develop in your vicinity at a rapid pace.
Mouth can distend like a snake's, and you have the Swallow Whole ability.
No arms, but when needed, you can extrude up to [roll 1d4 at character creation] pseudopod-like appendages from the flesh of your torso that function as crude hands.
Obligate carnivore.
Obsessive stargazing, astrology-based decision process.
Other people always know when you are saying their name.
Pick a cosmetic mutation from the Minor list. That is the only aspect of your appearance anyone can remember.
Poorly-played music or other unpleasant sounds causes you physical pain -- 1 damage / minute.
Putrefy food and drink at will.
Ratlike tail.
Rats are constantly going out of their way to try and eat you. They think you smell delicious.
Relentless cheer and optimism regardless of the situation.
Rugose cone-foot replaces legs.

A member of the Great Race of Yith and his rugose cone-foot.
Art by Michael Bukowski.
Sense of humor based entirely on horrifying cruelty.
Skeletal structure not properly built for bipedal locomotion -- it is very uncomfortable for you to walk upright, and you have to use your hands to knuckle-walk unless you make a particular effort to stand. +10ft speed.
Sometimes your shadow detaches itself and wanders off. It doesn’t do anything, but people tend to not like it much.
Spit acid 1/day
Spit contact poison 1/day. 1d4 Constitution damage, save DC = your Constitution score
Surrounded by unnatural chill.
Twisted, hunched, and asymmetrical. Half movement speed.
Unable to recognize value of sapient life.
Uncontrollable glossolalia several times a day. (GM is encouraged to roll for it whenever glossolalia would be inconvenient -- 10% chance.)
Venomous bite, as Medium spider.
Warped sense of aesthetics. Decay, destruction, vermin, &c. are beautiful to you.
Webbed hands and feet -- +4 Swim.
When you sleep, a shadowy form with glowing eyes, roughly the size of a housecat, climbs out of your mouth and stares unnervingly at anyone nearby. Its origin and motives are unknown, and it only shows up when you’re unconscious, so you’ve never seen it yourself.
Whenever you are asleep, anyone else sleeping within 100 ft. of you has a 10% chance of horrible nightmares that involve a colossal version of you cackling maniacally. You tend to get unpopular in towns really soon.
Whenever your blood is outside your body, there is a 10% chance it animates and crawls away like an ooze.
You always glow faintly, but once a day, you can emit a burst of dazzling light that functions as the Flare spell.
You always know when someone is saying your name.
You are incapable of intentionally breaking an oath.
You are incapable of storing fat. As a result, you appear skeletally emaciated, and starvation affects you much more dramatically -- skip right to the “lethal damage" phase.
You are invisible to living beings in their first year of life, with the exception of outsiders and aberrations.
You are poisonous, i.e., anything that eats part of you has to make a Fortitude save DC 10+ your Con score or take 2d4 Con damage.
You are supernaturally beautiful. Even if your other rolls on this table make you a half-worm monster with mandibles, you pull it off somehow. +2 Cha
You are supernaturally hideous -- whatever other symptoms of your tainted status you have are much, much worse-looking than they should be. If your other rolls on this table have no cosmetic effects, the player should assign some sort of mundane deformity; for some reason, it’s exaggerated in the minds of everyone who sees you. -2 Cha
You can hover up to three feet off the ground.
You can only sleep if you are hanging upside down. You have prehensile feet to facilitate this.
You can plant anything -- i.e., anything you bury in the ground puts forth shoots within a month. No guarantees on what grows out of it, though. GMs are encouraged to come up with their own sufficiently insane method of deciding at random.
You can produce 1 gallon of amber-colored resin a day. You have to eat/otherwise absorb twice as much each day you do this, though.
You can see bits and pieces of the ethereal plane. You have no way of distinguishing between ethereal stuff and material stuff without actually touching it.
You can taste and smell emotions, but otherwise have no sense of smell or taste. +4 to Sense Motive.
You cannot extract nutrition from food unless it died in agony.
You cannot sleep above ground. If there is no subterranean space available to you, you must burrow into the earth.
You cannot tell lies.
You carry a disease (player may choose from the rulebook) that can be spread by clawing or biting. Your travelling companions have to make monthly fortitude saves to avoid contracting it.
You compulsively poison food.
You compulsively record all of your actions in writing.
You corrode metal on contact.
You eat only live insects.
You eat only pearls. One a day.
You fail to understand the concepts of good and evil on a basic level, and are generally completely divorced from accepted humanoid morality. In a world full of ethical shades of gray, you are... orange. Seriously, your alignment is [Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic] Orange. Write that down. May or may not lead to hilariously tragic misunderstandings. Have fun roleplaying it.
You gain a horseshoe-crab-like tail, which gives you a 1d6 lash attack.
You have a second head. It does not have a mind of its own, but the extra brain mass gives you a +2 Int.
You have no head. Your facial features, brain, &c. are all located elsewhere on your body. (Player chooses where.)

You have the fragile, darkened, wrinkly skin of a bog mummy. You are always thirsty -- quadruple water rations, thirst penalties take 1/4 the time to take effect.

Fun fact -- this particular bog mummy is Grauballe Man. Grauballe Man's hands show every sign of having never done manual labor, and the last meal preserved in his stomach is incredibly elaborate, containing sixty-three different varieties of grain. His throat was cut and he was thrown into the bog; general consensus is that he was a ritual sacrifice, and some people say he is evidence pointing to the practice of sacral kingship among the Germanic peoples. (He's also in the right place & time to have been killed by the continental ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons.)
(Wikimedia Commons)

You know, instinctually, certain runes and symbols that, when carved into the face of a dead humanoid, cause its eyes to animate and crawl away as very small oozes. They don’t pay any attention to you or listen to what you have to say, but you can make them as long as you have a knife, a corpse, and about ten minutes.
You lay monthly batches of 1d12 eggs. (May result in some gender confusion if you are male.) If you have been -- ahem -- fertilized recently, each egg has a 75% chance of hatching into your biological children. If you haven’t, each egg has a 1% chance of spontaneous teratogenesis. Whatever comes out isn’t related to you by blood, and may or may not be harmless. Technically, each egg has enough nutrition to qualify as a day’s rations, but the idea of eating your eggs is viscerally horrifying to you, and you have to make a DC 20 Will save to force yourself to do it in desperate circumstances. Others may or may not have a moral problem with it, but the eggs do taste strongly of carrion.
You naturally grow small cysts inside your body. They do not harm you, but there is a 1% chance each day that one of them hatches and 1d12 creatures unknown to science crawl out of your mouth & wander off. If you forget to roll the d% chance yourself, the GM is encouraged to roll it whenever it would be incredibly inconvenient for you.
You only eat live animals. Swallowed whole.
You put down literal roots if you stay in the same place for an hour or more. You only need to eat ¼ of what you would if you didn’t get nutrition from the ground. Unfortunately, it hurts like hell to get up in the morning because you have to snap off all the roots that grew during the night. Or, you know, just stay there and see if you can get people to bring you snacks.
Your eyes are not attached to you -- instead, they hover a few inches away from your body, and slowly drift in circles around you. You can control their movement if you consciously think about it, but you can't send them more than three inches away.
Your head is actually hollow, and has a fire burning inside that can be seen through your eyes, mouth, and other cranial orifices. If the fire is extinguished while you are in positive hit points, you immediately drop to -1.
Your limbs are thin and spindly; -2 Str
Your limbs are twisted and malformed; -2 Dex
Your skin is one size category too large. It sags off of you and constantly gets in the way. -2 Dex penalty, +2 natural armor.
Your teeth and nails are made of cold-forged iron. Well, okay, technically they were grown, not forged, but they have all the properties of cold-forged iron.
Your torso is twice as long as it should be, and can bend and twist like a worm’s.
Your voice always sounds like a chorus of three talking simultaneously.

d100 -- Major Mutations

10 ft. Burrow speed. You secrete a slimy substance like a worm to aid in this.
1d12 pairs of working humanoid arms on torso.
1d12 pairs of working raccoon-like paws (with associated raccoon-size arms) on torso.
1d12 pairs of working thri-kreen arms on torso.
1d4 of your limbs are shriveled, useless, and constantly covered in some sort of tarry substance. Player can pick which limbs.
2d12 working tentacles on torso.
A large illusionary creature seems to follow you around. It takes great pains to hide itself, so usually nobody notices and you’ve never gotten a good description of it. Sometimes people just see something in the distance… or watching them through a window… now that you think about it, you only think it’s illusionary.
Abnormally strong teeth and jaw -- you can chew through stone given sufficient time.
All facial features replaced by forest of tiny wriggling tendrils. No verbal spells, yes blindsight, yes constant creepy quiet whistling noises.
Amorphous -- though your “default" shape is whatever the other rolls indicate, you can, at will, revert to an amoeba-like shape and ooze around. You are immune to sneak attacks and critical hits when you do this.
Birds HATE you.
Bleed (1 damage) whenever you touch living things.
Breath weapon 1/day -- player can choose the breath weapon of any wyrmling dragon at character creation.
Cannot perceive temperature -- immune to heat and cold damage.
Cannot speak -- produce only birdsong when you try.
Cause fear at random. (20% chance of activation whenever you are speaking with an NPC)
Cause fear at will.
Centaur-style body plan, but instead of a horse, your lower half resembles a house centipede.

House Centipede.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Centaur-style body plan, but instead of a horse, your lower half resembles a silverfish.
Centaur-style body plan, but instead of a horse, your lower half resembles an earthworm.
Consume metal as rust monster.
Every part of you except your head, hands, and feet is invisible, intangible, inaudible and otherwise undetectable. You get bonuses to AC and Stealth as if you were two size categories smaller. (These bonuses can be negated -- if someone tries to hit you with a ghost touch weapon, you don't get this special AC bonus; if you're trying to sneak past something that can see invisibility, you don't get the stealth bonus, etc.)
Exoskeleton -- you are always considered to be wearing full plate.
Gaze attack as Blindheim. Unfortunately, you can't switch it off. You might want to wear a blindfold when you're around people.
Gelatinous skeletal structure: you gain the “compression" special ability.
Incapable of using proper nouns in speech or writing, including the names of your companions, the town where you live, &c.
Insect mandibles instead of mouth. You can’t cast verbal spells or speak coherently (bet you learned to write at an impressive speed, though) -- but you get a 1d8 bite attack.
Instead of a normal nose, you are covered in crater-like nostrils (one every few inches or so, distribution apparently random). About once a minute or so, a tentacle shoots out of one and writhes around for a bit -- this is how you breathe. It’s really hard to suffocate you, but you also creep people the hell out.
It takes a genuine effort for you to make noise. +10 on Move Silently, but nobody can hear you from more than a few feet away, even if you yell.
Killing you would take a lot of work. Your skull is made of adamantine, and whatever is inside it (you assume brains, but who knows, right) can grow an entire body back from nothing. If you die, your body decays into goo within 24 hours, leaving just your metal skull & contents thereof. Your body grows back in 3d4 days, then comes back to life. Downside: you have to roll twice more on the Minor table each time this happens. 50% chance this whole sordid drama has already happened to you 1d4 times by the time the campaign begins. Oh, and if someone knows about your condition, they can totally kill you by just waiting for your body to decay then stabbing through your foramen magnum, so don't get too cocky.
Like a crow with a golden tongue, you have an unfortunate compulsion to speak in gnomic simile & metaphor.
Long arms and legs, flat ray-like body (no gills or sting, yes mouth on bottom and eyes on top). You crawl around in a manner not unlike a tree frog and have a climb speed equal to your walking speed.
Long, thin, prehensile tongue; can wield additional light weapon with -2 penalty (on top of any other relevant penalties); 5% chance of arcane spell failure when verbal components are involved.
Long, thin, transparent claws can unfold out of your mouth (giving you two 1d4 claw attacks). If you have no mouth, they come out of some other orifice. No, not that one.
Microcephalic; -2 Int
Mindless undead like you. If you come within fifty feet of them, they drop what they’re doing and follow you around like puppies. Like large, skeletal, mindlessly vicious puppies who won’t let anyone else near you under pain of being rent to shreds. They don’t listen to you at all, but their creator can call them off if they feel like it.
Mosquito-like proboscis coiled at back of throat. Once a week, you must drain large quantities of blood from a warm-blooded creature. The process takes an hour and leaves you too bloated to fit into your armor for one day. Otherwise, you don’t need to eat.
Mushrooms grow on your skin. 25% chance a given mushroom is poisonous, 10% chance it is hallucinogenic, 0% chance it is tasty.
No arms; Mage Hand at will.
No mouth. Can’t speak, can’t cast verbal spells, can totally photosynthesize.
Obligate cannibal.
Once a month, you spontaneously generate 1d4 thin white worms with six rows of translucent cilia. They crawl out of your mouth (or other orifice if you have no mouth) and burrow into the ground nearby. You may or may not be aware that they do this in order to spend the next year growing and molting. When they emerge, they are six inches long, have a thick exoskeleton, and dozens of razor-sharp claws. They will seek out a sapient being, burrow into their flesh, and spend the next five years growing into new Tainted, who are technically your biological children. The “hatching" process is definitely fatal to the host.
Replace one arm with large insect leg. 1d6 claw attack, can’t do anything that requires two hands with opposable thumbs.
Spit sovereign glue 1/week.
Suggestion as a 1/day spell-like ability.
The entire top half of your skull has been replaced by huge curling ram horns. (You assume your brain is in there somewhere, though.) You can use them to do 1d8 damage on a charge. Your nose & mouth had to be shifted down to make room for them, and your eyes are moved to your chin if they were still on the front of your face. Oh, and you have a really muscular neck to hold those horns up. FYI.
You do not eat, but instead gain energy directly from increasing localized entropy. The best way to do this, for your purposes, is to take something elaborate, complicated, & artificially constructed, and then smashing it to dust. You have to do this once per day. Your equivalent of “trail rations" is basically a sack of cheap objets d'art and a hammer.
The exact reverse of the above. In order to sustain your existence, you have to spend 2 hours each day crafting complex and elegant artificial structures out of whatever comes to hand. Scrimshaw, architecture, painting... whatever.
The taint of the Far Realms had a particularly unfortunate effect on you when you were in the womb -- the mutations it provoked in your body turned out to be non-survivable, and you were stillborn. You weren't allowed to get off that easily, though, and you're still kind of alive. Kind of. You look a bit like a zombie fetus, to be honest. It's not pretty, but you can still walk and whatnot. Your size is Tiny and you count as undead for all relevant effects.
Though you may or may not be horrifically squamous and tentacular, there's just something about you. Every time you meet a humanoid you have not met before, there is a 1% chance of them falling desperately in love with you.
Unusual body chemistry: you are immune to all poisons, but you find the following category of mundane items toxic. (Roll 1d6: 1 -- fruit (ingestion), 2 -- wood (injury), 3 -- silver (contact), 4 -- fungus (contact), 5 -- gemstones (contact), 6 -- fish (ingestion))
Weirdly light and flimsy for your apparent size. -4 Str, -4 Con, 1/4 weight.
When you die, the ground directly below you is tainted by the Far Realms, and children in the area will start being born Tainted.
Whenever your blood is spilled, there is a 25% chance it turns anything it touches to stone.
Working insect wings -- 10 ft. Fly speed (poor maneuverability). Player can choose what type of insect the wings resemble.
You are actually a hive-mind of 3d4 identical diminutive individuals who maintain a symbiotic relationship with the exoskeletal husk that is your “real" body. None of the components of the hive mind can go more than 50ft from the husk -- if they do, they pass out immediately. You still count as one person for all relevant effects.
You are always hungry. So, so hungry. You require quadruple rations, but you can eat anything flammable.
You are incapable of causing physical harm to anyone who knows your name.
You are one size category larger than you would be otherwise. You look swollen and disproportionate.
You are one size category smaller than you would be otherwise. You look withered and shriveled.
You are two size categories smaller than you would be otherwise, and you have a second, identical body. You can control both bodies simultaneously with ease -- basically you are a very small hive mind. Your two bodies cannot move more than five feet away from each other; if someone else forces them apart, you fall unconscious until this is corrected. If one is killed, the other goes into a coma until it is raised.
You are two size categories smaller than you would be otherwise. Once a week, you can burrow into the skull of any creature two or more size categories larger than you and control the body’s motions. The creature has to be alive but at negative hit points when you do this, and it decays too much to keep working after 1d6 days (roll separately each time you do this.)
You can cast ethereal jaunt once per week. Except you don't go to the Ethereal Plane, but a different, previously unheard-of, overlapping plane. Things live there. They're hungry. Each time you do it, 10% chance something tries to eat you. GM is encouraged to generate a stack of random monsters with varied CRs for this purpose.
You can curl up like a pillbug / roly poly / giant isopod. You also have segmented plates on your back like said animals. +1 natural armor.
You can only eat the flesh of sapient creatures (Int 5+).
You can only sustain yourself on a diet of the still-beating hearts of birds. Naturally, this involves vivisecting at least one bird a day at mealtimes. Packing rations is very difficult, and fancy dinner parties are generally out.
You can see people's true faces -- +10 to beat a disguise check, +5 to sense motive. Shaken if you see someone particularly evil.
You cannot sleep within 500 feet of artificially cultivated plants.
You cannot touch wood -- you pass right through it.
You don't sleep; you are powered by the dreams of children. This might sound kind of cutesy, but here's how that goes down. This incorporeal rat-monkey-thing lives in your head, where you are constantly aware of it perusing its collection of dreams -- meaning that, literally in the back of your mind, there are surreal dreamscapes running through your thoughts. Anyway, every night at midnight, rat-monkey climbs out of your head, runs off to the nearest sleeping child, and climbs into its head. The kid wakes up somewhat traumatized, and you feel quite refreshed. Rat-monkey then comes back to your head with new dreams for its collection. It scampers like hell, so it can cover about 100 miles in a night. If rat-monkey is killed while it's outside your head, you spend 1d4 weeks catatonic while a new one coalesces inside your brain.
You don’t breathe, but you do have to eat a pound of rust every day.
You don’t have to breathe, but you do have to drink a cup of tears harvested from a sapient creature daily.
You don’t need to eat -- once per day, you draw sustenance from the soil. The process takes roughly an hour, and turns about a cubic foot of soil into fine black sand.
You don’t sleep. However, you have to spend eight hours a day standing perfectly still while weird ethereal tendrils extrude from your face and collect… something… from the air. If you move during this process, the tendrils freak the hell out. You take 1d4 Con damage and have to start all over. Failing to do this means you are treated as though you have not slept.
You eat memories. Once a week, you have to come into skin-to-skin contact with a sapient being for thirty seconds and eat one day of their memories. They will pass out and awaken with no memories of the last twenty-four hours. The process is in no way seamless -- they’ll definitely notice the missing day. You do not eat otherwise.
You eat names. In order to eat someone’s name, you must maintain skin-to-skin contact with them for half an hour. They must be both sapient and alive. When you are finished, neither they nor anyone else (except you) remember their name. If they die before the month is out, you have to feed again within a day. You do not eat otherwise.
You exhale a vapor with addictive properties.
You feed on suffering. Once a week, you have to spend one hour causing a sapient being significant physical or emotional pain. You do not eat otherwise.
You have a second head. It’s fully developed, and has a mind of its own. It’s also an animal’s head, not a humanoid one. It has standard animal intelligence. Player can choose which animal.
You have a second head. It’s fully developed, and moves around under your control. (There is not a second mind in the head.)
You have a second stomach. You can control whether stuff you swallow goes into it, which is important because it works differently. Anything in your second stomach is kept alive (and aware) if you bit it off something that hadn't been dead for more than two minutes. You digest it over the course of a month. Yes, this means you can save on raise dead by biting off your buddy's thumb and bringing it to someone who can cast regenerate & doesn't mind mutants who vomit body parts at him. Your buddy's going to be fully conscious and aware the whole time, though, so he takes 1 point of Wisdom drain for every day you spend digesting him.
You have an instinctual understanding of the Runes of Thuurrlmn. If you are not an arcane spellcaster, choose 1d4 cantrips off of the spell list of an arcane spellcaster. Once a day, you can cast one of those by spending one minute carefully drawing runic diagrams. If you are an arcane spellcaster, you can integrate the Runes of Thuurlm into your item creation, and thus increase the effective caster level of the item you are making to whatever number you want. However, this takes much longer -- double the item creation time for each caster level above your own.
You have no eyes, but it’s cool, because each dawn the closest Tiny or smaller animal/vermin comes and perches on your shoulder. You can see through its eyes for the rest of the day. You can send it sneaking about spying for you if you want, but its eyes glow bright green, so it’s kind of conspicuous. At dusk, it wanders off.
You have no sense of humor. This doesn’t just mean you’re boring -- you cannot comprehend, recognize, or intentionally produce humor.
You have no skin; instead, you exude a mud-like substance to protect your internal organs. Water tends to wash it away, so you take a temporary -2 penalty to Con during the rain, and a -4 penalty for 24 hours after any time you are fully immersed in liquid.
You have the brainworms. Yes, that means worms live in your brain. Take a 1d6 penalty to Wisdom. No, killing the worms doesn’t get your Wisdom score back, because they’ve already hollowed out little burrows for themselves.
You moult regularly. Replace your normal aging process with Tainted Ecdysis (see attached* table).
You move absurdly quickly. Double your walking speed.
You move absurdly slowly. Halve your walking speed.
You must spend one hour a day immersed in liquid. If you fail to do this, you take 1d6 Con damage a day until you can immerse yourself again.
Your arms and legs can unfold and extend to impressive lengths. Triple natural reach, -4 Strength, +6 to Jump
Your legs are half as long as normal, and you move at half speed. However, your arms are twice as long as normal, doubling your natural reach.
Your legs are withered and weak, but your arms are disproportionately large. You have to knuckle-walk to move at normal speed, and you cannot do anything that requires you to stand and use both hands. However, you get a +2 Strength for your absurdly burly arms.
Your mind leaks: 2d12 random NPCs (decided by GM at character creation) are regularly assailed by your thoughts and feelings, regardless of distance or other obstacles.
Your saliva is saturated with dark reaver powder. Luckily, you are also immune to dark reaver powder.
Your skin burns if it touches stone -- 1d4 damage/round.
Your skin is always red-hot. You need to invest in fireproof clothing, but you also gain a Burn attack as thoqqua.
Your skin resembles twisted, blackened wood. Half move speed, -2 Dex penalty, +5 natural armor.
Your tongue is a separate, worm-like creature with its own agenda & opinions.
Your touch rots any vegetable matter -- plants get saving throw at GM’s discretion.

*If your character is a ___, roll on the Ecdysis Table once for every ___ years they have been alive. That is how many times they have moulted over their lifetime. (Round down.) If they are a crossbreed between two species, average the two numbers.

Bugbear: 6

Gnome: 20

Goblin: 3

Halfling: 10

Hobgoblin: 5

Human: 7

Kobold: 12

Lizardfolk: 11

Ogre: 9

Orc: 4

All characters using the Ecdysis Table start as Tiny and do not grow to another size category unless they roll it.

Characters of a species who would normally be Large or larger as an adult should add +1 to their rolls for each size category above Medium. (E.g., an ogre gets +1 to all Ecdysis rolls, a storm giant gets +2, etc.) The reverse applies to characters who would be Small or smaller.

Ecdysis Table -- Roll 1d12

1-4: Extra pair of arms

5-8: Extra pair of legs

9 +: Increase one size category

You are considered Adult after your second moulting, Middle-Aged after your fifth, Old after your seventh, and Venerable after your tenth, with the normal age modifiers to your ability scores.

Bestiary: Galdikin

The following was supposed to be an entry on a table of magical side-effects / results of a botched spell. I let it get out of control somewhat.

Sometimes, when a spell is miscast -- be this through a wizard trying to use a scroll beyond their ken, the vagaries of wild magic, a rogue botching their Use Magic Device check, or whatever else can cause such results in your campaign -- the misdirected energy lets something through¹. A sort of mindless spirit, given shape and intelligence by the spell that the hapless magic-user meant to cast. These creatures are called galdikins.² Each galdikin takes a shape much like a mundane animal, often one common to the area, but with distinct visual differences based on the nature of the spell that gave them their form.³ Depending on the power of the spell, they could be anywhere from virtually harmless animals to incredibly dangerous creatures with supernatural intelligence.

Galdikins “feed" on the aura emanated by magic items. This does not damage the magic items, and it is not actually necessary for the survival of the galdikin, which is entirely capable of feeding itself as mundane animals of its apparent species do. However, if a galdikin does not spend at least eight hours a day in direct contact with a magic item, it feels an overpowering hunger until it gets the opportunity to replenish... whatever it is they get from such items. This is the overriding motivation of any galdikin: to have access to as many magical items as possible at all times. This behavior is the only way the wizard who creates them might be able to control the beasts -- they feel no loyalty whatsoever to the person whose blunders brought them into the world, but the more intelligent ones are willing to negotiate cooperation in exchange for access to magical items.

The thing that makes a galdikin a danger -- or a useful ally -- rather than a mere curiosity is that they retain the ability to use the spell that originally gave them form. Once a day, a galdikin can cast its “birth spell". In addition, if they spend enough time “feeding" on magic items, they are able to absorb some of the abilities of those items and increase their own powers. It is not uncommon for groups of galdikins to cooperate in order to build up a shared hoard for this purpose.

This man is having some difficulty with a fire shield galdikin. Or perhaps he is in negotiations and is offering it access to his enchanted trident. Who's to say?
(From the 16th-century Book of Lambspring)

Stats

“Galdikin" is a template that can be applied to any animal or vermin. Normally, this is only applied to Tiny creatures, but galdikins smaller or larger than the norm have been recorded. The base animal is whatever creature the GM thinks is an appropriate thematic fit for the galdikin's “birth spell" -- i.e., the spell that the inadvertent creator of the galdikin meant to cast. Note that galdikins are often Neutral, but can be of any alignment.

To create a galdikin:

Change the base animal's creature type to Magical Beast; they receive the d10 hit die and all other qualities that this creature type implies.
Give the base animal Hit Dice equal to the level of the galdikin's birth spell. (Galdikins from 0-level spells get ½ HD.)
The galdikin can cast their birth spell 1/day as a spell-like ability. The specifics of the spell it casts are always identical to the intent of the caster: a galdikin that came from an empowered spell always casts that spell as if it were empowered; a galdikin that came from a summon monster spell can only summon the monster that the caster originally intended; &c. The save DCs for a galdikin's abilities are Int-based.
Add 1d4 Intelligence points per hit die to the base animal. (Galdikins from 0-level spells get 1d4-2.) A galdikin from a low-level spell might be barely smarter than the animal it looks like, while a galdikin from a high-level spell could potentially be terrifyingly brilliant.

So there you go. Now, if you botch a check to use a scroll of fireball, you might end up with a sapient flaming possum... who then spits a fireball right back at you, digs your magic items from the ashes, and runs off. You're welcome.

Care and feeding of your galdikin:

If a galdikin is able to remain in contact with the same magic item eight hours a day for a full month, it will gain a new 1/week ability that allows it to duplicate one of the spells or effects that can be cast from the item.

If the item has multiple potential effects, such as a staff of frost, it gains only one of those abilities, chosen at random. It can, however, spend another month in contact with the item, and repeat this process to gain another ability until it has access to all of them.

Each time a galdikin gains a new ability, it also gains 1 HD and 1d4 Intelligence points.

Note: Calculating the CR for something that can cast, for instance, meteor swarm but has no other abilities to speak of is difficult to do with any of the guidelines I can find. I would generally approximate a galdikin's CR as equal to half of its HD.

High-level galdikin can be unexpected and dangerous villains, as demonstrated by the galdikin shown here, using dominate person.

1. Through from where is up for debate. One leading theory suggests that these spirits don't come from outside the Material Plane, but are always around, drifting aimlessly through the world, until they get the opportunity to take form.
2. Real-world etymology: OE galdor, “sorcery" + diminutive suffix -kin (as in mannequin/manikin). Because “dweomerling" is taken.
3. So a galdikin based on color spray might be, say, a parrot whose feathers are constantly shifting color; one based on spider climb might be a tarantula with a dozen extra-long, multi-jointed, hooked legs.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Bestiary: C(h)amomile Urchin

In the last session, Bork declared that “herbs don't steal women". Now, in your campaign, that doesn't have to be true. Introducing the:

Chamomile¹ Urchin

A plant that has grown into the rough size and shape of a human child, capable of scuttling around on its root-like feet. From its back sprout dozens of daisy-like flowers on long stems, giving the visual impression of a hedgehog.

CR 4; XP 1200

Chaotic Blue² Small Fey
Init +1; Senses low-light vision, Perception +4