Crumbling Construct - A Template for Ancient Golems

First off, wow, I am way behind on my posts.  Sorry about that.  Things are pretty hectic at d20 Despot HQ right now (currently a hotel room down the street from Beaumaris Castle on the Isle of Anglesey).

Moat may contain otyughs

I know I said recently that you would be seeing a new PC class here soon, but that has been delayed due to technical difficulties.  As soon as Kent sends me the awesome illustration, I'll post that new class for you, no matter what day of the week it is (there is a complete PDF of the new class, minus illustrations, on my Patreon available for $1+ patrons).  Updates over the next few weeks will be sporadic or entirely absent, as they have been for most of this month.  I happen to be moving to a different continent soon, so please forgive my irregular schedule.

For today's update, inspired by a recent trip to the British Museum, I've created a 'Crumbling' template that you can apply to any constructs to nerf their power, making them appropriate for lower-level parties, and giving them that ancient feel which you might expect them to have from waiting around in an eroding tomb for 3000 years or so.  Due to my aforementioned hectic schedule, I've only been able to test this new template on the stone golem and caryatid column, so the CR adjustments might need some tweaking (determining Challenge Ratings is an inexact science in any case, especially so when working with templates).

The following material given in gold text is available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.  Crumbling stone golem and crumbling caryatid column are based on material published in Pathfinder Bestiary 1 & 3, (c) Paizo.

Monster Monday Friday: Spinosaurus, the Aquatic Predator

It's not Monday yet, but I just read some new findings about Spinosaurus that place it squarely in the 'aquatic predator' camp, not the 'run at you T-Rex style' camp, mainly because Spinosaurus probably couldn't run.  You know how excited I get about prehistoric stuff.

Art: Davide Bonadonna, National Geographic, via Smithsonian.com

Obviously, I had to modify the existing stat block for Spinosaurus to take these new findings into account.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. It is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars, based on material published in Pathfinder Bestiary 3 © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors Jesse Benner, Jason Bulmahn, Adam Daigle, James Jacobs, Michael Kenway, Rob McCreary, Patrick Renie, Chris Sims, F. Wesley Schneider, James L. Sutter, and Russ Taylor, in turn based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.

Fixing the Weapons Table, Part 7: Daggers and Short Blades

Whew!  I just finished my dissertation and boy am I tired, so this article might be a bit brief, but it's still important.  You probably know my whole Fixing the Weapons Table spiel by now: the weapons table in Pathfinder is broken, I think I know better than the team of professional game designers that wrote it, etc.

Today's article comes from a struggle I've been having with myself (and the weapons table, of course) over the various types of daggers and how best to simulate them in-game.  Specifically, I wanted to incorporate the long, pointy stiletto dagger and the iconic, wavy kris dagger.

The kris modeled here by Jafar                 Aladdin - Disney

In the end I had to move some things around and add some new stuff, and it really fleshed out the dagger and short blade options available to your characters, be they old-man assassins or merely powerful sorcerers disguised as old-man assassins.

The following material given in gold text is available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.