d20 Despot

Monday, April 1, 2019

Which Would You Rather Fight?

Today's Monster Monday tackles that age-old question that has plagued mankind for eons - which would you rather fight: a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses? You can finally answer this question in your game thanks to these two brand new monsters: the horse-sized duck and the swarm of 100 duck-sized horses! And feel free to spread the joy with a new spell (for bards, druids, rangers, and shamans) that lets you put the question to a friend or foe and then watch as they face the consequences of their decision.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2019 Jonah Bomgaars.

This massive duck stands on webbed feet the size of platters, preening its glistening wing feathers with its mighty beak. It could reasonably be described as horse-sized.

Duck, Horse-Sized CR 2

XP 600

N Large animal

Init +6; Senses low-light vision; Perception +9

DEFENSE

AC 13, touch 11, flat-footed 11 (+2 Dex, +2 natural, -1 size)

hp 22 (3d8+9)

Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +3

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., fly 40 ft. (average), swim 40 ft.

Melee bite +5 (1d8+6)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks Mighty Quack (DC 14)

STATISTICS

Str 18, Dex 15, Con 17, Int 2, Wis 14, Cha 6

Base Atk +2; CMB +7; CMD 19

Feats Improved Initiative, Skill Focus (Perception)

Skills Fly +4, Perception +9, Swim +16

SQ hold breath

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Mighty Quack (Ex)

As a free action, the horse-sized duck lets out a booming quack. All creatures within 30 feet who can hear must succeed on a DC 14 Fortitude save or be shaken for 1 round. Once a creature successfully saves against this ability, it cannot be affected by the same horse-sized duck’s mighty quack for 24 hours.

ECOLOGY

Environment any

Organization solitary, pair, flock (3-12)

Treasure none

This tremendous duck is easily the size of a horse. With a bill the size of a tower shield and webbed feet the size of a smaller size of shield, this freakish waterfowl somehow lends itself easily to size comparisons. While it certainly seems to be the size of a horse, its mass is no doubt less, for horses have trouble floating and rarely fly unaided, while this mighty duck can easily do both.

Galloping forward on tiny hooves, these miniscule equines are all roughly duck-sized, though together they probably have the mass of one normal-sized horse.

100 Duck-Sized Horses CR 2

XP 600

N Tiny animal (swarm)

Init +2; Senses low-light vision; Perception +7

DEFENSE

AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 12 (+2 Dex, +2 size)

hp 17 (2d8+8)

Fort +7, Ref +5, Will +2

Defensive Abilities swarm traits

OFFENSE

Speed 50 ft.

Melee swarm (1d6)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 0 ft.

Special Attacks distraction (DC 15)

STATISTICS

Str 10, Dex 15, Con 18, Int 2, Wis 14, Cha 11

Base Atk +1; CMB --; CMD --

Feats Endurance, Run^B

Skills Perception +7

ECOLOGY

Environment any land

Organization solitary, herd (2-5 swarms), infestation (6-12 swarms)

Treasure none

What at first appears to be a distant stampede of horses is actually a very close stampede of very small horses, each one approximately 1/100^th the size of a regular horse (in layman’s terms: roughly duck-sized). Still, they gallop with frightening speed for such tiny creatures on such tiny hooves. While clearly duck-sized, each individual horse is much more powerful than a single duck. It would take a duck of roughly horse-size to take them all on in a fair fight.

Horse-Duck Dilemma

School conjuration (summoning); Level bard 2, druid 2, ranger 2, shaman 2

Casting Time 1 round

Components V, S

Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Target one humanoid creature

Duration 1 minute/level

Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

When you cast this spell, the target is telepathically asked a single question: “Which would you rather fight – a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?” The target is compelled to answer immediately (no save), though their answer need not be truthful. Once the choice is made, the monster in question (either a horse-sized duck or a swarm of 100 duck-sized horses) appears at a random point within 30 feet of the target. It acts immediately, on your turn, though you have no control over it. The summoned creature is hostile to the target and attacks it relentlessly, though it will defend itself against other creatures who attack it as well. The summoned duck or horses remain for the spell’s duration, or until either they or the target are slain.

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d20 Despot began 6 years ago today, and by the gods I will not let that anniversary go un-marked.

-your equine/anatidine d20 despot

Monday, November 12, 2018

HIATUS - Secret Project

Dear readers,

I thrilled to announce that have been hired as a freelancer on a secret RPG project! For legal reasons, I cannot tell you the name of the company or the nature of the project, but I think it is something you all would like. This is a very exciting time for me, as you might imagine.

However, for the duration of the secret project, I will not be able to keep this site updated with all its Monster Mondays and whatnot - both for contractual and for workflow reasons. With that, I am afraid I will have to put d20 Despot on hiatus until the project is complete. My patrons on Patreon will not be charged for the months that I am away, nor will I be able to supply them with advance PDFs of upcoming monsters and other content as I usually do.

Rest assured, however, that I will return in the new year, brimming with creative energy and ready to serve up tons of new Pathfinder and 5E material along with more GMing and worldbuilding advice.

-your freelance d20 despot

EDIT: They have announced it, so I can confirm that I will be working as a freelance junior developer on 5E Cthulhu Mythos adventures for Petersen Games. I am 100% on-board for anything that involves Lovecraftian monsters resurrecting dinosaurs.

Monday, November 5, 2018

Monster Monday: Crystal Unicorn - The Prancing Prism

Today's Monster Monday is the crystal unicorn, a dazzlingly brilliant construct hewn from solid rock crystal into the shape of nature's most beautiful creation - the unicorn. This creature filters light into a dazzling array of magically enhanced colors, and its flawless facets are able to reflect spells back on their casters. The crystal unicorn is at once a deadly foe and a wealthy wizard's prized decoration. And don't be to hasty in celebrating your victory over this overgrown knick-knack - when defeated, these unicorns explode in a shower of crystal shards.

Like the arachnocalliope, I originally created this monster for my current campaign. The party was fighting their way through the lair of an old witch who, aside from having a lot of stereotypical old lady habits, was also a bloodthirsty murderer who built the bones of her victims into necromantically animated puppets. In one of her rooms, the adventurers had to fight off her private puppet circus which included a wind-up ballerina with a wicked kick, a mechanical magician marionette, and a crystal unicorn.

The best part about the crystal unicorn is, if you grew up in the household of a fantasy enthusiast during the 1980s, you probably already have a suitable miniature. All that's left now is to stat up little pewter wizards and ceramic dragons.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Calaca, the Lively Dead

Today's Monster Monday is the calaca - or calavera - a skeletal undead creature that eschews the traditional shambling and menacing of its undead brethren in favor of just, like, living its unlife. A calaca retains most of the personality it had in life and - unlike other undead - doesn't turn evil!

Calacas come from cultures that have a more positive outlook on death, where death is just an excuse to celebrate a life well-lived. These unique undead creatures reside most of the year in the Boneyard - the purgatorial realm of the psychopomps who usher dead souls to their eternal rests. Calacas are sustained by the memories of their living friends and relatives, and as time goes on they become more exaggerated representations of their living selves, sometimes verging on parody. Calacas can be summoned to the material plane at places to which they had strong attachments in life, or by remembrance rituals performed by the living.

Calacas/calaveras are strongly associated with the Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos in Mexico, Día de los Muertos in the US), a holiday which blends Catholicism with native Mexican traditions regarding the dead. They have deep roots going back to the gods and ceremonies of pre-conquest Mesoamerica, but the modern calavera can be traced back to José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican engraver whose satirical pictures of skeletons acting like the living poked fun at contemporary Mexican society and politics. His most famous calavera - La Calavera Catrina - was a laughing skeleton dressed in the finery of an upper class Mexican woman, a caricature that Posada used to criticize Mexican women who rejected their indigenous roots by adopting European fashions and whitening their skin. Through subsequent decades of folk art, Catrina evolved and became closely associated with Día de Muertos, but always remained at her core a way for the dead to poke fun at the living.

Calavera de la Catrina - José Guadalupe Posada (c. 1910), via Wikimedia

Monster Monday: Skeleton Troop - Bones and Bows

Today's Monster Monday is the skeleton troop, a battalion of fleshless undead fighters armed with bows and bones. Now it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of skeletons. When I put those plot hook and encounter ideas down below each Monster Monday, once of them by default should be "The party encounters a skeletal version of this monster".

Scene from Jason and the Argonauts (1963) Colombia Pictures via Gamers and Grognards

The lowly skeleton archer has been the bane of many a beginning adventurer. It can shoot at you, but your retaliatory arrows are just going to pass through its ribs. Skeleton archers have been an enduring menace through every edition of D&D and similar games, but at high levels it can be hard to threaten the party with them. You either need a lot of them, or you need to stat up some skeletal champions that specialize in ranged combat. But, as we saw last week with the zombie horde, the 'troop' subtype is our friend. Now you can bring a whole bunch of skeletal archers to the table, but they all act as one monster, thus simplifying your job as GM without sacrificing the dangerous combat for your players.
The stat block for the skeleton troop below can fire mass volleys of arrows that deal automatic damage to anyone in their path, and with their troop attack they rip at any enemy that comes within melee range with their bony claws.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Zombie Horde

Today's Monster Monday is the zombie horde, a crushing mob of dozens of shambling undead, their insatiable hunger driving them inexorably onward. Zombies are nothing new in Pathfinder or D&D in general, but if you want to run a fight against a lot of them at once (as I'm sure you do), it can get pretty darn tedious to manage twenty-or-so individual low-level monsters. That's where troops come in.

The troop subtype is one of the best recent(ish) innovation that the Pathfinder RPG brings to the table. It basically functions as a swarm, but of larger and more intelligent creatures - a dozen individual monsters run as one big monster with a shared pool of hit points and an auto-hit swarm-like attack which ensures even low-level fighters can be deadly in large numbers. This allows the GM to run combats against veritable armies of men without getting bogged down keeping track of each individual soldier's attacks and hit points and whatnot, a task which I know from experience soon turns into the GM rolling bucketloads of dice and muttering to themself, robbing the encounter of its momentum and excitement. Currently the selection of available troops is limited to living humanoids organized for battle, but the troop subtype is much more versatile than that.

Night of the Living Dead movie poster, via Wikimedia

This stat block includes a number of special abilities to simulate our cinematic expectations of zombie hordes. Like individual zombies, the horde is staggered - able to take only one action per turn - but once the horde catches up to you it becomes a lot deadlier. The horde's troop attack does an extra d6 of damage to opponents it shares a space with. It also has improved grapple and the constrict special attack, which means it can grab and do ongoing damage to individual opponents that it overwhelms. Finally, once the mob slays an opponent, they take some time to devour them, destroying the body and regaining some health in the process. While D&D and Pathfinder zombies don't by default have the Romero ability to turn the living into more zombies, this 'devour' ability could easily simulate the conversion and addition of the defeated opponent to the zombie lifestyle.

Next week's Halloweenish monster will be another troop, but of a different sort of classic undead monster.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Vampiric Creature Template

For today's Monster Monday, we have the vampiric creature template. No gothic horror campaign is complete without howling wolves and blood-sucking vampires. If you're pressed for time, why not combine the two? With the vampiric creature template, you can grant the most terrible of beasts the abilities of the mighty and mysterious vampires, from vampiric cats to vampiric dragons. The possibilities are nearly endless!

Presented below, along with the vampiric creature template, you will find example stat blocks for a vampiric wolf and a vampiric saber-toothed tiger. Imagine a vampiric chimaera with three fanged maws. Think of the implications of a vampiric elephant - would it suck blood through its tusks? (yes).

As Halloween approaches, d20 Despot will continue to post seasonally appropriate monsters. You might want to stock up on ammunition and board up your house before next week's monsters arrive en masse to claw at your door.