Weekly What the Heck

Welcome to the fourth installment of my regular feature here at the Near TPK. With continuing apologies to one of my favorite blogs, the Daily WTF, I present... The Weekly What The Heck.

Each Saturday at 10 AM Central Time I'll post one of Jen's drawings of some kind of whacked-out creature, and ask my readers: "What the heck IS that?"

I hope my readers will approach the challenge in the spirit of "Yes, and ..." - building on previous responses so everyone's ideas can be used in the final writeup. Comments are now closed on last week's entry, and I hope to have the final writeup posted tonight. Comments will be accepted on this week's entry until I post next week's entry.

So... What the heck is that? What should it do? Why do its teeth point in opposite directions?

The Core Mechanic: Looking Back: Dragon Halloweens of the Late 70's and 80's

Jonathan at the Core Mechanic just published The Core Mechanic: Looking Back: Dragon Halloweens of the Late 70's and 80's. In it, he says:

I can't help but wonder "How many of these topics have be unknowingly rehashed and recast by the RPG community over the years? In print, online, in blogs, where ever?"

Readers have probably noticed that my posting frequency has fallen off, and I think here Jonathan nails one of the big reasons why. I hate the feeling that I'm creating something that has been created before, but there's so much content out there that it's a monstrous pain to find out whether my clever new post idea has been done.

That's probably also why the only parts of my blog I still feel compelled to write are the campaign log posts and the Weekly What the Heck (shameless plug - go comment on this week's WWTH). I was thinking about blogging tonight about the superhero character idea I had this afternoon, but I'm sure dozens of others have come up with a long-range area-effect flame-throwing hero named Hwacha, and they probably did theirs right after last week's Mythbusters episode instead of waiting a week.

I love Jonathan's idea of a PubRPG, though I don't see how such a thing would actually get created.

Why, that's a Cycloptic Elephantaur!

The final comments are in from last week's "Weekly What the Heck". The result is a timid, cat-sized inhabitant of the Nine Hells whose trunk can emit devastating sound waves or a haunting song and whose "mildly inconveniencing stare" reduces its enemies to half their current hp.

I'd like to thank Reverend Mike, wyattsalazar, RPG Ike, Scott and Reverend Mike again (with special thanks to Rev Mike for the name) for their ideas, all of which have been mashed together to create:

Cycloptic Elephantaur

Cycloptic elephantaurs are very rare inhabitants of the Nine Hells that spend their time using their trunks to hunt hellish ants. These creatures are timid upon first being sighted, but once attacked or even touched they fly into a violent rage. They are sometimes hunted by devils, who eat their eyes as a delicacy.

Level 10 Artillery

Cycloptic Elephantaur Gawker

XP 500

Tiny immortal beast

Initiative see reactive initiative Senses Perception +9
HP 84; Bloodied 42
AC 22; Fortitude 23, Reflex 21, Will 23
Speed 6

mGore (standard; at-will)

+17 vs. AC; 1d8 + 5 damage.

MGawking Gore (standard; at-will)

+17 vs. AC; 1d8 + 5 damage, and the cycloptic elephantaur gawker makes a secondary attack against the same target. Secondary Attack: +15 vs. Fortitude; the target is pushed one square and weakened (save ends).

RMildly Inconveniencing Stare (standard; at-will)

Ranged 10; targets a living creature; +15 vs. Fortitude; if the target is dazed and weakened, it is reduced to half its current hit points; if the target is weakened, it is dazed (save ends); otherwise, the target is weakened (save ends).

Reactive Initiative

A cycloptic elephantaur doesn't roll for initiative. Instead, all cycloptic elephantaurs in an encounter take their first action immediately after the first attack that hits, or the first creature that touches, any of them.

Alignment Unaligned Languages -
Str 20 (+10) Dex 16 (+8) Wis 18 (+9)
Con 18 (+9) Int 2 (+1) Cha 21 (+10)

Cycloptic Elephantaur Gawker Tactics

Cycloptic elephantaur gawkers use gawking gore to keep enemies at a distance so they can use their mildly inconveniencing stare.

Level 12 Controller

Cycloptic Elephantaur Trumpeter

XP 700

Small immortal beast

Initiative see reactive initiative Senses Perception +11
HP 124; Bloodied 62
AC 26; Fortitude 25, Reflex 24, Will 25
Speed 6

mGore (standard; at-will)

+17 vs. AC; 1d8 + 5 damage.

RMildly Inconveniencing Stare (standard; at-will)

Ranged 10; targets a living creature; +16 vs. Fortitude; if the target is dazed and weakened, it is reduced to half its current hit points; if the target is weakened, it is dazed (save ends); otherwise, the target is weakened (save ends).

CSound Burst (standard; recharge 4 5 6) * Thunder

Close blast 5; +15 vs. Fortitude; 3d8 + 6 thunder damage, and the target is pushed 3 squares and dazed (save ends).

CHaunting Song (move; recharge 6)

Close burst 5; all creatures in the burst (including the cycloptic elephantaur trumpeter) make a saving throw and are no longer marked, and the cycloptic elephantaur trumpeter shifts 4 squares.

Reactive Initiative

A cycloptic elephantaur doesn't roll for initiative. Instead, all cycloptic elephantaurs in an encounter take their first action immediately after the first attack that hits, or the first creature that touches, any of them.

Alignment Unaligned Languages -
Str 20 (+11) Dex 18 (+10) Wis 20 (+11)
Con 20 (+11) Int 2 (+2) Cha 22 (+12)

Cycloptic Elephantaur Trumpeter Tactics

An cycloptic elephantaur trumpeter prefers to use its sound burst as often as possible. If enemies get too close it will use haunting song to move back to a safer distance.

Cycloptic Elephantaur Lore

A character knows the following information with a successful Arcana check.
DC 20: Instead of a death gaze, the cycloptic elephantaur has a "mildly inconveniencing stare", which desiccates victims half to death.
DC 25: The trunk of large specimens is capable of expelling a devastating sound wave that can warp metal and pulverize stone.

Heh heh. "Half to death". I kill me.

Weekly What the Heck

Welcome to the third installment of my regular feature here at the Near TPK. With continuing apologies to one of my favorite blogs, the Daily WTF, I present... The Weekly What The Heck.

Each Saturday at 10 AM Central Time I'll post one of Jen's drawings of some kind of whacked-out creature, and ask my readers: "What the heck IS that?"

I hope my readers will approach the challenge in the spirit of "Yes, and ..." - building on previous responses so everyone's ideas can be used in the final writeup. Comments are now closed on last week's entry, and I hope to have the final writeup posted tonight. Comments will be accepted on this week's entry until I post next week's entry.

So... What the heck is that? What should it do? How gross will it feel when the thing touches your character?

Do Not Scare Happy Naked Cleric

In this post I made a note to tell the story of happy naked cleric. I have nothing else to say today, so I'll trot this story out. Maybe a nugget of wisdom will reveal itself. It will also give me a place to mention that this week's Weekly What the Heck ends in 12 hours, so head on over and contribute a quirk to the Cycloptic Elephantaur.

A few years ago, Jen and I decided to run a one-shot mid-level 3e adventure for our gaming group. The group's 3e campaigns to date had all topped out below level 9, so the 9th level characters we handed out were pretty novel at our table. We came up with a dungeon crawl based on the old school module A4 plot - you wake up naked prisoners in a cave and have to get out.

We also set up the whole thing to be played for some laughs. It included a tour group of drow being led through the caverns by a bored tour guide (inspired by a recent trip to Meramac Caverns) and a gray dwarf princess surrounded by eager suitors carrying potions of love and potions of enlarge. Our pregen characters included a halfling ranger specialized in daggers.

Since the PCs were starting off with no equipment and barely a way out of their cages, I made sure the first encounter was easy: some gray dwarf fighters ranging in level from 2 to the mighty 4 (see 9th level characters, above). I also was nice enough to have one of them carry a number of throwing daggers so the halfling could become useful quickly.

Except that, upon entering the cavern and seeing a half dozen armed duergar heading toward him, the cleric won initiative and opened with his highest-level spell, flame strike. All the 2nd-4th level dwarves failed their saves. More important, almost every piece of their equipment failed its save.

I stood, stunned, thinking about the next few encounters with unintelligent monsters with no treasure/gear. The halfling's player shrieked something about the loss of the gear. The cleric's player looked over the results of his handiwork, shrugged, and uttered the evening's most memorable line. "Hey, do not scare happy naked cleric."

Field Notes of V - The Urns

I will start with the old woman, because she is where this started. She hired our motley crew to enter an underground reliquary and remove the dangerous vermin therein. She claimed that she required this service so that her team of experts could then remove several fragile urns from the premises.

She described some strange things, including a crystal on an altar deep in the dungeon. She also alleged that contact with the gemstone would result in the summoning of an angry archangel. I am uncertain as to the veracity of this claim, but am interested to see this crystal for myself. Perhaps I can convince Hobb to touch it. While I am at a safe distance, of course.

The dank excavation into which she directed us has so far been singularly unpleasant. It is infested with oversized arthropods and other distasteful vermin. Few of them are fit even for grinding into reagents or other experimentation. My sole encouraging find was two glowing glands from a fire breathing beetle, which I crafted into torches.

We have also encountered some members of one of the baser humanoid races here, which leads me to suspect the possibility of affairs more sinister than the old woman's simple vermin infestation. One of them shattered one of the old woman's urns, and we found another urn already shattered. Apparently the lowly creatures have no regard for the antiquities they are dwelling among. So why are they here? Could it have something to do with the crystal?

Battle Journal of Kain Gaa'zaith - Kobolds

Campaign Day 1 continued

The final door from the trash-filled room opened into one end of a long, narrow hallway. Spaced at regular intervals along it were large urns, presumably some of the very relics we were hired to find. Some of the cadre became quite excited at the sight of them.

We were quite surprised when a reptilian humanoid peeked out at us from behind one of the most distant urns. He appeared to be preparing to hurl some sort of projectile at us. Calibraxis, yelling something about "filthy kobolds", tried to charge down the hallway toward it, but was stopped short by another humanoid and two large scorpions jumping out from behind the nearest urns. The scorpions quickly had the cleric down on the ground.

A shouted command from me and a distracting attack from Marun got Calibraxis up and clear. Then I hurled him over the fray so he could pin down the far kobold that kept lobbing pots of glue at us. As the cadre advanced down the hallway over the broken bodies of the scorpions, another humanoid near the far one destroyed one of the urns and tried to flee. Calibraxis and Hobb, who seem overly concerned with saving these urns, ferociously attacked the two remaining kobolds and destroyed them.

Worried that the sound of the breaking urn would alert those nearby, we moved quickly to the door at the far end of the hall. It opened to reveal a large room full of the reptilian humanoids, with two more of the scorpions and four more urns. By this point we were well practiced at destroying the scorpions, and the dragonborn and elf slew many kobolds with fire and thunder. When there were only two left, one of them shouted at the other, and each tried to destroy an urn. We stopped them before either succeeded.

Now we have stopped to rest. Most of the cadre is in the large room, the elf and the drow staying awake in shifts. Hobb and I are in the urn-filled hallway, guarding them against any intruders. Calibraxis informed me that the shouting kobold told his comrade to "sound the alarm" before they tried to destroy the urns. We must be vigilant against whoever they were trying to summon.