Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Giant Ants


HD 2 Armor 14 Intelligence dog
Bite 1d6 Speed human Morale 12 
Alarm Pheromone: When a giant ant is first injured, it releases alarm pheromones, which have a 50% chance to bring 1d4 giant ants and 1d2 soldiers from an adjacent area, arriving in 1d3 turns.  (This can potentially snowball until the entire colony is summoned, unless the scent is blocked somehow.)  Anyone engaged in melee with the ant when it is squirting the pheromone must make a Dex check or get covered in the stuff, which requires water to wash off.  Ants instantly attack anyone covered in alarm pheromone.
Colony Pheromone: A giant ant rubs colony pheromone on itself to mark it as a member of the colony.  If rubbed on an inanimate object, other ants will carry it back to the colony.  If the gland is removed, it contains enough pheromone to cover 2d4 people.  If a person is covered with colony pheromone, ants will not attack you unless you harm an ant or damage their colony.  If a person who is covered with colony pheromone and kisses a giant ant while tapping gently on their head, the giant ant will recognize the "I'm hungry" signal and vomit a nutritious, watery pulp into their mouths.  Pheromone is washed off by water.

worker vs soldier

Castes (same stats, exceptions noted):

Giant Ant, Soldier
HD 3 Armor 16 Bite 1d8
Capable of speech, personality, and goals.

Giant Ant, Prince or Princess
HD Intelligence human Morale 7
Capable of speech, personality, and goals.  Has hands with opposable thumbs for some reason.
Capable of spellcasting as wizard of equal level.  ESP is a favorite spell.

Giant Ant, Queen
HD 8 Armor 10 
Intelligence human Speed 0
Capable of speech and personality.  Goal is always the welfare of her colony, which she considers to be part of her body.  Has fingers + thumbs. Always attended by 2d6 ants.
Capable of spellcasting as wizard of equal level.  ESP is a favorite spell.

Anyone who knows anything about ants know two things.  One, there's a million of 'em.  And two, they generally ignore you unless you fuck with their nest.

Unless it's far from their colony, combat with giant ants tends to recruit more ants to the fight faster than you can kill them.  Since a colony is 2d100 giant ants, those odds get ugly pretty fast.

The trick to navigating an ant colony is learning how to disturb them.  Adventurers who are coated with colony pheromone can walk through an ant colony unmolested as long as they don't crush or burn any fungus (grows on most walls) or harm an ant.  Of course, soldier ants might still be blocking off one or two places in the nest (eggs, queen), and the noble ants (prince, princess, queen) are too intelligent to be fooled by mere pheromones.

honeypot ants
Strange Breeds
50% of ant colonies are not vanilla ant colonies, but rather one of these strange breeds.
  1. Lockjaw Ants. Capable of locking their jaws on to their target, giving -2 to hit as long as they remain attached.  This persists until their next turn when they probably just bite again), but persists even after decapitation and death.
  2. Exploding Acid Head Ants.  As a suicide attack, they can bite so hard they explode their head, shooting acid.  10' range, 1d6 acid damage, repeats until scraped  or burned off.
  3. Shield Heads.  Soldier ants have huge, flat heads that they used to block off main passages.  They will not budge unless you vomit in their mouths (they are hungry from all the door duty recently) or hand-feed them a ration.  But really, the vomit thing is more polite.
  4. Honeypots.  Like easy to reach fruit, these football sized ants hang on the ceiling.  Each one functions as a potion of cure light wounds, but they will only share their belly-nectar with injured ants (or PCs who smell like ants).
  5. Plant Symbiotes.  The ants are friends with 1d3 treants who hang out near the anthill. They have ants in their hair and are too smart to be fooled by pheromones.  They are also a bit loopy because they have ants in their brains, too.
  6. Fire Ants.  Bite does +1d4 FIRE DAMAGE and SHIT CATCHES ON FIRE!  (Or +1d4 poison damage that merely feels like fire, if you're feeling less gonzo.)

ant colony filled with cement
then the casting was excavated
Type of Anthill
  1. Traditional mounds of soft dirt.
  2. Terraced ziggurats of packed dirt with stone decorations.  (The queen has decided that she prefers the aesthetics of human civilization.
  3. A ghost town, all the basements excavated and linked together.  An ant metropolis beneath dusty streets.  50% chance that the ants are warring with 1d6 ankhegs in a horrible guerrilla war.
  4. Hardened pillars of clay, 100 feet high.  These are not ants but giant termites.
  5. Colony has burrowed into a graveyard or cairn.  Roll a sub-d4:
    1. Undead ant husks led by an enterprising ant queen necromancer.
    2. They dug too deep!  Many ants dead or trapped.  The queen will promise a great deal if you can rid the tunnels of undead, but she will not be grateful.  Insects don't understand gratitude.
    3. Ants have a weaponized the undead.  Skeletons are trapped in the walls and ceilings, ready to attack people who dig.  A rocky chamber can be opened that will release the undead on the surface (a threat the ants hold over a nearby town).
    4. Ants have fallen under the sway of a powerful ghast, who wears the body of their queen like a ballgown.  She holds dinners and balls, and dances with their corpses.
  6. Hollow tree.  500' tall and full of ant tunnels.

Obstacles Within the Colony
  1. A bunch of sleeping ants are blocking the way.
  2. The colony is under attack!
  3. A water obstacle threatens to wash off your carefully applied colony pheromone.
  4. Witnessing all of your pale wiggliness, a hard-working ant mistakes you for a larva.  Sighing inwardly, it picks you up and begins to carry you back to the larva chamber.  You probably lack any method of communicating a correction.
  5. Your clumsy human feet have caused a small cave in!  Someone may be separated (25%) or buried, save to avoid (25%).  The ants will repair the collapse in 2d10 hours, or half that time if you'd just get out of the way.
  6. A princess is approaching!  Quick, hide!
  7. A steep slope with loose soil threatens to send you tumbling onto a patch of fungus garden.  The ants won't like it if you smash their mushrooms.
  8. After using a rope to descend a vertical shaft, an ant notices your rope and dutifully removes it as garbage, dumping it in the otyugh room.
sisyphus the ant knows only two spells
transport water easily
and flatten hill
Guests of the Colony
It's very rare to find an ant colony that contains only giant ants.  Lots of other creatures live in ant colonies.  Predictably, the ants will react poorly if they see you killing their aphids or stealing humans from their larder.  Roll on this table 1d4 times.
  1. Human cattle.  2d6 shivering humans at the bottom of a 20' pit, guarded by a soldier ant.
  2. Fungal garden.  Glow-shrooms.  2d6 valuable truffels (200s each).  Guarded by a shrieker and a biter (both HD 2).
  3. Red aphids.  3d6 aphids (stats as flightless stirges) normally feed on sap during the day and are herded back into the colony at night.  But they also like to drink mammal blood.
  4. 1d4+1 giant assassin bugs.  Like the PCs, they have infiltrated the nest by covering themselves in dismembered ant parts and avoiding the nobility.  They look nothing like ants, and if the PCs seem to recognize that they are not ants, they will go into assassin mode, stalking them until they can be assassinated (stats as assassin 3).
  5. Trapdoor spider (HD 4, non-poisonous but possessing a hideous strength), living in one of the floors.  It's been getting fat on ants for a long time.  Mechanically, the trap door in the floor has a lot in common with a pit trap.
  6. Rival adventuring party (50%) or entrepreneurial merchants (50%).  They are guests of the queen, and have planned mutually lucrative venture.
  7. Feral child, usually found riding the ants, whooping and kicking them to make them scurry faster.  Smells like an ant.  Beloved by the nobles, who see the kid as a symbol of the endearing simple-mindedness and distractibility of the human race.
  8. A demon, here to offer bargains.  He is curious what an ant soul will look like.  Is there one small soul for each ant, or is the colony one big throbbing soul?  He has shapeshifted himself as a jewel-encrusted red ant who speaks perfect Common.
stay out of there, ants!
what are you doing
immature antlion
THIS ISN'T EVEN HIS FINAL PHASE

Machinations of Ant Nobility
Despite having Int 10, the queen is almost idiotic in her slavish devotion to her colony.  Her princes and princesses often have other ideas, however.
  1. Kill the giant antlion (use HD 7 ankheg stats; it remains buried in the middle of a well-disguised, conical-slide sand trap) a couple of miles to the north.  Ants are utterly helpless against it.
  2. Assassinate the queen, so one of the princesses can step in.
  3. Princes are lusty individuals, always casting a lascivious eye on their royal sisters.  However, they have heard that--and this might just be a dreadful rumor, mind you--that they actually die after losing their virginity.  The young lovers are eager for their nuptial flight, but both of them are quite fond of the prince (especially the prince) and would prefer for him to not die.  Find some way for this to happen.
  4. They desire the trappings of human civilization.  Furniture, beds, armoires, motherfucking drapes.  They also want a chambermaid, someone who will willingly serve inside an ant colony.  Yes, they are quite insistent about the chambermaid.
  5. One of the princesses wants to retain her maidenhood and become an adventurer.  Help her escape from under the watchful eye of her mother, but grab 3 eggs before you do--she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life without anyone civilized to talk to.
  6. The queen wants you to clear out the nearby dwarven ruins so that two of her children can move in after their honeymoon.  She will, of course, provide you with a pair of soldier ants to assist you.
ants are racist
Treasures and Rewards of the Formic Crown
A colony will have 1d2 of these, along with 1d6 x 1000s, probably buried in a wall somewhere.  That's what the PCs will be rewarded with (or what they'll be here to steal).
  1. 1d3 permanent giant ant hirelings, or 1 soldier ant hireling.  Fuck yes.  
  2. Grasshopper Token.  Turns into a giant rideable grasshopper.  (Stats as a horse that can jump really, really far.)
  3. Crown of Ant Command.  Except it only works on normal, tiny ants.  Looks like a chitinous band with a pair of antennae.
  4. 2d4 Formic Mushroom Caps.  Each functions as a potion: 
    1. Giant growth.
    2. Speak with insects.
    3. Cure light wounds.
  5. Blessing of Dutiful Offspring.  The next time you have sex, you will conceive 1d3 children who will grow up a bit stunted, but be extremely hard-working and unshakably loyal (to you).
  6. Armor of the Ant-Friend.  As strong as plate but as light as chain.  Once per day, you can shrink down to 1" tall for as long as 1 hour.
pictured: ant-person?
pictured: ant-person?
Ant Personality

Quick, decide right now how human the humanoid prince and princesses are going to be.  Are they just ants with thumbs or are they star trek aliens who are just humans with antenna stuck on?  Do they talk like chittery bugs or british toffs with just a bit of crumpet stuck in their throat?

Also, consider their faces.  Between species and castes, ants have a lot of diversity in their faces, and these faces have their own personalities.  Look at these ants!  LOOK AT THEIR PERSONALITIES!  HEAR THEIR VOICES!  THEY WANT TO BE USED IN YOUR NEXT ADVENTURE! #GIANTANTREVIVAL





Tuesday, March 10, 2015

New Class: Guardian Spirit

Instead of playing as a wizard character or a thief character, you play as a guardian spirit who watches over an NPC character.  The NPC that you are protecting is called your ward.

In terms of theming, you can be a westernized guardian angel watching over a luckless adoptee, an ancestral spirit watching over a scion of a dwindling house, or a nature spirit watching over a child who was abandoned in the woods.

Wards are usually orphans, children with evil stepparents, or survivors of great tragedies.  They are usually brave and virtuous except for a single flaw (see below).

hello child
i am your guardian angel
i'm here to decorate
your room is depressing as fuck
The Guardian Spirit

You're a spirit.  You cannot interact with the world except through your ward.  If your ward goes to see a psychic or takes some weird drugs from a shaman, they (and the rest of the party) might be able to see you directly, even talking to you, but until that point you're basically a dissociated game mechanic.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't put some thought into how your character looks.  Will you wear the traditional white toga, for example?

Your Ward
You're the guardian spirit's ward, a level 1 commoner.  (Base them off the cleric in whatever system you are using.)

Yes, the player controls both the guardian spirit AND the ward (you have 2 characters, basically), but there are two big caveats here:

1. The guardian spirit is bound to the ward.  They're basically a floating combat mechanic that can cast 1 spell per turn.  They can't scout, they can't talk, they can't explore.  They just float along behind the ward, undetectable and utterly unable to interact with the game in anyway except for their miracles (see below).

2. The ward is under the player's control, just like a normal PC, EXCEPT when the ward is tempted by their flaw (see below).  When that happens, control is shared with the GM.  Basically, wards will always indulge their flaw.  Greedy wards will always steal, short-tempered wards will always get angry, cowardly wards will always run away when things get bad (like a PC who makes morale checks!).

Flaw
Every ward has a flaw (chosen by the player).  It can be greed, fear, pride, avarice, low self-esteem, or an inability to form lasting friendships.  This is their great failing.  This is what keeps them from becoming a truly great person, and this is why you became their guardian angel in the first place.

Without you, their flaw will drag them down to frustration and mediocrity, but if you rid them of their flaw, they can become truly great.

You also can't use any Miracles (see below) to help them bypass their flaw.  If your ward's flaw is greed, you cannot keep them from trying to pocket money from the church box.

They will fail, and you will be sad, but this is part of the journey.

You must lead your ward to rid themselves of their flaw.  This cannot happen before level 3.  Once you succeed, your ward is finally ready to become a Hero of Good in the world.  (Or Evil.  There's no reason a guiding ancestral spirit can't be evil, ready to shape them into a beautiful despot.)  This also means that you don

Exactly what constitutes "overcoming your flaw" is ultimately between you and your DM, but the only condition is that a flaw must be overcome with a virtue.

A greedy ward, eager for wealth after a life of hardship, steals everything that isn't nailed down.  But after liberating some slaves, he sees their abject hardship and is moved by charity.  He decides to give them every penny that he owns so they can buy a farm, and is doing so, lets go of his flaw.

A cowardly ward fought alongside her friends for the entire dungeon, but upon encountering the dragon in room 22, was so overcome by fear that she fled back the way she came.  While her companions entered combat, she crouched behind the doorway, crying in terror and shame at her cowardice.  Finally, after hearing her companion's screams, she is moved by fellowship and rushes back into the fray, her tear-streaked face shouting a battlecry, and in doing so, lets go of her flaw.

this bridge is unsafe
go home
and wash your hands
that other kid is filthy
Guardian Points
You have a number of guardian points equal to 1 + half your ward's level, rounded up.

Miracles
To everyone watching, these look like happy coincidences.  They're analogous to spells, in the way that it costs 1 guardian point to invoke one.  However, you don't have a stable miracle list (not all miracles are accessible all the time).  Also, they are "cast" by the guardian spirit, so the ward can do a full turn's worth of actions in a given turn AND the guardian spirit can cast a miracle simultaneously.

At the start of each day, the number of accessible miracles is equal to 1 + half your ward's level, rounded down.  The first of these miracles is good fortune, and the other ones are determined randomly every day.  

Good Fortune
Your ward rerolls a d20 roll, using the better of the two results.  

1. Auspicious Weather
The local weather alters in your favor.  This effect cannot do any major changes (no tornadoes), but it can turn a sunny day into a cloudy day, and a cloudy day into a downpour.

2. Bad Fortune
Someone else (not your ward) rerolls a d20 roll, using the worse of the two results.  

3. Deus Ex Machina
This is only usable when the ward's death is both immediate or inevitable.  (Being trapped in a room with a crush-trap ceiling qualifies.  Being cursed to die in 3 days is not immediate.  And solo-fighting a dragon is not inevitable because the dragon might miss all its attacks).  It basically functions as a get-out-of-jail-free card that only works at the last minute (the turn before death).  This miracle is unreliable: the chance of it working is only X-in-20, where X is the ward's level (max 15).

4. Drop
Creature must save or drop held item.

5. Fated Path
When confronted with a blind choice between two (mostly) identical alternatives, the ward picks the most beneficial one.  Choosing between two identical doors?  Two identical chests?  If the DM doesn't know which of the two is better, the player can clarify ("The ward hopes to find treasure." "The ward wants to escape the dungeon.").  If there are multiple choices (e.g. three identical doors) this ability merely eliminates the worst choice, and then is determined randomly.

6. Find Item
Your ward stumbles across whatever item they most need most as soon as it is plausible (usually in the next room in the dungeon).  This is limited to common equipment that doesn't cost more than 10 gp (examples: ropes, rations, shovels, battered swords).

7. Flee From Death
Ward takes 1d12 less damage from a single source.  Alternatively, the ward gets +4 on a save vs Death or Constitution loss.  This miracle can be used anytime, even when it is not your turn.

8. Forget
Creature must save or forget something recent or minor (within reason).  Guards might forget to replace the ward's shackles before putting your ward back in their cell, or goblins might forget to blow the alarm horn at their belt.

9. I Just Met You, But I Trust You Implicitly
People often take an inexplicable shine to your ward.  As the charm spell, except you can only use it on strangers that your ward is meeting for the first time, and in a non-combat situation.  This is nonmagical and pseudo-permanent.

10. Lucky Hit
After your ward's attack hits, you can choose to turn it into a critical hit.  Alternatively, the hit does normal damage but includes some beneficial side effect.

11. Lucky Break
A tool or mechanism breaks or jams.  Can be used to foil traps as they occur, e.g. trap door jams after opening halfway, preventing your ward from falling.

12. New Friend?
You meet a non-hostile person or animal.  They make sense given the location and place.  Roll a reaction roll as usual, to see how useful the new friend is.  GM's discretion.



Monday, March 9, 2015

Water Daisies and Daisy Sharks


Water Daisies

Water daisies don't grow on water.  They grow on soil, in tightly knit patches, as dense as clovers.  The flowers are small white asters that bloom in the spring.  They are assumed to be related to flying flechettia (PDF, page 14).  They can sometimes cover entire meadows.

These flowers have a magical defense.  When one of the flowers is damaged, it turns the ground around it into water.  Or to be more precise, it turns the dirt into dirt with the consistency of water.  And then it releases an alarm pheromone that induces its neighbors to do the same.

And 1d3 rounds later, it reverts the dirt to its normal consistency.  After a few minutes have passed, they will repeat this as necessary.

They are sometimes grown by alchemists, who can turn them into stone to mud potions.


An example (because at least some of my readers will not be immediately terrified of flowers whose only power is making dirt soft): Soldiers are marching across a field of tiny white flowers, trampling them under their hobnails.  In the rear, one of the soldiers cries for help.  Her companions turn and witness her flailing in the ground, bobbing in the solid earth like it was a muddy pool, her arms splashing up flowers and dry dirt.

"Help!" she shouts.  "I can't swim!"

A couple of the soldiers stop to chuckle; most of them move to help her.  She must have stepped into a patch of quicksand, or a pothole that the flowers grew over (even though most of them marched over that exact spot moments ago).  There is a faint herbal smell in the air, like unripe citrus.

And then all the soldiers are in the ground, thrashing around and shouting.  Their armor pulls them down, and it is a struggle to keep their heads above ground, exactly as if they had fallen off a boat.  They spit the dust off their lips.  It flies like dirt but splashes like water.

A few seconds later, the dirt solidifies around them like batter.  Most of them are trapped, with only their head above the ground, and perhaps half an arm.  Some of them work themselves free.  It is difficult--very difficult--to get their legs free.  Their boots are like anchors embedded in the soil.

The ones who have freed themselves help their friends, the ones who were unfortunate enough to have both of their arms buried, but there aren't enough of them.  Where are the rest?  Were they under the soil when it hardened?  Is it their imagination, or can they really hear the muffled screams of their companions under their feet?

A minute later, most of their soldiers have been pulled out of the ground like terrified carrots.  The wagon is completely sunk, except for the roof, which sits a hands length above the flowers.  A dozen soldiers are huddled atop it, shoving each other to make room.

Some of them were sprinting for the treeline.  Some of them were taking off their heavy armor.  Some of them were frantically trying to dig up their buried friends.

Random encounter #1: A wagon, buried halfway in a field of flowers.  The sun shines off its polished, wooden roof.  It looks new.  Inside the wagon are supplies for a group of soldiers: a few spare weapons, bottles of brandy, and crates of mouldering grain.

Random encounter #2: A group of grim faced soldiers on the march.  Wagons carry a quartet of canoes.  If asked what they are doing, they will respond: "We are going to dig up our friends, so that we can give them a proper burial."  At the end of the column, a wagon loaded down with a hundred barrels of flammable oil.


Daisy Sharks

Daisy sharks are predators that have adapted to exploit the water daisy's unique power.  They are not sharks, but are related to mosquito larva.  (They have no winged stage of adulthood.  They are neotenous, like axolotls.  In case you were curious.)

The dirt is liquid around them, and a small area in front of their noses.  Every where else, the ground is as solid as ever.  Convergent evolution has made them fusiform.  If you ever manage to excavate a daisy shark corpse from the ground, you will find that it looks like a maggot that grew into the shape of a shark (although the fins aren't all in the same places).

If you see a daisy shark swimming towards you, it will look like a shark crawling towards you under a rug.

Stats as sharks (HD 4, 1d3 appearing) with the following ability:

Daisyphasing:  All dirt within 1' of the daisy shark, and in a zone 5' in front of it, has the consistency of water.  In practical terms, the target of its attack treats the ground as if it were water (as the water daisy ability).  This ability ends when the daisy shark is dead, or when it stops attacking you.

Although they are certainly capable of it, they are too stupid to drag people underground and eat them at their leisure.  Usually.

Random Encounters: Just use the random encounters for water daisies but add sharks.


Land of Flowers

It's been a long time since I thought about the Land of Flowers, but I guess there might be water daisies there.

The only things that survive there are flowers and butterflies, which limits the encounter options, but then again, encounters aren't the point of the Land of Flowers.  The island is supposed to be almost heavenly in its safety and monotony (at least on the surface, during the day).


This post is inspired by a game of Into the Odd I just played with +Chris McDowall.  Thanks for the fun game, Chris.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Stirges



HD 1
AC as chain when flying, as unarmored when attached
Blood drain (1d4 + 1 con damage + attach)
Fly as bat
Morale 6
# Appearing 2d6
Special: If a stirge sucks the blood of someone affected by a potion, they also gain the benefits of that potion.  Drinking a potion while a stirge is attached to you also confers that benefit to the stirge.
Special: The bite of a stirge is painless.  Sleeping characters should make a wisdom check to awaken whenever they take damage from a stirge bite.

Attached monsters:
  • Automatically hit on subsequent attacks.
  • Can be pulled off with a Str check.
  • When killed, damage in excess of their HP rolls over onto the PC.
Stirges look like fibrous leeches or slugs or tongues.  They are the size of two fists, except they have a row of caterpillar legs on the bottom and a pair of slimy bat wings on the back.

They spend most of their time resting in on cavern walls or in crevices, where they spread their membranous wings on the stone around them for stability.  In this way, they look like a stringy nodule of fungus, or a ball of worms.  (And are often misidentified by dungeon neophytes.)

like this

They hunt through their subterranean territories in large flocks, but they also spend a great deal of time sleeping on walls or amid stalactites (noise wakes them up). 
Stirge nests look like an inside-out clam.  Fleshy folds that trap moisture, built around a calcified shell, porous with tunnels and sinuses.  In the center of every stirge nest is 2d6 juvenile stirges (harmless, lacking teeth and wings) and a mass of black jelly.

The black jelly is dungeon honey.  If eaten, a dose of dungeon honey heals as a potion of cure light wounds, but also causes 1 point of Con damage.

Encounters (d6)
  1. A chupacabra (HD 3) with a shepherd's crook.  Behind him, he pulls a stirge nest on cart wheels, which contains his semi-tame flock.  He has taught them to squirt harvested blood into his mouth.  On his back is a jar with 1d6 doses of dungeon honey.  He desires trade with morlocks; he covets their jewelry.
  2. Bloodless corpse whispers a warning before a flock of stirges billows out from beneath her clothing and attacks.  Her name was Blanche.
  3. Lone stirge trails the party, flapping wetly.  It is hoping to lure them back to the rest of the nest (3d6 stirges).
  4. High up on the cavern wall, a group of stirges cluster, asleep.  Also in the room: something that usually requires noise to overcome, such as a rusty gate, locked glass case containing a treasure, a aggressive shadow, a pair of skeletons, or a junk barricade at the verge of collapse.
  5. A vertical shaft with something desirable at the top.  Perhaps daylight?  Stirges attack any characters halfway up the rope.
  6. Red Cloak Kiriak (Wiz 5), a goblin wizard who rides in a flying chariot pulled by stirges, surrounded by a cloud of blood.  He is a cackling pervert who goes out of his way to harm dogs and children, but is extremely friendly to fellow wizards.  In truth, his body is an empty shell, and his consciousness was transferred to his blood long ago (stats as ooze that can cast wizard spells).  He desires wine and the humiliation of warriors.
Dungeon Honey Variations (d6)
Stirges create different types of honey based on what kind of blood they've been sucking.  This might not be a random roll: when considering what type of dungeon honey is in a certain stirge hive, consider what kind of monsters are most common in this dungeon, or closes.  All forms of dungeon honey cause 1 point of Con damage.
  1. Zombie honey is shot through with glitter.  It is a dissociative, imbued with a touch of undeath.  When eaten, you become immune to emotional effects, including pain.  It also makes it impossible to read your mind.  This lasts for the rest of the day.
  2. Troll honey is rubbery like tofa.  It causes regeneration.  1 HP is regained every 10 minutes.  Lasts for the rest of the day.  It can even help you recover from 0 HP, but if this occurs, you also gain a random mutation.
  3. Orc honey is thick like wax.  Eating it causes aggression and irrationality.  Your attacks get -1 to hit and +1 damage for the rest of the day.  This stacks up to +/- 4.
  4. Goblin honey is more viscous than usual, like black mucus.  It grants darkvision for 1 hour.
  5. Dragon honey is reified greed.  This glittering black jelly with a gold sheen has no practical value, but anyone who sees it desired to possess it.  Each dose is worth a whopping 100s.
  6. Ooze honey is rich, royal crimson that encourages growth.  A child or juvenile organism that eats ooze honey will grow to be +10% taller, and will see a corresponding boost to their Strength at the expense of their mind.  (+1 Str and -1 Int, for most systems.)
Variant honey usually has effect on the adult stirges--it is only eaten by the juveniles.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Fleshgod Inheritors

This is my response for the Chaos Request Line, which is sort of like a year-round Santicore.  This is in fulfillment of +Daniel Dean's request, who wanted a race-class that wasn't based on a specific animal, element, environment, or mechanic, and who isn't a construct.


Unlike most cases, this race-class is not determined at character creation.  The only way to become a fleshgod inheritor is to venture into a dungeon, museum, or royal vault, and find a canopic jar of the fleshgod.

These are 2' tall canopic jars that contain the organs from a fleshgod.  These organs resemble their human counterparts only vaguely, and are about twice the size.  The organs are immortal; inside their jars they spasm and spurt, exactly as they have been doing for the last century.

Fleshgods are star beasts of such exceptional puissance that they seem to be nearly impossible to kill.  Once they fall to earth, they are too weak to climb out of their craters, and will merely lie there, wailing and bleeding, flopping around helplessly under our gravity.  Eventually, they will be eaten by insects (the only creatures immune to the fleshgods' psychic blasts, as they lash out indiscriminately as they are being devoured over the course of years).

Only two fleshgods have ever fallen: Belpharukh and Gilahn.  The fate of Belpharukh is well-known and outside the scope of this page.

Gilahn was revered as a god for almost a decade before the cult was massacred and their relics dispersed.  Eventually the great god-corpse was cut up and used to feed the ghoul armies that marched on Yog.

Some of the relics that escaped the destruction were the canopic jars of the fleshgod, which contained its most potent organs.  They are now scattered across the world, mostly in dungeons.  When a PC finds a canopic jar and consumes the contents, they lose all XP and become a level 1 Fleshgod Inheritor.

Alternatively, a canopic jar can be sold for 1000s.


FLESHGOD INHERITOR
A new race-class who isn't keyed to a specific element or environment, who isn't patterned after a specific animal, and who isn't a construct.

Basically, take a human cleric and replace Turn Undead with Cosmic Cyst (below).  Then replace all the spellcasting with Mighty Godflesh (below).  Additionally, they can sense when a dungeon/building/hex contains an unopened canopic jar of the fleshgod.

One caveat: In order to level up as a fleshgod inheritor, a PC needs both the requisite amount of XP and to consume a new piece of fleshgod flesh from a canopic jar.  When a Fleshgod Inheritor gains enough XP to approach the next level, the DM should insert a canopic jar somewhere into the current (or next) dungeon.  Not at the end or the beginning, but somewhere in the middle.  Roll 1d20 to pick a room if you have to.

Inheritors who spend time tracking down rumors and lost bits of lore should be able to learn the locations of specific types of organs, so that they can guide their evolution as they see fit.  (See Mighty Godflesh, below.

One last caveat: when the Fleshgod Inheritor reaches 10th level, they begin doubling in size every day, instructed and fatted by extracosmic energies.  Additionally, each day they must make a save or become an NPC, compelled to fly away into space in order to achieve their destiny.

Cosmic Cyst
Tear open a gateway to a cosmic cyst, a biomechanical chamber embedded in the substrate between the voids.  (Physically, it resembles the inside of a garbage bag arranged in the shape of a derelict machine shop, through which a rain of H2O falls in slow motion.)  Functionally, it works like the rope trick spell, giving beleagered parties a secret place to rest that is inaccessible to their enemies.  After 8 hours of use, the cyst begins its digestion cycle, dissolving anything inside that doesn't exit immediately. The cosmic cyst is already in used by another fleshgod inheritor of HD 1d8+2 (50% chance) or 1d4+1 fleshgod inheritors of HD 1d6+1, who is either present when the party first enters or who arrives shortly thereafter.  Once the rival inheritor is slain, the cyst is indisputably yours.  If you invade their home and then flee, your rival fleshgod inheritors might chase you back into your dimension (but they often prefer to avoid our caustic atmosphere with all it's filthy nitrogen).

Everything in the previous paragraph is vaguely known to the nascent Fleshgod Inheritor.  While they can access their cosmic cyst from level 1, most of them are smart enough to avoid entering it until they are confident they can overcome its guardian.



Mighty Godflesh

There are six types of canopic jars, each holding a different type of godflesh.

  1. Heart
  2. Lung
  3. Liver
  4. Brain
  5. Stomach
  6. Intestines

Each time you eat an organ of the fleshgod Gilahn, you either gain a new ability or upgrade an old one.  These upgrades are non-stacking: once you learn Heart Ability #1, you lose access to Heart Ability #2.

Hearts ooze black ectoplasm for as long as the are whole.  They are usually found in the bottom of chests that eternally leak what looks like engine oil.  They taste like bitterness and old age; your saliva dissipates into grey smoke.

The first time you eat a fleshgod heart, your skin becomes covered with fleshy spines.  You can no longer wear armor, but get protection as if from leather armor (but it is as light as no armor at all).  Additionally, you can rattle your spines together, which causes humans and halflings within 100' to save vs fear or flee.

The second time, your skin becomes covered a shifting membrane that reflects a foreign starscape.  You still can't wear armor, but it functions as chain armor (but it is as light as leather).

The third time, your rib cage swells, bursts, and hardens into a huge carapace.  The shell hunches your back and arches over your head.  You still can't wear armor, but it functions as plate armor (but it is as light as leather).  Additionally, you have a 20% chance to reflect any spell cast on you, even helpful ones.

Lungs flutter out of their broken jars like sodden moths.  A mad piping emerges from their curled tubules.  They taste like hard vacuum, a pucker that travels down to your feet and makes your blood pool around coccyx.

The first time you eat a fleshgod lung, you gain two level 1 spell slots that you can each use 1/day.  The first slot holds immanentize the eschaton and is immutable.  The second slot is empty, but can be filled by a spell of your choice.  To fill the slot, you must obtain a level 1 spell scroll, then cut open your belly button and stuff the scroll directly into your stomach.  While you sleep, the sound of the ocean comes from your guts (as if you swallowed a speaker).

The second time is as above, except that you have two level 2 spell slots, the immutable one containing wave of extinction.  While you sleep, the sound of a forest fire comes from your guts.

The third time is as above, except that you have two level 3 spell slots, the immutable one containing homeward disjunction.  While you sleep, what sounds like whalesong comes from your guts.

Livers invariably outgrow their canopic jars.  They feed on extradimensional poisons that drift through the ether.  If a liver escapes its jar and is fed a steady diet of poison, it can grow large and feral, eventually becoming a Fleshgod Hepatoprax (see below).  If eaten, it tastes like blood (only moreso) and causes your teeth to loosen in their sockets and the striations of your muscle to be visible beneath your skin.

The first time you eat a fleshgod liver, your primary hand turns into what looks like a black fractal antler.  It shudders as it instantaneously grows, branches, and collapses.  It deals 1d6 damage, as a sword.  On a crit, it drains blood (if the target has blood) healing you for 1d6 HP.  This also causes the whites of your eyes to turn red for several minutes until the blood clears.

The second time, your primary hand turns into a serrated claw.  It deals 1d8 damage, as a heavy weapon.  On a crit, it rips the armor off an armored opponent (if logically plausible) and hoarse cries of triumph in an alien language burst from a hidden throat someone in your guts.

The second time, your primary hand turns into a tentacle with an oddly bony tip.  It is snapped like a whip, and is powerful enough to snap logs in half.  It does 1d10 damage.  On a crit, the target is disemboweled, and their intestines fall out of them like ground beef out of a styrofoam cup with the bottom cut off.  (Vorpal, essentially.)  Additionally, you are consumed with a powerful desire to eat a piece of each creature you kill, and must make a Cha save to resist this urge.


Brains are have the familiar sulci and gyri of human brains, but are shaped like traffic cones. Anyone looking directly at them has all the colors in their vision red-shifted.  Brains taste fizz and pop while they dissolve on your tongue, and they taste like ozone and acid burns.

The first time you eat a fleshgod brain, you gain the ability to swallow opponents: make an attack roll against an adjacent opponent.  If that opponent has 3d6 or less HP your jaw dislocates, distends, and you swallow them whole into the caustic oblivion that lines your soul.  The target and all of it's possessions are usually unrecoverable.  That night, you spend a couple minutes painfully vomiting out all of their bones.  Each of their items has a 2-in-6 chance of also being ejected at this time; otherwise, it is lost forever.

The second time, you gain the ability to become a travelling tumor: You can enter a willing creature, existing as a tumor on their back.  Mechanically, treat this as riding a mount, except that you are fused with them and weigh about 1/5 your regular weight.  While so fused, you can still speak and use your hands, as normal.  You and your host now share an HP pool, and you can redistribute HP as you see fit.  This also allows you to move damage between willing targets, as the donor's lacerations seal with slurp and the recipient's chest suddenly blossoming with sucking chest wounds, like mushrooms after a rain.  You can exit your 'mount' at will.

The third time, you gain the ability to lay paradox eggs: You lay an egg.  As long as it is kept watered with blood (1 gallon a day) it will live.  If the egg dies, anyone who gazes at the inchoate fetal paradox within must save or gain an insanity, and you will lay a new one in 1d12 months.  If you die while the egg is alive, your inheritor will hatch from the egg immediately.  The hatchling is you!  It has all of your memories and skills (although its mind is now speckled with visions of the interplanar gulf and the creaking abysms of creation).  So use your previous character sheet, with no XP loss or anything.  (You were inside the egg.  You were always inside the egg, even as you laid it.  It is a paradox.)  You have -4 to hit while you are still so small, but you grow to full size quickly, reducing this penalty by 1 per week as long as you eat a large amount of food daily (a small cow will do), potentially returning to full strength as quickly as a month.

Stomachs are rugose like a cross between brain coral and unstretched leather.  Unlike their peers, they are slight and fearful organs, and will cower in the bottom of the canopic jar, mewling in terror, recoiling from your touch.  They taste like rupture and transgression, a cross between a popping balloon and kissing your mom.

The first time you eat a fleshgod stomach, you get a freckled pot belly.  Not an ugly pot belly, a cute one.  Your other limbs narrow to aesthetic proportions.  Freckles travel across the pot belly like emotive stars.  Additionally, gravity is now reversed for you.  (Hopefully you ate the stomach indoors.)  If you want to walk on the same floor as everyone else, you can weigh yourself down with weights or a specially made suit of plate mail, but this is unwieldy and gives you -2 to hit.  Additionally, you are immune to cold and vacuum, and can survive comfortably in the void of space until you comfortably starve to death.

The second time, your eyeballs drift out of your head and begin orbiting it like IOUN stones.  Then another pair of eyes flies out of your sockets and joins the first, then another, and another.  You can see in all directions as easily as you can see in one.  However, you can only see through your 8 eyes as long as they remain in orbit around your head.  You can climb on things, as if permanently under the effects of spider climb.

The third time, your belly button vanishes.  Anything you say is now echoed by a basso voice located in the vicinity of your stomach.  Additionally, you can use dimension door 1/day, but you can only travel to and from a place where many sharp angles intersect (such as the corner of a room).

Intestines loop in on themselves, building a mobius digestive track.  Annular muscles push grey sludge through the loop in peristaltic waves, making a sound like a water heater full of mineral deposits.  (You do not have to eat the grey sludge.  If you do, save vs poison or suffer vomiting and weakness (-2 to hit) for rest of the day.)  The stomach tastes like broken teeth and bruised molasses.  You don't swallow it so much as allow it to slither down your throat.

The first time you eat fleshgod intestines, you gain an organ in your throat that gives you echolocation, allowing you visualize all solid surfaces within 30'.  It is very noisy; it sounds like a vacuum cleaner trying to suck up a dead cow at a foghorn party.

The second time, your eyes sink into your skull, becoming inverted cones with a depth far greater than your skull would normally allow (non-Euclidean spaces) filled with a mist that shares your original eye color.  This gives you X-Ray vision (stopped by foot of stone, inch of metal, mm of lead) for solid objects, but you can no longer discern colors (at least, not colors that your peers would understand) and so can no longer read books.

The third time, you midsection disappears entirely.  Your upper body ends at your ribs, which now have skin, even on the bottom.  Your lower body ends at the hips, which now have skin, even on the top.  You cannot separate these halves any more than you could before--your torso still exists, merely in another dimension.  Blood flows from your heart to your feet as normal; it just passes through another dimension to get there.  Additionally, you gain the ability to travel back six seconds in time with full knowledge of what transpired (usable once per day).  This ability is 90% reliable, but each time you use it, the chance of success drops by 10%.  This chance is only increased by eating the viscera of a sentient creature (which increases the chance of success by 1% per HD).  If this roll is failed, not only do you fail to travel back in time, but a paradox clone of yourself is created somewhere in the world that has all of your knowledge and abilities (but not equipment) and will work tirelessly to thwart all of your goals.


New Spells

Immanentize the Eschaton
Level 1 Wizard Spell
The sky turns an unnatural color, crows fly backwards, or slain animals laugh in your nets.  This spell hastens the apocalypse by 1 day, and there are entire cults dedicated to its casting.  Additionally, it has a useful side effect: for 1 hour, all clerical and divine magic cast within 50' (of this spell's point of origin) is weakened, and all creatures get a +2 bonus to save vs divine magic.

Chain of Extinction
Level 2 Wizard Spell
If the target fails a save, it takes 3d6 extinction damage, and this spell immediately jumps to the next nearest target of the same species as the last target.  Creatures killed by this spell immediately decay into gravedirt and fused fossils.

Homeward Disjunction
Level 3 Wizard Spell
Target takes 1d6 damage for every 100 miles it is from home.  Save for half.  If they fail the first save, they must make a second save, or be returned to the location of their birth.


New Monsters

Fleshgod Hepatoprax
HD 6
AC has leather
Movement as human
Bludgeoning tubules 1d6/1d6 + hemorrhage
Special: Gallstone 1/day.  Explodes in a 20' radius on contact (similar to fireball) that cuts target's current HP in half.  Save for half (so drops current HP to 75%).
Special: If both tubules hit the same target, they begin hemorrhaging, filling their eyes with blood (blinded) and dealing 1d6 damage per turn.  Lasts 1d6 rounds or until they receive healing (magical or otherwise).

They look like bear-sized livers that slide around on a trail of their own blood.  Although they have four limbs (and are capable of walking) they prefer to slide on their "bellies" and use their four radial limbs to shove themselves around.