Dragon Avenue Forums

3.5 Monster: Hash’ilk’Khan War Golem

2008-11-16T11:58:25-08:00

I’m working on this monster of my next campaign its supposed to be one of the arcane creation of the ancient race the Hash’ilk’Khan
Hash’ilk’Khan War Golem
Size/Type:
Large Construct
Hit Dice: 14d10+30 (110 hp)
Initiative: +3
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 26 (–1 size, +14 natural, +3 Dex), touch 12, flat-footed 23
Base Attack/Grapple: +10/+23
Attack: Slam +18 melee (2d10+9) and Arcane Eye Blast+12 ranged touch. *If available
Full Attack: 2 slams +18 melee (2d10+9) and Arcane Eye Blast+12 ranged touch.*If available
Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft.
Special Attacks: Arcane Blast, Improved Grab, Construct.
Special Qualities: Construct traits, damage reduction 10/adamantine, darkvision 60 ft., Spell Absorption, low-light vision, SR 24 (for area spells)
Saves: Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +4
Abilities: Str 28, Dex 16, Con —, Int 4, Wis 11, Cha 1
*They possess a primitive intelligence thus they have skills and feats.
Feats: Alertness, Combat Reflexes, Power Attack, Cleave, Awesome Blow.
Skills: Spot+17, Listen+17,
Treasure: Chrysm Heart.
Their natural attacks count as magic an adamantine for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

These metal golems are not so much built as poured . They are slimmer then an iron golem and smooth to the touch. They have only one large eye that glows a faint purple.

Spell Absorption(Su): Hash’ilk’Khan War Golems act as rods of absorption capable of absorbing any targeted, or ranged touch spell directed at them. But not area spells like fireball. This requries no action on the part of the construct and it can store up to 24 spell levels of energy.

Arcane Eye Blast(Sp): As long as the War Golem has six levels of stored energy it can use this abillity. As a swift action the War Golem can fire a ray of spellfire augmented by their absorbed energies. The ray deals 4d6 points +1d6 per level of stored arcane energy expended. (Maximum 20d6): Range 160ft
Half the damage is fire and half the damage is pure arcane energy.
It can use this ability only every other round.

Spell Healing(Su): As a standard action the War Golem can expend its stored spell energy to heal its self for 5hp/spell level expended

Typically a War Golem is left on guard duty with 12 spell levels absorbed. It is also not uncommon for dungeon designers to include magical traps whose true purpose is to recharge the golem.

Constrict (Ex): The Hash’ilk’Khan War Golem has the improved grab ability with its slam attack. In addition, on a successful grapple check, the construct deals damage equal to its slam damage.

Chrysm Heart: The heart of the construct is a magical crystal which allows it to store arcane energy. It is a valuable component in the creation of magical items that store magical energy such as wands and staves. It has a market price of 2d4x1000gp.
If the Golem is utterly destroyed such as by a disintegrate spell the heart is destroyed as well.

Construction: Only the Hash’ilk’Khan have the knowledge to construct these monsters.

Random Magic Item of the Day

2008-11-18T21:19:46-08:00

I’ve decided to restart work on my Ultimate Magic Item Table. Unfortunately, I lost the write-up I had and have to start over.

As a further exercise of my creativity, I can post a randomly selected magic item from the table every day or when the spirit moves me.

I usually don’t bother with calculations until I actually need that data. The game effects are written in 3.x—conversion to 4E or any other game system is an exercise for the student.

Most of these magic items are generated off the cuff (or maybe out of my mind...). Use of these in any campaigns for any purpose is strictly without warrenty.

Today’s magic item:

Accordion of Otto’s Dance

When this accordian is played, make a Perform Check against DC 24. (You can Take 10 if you like.) If you succeed, anybody hearing the music must make a Will Save against a DC of 10 + 1/2 your level + your Dex modifier + 1/10 the result of your Perform Check. Those who succeed can ignore your music. Those who fail must dance for as long as you continue playing or they can make their saving throw, with a cumulative -1 penalty for each failure they’ve ever made against your playing.
If you fail your Perform Check, you are stunned for 1-4 rounds, and anybody within 15 feet of you take a -4 penalty to any Listen checks for the next ten minutes.

3.5 - Diabolism - an idea

2008-11-10T11:55:21-08:00

So, I’m working on an idea and I want some help fleshing it out.

The idea is what I’m calling Diabolism, which is basically using a mastery of the demonic tongue to enhance the power of your spells. Basically, I want this to be a broken thing; it’s rediculously uber-powered, but it comes with incredible dangers to it, so that only the very foolish or very insane would dare attempt it - or PCs who want to explore some really dark and really dangerous aspects of roleplaying.

Well, I’ll spare the long discourse on how it works, I think most of you could figure it out from above. What I’m having trouble on is this: how do you break the spell system?
What I’ve come up with is that to master diabolism, you have to gain ranks in a skill that is basically specific to this ability (Knowledge: Diabolism, or something like that). When you want to cast a diabolical spell, basically, you substitute the demon tongue for all spell components. You roll a skill check with a DC equal to 10+spell level, but you use the result as the base save DC (adding intelligence or charisma, depending on your spellcaster type).
The drawback of using this is that it slowly eats away at your sanity (basically, introduce the sanity rules) as well as having terrible consequences for failing (such as taking permanent ability damage or summoning up 1d4 hostile demons).
But I wonder, is that broken enough? The only way you can gain ranks in the skill is by reading forbidden texts. While this isn’t a problem NPCs, it might be a problem for PCs who want to experiment with the ability, in which case, it raises the question of whether or not this boosts the power enough to make it worth it.

What to do with your tokens

2008-11-14T21:07:51-08:00

A couple of months ago, someone suggested making monster “tokens” to replace miniatures. These are basically pictures glued to 1” steel washers. They look great and my PCs love them, but I now have almost 200, and am making more every week.

Has anyone else who uses these figured out a convenient way to store them? So far, when I need to clean up I’ve just thrown them all in a box, but I’d like to find a system which keeps them sorted into some helpful order.

Is there something on Rune magic - not runecaster

2008-11-15T10:23:59-08:00

So, another idea of mine is something that is an ancient cultural secret of the dwarves. Basically, the dwarven mythology is that the world came into existence when god of dwarves described it by carving it in runes on a stone tablet. Since the begginning of their race’s birth, the dwarves have had a special society of rune-magic users who are the leaders of their clans. The idea behind it is something similar to the way that Chinese and Japanese treat their alphabet - that the runes not only represent the thing they describe, but actually contain the spirit of it. In some ways, its very similar to true name magic, only instead of speaking something, you write it down.
It’s very powerful stuff, but it’s also fairly limited. It can affect just about anything in the way that most wizard spells do, but it’s next to impossible to create something from nothing (evocation and illusion spells are out the window, but it is very useful for conjuring and binding, can do some minor enchantments and transmutations).
This is a closely guarded secret of the dwarves. One of the things dwarves do with it is to name their children. When an infant is fist born, the leader of the clan names it by carving a personal rune on the child’s plaque. If the dwarf ever does something like betray his clan, then his rune is scratched out - causing him to actually forget his name entirely - and he is banished.

Anyway, I’m just wondering if there are any books out there that have something like this. I’ve looked at the runecaster from FR, but that doesn’t quite work for what I’m doing.

4e - Bloody Minions

2008-11-04T09:06:54-08:00

So, I was thinking about minions and how they function in the game and came up with an idea I’d like to run across people here: Bloody Minions

Bloody Minions function just like minions except for the following:

HP: 2; Bloodied: 1; a miss never damages a bloody minion; see also minion weakness
Resist variable, Bloody Minions take 1 damage from any hit.

Minion Weakness
Any critical hit to the Bloody Minion reduces it to 0 hit points instantly.

Basically the Bloody Minion should be able to take two hits (baring the lucky critical). They would be worth about 1.5 minions in an encounter (they survive like 2, but only have the actions and space of 1) and would enable the DM to add powers that either trigger when bloodied, or only function while bloodied to the minion.

What do people think of this idea?

4E - Make Your Own 4E Power Cards

2008-05-01T05:44:07-08:00

UPDATE - going to post all the links in this post for easier reference.

Dungeon/Office Motivational Posters

2008-10-29T14:00:06-08:00

So the group I’m DMing is about to enter their next “dungeon”, it’s actually an office building ran by a super evil corporation. For some flavour, I’m looking to include some eerily “demotivational posters” that while at first they seem normal, they are actually depressing, and forebode that the company may be sacrificing it’s employees to appease dark forces.

The company’s name is SkyBloc. They are an umbrella industrial manufacturer/investment company. The Office building has a factory, several floors of offices, an art gallery and a massive library/office for the president.

Any ideas?

4e- Monster Design Feedback Needed

2008-10-27T08:24:17-08:00

I’m designing a monster for use in Rescue at Rivenroar (alongside the Ettercaps) for the purposes of scaling the encounter. I.e. this monster is to be added to the encounter when more than 5 characters are present (1 per extra character) and is used as a swap out for some of the creatures present when fewer than 5 charaters are present (with the idea being to adhere as closely as possible to the 110 XP per person present in the encounter as designed.

Does anyone have any feedback on it?

Spider Swarm . . . . . Level 1 Soldier
Medium natural beast (spider, swarm) . . . . . . . XP 100
Initiative +2 . . . . Senses Perception +1, tremorsense 5
Swarm Attack aura 1; the spider swarm makes a basic attack as a free action against each enemy that begins its turn in the aura. In addition, an enemy that enters or starts its turn in the aura is slowed (save ends) by strands of webbing.
HP 31; Bloodied 15
AC 16; Fortitude 13, Reflex 12, Will 12
Resist half damage from melee and ranged attacks; Vulnerable 10 against close and area attacks
Speed 4, climb 4 (spider climb)
Swarm of Fangs (standard; at-will) • Poison
+7 vs. Reflex; 1d6+2 damage and ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends).
Web Walker
A spider swarm ignores the movement effects of spider webs.
Alignment Unaligned . . . . Languages –
Skills Stealth +11
Str 8 (-1) Dex 13 (+1) Wis 13 (+1)
Con 15 (+2) Int 1 (-4) Cha 8 (-1)

MapTool and 4e games

2008-10-04T06:25:08-08:00

I want to start a discussion on map tool and 4e play by post gaming, since I hope I could inform some people of the program’s functions and hopefully I will learn something too!

MapTool is a Java based mapping program (free to download)that seems really well suited to handle mapping for d&d games. You can have set squares and tokens that are exactly like in d&d (3e and 4e) and most of the default settings kind of assume that the game is d&d (light radius, token sizes and stuff like that.

Example pic. from a player’s point of view here:

From DM point of view:

More to come when I have time…