The Quiet Ones

[Shawn Kowalke]

A gentle mist drifts through the clearing calming all it touches. When a sudden tension ripples through the air, the mist coalesces and lashes out with acid limbs.
The Quiet Ones CR 4
XP 1200
N Small aberration (air)
Init +6; Senses blindsight 60 ft.; Perception +0
----- Defense -----
AC 16, touch 16, flat-footed 10 (+6 Dex)
hp 37 (5d8+15)
Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +4
Defensive Abilities amorphous; DR 5/magic; Immune mind-affecting effects
Weaknesses vulnerable to sonic
----- Offense -----
Speed fly 20 ft. (perfect)
Melee up to 4 touches +9 (1d8 plus corrosion)
Special Attacks Wail of Anguish
----- Statistics -----
Str -, Dex 22, Con 16, Int 2, Wis 11, Cha13
Base Atk +3; CMB - CMD -
Feats Combat Reflexes, Weapon Finesse
Skills Fly +8, Perception +0, Stealth +9
SQ Rolling Mist, Sorrow Cloud, Corrosion, Phantom Limbs
----- Ecology -----
Environment any forest
Organization solitary
Treasure incidental
----- Special Abilities -----
Rolling Mist (Ex) A quiet one normally exists as a vaporous mist 30 feet wide. It is incorporeal, indistinguishable from a light fog and essentially harmless. It drifts about the forest seeking peace and is subject to any wind that would affect a normal cloud of this size. Anyone entering its area feels its desire for peace and must succeed a DC 13 Will save or fall asleep as the sleep spell. A quiet one can switch between forms as a full round action.
Sorrow Cloud (Ex) Once it finds a peaceful place a quiet one can concentrate enough to take more solid form as a small dense cloud 3 feet in diameter. It is considered amorphous and all statistics above are for a quiet one in sorrow cloud form.
Corrosion (Ex) Anything touched by a quiet one's sorrow cloud takes 1d6 points of acid damage. Weapons and armor will also be damaged but plant life is unharmed (including wooden weapons).
Phantom Limbs (Ex) In sorrow cloud form, 4 amorphous limbs can assist movement to increase the quiet one’s speed by 10 feet per round. Each limb can also deliver a touch attack but cannot be used for more than one purpose in a round. Thus the quiet one can deploy all 4 limbs to movement and achieve a speed of 60 feet, or make 4 touch attacks, or any combination of the two. Switching tasks for any number of limbs is a move action.
Wail of Anguish (Su) While vulnerable to sonic damage, the noise will cause an explosion of rage. The round following a sonic attack, the quiet one is helpless to do anything but wail in pain and terror. Everyone in a 30 foot radius suffers 2d6 points of sonic damage and must succeed a DC 13 Will save or be stricken with sorrow identical to a crushing despair spell.

These lonely creatures have been spotted throughout the Inner Sea Region, most frequently in Verduran Forest due to the many wars fought by nearby Taldor. They appeared during Taldor’s First Army of Exploration when many innocent creatures died seeking only peace from the atrocities of war. In some cases their collective fear and sorrow was strong enough to give life to these emotions, and the quiet ones have drifted through the forest ever since, eternally seeking that elusive peace.
Quiet ones are only aggressive if attacked (in either form) or if they have found a place peaceful enough to solidify and something should disturb their solitude. Anything breaking the silence of such a place will be met with all the rage and pain of centuries of sorrow.

[Sean K Reynolds]

Welcome to Round 3! I'm posting this little blurb at the top of my reply for everyone. FYI, I'm not going to crunch all the math in your stat block, for several reasons. One, I don't have an hour for each monster. :) Two, I'm sure you've been very diligent about this and if anything is wrong, it's probably only off by a little bit. Three, if you were writing this for publication in a Paizo book, you'd be using our stat block spreadsheet, which takes care of the math for you--your job is to understand the rules and bring the mojo. :) My focus in this review is on the overall coolness and balance of your monster, with an eye on how efficiently you put it together and a spot-check of stat block elements that catch my eye.

First off, calling this "quiet ones" in the header threw me off. A monster's name in the title should always be singular (the Bestiary says "Orc" not "Orcs," for example).

Rolling Mist: The problem with this ability is the creature shouldn't be incorporeal. The description of the incorporeal UMR says "An incorporeal creature has no physical body... It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms." Which means it's not a physical mist, it can't be moved by wind, and (as described later in the UMR) can pass through solid objects like a ghost.

Phantom Limbs: I think this ability is too complicated for what you want it to do. One, if it uses at least one limb assist move, it can't do a full attack, so it might as well use three limbs instead of just one, and if it's doing that, the ability might as well be "on any round it doesn't attack, its speed increases to 50 feet." Also, requiring a move action to repurpose a limb will slow down the creature anyway.

Wail of Anguish: Writing tip: Strengthen the tone of your writing: avoid using "will." Also, "the round following a sonic attack" should be "on its turn following a sonic attack," otherwise you end up with weird situations like PCs attacking with sonic in initiative 20 on round 1, the monster acts on initiative 10 in round 1, the PCs attack in initiative 20 on round 2, and then the wail of anguish happens on initiative 10 because it is now "the round after" the sonic attack.

SAs and SQs should not be capitalized in running text.

Innocent creatures dying and turning into air aberrations is weird. This could have just been an air aberration, perhaps something loose from the First World, without the Taldor or dead people connection.

I do NOT recommend this monster for advancement.

[Wolfgang Baur]

Initial Impression: An aerial ghost-aberration? Sounds freaky and even sort of Japanese-flavored in its tragic ennui. Interesting....

The general theme of "quiet one" seems to be that it was wronged and just wants to be left alone. And I think a monster that attempts to avoid combat *can* work, though it's always less compelling than a creature that is easy to add to an adventure as a combat encounter.

That said, we're looking at something that never fights unless attacked, and triggers off sonic attacks, which is an unusual trigger, and it all is starting to look super-niche and low-utility for adventure design. The last line of "disturbing the silence" makes me this maybe it is more aggressive, but by this point the text should not be leaving me confused about how this monster is best deployed.

So... I like the premise and some of what I see with the movement and wails, but I don't think the execution aligns that well with the design concept. The overlaps and misses that Sean identifies make this feel like a creature that needed another draft and tighter integration.

I do NOT recommend this monster for advancement.

[Clark Peterson]

Initial Impression: Passive gas monster just doesn't rise to Superstar standards.

[Clark Peterson]

Shawn, congrats on making Round 3!

Now that I’ve read all 16 entries, I can say that there are some real strong entries here—more strong entries than spots, unfortunately. Some good submissions won’t make the cut. I am only going to recommend 8 of you since only 8 can advance. In close cases, I took into account your prior work.

What I am looking for: I’m a big picture guy more than a minute details guy. I don’t think just seeing if you crunched out the rules properly is the right way to judge a good entry for this round. Of course you need to execute the stat block properly. Luckily, Sean and Wolfgang are way more qualified than I am to talk about the nit picks and issues with the stat block so I will leave that to them. My comments to you will be more “big picture.” For me, I want to see a monster that is fun and playable—a monster that leaps of the page and makes me find a way to incorporate it at the game table. That, to me, is a superstar monster. So here we go…

You got my Initial Impressions above. After reading all 16 I’m sorry to say I haven’t changed my mind.

Design (name, overall design choices, design niche, playability/usability, challenge): C
As I’ve said, you can make it with a non-conflict monster. But you really need to ask yourself, what is a monster, fundamentally? It’s an obstacle. It’s the living embodiment of conflict for the PCs. Sure, you can find great ones that don’t do that and serve other purposes but those better be mind blowingly great to make it in Superstar. Let me take a stab here—I think you are a writer, an idea guy. It is another step to be a freelancer/designer. Cool, evocative writing isn’t enough—though you have that. The part of the entry that knocked me out the most came in the two paragraphs of descriptive text. This round was about wrapping an idea into a stat block, though.

Execution (quality of writing, organization, Golarion-specific, use of proper format, quality of content—description, summary of powers, rules execution, mechanics innovation): B
Without repeating Sean, I think the execution of the abilities is not as strong as it could have been.

Tilt (did it grab me, do I want to use one in an adventure?, mojo, just plain fun factor): B
Evocative writing, which grabbed me, but that was at the end of the submission—long after the monster showed me it wasn’t up to snuff in this tough round.

Overall: B-
Shawn, I think this round showed the design flaw from squeezing a great idea by a good writer into a stat block. That’s why this contest is so hard.

Final Verdict: I DO NOT RECOMMEND this monster advance.

Shawn, I thought your gloves were middle of the pack. And as you know I didn’t recommend your Round 2 archetype. I think this monster has the same problem as your Round 2 archetype—a cool story idea but that isn’t the test here. Either would make great short stories, but this is a freelancer design gig. That said, it’s up to the voters.

Good luck!

[Caineach]

I really like the concept, but the mechanics just seem to be overly complicated and not fully thought out.

[Raphael]

This sounds like it should have been a type of undead.

[DarthPinkHippo]

I disagree about whether this thing is undead. The way I see it, the sadness of the dying creatures affected the mists surrounding them, and the mists themselves became embodiments of that emotion. It brings to mind the trope of a rain cloud following around unhappy people, and I like it! I could see myself using this in a game.

[R D Ramsey]

Naming: Pretty good. Monster name is decent, outside of needing to be singular. SA names decent too.

Cool Factor: I don't think these are quite as passive as others have said, since they attack if anything disturbs their silence (aka every party ever).

But this just doesn't gel for me. I get what it's going for, which could be pretty cool atmosphere-wise. But I don't think it gets there.

I think fighting it would just feel weird and random.

[RonarsCorruption]

Though the idea is there, your abilities are... weird. Some of them are weird-good, like it's ability to transform to and from a large cloud and a small cloud-monster.

But then, you wrote them all so weird. Things you say in the abilities that shouldn't be there: "It drifts about the forest seeking peace" "Once it finds a peaceful place a quiet one can..." "While vulnerable to sonic damage, the noise will cause an explosion of rage."

The last one is especially bad, because you later go on to explain that you mean it's *because* it's vulnerable to sonic damage.

[Joel Flank]

This entry has the same issue as some others - that it's not in any way likely to ever encounter the PCs, or fight them if they find one. It just wants to be left alone in peace - and as a cloud of mist, that's pretty likely.

As for the stat block, does corrosion do an extra 1d6 of acid damage, and apply 1d6 acid damage to a target's weapons and armor?

It seems pretty counter intuative to have a weakness, but guess what, it allows a nice area of effect attack - not really a weakness for anyone who knows about it - more like an accidential byproduct for those who use sonic attacks but don't know about this creature.

[Eric Morton]

@Shawn Kowalke: I don't have much to add in the way of commentary. The necessary critiques have already been made: a passive monster with confusing motivations and strange mechanics. This monster could be fixed by focusing on one special attack and giving it a clearer reason for seeking out creatures to target with that attack, but there are other monsters this round that don't require so much work to use at my table.

[Sean McGowan]

While I'm big on the 'give me a monster that isn't JUST evil and wants to eat the party' wagon, a general corollary to that is that is that I want to be inspired with ideas as to what else I can use said monster for besides party-eating. I know the point has been well and truly belabored, but these just go too far in the other direction. It would take really specific circumstances for a party to even encounter them, and then, for all their passivity, the only possible way an encounter goes is 'you wake them up and they attack'.

I do like that you take their vulnerability and then turn it around into a tit-for-tat area effect; that's kind of fun.

[Shawn Kowalke]

I was very proud to have made it this far into the contest. Having read some of the other entries, for the most part I agree that this entry wasn't quite up to advancing me to the next round.

I don't agree with all of the critiques noted here, but I do agree that there are enough flaws in the mechanics to make it far too clumsy for general use. Most especially, the phantom limbs ability was very badly constructed. Many of the other critiques I may have been able to explain away as problems that occur in the description as I try to trim down the word count, but the error that Sean pointed out in the phantom limbs as a full attack action was one I had completely overlooked. That's what happens when you don't have time to play-test a creature before submission :/

Clark hit the nail right on the head: I am a writer first. I have done a great deal of game design for my own players, and it is all extremely plot/character/mystery/idea driven. This was almost a first time for stat block design however, and I see that I need a lot more practice. I am glad that people seemed to like a lot of aspects of it and that the writing evoked some reactions from people, because that really is what I'm best at. Which is why it's such a shame I didn't get through to the next round. Ah, well.

Thank you everyone for the feedback I received, and I much appreciate the constructive nature of everything people gave back to me.
Congratulations to everyone that advanced, and especially to Steve Helt!