Looking for suggestions on reskinning mites


Homebrew and House Rules


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I have used these creatures off and on now 4 times over the past 3 campaigns and I'd like to use them again but I'm looking to make a few mods. I'm looking at the alternate race traits of kobolds and considering things like:

Dayvermin: mites who trade out Darkvision to lose Light Sensitivity

Mounties: replace Hatred with a +1 to hit when attacking while mounted

Sounders: swap out Ghost Sound for Prestidigitation in their at-will SLA slot

I want to keep them as vermin-using fey but the rest of the mite abilities are so basic and now overused in my game, I'm looking to freshen them up a bit. Your suggestions and comments would help out immensely.


Please I'm hitting some serious writer's block here


Bumping for one last shot

Paizo Employee

Your idea for sounders reminds me a bit of Knockers. If you wanted to go with an idea like that, they could be more earth-aligned... like say, give them the earth elemental's Earth Mastery ability instead of hatred. They also traditionally love to steal and break tools, which is a nice tie-in to their gremlin heritage.

You could also focus on their doom ability. Maybe instead of hatred, they get +1 to hit the doomed. Or maybe they can faerie fire instead of doom.

Or just change up their tactics a bit. Maybe they wear armor made out of chitin (the honored remains of their fallen friends). Or they milk their spiders for venom, applying it to their weapons.

They could even just be culturally different. Maybe they're a mite death cult that thinks their dead can be returned to the "Before Place" (First World) if they're fed to the tribe's vermin. Describe their doom ability as sharing the fear of being trapped eternally without ever passing to an afterlife. If you need mechanics, instead of Light Sensitivity, they could be freaked out if they're not near a vermin because they're worried about what happens if they die.

Hope something in there helped!

Cheers!
Landon


Thanks L-dubs! Had an epiphany looking at giant spiders. I know they've been done-to-death by the drow, but what about spider-themed mites?

1. Change their Hatred for Poison Use (no chance of self-poisoning)
2. Replace Prestidigitation with Detect Poison off the Witch spell list
3. Replace Doom with Web Bolt - they spit webs on their opponents

To advance them I give them levels in either an NPC class or:

Cavalier & Ranger: Webriders - elite spider-mounted ranged attackers
Witch: The Eight-Legged Sisterhood - rare 4 member witch covens
Oracle: Silkmouths - blind mites gifted with the ability to use their enhanced scent to taste the will of the profane in spiders' webs

Now to the tribe I'd add some dream spiders and regular ones. They use their supernatural gifts to hold revels to please some immortal patron from the first world. To do so they lure victims down into the dark to become trapped in webs. These victims are then ritualistically cocooned so that he patron can feed on them over the course of years. The webbing used incorporates dream spider silk, meaning that the victim remains alive in a perpetual nightmare state while the patron feeds on their fear.

Please critique.

Dark Archive

There must also be Mite Driders, small mite torsos rising up from medium 'giant' spider bodies!

If spiders feel over-used, making the lower half a medium-sized centipede (or wasp, etc.) could mix things up. (Ant, beetle or scorpion don't have the same 'zing' for me, but are also options, as are stirges, for a more fantastic mashup.)

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Mites taken in the direction of mechanical gremlins, able to foil complex machines or cause other equipment-related jinxes, could be another way to go (temporarily assigning armor of foes the broken condition, for instance, by causing straps and buckles to come undone, requiring half the 'time to don' to re-strap and regain full benefit).

.

Back to spiders, they might have two large black eyes, and six smaller eyes above them in a semi-circle, like some hunting spiders, the ability to leap/pounce/charge up to 10 ft., a climb speed and many spindly arms and legs that increase their ability to grapple, but aren't coordinated enough to allow them more than a couple extra attacks (and only one weapon attack, so that some go for four primary claw attacks rather than one weapon attack and 2 or 3 secondary claw attacks). Immunity to web, and access to spider poison, can make them much more effective used in tandem with actual giant spiders, leaping from web-covered walls and ceilings to attack foes who are struggling to free themselves.

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Or they could move away from the bug theme, and be more fey and trickster-ish, with access to three cantrips each, including options like ghost sound and putrefy food & drink and daze and acid splash.

Cantrips may be small fare, but when a half-dozen or more mites are sneaking about and raining them down on the party (perhaps after using ghost sound or dancing lights to lure them into an encounter with something more dangerous), they can add to the challenge of an encounter.

Paizo Employee

Sounds good, Mark!

The dreamspiders remind me a bit of Leng Spiders (with Leng being the realm of nightmares) and Atlach-Nacha. But it's a good vibe overall.

Set's also got some great stuff. Mite driders (or just spiders with withered mite heads) could be cool. It's starting to get into ettercap territory, so you could reskin them as advanced mites easily enough.

Cheers!
Landon


Thank you both for your excellent input so far. To the rest of the forum: if you've got an idea shout it out!

One of Set's also sounded particularly cool: to make them MORE fey-like.

Give them glider wings and a climb speed while making them tiny - they crawl and scurry through dark caverns and passages. They revel, like their above-ground counterparts so they utilize lights and sounds and illusions to this end. Ghost Sound, Dancing Lights and bardic cantrips like Flare, Lullaby and Unwitting Ally become fodder for these mites.

Their revels are more like modern-day raves; hedonistic and passionate with loud music, flashing lights and frenetic movements. They no longer empathize with vermin but rather with something even more mindless: oozes. The mites have a parasitic symbiosis with slimes, molds and fungi tending massive underground gardens.

They no longer suffer sensitivity to light though they have lost their darkvision. Instead they use their low-light vision, cantrips and Scent to ferret through the inky depths of near-surface caves. Every so often a ray of pure sunlight finds it's way down to nurture photosynthetic molds so these mites are no longer slaves to the dark.

They are still cousins to gremlins and outcast from proper fey courts of the wilds; there is still mayhem in their hearts. The mites lure animals and victims down to revels where they eventually perish to rot and feed the gardens. Still they take a perverse joy from these raves so many among their number become accomplished bards, rogues and performers.


The mites in our game have found employment in a small goblin trading post/tree village that's going through a boom cycle. The dark, spooky woods they inhabit is, of course, infested with spiders and other insect life, so the mites hire on as vermin wranglers to protect crops and the area around the town.

The vast forest has a heavy canopy with relatively little ground cover, so the abundant food sources are boar, fish, tree crops of nuts, fruits, or seeds, and various bugs. Vermin-trapping mites roam about checking vermin traps much like crab fishermen, sometimes "tickling" the vermin out of their holes so they can be roasted, boiled or deep fried. The mites are very good at this kind of thing due to their vermin empathy ability. Some of them collect cave fisher filaments and glands from the sinkholes and caverns found in the woods to supplement their income.

As they've gotten more money from these activities, I've begun describing some of their spider, beetle, or mantis mounts with garish paint jobs, barding and saddles bedecked with silver studs, "Busty goblin babe" designs either painted on the mounts or worked into the saddles, and colorful pennants flying.

There's going to be a small mite gathering every week or so in the town that's akin to a "cruiser night", where the mites show off their giant vermin mounts. I'm also going to incorporate a "Spider Run" festival where there's a big hatch around the same time every year. Folks will come from miles around to eat their fill of 8-legged land lobster,with the mites featuring pretty prominently in helping bring in the big catch.


On the topic of mite driders, you could also, for kicks, merge them with other unpleasantness - a mite/giant tick "drider style" with a bloated belly full of blood would be pretty creepy.


Frostmites: change DR 2/Cold Iron to Cold Resist 5; change Light Sensitivity to Vulnerable to Fire; mod a few vermin to cold-weather types; change Prestidigitation and Doom to 2 new unique powers:

0 Level: Create Snow - as Create Water save that it only works as the function where it fills an open area, not receptacles. The liquid created takes the form of snow. It deals no damage but the area that it fills gains Concealment for 1 round.

Level 1: Ice - reflavored Grease spell that creates brief sheets of ice which can be augmented by special materials like the Grease spell can with Alchemical Grease.


Remove hatred, add swarming and kneecapper. Specialize then in combat maneuvers and swarm tactics.

"They ... Just ... Keep ... Coming ...


Old AD&D has some monsters you could use:Xvarts , Gibberlings etc.

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