That's absolutely genius; it would be perfect for a game focusing on Time Thieves and travel between eras in the style of Chrono Cross.
Dude ... it turns hammer-blows to the face into force-lasers. Of-freaking-COURSE I love it! This is also one of those items that clever DMs are going to design a way around: a PC gets a big DR/bashing (for example), and suddenly all of the enemies are carrying clubs, mauls, flails and hammers. Slap on this torc, and watch the sword-wielding vampires come out to play. Honestly, I hope that the "I punch myself in the face to charge my super-blast!" work-around was intentional - it's hardly less goofy than the obvious "I command all of my minions to whack me repeatedly with their quarterstaves, and then I fire a beam of pure force into the dragon!" system. This is a cool item, and explosions are neat. Okay, YES, there are some design issues (already well-covered by the Judges) ... but at the end of the day, it's a throat-bracelet that will explode and kill everything in a twenty-foot radius if you get hit with 11 individual bricks, each dealing 5 or more points of damage (before DR). And it was made by dwarven wizards to help them in a secret war against dwarven clerics. THAT'S fun. Congratulations, and I look forward to seeing more as Superstar! continues!
Yeah, I just discovered that problem as well. Still, I'll be digesting the previous 27 previous pages of cool, interesting rules until Monday, at least - I'll be back Monday, then, to read over those last four paragraphs before the "Good Luck" section.
Kakuen-Taka, The Hunger that Moves At dawn, our hunters beheld on the southern horizon an unclean darkness – a roiling haze that blew towards us, against the wind, thick and shifting like rust-colored smoke. Before mid-day, the bloody coils had resolved into a thousand-thousand carrion birds, swarming and screaming in widening clouds above three huge and shambling forms, black mountains hunching slowly towards our village. High-sun passed, and the three colossi were now visible in all their monstrosity; festering mockeries of great and terrible beasts, walking slowly towards us on shattered legs, driven onward by the black magic of Unlife. As the sky darkened, the mad, blood-red birds descended upon us; clawing at exposed flesh with hooked, venom-thick talons, their poisons stealing from us strength, sanity, and sight. When night finally took us, the Ghosts-with-Many-Teeth boiled forth from the bellies of their rotting titans, mere shadows; their drooling servant-beasts, once men and dogs, stalked us with hollow eyes. In unseen and chattering waves, the Kakuen-Taka hunted. There was a feast; and our village was no more. - from the Lost-Spirit Recollections Legends speak of weird and hungry ghosts that slumber fitfully within walking mansions of pitted bone and rotting flesh, smearing a winding path of desolation and horror in their wake. As these spirits writhe in their sleep, their vast corpse-castles shuffle along the edges of the world, infectious Feast-Guardians in tow, searching out lonely villages and temples with their ten-thousand glittering eyes – the strange and horrid swarms of crows that fill the skies above them. And when living meat is found, the Ghosts with Many Teeth slide free of their necrotic homes to feast anew. Thematic Link:
Bhoga-Kantaka, Ghost with Many Teeth CR 5
Defense
Defensive Abilities Evasion;
Offense
Evasion (Ex)
This ability is lost if the bhoga-kantaka's pseudo-feathers are removed. Sneak Attack (Ex)
Spell Resistance
This ability is lost if the bhoga-kantaka's pseudo-feathers are removed. Walk With the Dead (Su)
Using walk with the dead is an intense ritual of dance, howling and violence that requires ten minutes of trance-like activity per new HD of the creature to be animated, and all bhoga-kantaka involved are considered helpless while within the trance. A zombie of Medium size can hold and house one bhoga-kantaka, a Large-size zombie can carry up to eight, a Huge zombie can contain 32, rare Gargantuan zombies can hold up to 128 bhoga-kantaka, and a zombie of Colossal size could theoretically contain a full 512. Zombies animated by walk with the dead, often including megaraptors, elephants and Huge specimens of other exotic beings, are controlled via telepathic command by the highest-level member of the group of bhoga-kantaka that created it. A group of bhoga-kantaka can only have one zombie so animated at any one time, and may create a new mansion only when their previous home has been destroyed or abandoned. Freshly hatched bhoga-kantaka band together to kill large creatures and animate mansions of their own. Bhoga-kantaka without pseudo-feathers cannot participate in a walk with the dead ritual. Ecology
Bhoga-kantaka with class levels may wear up to light armor without losing the benefits of their pseudo-feathers.
Bhoga-Kantaka, Ghost with Many Teeth
It clutches a wickedly barbed spear in a many-fingered hand; cunning, thirsty intelligence glitters out its many red eyes . . . and suddenly more forms, identical, slink out of the darkness. You’ve been surrounded. Freakishly difficult to spot while hunting due to their extremely small size and the bizarre “cloaking” ability of their translucent, scale-like pseudo-feathers, the bhoga-kantaka are dangerously and surprisingly intelligent, making use of tools, servants, pack tactics and terrain-based advantages that laughingly frustrate those who would defend against their relentless assaults. Without their thick, camouflaging coat of light-warping pseudo-feathers, the Bhoga-Kantaka most closely resembles nothing so much as a heavily fanged, miniature Ethereal Marauder with many eyes, four multi-jointed limbs and a prehensile tail; such bizarre anatomy has prompted the few scholars who have studied dead specimens to tentatively suggest some faint biological connection between the two beasts. The shimmering pseudo-feathers themselves are thinly-woven layers of a semi-translucent, magical keratin alloy unique to the “Ghosts-With-Many-Teeth”; they provide the bhoga-kantaka with a host of advantages including exceptional balance, light-bending camouflage, and sensory input in a manner similar to those benefits provided to a cat by its whiskers. In addition, the pseudo-feathers mystically provide armor, resist extremes of heat and cold and deflect hostile spell energies in ways that baffle sages. Ecology: The ghosts-with-many-teeth are vile, carnivorous products of some alien evolution in a place far removed from the world of men, deadly predators at the apex of any food chain. Their wandering corpse-castles travel the length and breadth of many worlds, crossing tundra, forest, jungle, mountain and desert with slow, diabolical purpose. Using ice floes, land bridges and magical portals to cross into new territories, they are guided by the ever-hungry Meki-Kantaka and the divine sky-insight of their mad Wind-Devourer priests, worshippers of the legendary Chichimec, who facilitate communication between the wandering mansions via wide-cast webs of sending spells. The ghosts-with-many-teeth dwell inside the reanimated bodies of great and fearsome beings slain by thousands of tiny bites and blades – it seems to be a point of pride for their strange tribes to obtain the largest and most horrid forms of zombies for their “walking mansions”, decorated with sweeping whorls of paint and blood. A corpse of Huge size can house and carry a full thirty-two bhoga-kantaka with little difficulty, but the slain bodies of Gargantuan or larger creatures are nearly always beyond the abilities of the ghosts-with-many-teeth to animate. Thus, large tribes often create secondary or even tertiary mansions that travel together in a group, separating to wander in different directions during leaner times. Society: Life among the bhoga-kantaka is not well understood, but some elements are clear to scholars: punishments for transgressions within the community, from stealing of food to homicide, are universally applied via a violent gang ritual of forced pseudo-feather removal and expulsion from the tribe. Those ghosts exiled from the mansions must wander alone, without the benefit of their cloaking pseudo-feathers, their mansion or their tribe, until such time as the ethereal feathers have regrown, a process that can take weeks. Strangely, bhoga-kantaka that survive long enough to reacquire their coats and hunt down their mansions are often placed in positions of high power and authority within the tribe – rewarded for viciousness, cunning and instinct beyond the abilities of their kin. The bhoga-kantaka spend most of their time fitfully hibernating, gripped fast to the slowly putrefying interiors of their great walking mansions, awaking in shifts of four to seven to scout newly discovered areas, tend their webbed clutches of eggs, craft their masterwork throwing-spears (treated as tiny tridents), consume stores of food (including the Patal-Kantaka, during times of extended famine) and make odd, violent struggles against one another. Small hunting parties of the ghosts-with-many-teeth, composed mostly of fresh hatchlings, will occasionally leave the mansion for weeks at a time to pursue strange errands understood only by them. Such parties range wide and far, tracking down their mansion when heavily supplied with food, treasure and knowledge of the outside world or forming wholly new mansions. During these expeditions, a clutch of four to sixteen bhoga-kantaka, often led by a priest or sorcerer, will usually travel with two or more swarms of meki-kantaka and possibly a swift-moving patal-kantaka to provide watch. The ghosts-with-many-teeth wake and move en masse only when their mansions are directly assaulted or when called to the Breeding Feast by the cries of the Meki-Kantaka; swarming in predatory packs upon whatever settlement or feast-place has been discovered. Combat: The ghosts-with-many-teeth are feared primarily for their near-invisibility and silence; traits of which they take great advantage in combat. They strike in packs that coordinate their approaches with lethal efficiency, usually led by high-level Wilderness Rogues, Battle Sorcerers and the Wind-Devourers, weird clerics of the Chichimec with access to the Domains of Madness, Travel, Trickery and Weather. Meki-Kantaka, the Foul-Winged-Blindness CR 6
Defense
Defensive Abilities
Offense
Tactics
Statistics
Distraction (Ex)
Poison (Ex)
Hive Mind (Ex)
Ecology
Meki-Kantaka, Foul-Winged-Blindness
With a sudden burst of rust-colored feathers and jagged screams of lust, a savage beast from another world bursts forward on a thousand wings that beat as one. A twisting cloud of bloody-tinged carrion birds in the distant air is often the only warning that shambling corpse-giants thick with hungry bhoga-kantaka are on the approach. Although they bear a more than casual resemblance to normal crows or ravens, the creatures called Meki-Kantaka are the result of a parallel evolution within a wildly divergent, alien ecology; they possess multi-pupiled eyes, exaggerated claws endowed with poison sacs, and tiny, hooked fingers that aid them when they sleep and feed upon the rotting mansions of the ghosts-with-many-teeth. Bhoga-kantaka use swarms of the Foul-Winged-Blindness to scavenge for live prey, trusting in the predatory instincts of these carrion birds to guide the near-mindless walking corpse-castles inevitably toward under-protected settlements. While the majority of the ghosts sleep, the meki-kantaka ride the winds in spirals around the slowly striding, decayed form of the mansion, hunting down a Feast-Place for their masters. For their part, the bhoga-kantaka treat the vast flocks of foul-winged blindness that crawl upon and peck at the necromancy-infused flesh of their walking mansions with a casual deference, although Wind Devourer priests occasionally climb across the backs of their zombie households to collect armfuls of meki-kantaka for use in ritualistic, divinatory sacrifice. Among the most powerful mansions of the bhoga-kantaka, high-level Wind Devourers have somehow succeeded in breeding highly prized half-fiendish flocks of the meki-kantaka. Combat: Semi-autonomous swarms of the foul-winged-blindness are used to search out and pacify places for the ghosts-with-many-teeth to hunt and feast. Sweeping into hamlets, temples and other small settlements during daylight hours, they poison and disrupt the populace, blinding or laying low as many defenders as they are able before the bhoga-kantaka and patal-kantaka emerge with the onset of darkness. Patal-Kantaka Hell Hound, Memory of the Breeding Feast CR 6
Defense
Offense
A patal-kantaka hell hound’s natural weapons are treated as evil-aligned and lawful-aligned for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Breath Weapon (Su)
Fiery Bite (Su)
Improved Grab (Ex)
Rend (Ex)
Servant to Ghosts (Su)
Ecology
Creating a Patal-Kantaka
Spoiler:
"Patal-Kantaka" is an acquired template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature that is not immune to poison (referred to hereafter as the base creature).
Size and Type: The creature's type changes to Magical Beast. Its size increases by one step: the creature gains a -1 (or more) size penalty to AC and attacks, a +4 bonus to grapple checks, a similar penalty on Hide checks, a die-size increase to damage on bites, claws and other natural attacks, and an increase in Space and Reach. Do not recalculate base attack bonus or saves. Hit Dice: Increase base creature's base HD by one die size, to a maximum of d10. Do not increase class HD. Speed: Base speed is increased by 10 ft., other movement modes remain unchanged. Armor Class: Natural Armor improves by +6 Attack: A patal-kantaka has a bite attack and two claw attacks, and the bite is the primary natural weapon. Its extreme deformities are such that the patal-kantaka loses any ability it once had to use manufactured weapons. Full Attack: A patal-kantaka uses its bite and both claw attacks, its secondary natural weapons, when making a full attack. The patal-kantaka loses any ability it once had to use manufactured weapons. Damage: Patal-kantaka have bite and claw attacks. If the base creature does not have these attack forms, use the damage values as listed in the table found here. Otherwise, use the those values or the base creature's damage values, whichever are greater. Because the base creature increases in size by one category, be certain to increase the base creature's damage values on the table accordingly before you perform the comparison. Special Attacks: A patal-kantaka retains all of the special attacks of the base creature and gains the extraordinary special abilities of Improved Grab and Rend. To use these abilities, a patal-kantaka must hit with its bite attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple check as a free action without provoking attacks of opportunity. A patal-kantaka that wins a grapple check after a successful bite attack establishes a hold, latching onto an opponent's body and tearing the flesh. This rend attack automatically deals damage equal to a bite attack, although it deals one and one-half times strength modifier damage. Special Qualities: A patal-kantaka has all the special qualities of the base creature, plus scent and blindsight to a range of 30 ft. It becomes blind and loses all other modes of vision, including darkvision and low-light vision. In addition, all patal-kantaka acquire the special quality servant to ghosts, losing their ability to fight against the will of the mansions of bhoga-kantaka that spawned and command them. Servant to Ghosts (Su): Creatures with this special quality are always considered to be under the effects of a charm monster spell as cast by any bhoga-kantaka that makes contact with them using telepathy. Patal-kantaka will even obey suicidal orders given to them by bhoga-kantaka, but the bhoga-kantaka must win an opposed Charisma check against the patal-kantaka. Abilities: Increase (and decrease) from the base creature as follows: Str: +10, Con: +10, Int: -8 (minimum 1), Wis: +2, Cha: -4 (minimum 1). Patal-kantaka with intelligence scores below 3 lose the ability to understand or speak languages, but may be commanded via the bhoga-kantaka's telepathy. Skills: Although a patal-kantaka's intelligence score drops precipitously upon transformation, it retains whatever skill-ranks the base creature possessed - its total skill value should merely be adjusted for its new ability scores and larger size category. A patal-kantaka who advances by Hit Dice after its transformation gains skill points as a magical beast and has skill points equal to (2 + Int modifier, minimum 1) x (HD + 3). Do not include Hit Dice from class levels in this calculation - the patal-kantaka has magical beast skill points only for its racial Hit Dice, and gains the normal amount of skill points for its class levels, as adjusted for its sharply lower intelligence.
Feats: Because patal-kantaka with class levels lose their abilities to use manufactured weapons, replace upon transformation any of the base creature's weapon-related feats with more appropriate feats such as Improved Grapple, Improved Natural Attack (bite), Multiattack and Weapon Focus (bite). Challenge Rating: Same as base creature + 3 (minimum 4)
Patal-Kantaka, Memory of the Breeding Feast
But it has swollen with infection, and thick, rubbery bone and ropy coils of slithering muscle and otherworldly corruption to the hunched shape of a drooling troll, mucus-caked and hollow-eyed, and it lives to serve new masters now; to walk beside rolling castles of festering meat, to protect with potent teeth and claws the monstrous works of horrors from another world. It is the bodyguard of black magic, a memory of hot blood spilled on cold earth for the orgy of the ghosts-with-many-teeth. The sad remnants called Patel-Kantaka are the twisted result of the bhoga-kantaka’s horrid mating rituals – “survivors” of the hunt given new life and purpose as guards, shock-troopers, living siege engines and mobile emergency rations. The creation of patal-kantaka is volatile, messy and infrequent. Bhoga-Kantaka have little or no comprehension of gender, and make no lines of gender-distinction within their society – they divide the necessary chores of their continued existence among the various blood-lines of their mansion in whatever way is most expedient to the ruling elites, often by whim of the insane Wind Devourers. The exception to that ignorance comes only when a tribe engages in a particularly successful hunt, providing more than adequate food to satiate every member of the mansion and simultaneously refill their putrescent larders. Given the voracious appetites and long fasting periods of the bhoga-kantaka, this usually requires three or more Medium-size creatures per member of the tribe – one hundred humans for a mansion of thirty-two ghosts. During such a meal, hormonal changes occur over the course of hours, and the vile Breeding Feast commences as the ghosts-with-many-teeth develop secondary sexual characteristics of ghastly design and function. Females double in size as their bodies swell with throbbing eggs waiting to be fertilized, losing nearly all ability to move; males bicker for dominance as they manifest frilled, engorged poison-sacs in their lower jaws. All bhoga-kantaka then enter a “heat,” seeking to breed with as many members of their mansion as possible. Because males outnumber females by a ratio of about three to one, the many males without partners rapidly become violently agitated. Males waiting to breed vent their frustrations on living prey with dozens of weird, almost gentle “love bites” – often falling upon blinded, terrified humanoids and animals not yet killed and eaten. The strange poisons of the male bhoga-kantaka enact a horrid and painful transformation on the prey; helpless creatures infused with the toxins collapse into a sort of churning chrysalis, and the hungry, warped things that emerge in the daylight are fed a meal of raw meat, their first as servants to the satiated bhoga-kantaka. Patal-Kantaka are the lowest of the low within the ecology of the Hunger-that-Moves, guided always by the telepathic command of the Ghosts that the Memories-of-the-Breeding-Feast follow blindly behind, their short lives marked by extremes of violence, deprivation and horror. The bhoga-kantaka cannot be said to feel much of anything for their drooling servants, though a Huge patal-kantaka - such as a servant generated from a Large size creature like an ape, horse or brown bear or one that increases in Hit Dice – is well-suited for expedient transformation into a meal & a new walking mansion after its death; bhoga-kantaka usually watch such precious creatures closely, hoping to retrieve the fallen body once the servant dies in combat.
Pants of the Many Monkeys This simple pair of khaki adventuring pants contains, hidden in its many goody-sized pockets, monkeys. Many, many monkeys. Each day, upon command ("Monkeys!") the pants produce 3d12 monkeys (see page 267, MM). These monkeys are CRAZY monkeys, however, and no amount of training, yelling or stomping of feet will get these monkeys to stop it with their crazy monkey shenanigans. The monkeys are possessed both a limited magical 'hive-mind' and an overwhelming, capricious desire to perform acts of mischief and tomfoolery. The monkeys will probably eat all the rations and poop in the bedrolls. They will pants the cleric and 'honk' the elf's boobs. Also, they like to trip people, drink ale, and steal hats. The monkeys speak French. Moderate Conjuration; CL 5th; Craft Wondrous Item, Summon Nature's Ally III, Prestidigitation; Price 8,000 gp., 2 lbs. |
