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Good villains always have hiding places and escape plans.
That's a sure thing. To be hated by the players (and their characters, obviously), the bad guy's gotta be able to do some damage *and* get away to taunt them a second time.
Ghosts, vampires and liches (and wizards with the Clone spell) have built-in 'getaways,' but fight-to-the-death dwarves, not so much.
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Ok... Where is the plant part?Due to the rules restrictions I can not elaborate on my entry. However, Cpt_kirstov post above may shed some light on your questions. I'll get back the post after round 3 ends.
Thanks!
As my first entry that you point people at says, I really liked this, and now that the round is over, I would be happy to hear your view on where you were going with the creation of this villain, and what plant abilities you would have given him if you weren't limited to the SRD.? Thanks!
The Cap
As my first entry that you point people at says, I really liked this, and now that the round is over, I would be happy to hear your view on where you were going with the creation of this villain, and what plant abilities you would have given him if you weren't limited to the SRD.? Thanks!
If there was no SRD (and cr20) I probably would have used The Sundered Prince of Yithnai. A demi-god sort that is essentially the unfortunate fulcrum of a pair of dueling goddesses. Where the PCs would thwart various large realm-scale disasters (ala 'The Master of Hule' or Iuz), and probably not even know it was him behind them. Likely something for a campaign wide villain instead of a single adventure villain though. I really don't know how well it would have been received since a very specific criteria seemed to be on the mind of the judges, and the crowd pretty much votes how they do.
As for the spore-dwarf the first draft was clearly much different than the end result. The idea was to have a group of Myconids in the Stained Peaks innocently use some bodies floating around in the sewers for fertilizer in their fungal gardens. Some of the bodies would have been that of some escaped convicts (cultist) with various dark pacts with forbidden powers, and thus some dark sentience would transfer to the garden. So really the location would have been the villain.
The myconids were to be too alien to know what was really going on, they simply want to upkeep their garden and meld. The evil sentience(s) in the garden would plot revenge upon those that killed them and also to get more 'fertilizer'. Thus Vegard would come in at some point, get addicted to the spores having his body controlled by the garden to collect as much fertilizer as possible. I originally intended for him to keep his sane and noble mind, just have his body under the possession of the garden. Sort of a tragic pawn, with Myconids as ignorant pawns, and some plant zombies and killer fungi tossed in as well. Various abilities would be easy, The Myconids had several that would transfer well.
Clearly too convoluted for the canned rules and the chopped down version suffered. 500 words is tiny, the stat-block is longer than the article was which is pathetic. Anyhow, with the holiday it was pretty much too late to start over though. Thats the way it goes.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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If there was no SRD (and cr20) I probably would have used The Sundered Prince of Yithnai. A demi-god sort that is essentially the unfortunate fulcrum of a pair of dueling goddesses. Where the PCs would thwart various large realm-scale disasters (ala 'The Master of Hule' or Iuz), and probably not even know it was him behind them. Likely something for a campaign wide villain instead of a single adventure villain though. I really don't know how well it would have been received since a very specific criteria seemed to be on the mind of the judges, and the crowd pretty much votes how they do.
As for the spore-dwarf the first draft was clearly much different than the end result. The idea was to have a group of Myconids in the Stained Peaks innocently use some bodies floating around in the sewers for fertilizer in their fungal gardens. Some of the bodies would have been that of some escaped convicts (cultist) with various dark pacts with forbidden powers, and thus some dark sentience would transfer to the garden. So really the location would have been the villain.
The myconids were to be too alien to know what was really going on, they simply want to upkeep their garden and meld. The evil sentience(s) in the garden would plot revenge upon those that killed them and also to get more 'fertilizer'. Thus Vegard would come in at some point, get addicted to the spores having his body controlled by the garden to collect as much fertilizer as possible. I originally intended for him to keep his sane and noble mind, just have his body under the possession of the garden. Sort of a tragic pawn, with Myconids as ignorant pawns, and some plant zombies and killer fungi tossed in as well. Various abilities...
That's a pretty cool idea, and I love the tragic/corruption angle of it, especially with the myconids sort of blissfully unaware of the awfulness growing in the garden.
I don't suppose you still have that first draft hanging around and that you'd like to post it here for everyone to share in its twisted glory? (I'm wondering how one stats up a sentient garden...)
I loved poor Grimson (almost as much as I loved the Migrus), but I didn't really read the comments it earned, so I didn't realize that you could get cut this round.
I'm disappointed that your dwarven addict didn't carry you through. While he didn't have a world-shaking craving to dominate or destroy, anyone who says that a murderous 'shroom addict isn't a villain isn't thinking things through clearly. I thought that your fungus-infested dwarf made an excellent villain and intend to include him in a future game.
Grimson apparently suffered from the same issues that doomed my snowbound vampire: Their villainy was limited to personal survival. Both kill remorselessly in order to feed their unnatural cravings, which both you and I saw as twisted villainy. Many of the others in the contest obviously felt that villains needed to operate on a larger scale, with sinister plots and the power to reduce nations to ruin.
You deserved to go forward to the next round.
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Sort of a tragic pawn, with Myconids as ignorant pawns, and some plant zombies and killer fungi tossed in as well. Various abilities would be easy, The Myconids had several that would transfer well.
I love the Myconids, although they tend to be a little weak, so I buffed them up a tad for my own game, giving even the lower HD ones a smidge of Damage Reduction / slashing and a useful spore attack (a weak poison, delivered by touch, for the weakest).
I don't suppose you still have that first draft hanging around and that you'd like to post it here for everyone to share in its twisted glory? (I'm wondering how one stats up a sentient garden...)
Yeah I still have an older version. I'll put it up here for the morbidly curious. Warning though, it is very rough.
You deserved to go forward to the next round.
I'm bummed that both of you didn't make it to the top 8. I intend to use portions of both Stained Peaks and Yithnai. :)