I remember them in Shackled City, Age of Worms(??),Savage Tide, and now Legacy of Fire. I might even have overlooked some.
And how does one pronounce this word... "Huecuva"???
"Heck-of-a" monster.
It's an undead spellcaster, so that makes it a decent threat to PCs; sort of a mini-lich.
Well, the SRD version isn't. Nothing but disguise self, the way it was in previous editions.
I honestly don't remember there being any huecuvas in Age of Worms, either.
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Uh oh. Another pronunciation discussion. I can't resist diving in (even if I'm eventually proven wrong).
Since the real-world mythological huecuva is of South American origin, I had always given it a kind of Latin American pronunciation, like "HWEY-koo-va" (where the "HW" is a breathy "W" sound).
Of course, now that I'm older and a bit more culturally aware, I realize that in this cases, South American probably refers to one of many indigenous peoples whose language sounds nothing like Spanish.
Still, that's the pronunciation I've always used.
Creative Director
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It's because they're cool, for one. I particularly like them, which is why they show up more than, say, the arrowhawk. But more to the point, they're low level undead, and when you publish as many adventures as Paizo does, you start to get tired of using ghouls, skeletons, and zombies.
It's because they're cool, for one. I particularly like them, which is why they show up more than, say, the arrowhawk. But more to the point, they're low level undead, and when you publish as many adventures as Paizo does, you start to get tired of using ghouls, skeletons, and zombies.
Then you start going for the "Ravenous Zombies" and such.
BTW, the Huecuva from Shackled City was particularly memorable, IMO. I think the mini-Lich comparison is apt.
I suspect the fondness is to a large degree because it was in the original Fiend Folio, no?
Mere linguistic reasons
Yeah, but MY answer has the virtue of answering one question with another's answer! And it's mnemonic. Economic and mnemonic! Therefore, alliterative. I will now insert a Huecuva in all the adventures I'm planning for this summer.
And don't think I didn't notice that reveal, Chief Jacobs. :D
It's an undead spellcaster, so that makes it a decent threat to PCs; sort of a mini-lich.
Undead Mini-Me?
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All I know is that my group in Savage Tide captured the huecuva in the first adventure, controlled it, and it is still with them as they're approaching the Isle of Dread. That DR 10/Silver is a formidable defense for most monsters to penetrate. (not to mention PCs. I think it's a pretty frustrating monster to fight for this reason).
I suspect the fondness is to a large degree because it was in the original Fiend Folio, no?
That totally has something to do with it as well. We'd always prefer to use a monster with legs over something that's just made up. And it doesn't hurt that these beasties also have a built in cool backstory.
HA! If that were the case, it wouldn't just be me and Wes championing the return of the Carbuncle, and we'd see a lot more Umplebys and Wolfs-in-Sheep's-Clothing in published adventures.
Hey, they're not all winners, but some are deserving of redemption.
Needs more umbelpeys.
Frankly, for Legacy of Fire, I'm going to tweak the huecuva. Strike a middle ground between the 3.x Fiend Folio's "template for clerics" version and the Necromancer Games "a zombie with disease and disguise" version. Give it a few clerical-themed SLAs, making it a divine counterpart to Libris Mortis' deathlock. Thoughts?
So, instead of a mini-lich, a mini-mummy?
I have a soft spot for the heucuva. In the very first adventure I ever made up and ran (we didn't buy adventures in those days), I had a ruined monastery populated by heucuvas. Good times.
I keep thinking I'm going to convert that old adventure from 2E one of these days. We never finished it, between its somewhat epic scale, our limited playing time, and a troublesome PC who burned down most of my HQ village. (I was a new DM and didn't know how to quash him.) That was before I had kids, so I had mounds of preparation for it: a timeline of backstory going back several centuries, maps galore, and pages up on pages of encounters. *sigh* Good times....
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It's because they're cool, for one. I particularly like them, which is why they show up more than, say, the arrowhawk. But more to the point, they're low level undead, and when you publish as many adventures as Paizo does, you start to get tired of using ghouls, skeletons, and zombies.
Paizo loves them, James loves them, and I, too, love them... I think there's been at least one Heucuva in every campaign I've run since AD&D came out. They're ultra-cool low-level undead foes, and they have nice flavour to them (as priests who turned to worship deities of death and evil).
EDIT: James, I truly hope they'll be one of the templates in the PF Bestiary! :)
If we're nit-picking, the Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing comes from S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Vegepygmies and Froghemoths also stem from that venerable source.
(Still lamenting that S3 never got the 3.5 treatment...)
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Under the Pathfinder system, Huecuva who have Channel (negative) Energy because of a Cleric level here or there are gonna rock. Perhaps they might even gain Extra Channeling as a bonus feat, since they are all hopped up on negative energy anyway...
I'm also fond of introducing a lower-level alternative to the lich for arcane casters as well. 'Spellwraiths' that have shadow-like statistics or 'Bonecasters' who have advanced skeleton stats, both with a few levels of Sorcerer strapped on.
Under the Pathfinder system, Huecuva who have Channel (negative) Energy because of a Cleric level here or there are gonna rock.
Funny -- I and the other players in my Pathfinder Beta game found that extremely aggravating rather than rockin'. :-/
(Still lamenting that S3 never got the 3.5 treatment...)
If we're nit-picking, the Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing comes from S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Vegepygmies and Froghemoths also stem from that venerable source.
Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if someday we did such a thing. I mean, it's not like we have a country littered with starship wreckage....
we'd see a lot more Umplebys and Wolfs-in-Sheep's-Clothing in published adventures.
How much do I hate the umpleby? It defies the imagination.
Meepo and Cappadocious have it down now! Wolf-in-sheep's-clothing was one of the "Barrier Peaks" monsters that got rewritten in the Monster Manual II (along with the other two mentioned, and, among a number of others, the squealer -- which I sure wish had made it to 3.5!). If you want more lame Fiend Folio choices, the tirapheg always struck me as a "don't use or the players will quit."
RE: the huecuva, I recently wrote a high-level adventure in which the villain is casting an epic-level spell -- one with a casting time of years, and that requires a number of additional casters. No mortals could possibly sit there and chant spells for that length of time without eating or sleeping, so before starting the spell, the villain slew his entire priesthood and animated them as huecuvae -- problem solved!
As for "don't use this or the players will quit," the nilbog has always been rather high on my list.
I used a nilbog as the foil for the goblin PC in my Rise of the Runelords game. It worked fantastically well--the PC was the new King of Thistletop, and he comes back to find all of his subjects reading, petting dogs, all of the women wearing clothing... and every time he tried to kill the nilbog, he had to make a saving throw or engage him in polite discussion instead!
You can find a 3.5 squealer in the Tome of Horrors I: Revised Edition.
I should have added "...other than in the Creature Catalogue/Tome of Horrors." Those conversions always strike me as bloodless and mechanical, as if done by a computer. I mean, I give them a heap of credit for the sheer number of them, but it's like nobody puts too much thought into each one, making it unique and bringing it to life in the wider possibilities of the 3.0/3.5 mechanics.
Speaking of FF monsters that don't get enough love, just wait until next year's RPG Superstar when I unveil my flumph blackguard.
I remember them in Shackled City, Age of Worms(??),Savage Tide, and now Legacy of Fire. I might even have overlooked some.
And how does one pronounce this word... "Huecuva"???
You made the blog dude :)
I used a nilbog as the foil for the goblin PC in my Rise of the Runelords game. It worked fantastically well--the PC was the new King of Thistletop, and he comes back to find all of his subjects reading, petting dogs, all of the women wearing clothing... and every time he tried to kill the nilbog, he had to make a saving throw or engage him in polite discussion instead!
As for "don't use this or the players will quit," the nilbog has always been rather high on my list.
A save vs. the nilbog effect? What a softy you are!
I've liked these buggers ever since I occurred to me that they would be a perfect monster to use to populate a ruined temple of clerics that had failed their deity. Of course, I had a few unhallowed coffer corpses in there as well that the PCs had to figure out how to put to proper rest.
Good times.
