|
I'm running a game where my players are going through a region styled after Ancient Egypt. I've adapted the Pharaonic pantheon to suit my needs and included the god Anubis. I want to create a gnoll variant in the service of Anubis instead of Yeenoghu, or as in the case of this region, Set. The followers of Anubis will be easy to differentiate from those who follow Set, because Anubis-gnolls will be jackal-headed. My problem stems from the fact that I don't know what kind of ablities or stats to give them. Could anyone give me any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
The gnolls in the compendium/monster builder are pretty cool already. But I would give all gnolls one of two templates:
* Living Servant of Anubis (Immediate Reaction; when dropped to 0 hit points)
The gnoll is filled with the power of undead. It does not die, but keeps standing unsteadily and can fight for a single additional round.
* Undead Servant of Anubis (Immediate Reaction; when dropped to 0 hit points)
Close Burst 1; Level + 3 vs. Reflex; The servant's innards shower the battle field. (levelappropriate) necrotic damage, and 5 ongoing necrotic damage.
This is similar to Acererak's Slaves in the 4e Tomb of Horrors...
The usual way to give a broad group of creatures a feel that they are all related to some kind of cult or organization is to give all of them a distinctive power (well and visual cues). I went and looked up Anubus on Wikipedia but its not clear from there what it is your associating with Anabus that makes them cool as your gnoll god. Whatever the cool element is you'll want to see if you can come up with a distinctive power around that.
For example I note that Anubus is usually associated with mummification which got me thinking about undead. An example of a power that might play into that sort pf theme is having the gnolls be undying for a limited period of time. Maybe after they are killed they just keep on fighting as if they where not dead for two rounds for example. Accompany it with a visual clue. Maybe the Gnolls hyena head has all the flesh dry out and the eyes shrivel up like raisins and fall out.
Here I have gone with a pretty potent power to give to this entire cult because I'm looking to make sure the players notice that this is different and it sure is not how Gnolls normally behave when killed. My experience has been if your subtle with this sort of thing your players often miss but tend to catch on if its either quite exaggerated or it feels like it 'breaks the rules'. So the kobold racial power that lets them slide constantly after people works well because perpetually sticky kobolds feel like they break the rules - the players can't do what they expect to be able to do (slide away) when their opponent can always follow them no matter how often they slide.
Anyway consider something interesting and defining power associated with your Anubus and give your gnolls an exaggerated power associated with that is my advice.
The gnolls in the compendium/monster builder are pretty cool already. But I would give all gnolls one of two templates:
* Living Servant of Anubis (Immediate Reaction; when dropped to 0 hit points)
The gnoll is filled with the power of undead. It does not die, but keeps standing unsteadily and can fight for a single additional round.
Deathpledged Gnolls (Level 5 Brutes) have basically this exact power - when they would drop, they instead gain 5 hit points, 1 action point, and resist 15 all until the end of their next turn, and then die.
Frankly, unless your players have a lot of experience with gnolls in other campaigns, there should be plenty of existing material in the Compendium to make your gnolls feel adequately Anubis-ish without really having to mess with them.
That said, creating an Anubis-based monster theme (a set of thematic powers that you can tack on to any monster to give them a bit of extra flavor) might come in handy for you as you develop the campaign.
Deathpledged Gnolls (Level 5 Brutes) have basically this exact power - when they would drop, they instead gain 5 hit points, 1 action point, and resist 15 all until the end of their next turn, and then die.
That said, creating an Anubis-based monster theme (a set of thematic powers that you can tack on to any monster to give them a bit of extra flavor) might come in handy for you as you develop the campaign.
Cool, even better if they exist already...thanks, Scott!
Very interesting ideas guys, thanks. I also plan on givig some of them a paladin like ability to reflect the judgment aspect of Anubis. Thanks for all your help, I appreciate it!
Giving them some kind of a divine mark is definitely awesome in the sense of getting your players to sit up and take notice. Especially if they have defenders and do lots of marking of their own. Feeding them their own medicine strikes me as something they'll really notice.
That said, and presuming we are talking about something that looks like a defenders mark, I do have a concern here in that this is the kind of thing locks down combats and can draw them out. The 'WTF!' effect that you get from your players only really works big time the first time your players meet it. So with a cult or organization where the players are going to see the same kind of power repeatedly you also need to be really cognoscente about whether the power will still be fun to have in the game when they encounter it multiple times. Does not have to be awesome...other elements of later encounters can take on the burden of being 'the awesome', but it can't be getting in the way either.
This is not to say that having defender like abilities is impossible, just that it takes more thought on the DMs part to make sure that the monsters cool abilities do not turn into annoyances that slow the game down. So smaller organizations are better here or alternatively the encounters can just be really spread out...if they only encounter an Arbitrator of Anubus once per level then there is no real problem. Finally just being highly variable with encounter design can get around the issue.