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My players once fought an ancient red dragon in a quick one-shot adventure. They got lucky and managed to turn it into a chicken half way through the battle. Said chicken ran away into the back of its cave where the tunnels narrowed.
When they cornered it, laughing about how the dragon was "chicken" to run away and that they would soon be enjoying a chicken dinner, the chicken turned its head and leered at them evilly with molten red eyes. Only then did it dawn on them that, for the first time during the fight, they had clumped together.
Half the party was incinerated on the spot as the demonic-looking chicken-dragon breathed its hellish flame over them. The remaining survivors fled, leaving their friends to be pecked clean by the carnivorous chicken monster.
We ended the game on the note that the carnivorous chicken monster soon built up a fierce new reputation akin to the vorpal bunny from Monty Python's Holy Grail.
I don't think there are stats for a chicken.
Just use the stats for a raven or similar small bird, without flight.
Heck, the weasel without the climb speed and attach ability makes for a pretty good chicken.
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I wish there were stats for a chicken, and it was a choice for a familiar.
Domestic chickens are typically flightless birds due to how they've been selectively bred...why not use the stats for a dodo and just reskin it as a chicken? The dodo is a choice for a familiar, and actually a pretty good one; it provides a +4 bonus to Initiative.
How could you get any more assuming than carrying around an extinct animal?
How could you get any more assuming than carrying around an extinct animal?
Are you saying chickens are extinct in the default Pathfinder campaign setting?
How could you get any more assuming than carrying around an extinct animal?Are you saying chickens are extinct in the default Pathfinder campaign setting?
I'm saying they are delicious and its a possibility... Baleful Polymorph to bring back a species now?
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How could you get any more assuming than carrying around an extinct animal?
Notwithstanding Lord Pendragon's excellent point that we're talking about chickens, not dodos, and that the stats for a chicken and a dodo are likely to be similar enough so that reskinning becomes an option...dodos are not extinct on Golarion. The stats for them appear in The Wormwood Mutiny.
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Would medieval-era/early-modern-era chickens have been as bad at flying as modern ones? Some domestic animals have been altered a lot in recent decades/centuries...
I didn't think even regular barnyard chickens were flightless. Bad at flying, yes, but not completely flightless. Battery farmed fat chickens might well be, but...
For purposes of PF they'd be flightless in that they wouldn't have any kind of meaningful flight speed. Chickens can get airborne, kind of, but they have a hard time staying airborne, which even the clumsiest dragon can do as long as it keeps moving over half its fly speed in a straight line. What they tend to do is hop and flap to a higher perch (say, a tree branch or the roof their coop).
I need to do a story arc of a group dispelling a baleful polymorph only to unleash a tyrant into the world. That would make me have the DM chuckles.
If your players are abusing the spell, make your villains kitsune.
They can look human whenever they want to, and as shapechangers they can break out of Polymorph effects as a standard action.
Just another reason why the kitsune are the best race ever. :)
My experience is that baleful polymorph really isn't always that impressive unless they fail the Will save. Otherwise you've just given them a Dex bonus and Str penalty + some natural armor, and a crappy natural attack. Sure, it's nice bringing that barb down from 30 Str killing you with a greatsword but a 24 Str pigeon with 100s of hp is still somewhat respectable. About the only class that will consistently fail both saves is a rogue, and even then Diminutive is a +12 Stealth for getting away or enabling a tiny kitty sneak attack.
So, the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog was a polymorphed feint assasin.
Anyhow, ask yourself why the caster feels safe using a first round action on a save or die spell, he has to know the chances of failure is high. Is the fight so easy that the caster is willing to throw hail mary's like that? That group can effectively fight with one player just goofing off? If that's it the case, that just means the caster is beating any other glass cannon to the punch.
This all goes back to action economy. A party vs one boss does not work, they take him down in turn one or he one shots a player a turn. Try outnumbering the group 2 to 1. Then the caster has to pick between 8 targets for his save or die, has to weight the chance of success versus the value of the target. Slim chance of wiping out the boss or surefire way to knock one henchman out of the fight. Up the stakes, make the group fight tactically.
When a save or die spell is used in turn one of a boss fight, the player feels that the group can survive him not aiding in the fight.
Gm screen works well for this kind of problem you can protect the big bad because your party dont know what you actually rolled and in my case in particular it protects the party from my constant natural 20s