Your mimic is going to go up several size categories to get from the traditional chest to a ship. That means lots of extra hit dice, requiring a boost in CR appropriately.
For the mouth, well, thing is, it's a mimic. It's mutable. It might be able to put the mouth anywhere. Could be it snacks on lookouts in the crow's nest. Could be it eats rats in the hold. Might even eat a captain it dislikes. So anyplace is good.
Two things:
1. Really cool idea.
2. If making the mimic big enough to be a ship makes it too high of a CR, then just adjust what amounts to "defeating" it. For example, when I want to throw an exceptionally high CR encounter against my players, I simply set the bar lower on what constitutes a "win." Reduced to half HP, he/she/it disengages and retreats. Or, if the party survives X number of rounds, the opponent leaves, etc.
Okay, make that three things,
3. You could also rule that keeping itself in the rather complex shape of a ship means that it can only partially focus on attacking the party, therefore only a part of the "ship" actively transforms, coincidentally into a level appropriate CR encounter. When that encounter is defeated, the ship drops like a stone, dumping the PCs into the water, and the rest of the mimic swims away.
However you handle it, sounds like a great encounter. Good luck.
1. Really cool idea.
+1. I'm going to shamelessly steal this idea for my own game :)
As for how to actually do this: A Mimic is size Medium (and can take the shape of medium-size objects). A ship is at least 50ft long (based on the Transport section of the Equipment chapter in the Core Rulebook), which makes it at least a Gargantuan object (based on the size table in the 3.5 Monster Manual; that table isn't in the Pathfinder Bestiary AFAIK).
So, you'd need to advance the Mimic by enough HD to increase its size to Gargantuan. The basic rule is to increase size by 1 category when you have increased HD by 50%. The Mimic has 7 HD, so the first size change would be when it reaches 11 HD (size increased to Large), the second (size becomes Huge) would be at 17 HD, and the last (size becomes Gargantuan) at 26 HD.
I don't have time right now to stat out and make a CR for a Gargantuan 26 HD Mimic, but maybe someone else will :)
Ok, since these boards SUCK... (think I would be in the habit of copy and pasting stuff by now. Dan ANGRY! ;P)
The short, SHORT version!!
1st Edition - Lurker & Lurker Above - surface equivalents to a mimic aka floor & ceiling mimics. This mimic would be large or huge, but very 'canvas sheet' thin making it HD appropriate.
Make the mimic the ship's SAIL. Give chance(perception vs. disguise) to notice it eating birds. If noticed treat it as thought it was a figment of said player's imagination... "out of the corner of your eye you swore a bird was near the sail and now it's gone and worse, you KNOW you heard a CRUNCH sound." (They'll think it was an invisible creature, muhahahaha!)
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Make the mimic a DOOR or HATCH somewhere on the ship, giving rogues (trap sense) and elves (keen sense) chances/bonuses to notice it does NOT belong.
hey, just double-play them.Put a Doppelganger on the ship as well, that sooner or later takes over as "Captain", and his job is also to get rid of the ambassador, knowing nothing of the mimic ;)
I like it! Another direction could be a Doppleganger who has a Mimic companion/pet.
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Ha ha, by all means :)
Thanks for everyone's input. I don't think I ever would have considered the PC's getting a 'win' other than by killing their foes...this opens up countless opportunities as GM, thanks for that ;)
I don't think I'll send my level 2 PC's after a 26 HD mimic just yet, or maybe I can work out a way for them to defeat it besides complete HP annihilation. Thanks for crunching those numbers Are, I'll have to see if I can calculate the stats; if I come up with something I'll post it.
I think I'll have the mimic eat someone in the crow's nest and other random places and try to get the PC's to think the danger is something on the ship rather than the ship itself. Thanks again!
You could totally play this as an awesome horror story, especially for 2nd level PCs! The party ship sinks in a storm and they are forced to board a seemingly abandoned ship at sea where they are then picked off one by one. Just throw in some red-shirt NPCs. Maybe a half-crazed survivor from the previous crew (who found the ship drifting at sea and tried to claim it) running wild that they can blame the disappearances on ... at first.
Maybe the mimic is so big that it naps a lot. Every so often it wakes up and eats someone, then goes back to sleep. Or, better yet, it is just sadistic. It likes the taste of people when they are scared. So it "marinades" the passengers by slowly picking them off and building suspense.
The party would "win" by figuring out that the ship itself was killing people, and then escaping with their lives (saving as many of their fellow crew as they can). Oh oh, they can escape during another storm, because they were in the eye of the hurricane that sunk their original ship the whole time.
You could also ratchet up the tension a notch at the end (as well as give the PCs a method of escape) by having a pirate ship attack. The pirates, unaware that the ship is a giant mimic, board in an attempt to kill the crew and loot the hold. So the final fight would be a swashbuckling duel against a pirate boarding party while the ship itself manifests pseudopod-tentacles to grab and eat as many people as it can.
Oh man, I'm totally snagging this for my campaign. I might even make the pirates undead and give them guns from Alkenstar. That way the PCs will have barrels of gunpowder to detonate in an attempt to destroy both vessels...
...'cause the only thing that would make this better is a giant explosion at the end.
rror story, especially for 2nd level PCs! The party ship sinks in a storm and they are forced to board a seemingly abandoned ship at sea where they are then picked off one by one. Just throw in some red-shirt NPCs. Maybe a half-crazed survivor from the previous crew (who found the ship drifting at sea and tried to claim it) running wild that they can blame the disappearances on ... at first.
Maybe the mimic is so big that it naps a lot. Every so often it wakes up and eats someone, then goes back to sleep. Or, better yet, it is just sadistic. It likes the taste of people when they are scared. So it "marinades" the passengers by slowly picking them off and building suspense.
A D&D Rose Red! Lovely!
Reminds me of when I had the party come across a mimic that was pretending to be a Gazebo. It was hillarious, especially when they actually managed to make friends with it. In exchange for them casting Hero's Feast for it once a day it would give them rides. The Gazebo just grew legs and started walking. They could ride around on the bench as much as they want.
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Reminds me of when I had the party come across a mimic that was pretending to be a Gazebo. It was hillarious, especially when they actually managed to make friends with it. In exchange for them casting Hero's Feast for it once a day it would give them rides. The Gazebo just grew legs and started walking. They could ride around on the bench as much as they want.
Did they discover it was a mimic after they attacked the gazebo?
A Mimic Ship... Hell!!!!
Nice idea, but for a more "playable" version, I would make the mimic only to one part of the ship, maybe the rear deckhouse or for low level players some furniture in the ambassodors cabin.
It's a lot easier than having the mimic imitating the ship or even parts of the ship: Just have it mimic the cargo. Who on a ship notices an extra crate of goods or extra barrel of rum?
Hell, the mimic could even be salvage the crew found floating in the sea.
Or you could let it be the ship's new figurehead....
Reminds me of when I had the party come across a mimic that was pretending to be a Gazebo. It was hillarious, especially when they actually managed to make friends with it. In exchange for them casting Hero's Feast for it once a day it would give them rides. The Gazebo just grew legs and started walking. They could ride around on the bench as much as they want.Did they discover it was a mimic after they attacked the gazebo?
I heard they were casting magic missle at The Dark and hit the mimic instead.
The problem with a mimmic the size of a ship I see is it will attract Giant sea turtles, Dragon Turtles, Giant Squids and Dragons among other sea going monsters that track by scent and think "Lunch" whenever it passes by. Mind that would make things interesting as well...