Taking a stab at the Yeth hound for an adventure. Rough version below. I used similar monsters like dire wolf, hell hound, barghest and warg to figure out HP and DCs. Also used the bunyip and wendigo fear effects for comparison. The text probably still has a lot of 1E terminology that is no longer relevant. I'm not sure how a creature with two fear abilities should work. Do multiple frightened conditions stack? If not, I suppose I should make them stack. Also not sure if a Yeth hound's fear affect should make PCs flee. On the one hand, it does seem like that's not a thing at lower levels (the bunyip doesn't cause fleeing but the wendigo does). On the other hand, the yeth hound seems like it's all about being a flying howling source of fear and making a PC flee while it's tripped and on the ground and the yeth hound gets to use its Attack of Opportunity would be really cool.
Yeth Hound Creature 3
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[NE][Medium][Fiend]
Perception +9; darkvision, scent (imprecise) 30 feet
Languages Abyssal or Infernal (cannot speak)
Skills Acrobatics +9, Perception +9, Stealth +9, Survival +9
Str +3, Dex +2, Con +2, Int -2, Wis +2, Cha +0
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AC 17; Fort +7, Ref +11, Wis +11
HP 40; Resistances physical 5 (except silver)
Attack of Opportunity
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Speed 40 feet, fly 60 feet
Melee • jaws +11, Damage 2d8+3 piercing (plus sinister bite and trip)
Bay • (auditory, concentrate, emotion, enchantment, fear, mental, primal) When a yeth hound howls or barks, all creatures except other fiends within a 300-foot spread must succeed on a DC 20 Will save or become frightened 2 (frightened 3 on a critical failure, frightened 1 on a success, or unaffected on a critical success) for 1d4 rounds. Whether or not the safe is successful, an affected creature is immune to the same hound’s bay for 24 hours.
Flight A yeth hound can cease or resume its flight as a free action.
Sinister Bite A yeth hound’s bite is treated as evil-aligned for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. In addition, a good-aligned creature bitten by a yeth hound must make a DC 20 Will save or be frightened 1 for 1 round. Any creature that critically fails is instead frightened 2.
I would probably leave out the durations, since Frightened has its own built in duration, which are close to the ones you are setting. With the bay, consider adding fleeing while frightened, since the original creature panicked targets.
So for my own yeth hound, I plan to simply use the stats for a Hell Hound and replaced its weakness to cold with weakness 5 to silver and good. Not sure why the hell hound didn't have a good weakness like devils and other hell folk, but I feel like Yeth Hounds should definitely have it. Silver isn't as readily accessible as good or cold is. The extra fire damage on the bite and the breath weapon will be replaced with fear effects similar to your own. Plus flight, obviously, but probably just at a 40 foot speed because of the Fly spell.
The finer points between a monster that has weakness vs resistance to silver haven't entirely become apparent to me yet without the monster creation rules. I think you have the right idea giving it a lower AC than the hellhound, but I can't say if that hits the mathematical sweet spot. So I find it easier to just use the same stats as the hell hound and give it a weakness instead of resistance.
I would probably leave out the durations, since Frightened has its own built in duration, which are close to the ones you are setting. With the bay, consider adding fleeing while frightened, since the original creature panicked targets.
Fleeing has been severely scaled back in the bestiary though-- it is way less common. The PF1 bunyip worked similarly to how you described, but the PF2 Bunyip doesn't inflict fleeing. Personally, I'd add fleeing as an effect on a critical failure for the yeth hound since I think its too iconic to get rid of, but your mileage may vary.
Should by and sinister bite work basically identically, do you think?
Should by and sinister bite work basically identically, do you think?
Nah. Given how it works in PF1, I'd look to the medusa for inspiration. Have the bite make them flee if they fail and are already frightened. Or perhaps it increases their frightened condition by 1 and makes them fleeing if they hit frightened 3.
Another option that occurs to me, looking at sinister bite being evil aligned, is it could deal evil damage. I'd maybe consider doing either that or the fear thing but not both. Or at the very least not letting it deal evil damage and stack fear. Taking them just to frightened 1 or frightened 2 on a critical seems fine.
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Here's a second draft after some tweaking. I didn't add evil damage because that damage readout already has enough going on with Knockdown and Sinister Bite. The hell hound does fire and evil damage because it's a damage monster, and the bunyip does bleed. The yeth hound's damage is about comparable plus it knocks people down and pumps them full of fear which reduces their ability to defend themselves. I think this is the version I'm going to go with, but let me know what you all think.
Yeth Hound Creature 3
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[NE][Medium][Beast][Fiend]
Perception +9; darkvision, scent (imprecise) 30 feet
Languages Abyssal or Infernal (cannot speak)
Skills Acrobatics +9, Perception +9, Stealth +9, Survival +9
Str +3, Dex +2, Con +2, Int -2, Wis +2, Cha +0
—-
AC 17; Fort +7, Ref +11, Wis +11
HP 40; Resistances physical 5 (except silver)
Attack of Opportunity
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Speed 40 feet, fly 60 feet
Melee • jaws +11, Damage 2d8+3 piercing plus Knockdown and Sinister Bite
Bay • (auditory, concentrate, emotion, enchantment, fear, mental, primal) The yeth hound lets out a loud and horrifying howl. All creatures except other fiends within 300 feet must succeed on a DC 20 Will save or become frightened 2 (frightened 3 on a critical failure, frightened 1 on a success, or unaffected on a critical success). In addition, a creature affected by bay does not decrease the value of its frightened condition for 1d4 rounds. Whether or not the safe is successful, an affected creature is immune to the same hound’s bay for 1 minute.
Sinister Bite (emotion, enchantment, fear, mental, primal) A non-fiend creature bitten by a yeth hound must make a DC 20 Will save or be frightened 1. If the creature previously failed a saving throw against bay, the value of their frightened condition increases by 1 (to a maximum of 4). On a critical failure, the creature is also fleeing for 1d4 rounds or until no longer frightened.
Out of interest - I would have used the hell hound as the chassis in terms of AC, attack bonus etc
I assume you dropped those due to flight and knockdown?
I would have made the D.C. same as hellhound at 19 as they are the same level
Also why doesn’t Bay make them flee? Basically recreate the Owlbear screech?
Out of interest - I would have used the hell hound as the chassis in terms of AC, attack bonus etc
I assume you dropped those due to flight and knockdown?
I would have made the D.C. same as hellhound at 19 as they are the same level
Also why doesn’t Bay make them flee? Basically recreate the Owlbear screech?
I think they used a lower AC because where the hell hound has a weakness they wanted to keep the Yeth Hound with a resistance.