How to advance a bugbear to a koblak

[Mark Hoover 330]

So a Koblak is a bugbear with 8 HD, immunity to Fear and Mind-Affecting Effects, DR 10/weapons sprinkled with grave dirt, and have the SLA's At-Will:Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, Speak With Dead; 1/day:Phantasmal Killer. They also create an Attic Whisperer every time they slay a child.

Mechanically though, how do I advance the bugbear? If I'm just adding racial HD, does their Size change? If not, and also their stats don't change except for +1 point added to a stat at 4 HD and at 8 HD, this means that unless I change their Con with these stat increases a Koblak has 44 HP, right?

The average CR 6 monster by Monster Creation rules has 70 HP with this monster having only 44. If I increase it's Con to 14, this jumps to 52; using one of it's extra feats from advancement for Toughness only gets it to 60. Is this low HP ok b/c basically, unless the players do their research, it is nearly DR 10/- with some immunities to boot?

Also, the average CR 6 monster has a high attack of +12 with their avg High Damage being 25. I've always assumed this High Damage is calculated for a Full Attack round. Taking a bugbear and adding 5 HD gives you +2 Feats, so I can get a koblak to Morningstar +10/+5 (1d8 +3) with a very low chance of it doing 15 avg damage in a Full Attack round, but again, maybe this is ok b/c this monster has a low chance, but a chance nonetheless to instantly kill any one PC, 1/day, with an SLA.

What am I missing in the monster advancement rules, other than the potential of a Size change?

[Ryze Kuja]

As long as you're doing everything it says in Monster Advancement, you should be good to go. If you haven't already, I'd recommend downloading the Combat Manager app on an Ipad or Surface, and you can customize monsters and encounters in an instant.

[gnoams]

Step 6. Compare.

The base bugbear has high AC and low hp for a cr2. They also have a high attack bonus and on the low end of damage. So you want to aim for something similar with your CR6 version.

Note that you will always have to adjust stats at the end to really make a CR appropriate creature. Paizo did with all their monsters.

EX- look at an earth elemental. A Huge earth elemental is CR7, and elder one is CR11. Both are the same size category. The elder has 6 more hit dice, 6 higher strength score, and 2 more con.

[Diego Rossi]

Looking the Copyright notice, unless I am mistaken, the Koblak is a Wotc monster made for the 3.5 edition. The instructions for converting 3.5 to Pathfinder suggest reducing the CR of creatures by 1 point to get the correct CR in Pathfinder (strangely, I have seen that note just the other day). So probably the Koblak would have a CR of 5 in Pathfinder.

As a CR 5 monster it seems pretty fine and can use one of the new feats to take weapon focus with his preferred weapon or power attack to increase the damage. The DR is decidedly powerful as the chances that the PC know to prepare in advance are low until they know that the bugbear tribe has one or more of them. And even then, unless they glue the grave dirt to the weapon, it will last for only a single hit, son sprinkling grave dirt and attacking will have an action cost for the PCs.

Interesting find, I didn't know of that monster.

[Name Violation]

Diego Rossi wrote:

Looking the Copyright notice, unless I am mistaken, the Koblak is a Wotc monster made for the 3.5 edition. The instructions for converting 3.5 to Pathfinder suggest reducing the CR of creatures by 1 point to get the correct CR in Pathfinder (strangely, I have seen that note just the other day). So probably the Koblak would have a CR of 5 in Pathfinder.

As a CR 5 monster it seems pretty fine and can use one of the new feats to take weapon focus with his preferred weapon or power attack to increase the damage. The DR is decidedly powerful as the chances that the PC know to prepare in advance are low until they know that the bugbear tribe has one or more of them. And even then, unless they glue the grave dirt to the weapon, it will last for only a single hit, son sprinkling grave dirt and attacking will have an action cost for the PCs.

Interesting find, I didn't know of that monster.

Its from classic monsters revisited, page 8.

The wotc part is just the little table at the very bottom of the page

[Diego Rossi]

Name Violation wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

Looking the Copyright notice, unless I am mistaken, the Koblak is a Wotc monster made for the 3.5 edition. The instructions for converting 3.5 to Pathfinder suggest reducing the CR of creatures by 1 point to get the correct CR in Pathfinder (strangely, I have seen that note just the other day). So probably the Koblak would have a CR of 5 in Pathfinder.

As a CR 5 monster it seems pretty fine and can use one of the new feats to take weapon focus with his preferred weapon or power attack to increase the damage. The DR is decidedly powerful as the chances that the PC know to prepare in advance are low until they know that the bugbear tribe has one or more of them. And even then, unless they glue the grave dirt to the weapon, it will last for only a single hit, son sprinkling grave dirt and attacking will have an action cost for the PCs.

Interesting find, I didn't know of that monster.

Its from classic monsters revisited, page 8.

The wotc part is just the little table at the very bottom of the page

Printed in October 2008, when the first edition of the Core Rulebook is August 2009. Decidedly it used 3.5 rules.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Wow...I have never heard of this critter for some reason. Yeesh!

[Mark Hoover 330]

Yeah, I have a bunch of level 5 PCs in a game and I was just looking at bugbears on the SRD, thinking about using them as mooks/targets for the PCs' AoE spells, Large sized mount with Trample and other large area damage effects. As I was on the page, scrolling down, I came to the Koblak and thought of the following scenario:

1 PC in the group wants to learn an old, dead language. The source material I'm using says there's no one in the main city that knows this language or even the culture it was from anymore, so PCs should only get to use Linguistics to get bits and pieces. Still, this player was really interested in the builders of this ancient dungeon and the language he's seeing around.

So what if there was someone, old enough to have some recollection of the lingo and culture, but not willing to part with the info easily? Enter Thragg, The Whisperer of Graves.

Thragg:

This koblak has outlived his own clan and gone on to prosper as an information broker. The nearby city of Endholme has a major wizard's academy and many arcanists have passed through its gates. Those who have died over the centuries become the prey of Thragg.

He makes a point to invade the vaults and graves of arcane practitioners, in order to learn secret knowledge and learn of the books and scrolls his prey enjoyed in life. While not always successful, Thragg has accomplished enough to build a tidy sanctum of lore which he hoards access to.

Payment for his services as a vile sage to the most wicked is a single child. Some of these who survive Thragg's "tests" become his minions and subordinates. Those who do not become the frightening horrors that inhabit the darker places in his vaults.

Now Thragg is lazy and for many decades has lain dormant and unused (explaining not only why he's not more well known as a resource in Endholme AND why he's not, like a 19th level Wizard by now). Recently however a nearby entity of great power has begun to probe the region for valuable resources in its own dark campaign and Thragg once more finds himself in demand.

Of course, with a paladin in the party, there's no way I'm going to get the PCs to steal a kid to sacrifice to Thragg. Also, I might still up the koblak's power level just in case they might want to fight him. Still, I will likely make his services or his acquired library be the solution to the 1 PC learning about the ancient culture of the nearby dungeon. He might even become a recurring villain; perhaps if he's slain by the PCs he'll rise as a full, intelligent undead or be animated as a minion to the big bad, or if I can have him escape I will. Thragg could be an easy exposition dump when I need the PCs to learn some secret about the dungeon.

[Reksew_Trebla]

Can confirm it is D&D 3.5, made by Paizo, but 3.5, as I just looked at the book, and the first statblock I found had 3.5 skills that were merged in Pathfinder, like Hide, for example.