Classic Dungeons and Dragons and Old School Gaming

D&D etc.


"Heir to a crumbling summit: to a sea of nettles: to an empire of rust: to rituals' footprints ankle-deep in stone."

-Mervyn Peake

"...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped."

-Sir Bedevere in Monty Python and the Holy Grail



Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Monster Remixed: The Otherworldly

This is my latest in a series of posts remixing the canonical monsters from OD&D.  These remixes blend monsters within categories  established in the original game.

The otherworldly includes Elementals, Djinn, Efreet and Invisible Stalkers.  This remix was tricky, I've created and discarded several versions of these tables.  After adding lots of things that were not derived from the original monsters I eventually returned to the monster's descriptions for material.  I did have to add some things to elementals to make them interesting.  (Elementals are soooo boring)  The secret compulsion comes from the  Qareen which I found mucking about on Wikipedia looking for anything djinn related.  I left it deliberately open to interpretation what exactly would count as being exposed.  Does that mean getting touched?  successfully hit in melee?  merely seeing one?  The same goes for the "Language of Control" that Magic-Users may learn.  The idea is that those familiar with the Arcane can discern the other worldly thoughts of pure elementals and use that knowledge to command them. It doesn't say this, but that effect is supposed to last D20 days just like the Secret Compulsion.  It's also up to interpretation how an otherworldly trapped in a object might get out or how the DM is to adjudicate this.  If you're having trouble with this, read or re-read 1001 Nights.

In case this is confusing I'll give a run down of how to use this:

Roll one of each die.  You can roll more than one D20 if you have extra. To read the results start with the D12.  This'll tell you what kind of elemental you've got and whether or not it's a "pure elemental" with no extra powers or something more Djinni like with extra powers.  Next look at the D8.  This will tell you if the otherworldly creature is determined to accomplish some specific task, or if it's imprisoned in an object, or if it's goals if it even has any are alien to humankind. The D10 gives you the object or mission and the D4 is generally only used if the creature is on a mission. The D6 tells you how many powers it has, or the chance in 6 that an M-U can learn to temporarily control elementals.

Here is the download:
The Otherworldly

Now this, Slimes Molds and Jellies,  crazy fey and crazy fey beasts, and Dragons and Chimeras are done. All I have left are the undead, lycanthropes, humanoids, save or stoned and animals, oh and gargoyles.

1 comment:

  1. The link to the right doesn't work, fortunately, the one in the post does.

    ReplyDelete