gunslinger archetype that keys off Strength instead of Dex/Wis and doesn’t actually get a gun because they’re just throwing the bullets really hard
Great archetype idea: gunslinger who uses Intelligence as a key ability and has a feature that lets them make a Knowledge: Architecture check to shoot down walls or chandeliers!
Godlike archetype idea: op’s idea but it scales off of strength cause they just throw the guns as a literal gun slinger
Galaxy brain archetype idea: Fighter archetype that gets proficiency with firearms but not to actually shoot them, just to use them as melee weapons
Starting off Theme Week 21: The Heartless Hive, we have the beginning stages of the Hive’s life cycle! Hatched in clusters of eggs and moving as swarms rather than individual Facehuggers, Hive Larva relentlessly, mindlessly seek out hosts to infest with their perfection. Having no higher capacity for thought and no desire but to locate a victim, Larva are fairly predictable, operating as a swarm of destructive vermin… Aside from the fact that they try hard to not kill their victims.
The caustic swarm of larva, of course, has a swarming attack, dealing 2d6 damage to everything in its space each turn. Anyone damaged is threatened not only with Nausea, but poison, a toxin that saps 1d4 Str from the victim each round for up to 6 rounds. When a Small or larger creature is rendered insensate by either the damage or the poison, the Larva cease their assault and begin to Infest them, rendering the victim unconscious and impossible to awaken through any means for 24 hours. If, during this time, the victim receives Remove Disease or similar, the infestation ends and the larvae die, dealing 1d6 Acid damage to the victim… And potentially being metabolized into their bodies. The consequences of that will be discussed later!
There is no known limit to what the Hive can infest, by the way, only that the
creature must be a living creature and not a corpse. Immunity to
disease doesn’t prevent the infestation (not only is the Infest ability NOT a disease effect, but the rules on infestation are quite clear!), allowing the Hive to infect Dragons, Outsiders, Plants, Vermin, and even (somehow) Elementals if they manage to find a way to wriggle in! Only specific immunity to infestations will stop them. Or, y’know, not being alive.
After those 24 hours pass, the victim has only 2d12 more hours to live, a clock they are not made aware of. All they know is that they’ve awakened, healthy but ravenous, their biology subtly changed in ways only a Knowledge (Dungeoneering) DC 25 check can spot. An infected creature detects as both its original type and an Aberration and is treated as both by magic and mundane effects, but other than that they’re perfectly fine! They’re perfectly healthy! It’s all good, you can drop quarantine and invite them right into the lunch room where everyone can see them!
Once the Hive Larva have achieved symbiosis with the victim, there’s nothing that can be done to save them aside from using a Wish or Miracle. Even death, the most reliable cure to most status ailments, will only postpone the infestation, the larva having bonded so thoroughly with the victim that they’re considered as essential as blood and organs to them. Resurrecting the victim will resurrect their uninvited guests as well, and the clock keeps ticking.
Once that 2d12 hour clock finally hits 0, the victim is condemned to death. A fully mature Hive creature–typically a Warrior or Worker–takes 2d12 rounds to separate itself from its host. Each round, the victim takes 4d6 damage and is nauseated unless they succeed a DC 16 Fortitude save, but success in the save does nothing to stop the emergence, merely delays it. Once the victim is slain by the damage, or once those 2d12 rounds pass, the body is torn to pieces and the Hive beast is born into the world. At this point, they can be resurrected without the infestation in them, but their body is torn to bloody shreds, so low-level resurrection magic won’t work.
This is the entire purpose of the Hive Larva, and the death sentence of infestation is largely the reason for their CR being so high (that and their 20 AC and immunity to weapon damage, I mean). Every person felled by a swarm of Larva becomes a new agent of the Hive, though it’s incredibly rare that the Hive Larva need to strike out on their own to seek out hosts. Typically, victims are brought to them by other, more powerful agents we’ll see shortly…
The Xammux sound like interesting villains, your blurb makes it sound like they’re the gods of gaining knowledge without any disregard for those it comes from. Scientific knowledge without the empathy to the subjects, appropriation of cultural stories, this concept of cold knowledge collection without the humanity. Fascinating and kinda relevant.
Indeed! I’ll write a blurb about them at a later date, or just make my own thing based on them. In either case, you can expect a god of cold knowledge (perhaps literally cold).
So hidden within the unnecessarily edgy pages of D&D 3.5es Book of Vile Darkness are “brand new” (as in just created for the publication) and incredibly evil gods. There’s the basics, y’know; the goddess of seduction and torture, the god of murder and torture, the god of wild destruction and torture, the token all-consuming eldritch abomination with an ominous moniker instead of a name (The Patient One), none of which were of important note enough to ever be mentioned in any publication since the BoVD outside of single-line wiki entries or red links in divine domain articles.
The one that ended up catching my attention was the Xammux, which is actually a group of six individual deities who are devoted to gaining knowledge at any cost (usually via torture). Given my enjoyment of both villains and the Knowledge Seeker archetype, of course I was ensnared instantly by a deity whose sole purpose was to seek knowledge via the most unethical and destructive means possible, but the fact that they’re–again–basically nonexistent outside of their brief mention in the BoVD means they’re non-characters
which means they’re perfect for me to expand upon for the sake of making some 5e archetypes
… that, or i’ll just take what i like from them and add some details of my own to make them a new thing. Their name could use some work, to begin with.
Sadly not, as fun as that would be. There’s a canonical precursor race to the Swarm that had a relatively mundane beginning as Tyranid-esque insects on a tiny little world that evolved a way to assimilate one another, and then eventually everything else. They may have been visited by the Annunaki–as there’s no direct mentioned reason why they suddenly evolved a method to assimilate DNA–but it’s just as likely they were influenced by demons, one way or another.
Of course, there’s nothing saying a DM can’t just brush aside the canon background for the Swarm and draw a direct connection between them and the Hive.
An ancient weapon created by rogue Annunaki, the Hive are an aggressive, tenacious, fast-spreading form of parasitic life that anyone even vaguely familiar with the Alien franchise will instantly see the inspiration for. Much like the Xenomorphs, the Hive start as tiny larvae that seek to invade the wounds and orifices of any creature they stumble across to absorb their nutrients and evolve into more threatening forms. The ‘natural’ form of the Hive, if even has one, is completely unknown; Hive Larva absorb the DNA of their hosts to create nightmarish hybrid lifeforms coated in chitin, each baring sharpened claws, a razor-tipped tail, acidic blood, and a drive to capture or destroy any non-Hive form of life that enters their sensory radius.
Connected by a vile hive mind, the Hive are all Neutral Evil due to their inborn belief that all life should belong to them, that no non-Hive life should be allowed to exist. They are far more intelligent than one could guess just by looking at them, and their unique ability to communicate silently with one another via pheromones and body language allows even small groups of them to launch complex attacks from angles many creatures aren’t often prepared for. Not only are they armed with formidable natural weapons, but most of them have the power to deluge their victims in extremely potent acid, the same acid that fills their veins and explodes out of them if they’re ever slain.
They believe themselves to be perfect… and they have a few abilities that back that up. Their adaptability is quite impressive thanks to a unique quirk in their biology we’ll cover this week, but the most important thing to note about them is that they are Perpetual-Motion Monsters. They do not need to eat, drink, or even sleep. They don’t need to capture creatures for food, letting them focus 100% of their efforts on securing victims to expand their army, they can never be caught off-guard, and their armies do not have supply lines that can be cut. They can spread through any environment so long as there is life for them to spread to.
They all have the same traits in common: They are all blind, have immunity to Acid damage, can exist in extremely hot environments without difficulty (as Endure Elements), navigate with 60ft of Blindsense and 10ft of Blindsight, use a Hive Mind that allows silent communication with one another so long as they’re within 60ft and have line of effect, and have the ability to damage their attackers’ weapons with their Caustic Blood. This same blood is an acid so unbelievably potent that it lingers as a devouring pool 3 rounds after the creature’s death, dealing Acid damage equal to 1d6 x the creature’s HD each round to everything in the space… including the floor, letting it eat straight through and splat onto anyone or anything underneath, continuing to damage everything every round until it finally, mercifully evaporates.
The Hive makes an excellent threat for a low or mid-level adventure, but note that their primary gimmick–formidable Full-Attacks and dangerous acid damage–makes them easy for a party to adapt over the course of just a few sessions, necessitating a bit of clever thinking if a DM wants them to remain an actual threat. In this Theme Week, I’ll hopefully be helping you do exactly that!
Unlike the other curiosity that caught my attention, Mother Kor, Kitumu is god in PF with canon Domains and FAR more storylines about her, her wrath serving as the background for every storylet in the Serpent’s Skull Adventure Path. It’s more accurate to say she’s a godling though, a creature of immense power who has not yet achieved proper apotheosis. She is clearly Deific, able to grant Domains and divine magic without any level restrictions, though what she offers her worshipers beyond divine magic isn’t known. What IS known from what knowledge can be gathered from the storylets in theAdventure Path is that she spends most of her time hibernating within her temple, waking only to gorge herself on sacrifices eagerly offered by surrounding civilizations if only to avoid her wrath.
Her displeasure manifests as swarms of flesh-eating fireflies, a novelty if there ever was one. Thousands of twinkling stars descending upon a village and leaving nothing but masses of bloody bones is a good way to get people to worship you out of fear, but even moreso to get snooty adventurers knocking on your door… But, as far as anyone knows, Kitumu is unassailable thanks to her endless swarms. She has to be unimaginably powerful for a living creature, likely fully CR 30, because despite her temple being a known landmark no one has managed to kill her yet, and no one is known to have ever lashed out at her despite her penchant for doing the same.
Another unique fact about Kitumu is that she has children. Not the firefly swarms, but actual godling children that possess divine sparks… and, strangely, they’re born in the shape of humans.
I may attempt to stat out the Mother of Fireflies as an entity at some point (provided I don’t go insane from the effort), but for now here’s a bit of extra power poured into her in the form of Boons to tempt more people into serving the gluttonous godling.
An unusual light was seen in the forest last week, dancing across the tree tops before lifting off into space. Few people believe it, and those that do assume it was some druidic workings or a unique but ultimately harmless phenomena. But this is not something that can be ignored.
There’s less and less game in those woods each day, and more and more hunters are going missing.
It started with the woods, but now it’s getting worse. Livestock and farmers living at the edges of civilization are disappearing one by one, the walls of their homes torn open by vicious claws, the air having a penetratingly toxic stench that people on our world would recognize as chlorine, but the folk of Golarion would have nothing to compare it to but the caustic blasts conjured by mad mages or hungry monsters.
But these can’t be hungry monsters! There would certainly be a sign such as piles of gore or skeletons stripped to bloody messes if that were the case. No, these victims–animal and man alike–are being taken alive.
That’s when a survivor, raving mad from all they’ve seen, tears into town babbling of massive, organic constructs where metallic insects cage their victims in resin, infesting them with their young. They plead for the local apothecary to carve the worms from their body, to save them from the fate that awaits them, but the terrified populace can only watch in horror as the survivor’s body bursts from within and a caustic nightmare steps from the gore.
The call for aid comes out, and adventurers are summoned to deal with Theme Week 21: The Heartless Hive, before it can grow any larger.
I’m sure you’ve been asked this plenty and it might be a bit irritating, in which case apologies, but are you at all interested in Second Edition Pathfinder? There’s some cool stuff over there, especially in some of the APs.
I haven’t begun actually wrapping my head around the mechanics as a whole and have little interest in actually playing for the moment, but I really love reading the new lore, looking at all the new critters, reading all the new lore, installing all the new art into my eyes, and reading the lore!
So I’m going back through my old pathfinder bestiaries looking to buff out my current catalog and I’ve noticed something weird.
Almost every pathfinder original monster is either:
A direct lift from the mythology/superstition of an IRL culture
A cryptid/meme monster, existing in pop mythology
A manifestation of some kind of mental illness, either in that it causes depression/anxiety/dissociative episodes, or is directly spawned from them.
A normal animal, either made big or made humanoid
@thecreaturecodex, @monstersdownthepath, any insight on this trend? I know that most of the “classic” d&d monsters were just stolen from old sci-fi novels and the like, but maybe they seem more creative because they’ve been reimagined so many times.
Also is it just me or does pathfinder 1e’s massive statblocks completely squeeze out any chance for real lore? I’m finding a lot of critters that have just between a sentence paragraph of text associated with em.
I feel like that’s being somewhat uncharitable. A lot of Pathfinder monsters are taken from IRL mythology or inspired by pop culture, but a lot of them aren’t. Especially if you look in the categories. Most of the fiend subtypes, dragons, giants and golems have completely original concepts. The sahkils, I imagine, fall into your category of “manifested mental illness”.
I find the allegation that Pathfinder has more giant animals and anthropomorphic animals than D&D to be absurd. The 1e Monster Manuals are full of giant animals and furries, and that proliferated in 2e. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be five different types of cat people. They’ve been trimmed down a little in modern D&D, but 5e’s Monster Manual still has a whole appendix devoted to animals, half of which are giants.
The reduction of space for lore is a genuine issue for some of the creatures. You may have noticed that in the late 1e era (like Bestiary 5 and 6), monsters with bigger stat-blocks tended to take up double-page spreads. So that feels like something that they worked on. The layout of the 2e Bestiary addresses that by having paragraphs of lore text in the margins. And of course, monsters in the Adventure Path issues always got double-page spreads. So some critters have more lore than others, but it’s scattered around a lot. And both D&D and Pathfinder RPG play the “want more lore? Buy more books!” card.
It’s also easy to make monsters that are familiar in some way, because
then it becomes easier for a DM (and player) to understand how they
work and how to use them (or fight them). For example, looking at Kaiju Mogarou and realizing he has more than a passing resemblance to Godzilla will immediately clue you into the fact that A) he has a breath weapon and B) he’s probably a relatively good guy, facts useful for both the DM running him and the players fighting-and-then-realizing-they-can-probably-ally-with him. Basing works on existing media creates a nice little bond of familiarity!
Plus, taking something familiar and known and giving it a statblock is a time-honored tradition in tabletops!
There’s also the very mundane issue of needing to fill out the Bestiaries, which can stretch 300+ pages, as well as the 3 to 6 new monsters in every Adventure Path book. When original ideas are already written down (or saved for later), one can always reliably take inspiration from existing cultures, myths, and memes, which has the side effect of introducing readers to cultures, myths, and memes they may have never even heard of! I hadn’t even heard of Betobeto-San until I read about him in Bestiary 3 and I instantly loved the little ball of polite shadow.
I wouldn’t say Pathfinder is creatively starved (the latest 2e books have had some really amazing and imaginative originals), but when you’ve used all your current ideas and still need to fill 50 more pages, it’s easy to look to what already exists and expand upon that. Or just take something that exists and give it the Except Bigger treatment.
I do agree with you and creature codex, though, that enormous statblocks do strangle a lot of the lore entries for the monsters. It’s a real problem for creatures like the Proteans, most of whom have single sentences of lore devoted to them due to the hugeness of their statblocks and art dominating the space. A lot of the lore I put in my articles for creatures with little to no lore of their own is extrapolated from their stat blocks and skill lists and how I think they’re applied in their day-to-days.
She’s lifting a grown woman by the throat with one hand, and by the looks of it, her grip is strong.
(side note: check out the idiot in the background getting booted into the atmosphere by the Dancing Hut)
It wouldn’t surprise me if half her stats came from both repeatedly using Wishes on herself and having access to +5 versions of the various stat Manuals and Tomes.
An alternate (and way funnier) take presented by @a-singular-canadian
baba yaga hasn’t actually enhanced herself in any way, she’s just Like That
I find it funny that the Baba Yaga has STR: 17, DEX: 20, and CON:26. That is a spritely old woman.
Absolutely. I mean look at this:
She’s lifting a grown woman by the throat with one hand, and by the looks of it, her grip is strong.
(side note: check out the idiot in the background getting booted into the atmosphere by the Dancing Hut)
It wouldn’t surprise me if half her stats came from both repeatedly using Wishes on herself and having access to +5 versions of the various stat Manuals and Tomes.
