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Let's Read the 4e Dark Sun Creature Catalog: Psionic Adept
As we all know by now, psychic powers are very common in Athas. Anyone might have some, even if that’s not their main specialty. For PCs, this is implemented as a couple of character themes (Noble Adept and Wilder).
For NPCs and monsters, we have the Psionic Adept theme presented here. You can add this to a non-psionic monster to make it more controller-ish.
Psionic Adepts gain a +2 to either either Diplomacy and Intimidate (force of personality!) or to Insight and Perception (sixth sense!).
Attack Powers
Following the usual design strategy of adding new abilities that work “around” established attacks, we get a collection of powers that hinder and debuff enemies. All of the ones that require attack rolls target Will.
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Blind the Mind’s Eye (recharge 5+) is a ranged attack that makes the creature invisible to the target (save ends). This ends when the creature attacks the target. Lurkers can use this to enable their big attacks, while others can use it as a way to ease pressure on themselves.
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Empathic Wall (recharge 6+) creates a 12-square wall that lasts a turn. It blocks line of sight. People can cross it, but its squares are difficult terrain, and anyone inside them is lightly obscured.
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Mantle of the Mind (encounter) is a close burst 4 that attacks will and prevents affected targets from targeting the creature with their attacks (save ends).
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Mental Marionette (encounter) is a sustainable domination power. It dominates for a turn on a hit, but can be sustained with standard actions to let the creature repeat the attack against the same target, potentially prolonging the domination. On a miss, it dazes for a turn. It’s a little weaker than a fire-and-forget (save ends) power, because it eats up standard actions.
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Three variants of Psionic Augmentation that add a little extra something when the creature hits with a melee basic attack. One deals extra psychic damage, the other dazes for a turn, and the third one inflicts ongoing psychic damage.
Utility Powers
These are a lot more clearly “utilities” than the ones for elemental creatures. They’re all encounter powers.
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Mental Bastion is an interrupt that gives a +4 to Will, potentially turning a hit into a miss.
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Open the Mind’s Eye gives blindsight 5 and all-around vision for a turn. The latter means the creature cannot be flanked.
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Oracular Empathy is a weird one. When an nearby ally of the creature is hit by an attack, the creature can use a reaction to switch its initiative order to be just after the attacker’s.
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Psionic Flight automatically pushes each adjacent enemy 1 square and lets the creature fly its speed.
Final Impressions
Pretty cool! It seems more thematically tight to me than Elementally Infused. Adding these powers to someone like an ogre would be a nice/nasty surprise.
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Let's Read the 4e Dark Sun Creature Catalog: Elementally-Infused Monster
Athas is a world particularly close to the Elemental Chaos, and so there are lots of places in it that are soaked in elemental energies of some kind. The creatures that inhabit these areas often end up elementally-infused.
The book suggests changing the creature’s origin to elemental if its mutations end up being inheritable, though that just affects the lore and so it’s just necessary if it will affect the game’s stories in some way.
The main mechanical thing you must decided about an elementally-infused creature is its element. All of its powers that deal damage have it written as “[damage type]” in the book, and you’re meant to replace that lacuna with a type corresponding to the creature’s associated elements: one of fire, acid, cold, thunder, or lightning (very very frightening!).
Not all of its attacks need to do the same type of damage. Multi-element elementals are a thing now, after all. And you might decide to make one or more of these attacks untyped, which would be common for an earth elemental whose rock-based attacks deal physical damage for example.
Elementally-infused creatures get +2 to Intimidate and Athletics.
Attack Powers
All of these powers deal damage of the type you chose above.
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There are two Elemental Auras, one that triggers when the monster is bloodied and damages enemies inside, and one that is always active and makes enemies vulnerable to your chosen element.
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Elemental Eruption causes an explosion when the monster is first bloodied, a close burst 2 that targets Reflex and deals elemental damage equal to the monster’s best basic attack.
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Elemental Manifestation converts the damage of all of the monster’s attacks to your chosen element.
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Elemental Persistence is recharge 5+ and inflicts 5/tier ongoing damage of the chosen type when the monster hits with a melee attack. It’s said to increase “damage output and entertainment value”.
Utility Powers
The most obvious here is Elemental Damage Resistance, which should be high enough for the monster to resist its own attacks (or I guess 5/tier if you don’t want to do math). If a monster’s attacks are untyped, you could give it variable resistance instead.
Nearly all of the others deal damage, proving that the “attack”/”utility” split is more of a guideline here.
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Elemental Dissipation lets the monster vanish from play for a turn and reform next to an enemy, dealing a bit of damage and making them grant combat advantage for another turn.
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Elemental Ground is a third aura variant, this time meant to keep enemies close. The aura’s radius becomes difficult terrain and enemies take damage when they leave it, instead of when they enter it.
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Elemental Step deals elemental damage to anyone who hits the monster with an opportunity attack while it moves.
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Elemental Transport lets the monster teleport between patches of hazardous terrain that deal damage of the chosen type. Clever!
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Mutable Body is appropriate for water-based or otherwise gooey monsters, and lets the creature count as one size smaller when squeezing through narrow openings.
Final Impressions
You want elemental damage? We got elemental damage! I like the design strategy of additional attack powers that modify and work around the monster’s usual attacks, and it works particularly well here.
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Let's Read the 4e Dark Sun Creature Catalog: Arena Bred Monster
What’s a Monster Theme? The concept was first introduced in Dungeon Master’s Guide 2, and it’s a way to give a set of monsters a shared look and feel. This involves changes to their mechanics and lore, but unlike monster templates from the DMG 1, it doesn’t change their “quality”. Regulars remain regulars, elites remain elites, and so on.
Monster themes end up being more flexible than templates, since the monster creation rules are good enough to handle any level or quality changes by themselves.
Anatomy of a Monster Theme
Each theme has a fairly involved presentation. You get some explanation for the lore attached to that theme and how it might modify a monster. Then a line about skill changes that might apply, and finally a big list of powers.
Those powers are divided between Attack Powers and Utility Powers - you pick one of each category to add to the monster’s stat block. Nothing else about its basic stats changes, unlike with a template. If you want those to change, you can use the standard monster creation and “editing” rules to change the monster’s level or quality.
Our First Theme: Arena Bred Monster
Blood sport arenas are the most popular entertainment in all city states, and monster fighting is one of its most popular modalities. It’s common to throw recently captured wild animals into the ring, but a monster that was specifically prepared for the spectacle is a much bigger draw. Animals are specifically bred for the role; people receive special training. And both might be further modified by magic or psionics, all in the service of providing a more brutal and spectacular fight.
Monsters with this theme get a +2 to Intimidate and a +2 to either Athletics or Acrobatics.
Attack Powers
Despite the name of this category, the powers here tend to avoid having specific attack or damage figures, to better enable them to apply to monsters of any level.
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Berserk Passage (recharge 5+) lets a monster make two basic attacks and shift half its speed at any moment in this sequence, passing through enemy spaces. It usually goes on monsters that have been made mad with hunger and pain before being dropped into the arena, though I supposed it could also be used to represent an agile duelist humanoid.
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Bleeding Attack is a triggered power that inficst 5/tier ongoing damage (save ends) when the monster bloodies a target. It might represent serrated weapons or claws. The book recommends making it (recharge 5+) for elites or solos; by default, it’s at-will.
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Brutal Flourish lets the monster make a free melee basic attack whenever it bloodies or defeats an enemy.
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Death Burst means the monster has been rigged to explode! This is visible to the PCs and should be described appropriately. This power is common for monsters that have received some sort of combat implant, but could be applied even without that. By default this happens when the monster hits 0 HP, but for elites and solos it could also happen when the monster is first bloodied, where it might be combined with some other change in its stats as those implanted bits fall off. The explosion is a Close Burst 2 with attack and damage figures appropriate to the monster’s level.
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Retaliating Stride (recharge 5+) is a move action that lets the monster move its speed and deal damage to any creature that hits it with an opportunity attack during this move. It can represent showy counterstrikes, or maybe something like implanted spikes.
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Attached Weapons are not written up like a power, but discussed in general terms inside a text box. Many arena monster handlers like to implant extra weapons on their charges through magic. This is an excuse for your to add extra attack powers that monsters of that type don’t normally have. For example, an artillery monster could receive implanted melee weapons that give it a stronger than usual melee attack, or a brute could get an unusually accurate ranged weapon. It’s common for these weapons to break or fall off when the monster is bloodied - and this can also be combined with Death Burst variants.
Utility Powers
These are generally the fruit of long experience in the arena, representing cunning, resilience, and luck.
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Intervening Armor represents an ability to leverage the normally useless piecemeal armor that covers gladiators by shifting so enemy attacks hit the tiny plates. It’s an Interrupt that gives +2 to AC or Reflex when the monster is hit by an attack targetting one of these defenses.
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Necessary Betrayal is for treacherous gits who developed the habit of abusing their teammates’ trust. If the monster is hit by a melee or ranged attack while adjacent to an ally, it can swap places with the ally as an interrupt, and have the ally take damage from the attack instead. You don’t compare the attack roll against the ally’s defenses - just apply the damage directly. This power cannot be nice even by accident.
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Shake it Off represents the ability to quickly recover one’s wits in a bout. Whenever subject to an effect that a save could possibly end, the monster can roll a save to end it as a reaction, even if this specific application cannot be ended with a save. (So it works against “dazed until the end of the next turn”, but not against “dead”).
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Turn the Tables is a defense against forced movement. If pushed, pulled, slid, or knocked prone, the creature can trigger this reaction to stand up (if prone) and shift 2 squares.
Final Impressions
I think it’s interesting how many of the powers here can be either applied to a berserk beast of a flashy humanoid fighter that uses finesse and agility, with the final mechanical result being the same.
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Let's Read the 4e Dark Sun Creature Catalog: Customizing Monsters
We’re past the monster lists, but there’s still a fair amount of book to cover. Its final third is dedicated to Encounter Options, and the first subsection of that is a small lesson on Customizing Monsters.
The gist of it is that when you want to bring a “generic” D&D monster to Athas, you should change them a little to make them fit the more brutal and desperate tone of the setting. In other words, you should make them Darker and Sunnier.
The next page has a few tips on how to do that. First, you should keep the monster recognizable, since it both keeps things a little familiar and makes the differences stand out that much more. And then you can apply one or more of the customization guidelines they suggest, each with an example:
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No change: Some monsters already fit the aesthetic and could just be dropped in where you need them. Gnolls and bullettes, for example.
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Altered Appearance: Some monsters need a little extra make-up to fit the visual style of Athas. You’ll rarely find traditional mammals here for example, but you could have equivalent creatures that have carapaces, scales, and bony plates instead of soft fur. Hill giants might look more rocky, with skin matching the colors of the surrounding terrain.
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Altered Environment: Creatures that live in frozen or aquatic biomes in their original forms could be changed to live in the desert wastelands of Athas instead. Sure, the aquatic ones could live in oases, but turning them into sand-burrowers can be a “nice” surprise for the players.
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Alternative Lore: This most important for creatures whose lore has extensive ties to the Astral Sea and divine magic, both of which are mostly inaccessible in Athas. Eidolons are one example, and they’d need to be changed to be tied to arcane or primal magic instead unless they’re relics from when the gods were still around. Angels and the like should also be reskinned unless your entire game revolves around the mystery of why they appeared.
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New Powers: New mechanical abilities might be just the thing to make a given creature Darker and Sunnier. This should mostly be handled through Monster Themes, which are discussed in the next page.
Sample Converted Monsters
These two are given as examples, and in some cases are also stealth updates to the originals, using the new Monster Manual 3 math.
Silt Shark
Based on the Fleshtearer Shark from the Monster Manual 2, this creature occupies a similar niche to the bullette, with slightly different abilities. Its water-based traits were replaced with sand-themed equivalents, and it’s been given training in Athletics to make higher jumps. It “swims” through sand and loose soil.
The Silt Shark is a Large Natural Beast and a Level 10 Brute with 128 HP. It has a ground speed of 5, and a burrow speed of 8, with low-light vision and Tremorsense 10.
The original shark’s Aquatic trait has been replaced with Silt Swimmer, which lets the shark shift and charge while burrowing, and gives it a +2 damage bonus while burrowing against any creature without a burrow speed. It cannot burrow through solid stone, however.
The shark has a basic Bite, and a Lockjaw Charge maneuver that deals the same damage and grabs on a hit. While the shark has a grabbed victim, it can automatically deal damage to them with Shredding Teeth. And once the grab ends, the victim takes ongoing 5 damage (save ends).
If the shark starts its turn within 5 squares of a bloodied creature, it enters a Feeding Frenzy, and makes a free attack against a creature adjacent to it. If it was grabbing someone, it releases them first.
Ssurran Dune Mystic
This is a Greenscale Marsh Mystic from the Monster Manual, modified into a Ssurran version. The swamp theme of the original’s abilities has been switched to a sand and desert theme, its Constitution was increased a little, and its basic attack has been given a push rider to match the Ssurran Shaman from that entry.
We end up with a Level 6 Controller (Leader) with 72 HP and a ground speed of 6 with Earth Walk. It has a Sun Blessing aura (5) that heals 3 HP to any ally that stats their turn inside, and fights with a spear that damages and pushes 2 squares on a hit.
The mystic also has a couple of fireball-style combat spells: Salt Cloud (recharge 5+) deals poison damage and dazes for a turn; Sand’s Grasp (encounter) is non-damaging, but it immobilizes (save ends) and creates a zone of difficult terrain that lasts for the rest of the encounter.
Impressions
It’s quite likely that anyone who still actively plays D&D 4th Edition is experienced enough at reskinning monsters that they don’t really need this advice. Nevertheless, it’s still good to see it printed, and with worked examples to boot.
Next up: Monster Themes!
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Let's Read the 4e Creature Catalog: Zeburon, the Iron Rider
Zeburon The Lore
Zeburon is the leader of the Black Sands Raiders, a brutal and feared bandit gang that hides out in the Black Sands. According to rumor they always number a hundred, and ride war-trained kanks to assault caravans and settlements around the Black Sands.
The Iron Rider got this title because of his signature metal helmet, which has a pair of prominent horns and completely conceals his face. Not even most of the Raiders have ever seen it - only his most trusted lieutenants (such as the defiler Fevik) know what he looks like.
And this is because Zeburon’s big secret is that he’s a tiefling. The book lists reasons why no one has figured it out yet, and they’re actually a little funny. He lacks a tail because he cut it off himself years ago. People tend to mistake the reddish tone of his skin for sunburns instead of natural pigmentation. And they think the horns are part of the helmet, when in fact they’re poking through a pair of holes in it.
Zeburon hides his true nature from the rank and file of his gang because he’s afraid of how they’d react if they found out. Given bigotry is never in short supply around Athas, I’m guessing the answer is “not well”. And being a fearsome individual warrior is not very helpful if about ninety guys on war kanks decide they want you dead and charge you all at once.
The Numbers
Zeburon is a Level 12 Elite Soldier with 246 HP. He has a ground speed of 6, low-light vision, and Resist Fire 10.
All of his attacks deal bonus damage against bloodied targets due to his Bloody Violence trait. He fights with a Bastard Sword that can make standard basic attacks and be used in a Wild Bloodletting maneuver, attacking a Close Burst 1. A hit deals damage, slows the target, and inflicts ongoing 10 damage (save ends both). This recharges when he’s first bloodied.
As a minor action he can use his Iron Fist (metal gauntlet!) to make another attack, which does the same damage as the sword, and immobilizes for a turn.
Finally, he has the tiefling Infernal Wrath power which, when used, gives him a bonus to attacks and damage against any enemy that hit him since the end of his last turn. This lasts for a turn or until he hits an enemy.
Encounters and Final Impressions
A fight against Zeburon will also include a sizable contingent of Black Sands Raiders, as well as his best buddy and top lieutenant Fevik the Defiler. Plus any amount of kank mounts you deem necessary. It will likely come after the PCs have fought multiple encounters against the raiders, too.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen someone a lot like Zeburon in one of the many Brom illustrations for DS: muscles, leather straps, face-concealing horned helmet, menacing pose. I haven’t read any older DS material to know whether he’s someone from the old days, or if he’s new and just likes following local fashions.
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