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• Aug 15, 2019

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Chuul

  

  This article is part of a series! You can find all of them here.

  Chuuls are large lobster-like beings with yellowish shells, a semi-upright posture, and a mass of little red tentacles dangling from their faces. They’re a mainstain of the Underdark in every edition they appear in, including this one. They didn’t appear on the Monster Vault, but later on they got a Monster Vault-style update in Dungeon #192, so we’ll be looking at that as well.

  Chuuls are Aberrant Magical Beasts (aquatic). We saw the aquatic keyword already, back when we read about aboleths, but I don’t think I explained it. Aquatic creatures suffer no penalties for operating underwater and usually have a swim speed. They also get bonuses when fighting non-aquatic enemies underwater.

  The Lore

  As magical beasts, chuuls are sapient. They’re not very smart, with Int 4, but they’re conversant in Deep Speech. They lurk in underwater lakes, still pools and other sufficiently large bodies of stagnant water, and emerge to snatch prey with their huge claws. Chuuls don’t care if that prey is sapient, and will eat every single part of their bodies except for the brain, whose taste the creatures dislike. Predictably, this makes them good neighbors to mind flayers, who will use a chuul pool as a dumping ground for brainless bodies.

  The Dungeon article adds a bit more lore. Chuuls live in small groups called pods, in bodies of still water large enough to support them. They’ll happily use rivers and seas for long-distance travels, but there’s nothing like an underground lake or still swamp to settle down and raise your kids. These creatures only have two ambitions in life: to be left alone and to eat people. When the first one is frustrated, it means they’re about to satisfy the second.

  Chuuls reproduce by laying sacs of slimy yellow eggs, which they protect fiercely. Sometimes they’ll attach these sacs to the bottom of ships or riverboats as a way to help the species propagate further.

  As chuuls grow older, they grow bigger and sometimes develop psychic powers. They also mutate very easily, which makes them a preferred subject for mind flayer experimentation, and might give even wild chuuls a few extra interesting traits. Finally, they all share a kind of racial memory. An individual will remember its previous generation very clearly and have a dimmer recollection of the ones that came before. One memory from the dawn of time remains very strong, however: hate humans. Kill them. Devour them.

  The Numbers

  In both the Monster Manual and the Dungeon article, we get the same two varieties of this monster:

  The classic Chuul is a Level 10 Soldier with 109 HP. It’s Large, has darkvision and both a walking and a swimming speed of 6. Its basic attack is a claw whose damage is exactly half of what it should be for its level, but that’s surprisingly okay here because the chuul can make 2 claw attacks per turn despite not being Elite. These do extra damage against immobilized targets.

  If both attacks hit the same target, the Chuul will make a attack against the victim’s Fortitude using its face tentacles. This does no damage, but immobilizes on a hit. The tentacles also figure in the Tentacle Net ability, a passive which automatically immobilizes anyone hit by the chuul’s opportunity attacks.

  The chuul’s ambush predator tactics make it seem like a lurker, but I guess it doesn’t try to hide again after first emerging, though it prefers to stick to the water. The Dungeon/Monster Vault version has better claw damage, but is still largely the same.

  Next we have the Chuul Juggernaut, a Level 23 Elite Soldier with 434 HP that’s either very old or was experimented on by mind flayers. It’s Huge, has ground and swim speeds of 7 and also psychic powers! Psychic Lure is a ranged 10 attack against Will that does psychic damage and pulls the target 5 squares on a hit. The Juggernaut otherwise fights like the classic model, but is much less shy about leaving the water. We’re back to having to fix its damage: as an elite it’s supposed to make two full-damage attacks and not two half-damage ones. This damage fix is exactly what the Dungeon version does, being otherwise identical.

  Encounters

  The first is level 10, 2 chuuls, a feymire crocodile, and a bog hag. Just to show you these things also live on the surface and associate with people that are not mind flayers.

  The second is level 23, a chuul juggernaut and three blood fiends. I got nothing on this one.

  Final Impressions

  The chuul lore in the MM didn’t exactly spark joy, y’know? The additions from the update make them more interesting in that front. Mechanically they’re solid opposition, as evidenced by the fact that the update didn’t do more than increase their damage a bit.

• Aug 13, 2019

  Ravenloft, or How I Started GMing GURPS Iron Gods

  In the last post on this subject, I talked about how I accidentally hijacked a D&D 5th Edition game and turned it into a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game using the old-school Ravenloft module for AD&D. Today, I’ll tell you about how Ravenloft claimed yet another party of ill-fated adventurers.

  I don’t think the group actually realized how close they were to winning. It was almost entirely a psychological defeat. The place was scary and unknown, the random encounters hard, and they spent the first couple of sessions treating it like a Diablo dungeon (“run in as fast as possible and kill everything that moves!”). After that, they became overly cautious, retreating to the chapel every couple of fights to spend the night and let those healing penalties fade.

  They’d inevitably wake up to a random encounter. No, undead can’t enter the chapel, but those two rust monsters I rolled up that one time sure could! They didn’t wreck any equipment, but they scared the players just the same.

  This became the usual pattern of our sessions, and if it kept up the group would end up allowing the monsters to slowly grind them to death. I told them as much, and cautioned them to explore the castle in a more directed and organized manner if they wanted to win.

  That led to a rather fruitful session where they moved with purpose and reached the room where Strahd’s maid lived. She pleaded for help and offered to lead them to a stash of treasure in exchange for help in escaping the castle. The PCs agreed.

  She led them up the stairs, staying towards the back of the group for safety. When they reached the “treasure room”, the maid sprouted claws and fangs and backstabbed the party, because of course she was a vampire and the treasure was fake.

  They managed to defeat the vampire maid without suffering too much damage, and it turned out that all of this happened right in front of the door to the throne room, where I6’s tarot reading told me Strahd himself could be found.

  So there they were, mostly unhurt, with a cleric and a paladin in the party, in possession of both the Icon of Ravenloft and the Sunsword, literally at Strahd’s doorstep. What did the PCs do? They ran away! The rest of the session was them finding their way to the outside, still at the second floor, levitating over the walls and making it back to Barovia.

  We ended the session there, and we wouldn’t get to play another. One of the players outright told me Ravenloft was too hard and he wanted something else, so I offered to switch to Iron Gods the next session with a fresh batch of characters. No one else complained or offered a dissenting opinion, so I guess they agreed. Ravenloft had claimed another party, not by killing them but by breaking their spirits.

  I’m pretty sure it was Ravenloft, too, as opposed to shitty GMing on my part. The Iron Gods game is still ongoing and the players look forward to each session, so I must be doing something right.

  When I next write about this, we’ll see how that Iron Gods game started.

• Aug 8, 2019

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Choker

  

  This article is part of a series! You can find all of them here.

  Chokers are humanoid creatures with somewhat elongated heads and very long rubbery arms ending in hands whose palms seem lined with sharp barbs. To better choke you with, obviously. They’re only listed in the Monster Manual, but they do get an update in Dungeon Magazine issue 196. This update is part of a series of articles that are considered “missing pages from the Monster Vault”, so I’ll cover them here as well.

  The Lore

  The MM doesn’t offer much in the way of choker lore, but the Dungeon article remedies that nicely.

  Chokers love the Underdark but may be found in other favorable environments closer to the surface, particularly near sapient settlements. You see, they prefer hunting sapient prey, because in addition to being good eatin’ they often carry the shiny baubles and jewels which these creatures love to collect and occasionally fondle. Their arms are so flexible because their internal structure is composed of many knobby cartilage joints.

  Chokers typically live and hunt alone, because they’re so antisocial they see even other chokers as prey. They gots shinies and meat on them just like anybody else, precious. These creatures are however just smart enough to accept shiny bribes in exchange for not eating someone, and sometimes drow or other underground dwellers can hire them on that basis. Drow in particular don’t like to do it very often, because they find chokers too unpredictable.

  The Numbers

  We have two varieties of choker statted up here, both Unaligned and possessed of Int 6. I suppose this could mean not every choker the party meets is a bandit, but I don’t think I ever saw any published friendly chokers.

  Cavern Choker (Monster Manual)

  This is a Small Natural Humanoid and a Level 4 Lurker with 42 HP. It has darkvision, a ground speed of 6, and a climb speed of 6 with spider climb.

  Its basic (and main) attack is the Tentacle Claw. Its Reach 2 is impressive for a Small creature, and in addition to doing damage it also automatically grabs the target on a hit. Grabs in 4e prevent the victim from moving, but not from performing other actions. They can use an action to attempt to escape the grab. For monsters without a listed escape DC, such as these chokers, the test is either the victims Acrobatics vs. the monster’s Reflex, or Athletics vs. the monster’s Fortitude. In this specific case the target takes a -4 penalty to the roll to escape.

  Some monsters have specific things they can do to grabbed victims. For example, the cavern choker can use its standard action to choke a grabbed victim, an attack which deals the same damage as the claw but targets Fortitude and has a better chance of landing. When the choker is targeted by an attack against its AC or Reflex, it can use an immediate interrupt to interpose the grabbed victim, causing the attack to target them instead. This doesn’t work if the attack comes from the victim itself, obviously.

  The choker also has a Chameleon Hide, which it can activate as a minor action to gain concealment for a turn. It can’t use this while grabbing someone, but it’s useful for it to retreat using its considerable Stealth.

  The tactics write themselves - the choker will lurk on a ceiling and grab someone when they pass by, while its less sneaky buddies distract the rest of the party.

  Cavern Choker (Dungeon)

  The Cavern Choker from Dungeon remains a level 4 lurker with 42 HP. The main change from the MM is a significant upgrade to its Chameleon Skin, which now gives full concealment and is always on as long as the choker doesn’t have anyone grabbed.

  The Choke attack is gone - now the Tentacle Claw does 10 ongoing damage to grabbed targets until they escape. Escape attempts now have an explicit DC of 21, which is about the same as you’d get under the old rules. Body Shield has had its text changed and clarified. It’s still an interrupt that redirects an attack by someone else to the grabbed victim, but now it only recharges when the choker hits with Tentacle Claw. This means that the monster can only use it once after it grabs a target, making “grab, release on your next turn, grab again” preferable to holding on until the target dies.

  Feygrove Choker (Monster Manual)

  This Medium Fey Humanoid is a Level 12 Lurker with 91 HP. A different species, or the platonic ideal of the mundane choker? In any case its abilities are quite similar. It has Reach 3 and can grab up to 2 targets simultaneously. When it has 2 grabbed creatures it can choke them both at once; it can use either creature as a shield, but not against attacks made by either grabbed creature.

  As an extra surprise, it can use a power named Vine Fetter, which animates nearby vegetation in an Area Burst 3 within 10 squares. It targets the Reflex of enemies in the area and restrains them (save ends) on a hit. This recharges on a 6 and will very likely be the opening move in a fight.

  Feygrove Choker (Dungeon)

  The exact same set of changes also applies to the Feygrove Choker, which remains a Level 12 Lurker with 91 HP. It can still grab two people instead of just one, so it has more opportunities to use Body Shield. The damage fixes also have much more of an impact on it, since it’s a higher-level monster.

  Sample Encounter and Final Impressions

  The sample encounter is level 4: a pair of cavern chokers employed by a small hobgoblin war party.

  MM Chokers get a “meh” from me. I didn’t find them that exciting. I guess they’re the sort of gimmicky Gygaxian monster you’d expect to find alongside cloakers and piercers, but I didn’t find them appealing outside of that.

  I like the additional lore from the Dungeon article, though it definitiely makes it clear that chokers are more monsters than people. The stat updates are welcome too. I’d normally just apply a damage fix to the MM stat blocks and call it a day, but these come with some interesting changes like the boost to Chameleon Skin.

• Aug 7, 2019

  On Warhammer 40.000

  This one has been sitting in my drafts folder for a while, and I figured it was time it got finished and saw the light of day.

  When I announced my post on Meltaguns on the GURPS Discord server, the following sentence from there generated a little discussion:

  There is pretty much no reason to use one of these instead of a
  good anti-vehicle missile, but the Imperium of Man never cared for reason.
  

  Some of the people who were in there at the time disagreed with this sentence. They attempted to explain their position¹, and while I still don’t agree with them, I could kinda see where they’re coming from.

  At the core of that logic is a strong impulse to suspend disbelief in the setting and to willfully ignore the gaps between the fiction and the rules². To look at the stuff depicted in the setting material and wargame rules, and to build a chain of logic that makes it internally consistent. This is an attitude shared by a lot of fans of the setting, and some of its writers too.

  I come at this from a different direction. At the core of my thinking about Warhammer 40.000 is the fact that this setting is utterly ridiculous, and any material I write about it will hold that idea within its heart. The Imperium are a bunch of space nazis whose outlook, equipment, and strategies are entirely oriented towards what would make the best heavy metal album cover. Their claims that they are the only alternative to the end of humanity or even of the universe are entirely bunk. I will never, ever take them the least bit seriously or picture them in a sympathetic light. They will never be better than a joke in my book.

  The same goes for pretty much everyone else, though they likely prefer to pose for album covers in different music genres³.

  I will gladly adapt stuff from that setting to GURPS, and I would even GM a game in that setting, but in both cases I will always keep that ridiculousness in mind, lampshade it at every opportunity, and make sure every shade of nazi in there is an eminently punchable antagonist. As you might imagine, it’s not very likely that I’ll end up playing in a game with people who take the Imperium at its word, much less people who think it’s way of thinking applies to the real world.

  1. Which was that the setting’s missiles are weaker than meltaguns because that’s what the wargame and FFG rules imply. ↩

  2. Or ludonarrative dissonance if you want to be technical. ↩

  3. Hair metal for the Eldar, some kind of Gundam soundtrack for the Tau, and so on. ↩

• Aug 6, 2019

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Chimera

  

  This article is part of a series! Go here to see the other entries.

  Chimeras come from Greek mythology, where as far as I know it was just The Chimera. D&D likes to make unique monsters into whole species, and this is what happened here. I remember seeing them statted up for AD&D 2nd Edition in the past, and they’re quite likely much older than that. Here, they’re only on the Monster Manual.

  Chimeras in 4e have a lion’s body with a dragon’s wings and tail. Its three heads all sprout from the front: the lion in the middle, a goat to the left, and a dragon to the right. They’re Large Natural Magical Beasts, which means they’re both native to the world and sapient. They speak Common and Draconic but aren’t very smart, at Int 5.

  A chimera behaves much like the less cerebral types of dragon: it stakes out territory somewhere and roams the surrounding countriside looking for food to line its stomach and shiny treasure to line its lair. Sometimes other creatures will convince a chimera to work for them as muscle, guards, or mounts. They’re Unaligned, but I guess a peaceful interaction with a chimera would be difficult unless you can convince it you’re not prey.

  A chimera is a Level 15 Elite Brute with 366 HP. It has both all-around vision and darkvision, so it can hunt at night just fine and can’t be flanked. It also has Resist 10 fire.

  The chimera runs with speed 6, flies with speed 10 (clumsy), and has overland flight 15. Creatures with overland flight can fly at the listed speed outside of combat for extended periods, basically. You can run into a chimera quite far from its lair.

  In combat, the chimera will usually attack with all three heads: bites from the lion and dragon, and a gore from the goat (which knocks prone in addition to doing damage). The lion bite is its basic attack, but it can attack with all three heads as a standard action. When it charges it uses the goat head, causing a little more damage than the standing gore attack.

  The dragon head can also breathe fire on a close blast 5, targeting Reflex and doing fire damage plus ongoing 10 fire damage (save ends) to anyone it hits. This is an encounter power, but when the chimera is bloodied it will immediately recharge its breath and use it again as a free action. In other words, it works exactly like the breath from a real dragon.

  The pictured chimera breathes and resists fire because it has red dragon bits, but they come in all the colors of Tiamat. Just change the element: a black chimera would use and resist acid, a blue one lightning, and so on.

  The suggested encounters are both level 15. The first is 2 chimeras and 2 hill giants, and the second a chimera, an azer taskmaster, and 6 azer minion warriors.

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