jeff
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 20
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Post by jeff on Dec 25, 2013 7:44:46 GMT -6
In my B/X game I surprised the players with the fact that in my world Lizardmen spit venom! I got the idea from a show I watched about spitting cobras. How it works is that if the spit attack hits, the player must save vs. poison or be blinded for 1d4 rounds.
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Post by Red Baron on Dec 25, 2013 15:43:19 GMT -6
Reptiles have all types of cool superpowers. Lizards can regrow limbs. Chameleons can change colors. Geckos can walk upside-down. Maybe they can grab things with their tongues or flap all their scales to fly. Lots of good lizard-y curveballs to throw at players.
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Post by cadriel on Dec 26, 2013 5:53:49 GMT -6
I did a bunch of variant lizardmen back in the fourth issue of Fight On! - including venom-spitting ones, lizards that walk on walls, and heavily armored lizards. But yeah, variant lizardmen are always fun
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Post by hareton on Jan 8, 2014 3:14:19 GMT -6
Good ones, need more ideas for interesting lizardmen.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Jan 8, 2014 4:27:45 GMT -6
In BLUEHOLME™ I've adopted a similar approach for the creatures chapter. One of the differences with B/X was that things became specific, like giant geckos, giant crab spiders, etc. While that's okay, it means you need a whole new monster if you want something different. What I do is to use generic basic creatures like "great cat" which come in different sizes, usually normal, large and giant. Then you can layer special abilities on top of these, like poison, special jump movement or attack, petrifying gaze, whatever. That gives you a lot of variety for minimal effort.
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Post by makofan on Jan 8, 2014 14:11:52 GMT -6
Wolf breath is a good one. I have poison wolves, for example, who when they bite, also breath a cloud of poison on their foe, which if opponent fails a save, causes them to fall asleep. The players cut out the poison sacs and use them against other foes
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Post by strangebrew on Jan 8, 2014 16:54:59 GMT -6
Just as a random tangental aside, I thought up a easy little house rule while doing yard work a few months back:
Whenever a character has to save versus poison and succeeds, they get a permanent +1 bonus against that kind of poison (spider, snake, etc.). This is cumulative, so the second time they make a save their bonus is changed to +2. If a character gets to +5, then they are naturally immune to that kind of poison. This might be a gradual tolerance, or maybe they were actually naturally immune the whole time.
First of all, it's nice to give a little celebration for making a tense save, especially a save or die roll. I also like light mechanics which add little permanent bonuses to a character to make them a bit unique and storied. It would be cool to have Yorgor the lowly spearmen end up as Yorgor Snake-bitten, scourge of lizards everywhere.
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