Magic Incarnate

A blog dedicated to the casters who live and breathe their magic. Part of the We Are Adventurers collective.

[a-squirrel-wizard]

What is a suitable punishment for an apprentice that cast "Tasha's Triple Titty Twister" on their classmate in the middle of a lecture causing them to loudly moan

punishment?

1 day blinding stew

stew that blinds you for 1 day

1 day stew of blinding

1 hour locked in a room with dennis

Remaining time: 3 days 23 hours

[mattymouse16]

The best magicians don't reveal their tricks.

[mold-wizard]

So this mail-order company was advertising pondering orbs that were actually five-dimensional hyperspheres and I thought that sounded fancy so I went ahead and ordered one, but it turned out to be a bit of a ripoff. Sure, it may technically be a five-dimensional hypersphere, but I'm only seeing a three-dimensional cross-section of it, so the damn thing still looks like a regular spherical orb, except that every once in a while it shifts a bit along a spatial axis perpendicular to the three dimensions I normally exist in and it seems to change its size.

[unspokensuggestion]

you are allowed to be wrong you are allowed to mess up you are allowed to be embarrassing.

[unspokensuggestion]

you are also allowed to do this.

[wearesorcerer]

@wearepsion

[wearesorcerer]

I have an idea that's to die for. (Casts corrupted blood.)

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

weighted blanket's not enough i need to be compressed by a hydraulic press

[katjohnadams]

Like so?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

precisely so

[wearesorcerer]

Me, to Gaud, having paused time for the equivalent of seven seconds:

[dungeonmastersdiary]

8d6 fire damage, 20-foot radius sphere.

[wearesorcerer]

Sorcerer Reviews Books: Monster Manual II (3.0)

Miscellany

We're so close! :D So I'ma treat you to a twofer: miscellaneous new monsters and miscellaneous old monsters.

Boggle (1st ed. AD&D: Secret of the Slavers Stockade): The art matches the textual description -- in part. The text says that Boggles act like monkeys and have disproportionate body parts varying between individuals. The art, however, gives us a hairless, dark blue gibbon. (Nonhuman Primate #5: Greasemonkey.) It's not like the artist couldn't have shown several different-looking individuals.

Bogun (3.0: Masters of the Wild): A Druidic homunculus. Though practically identical to a normal homunculus, before the 3.5 update, it was trivial to make: the only thing really restricting its creation was requiring a Druid of at least 7th level. (The arcane version costs quite a bit of gold and thrice the XP of the Bogun, but you could be 4th level when making one.)

Bronze Serpent: If Steelix were Steel/Electric and had Volt Absorb -- no other changes, since it can already learn Bind/Wrap and Thunder Fang. It looks cool, but having the 3.x shocking grasp is nothing special and the stats (for a CR 10) are only slightly better than those of the Giant Constrictor Snake (a CR 5).

Galeb Duhr (1st ed. AD&D: Monster Cards, Set #2): The stats are oddly different between 3.0 and 5e, but the concept's the same except these ones perform (mainly orally: singing, telling tales, etc.).

Hook Horror (1st ed. AD&D: Fiend Folio): Have I ever liked or taken seriously the vulture-roach/beetle with hooks for hands? No, no I haven't. Not-Man Door Hand Hook Car Door.

Juggernaut (OD&D: Monsters & Treasure [Mentioned]): Casual, blatant, and avoidable Hinduphobia and total lack of JoJo reference notwithstanding, one has to wonder why you need to turn a steamroller (a vehicle) into a Construct with multiple arms, let alone multiple spell-like abilities.

I considered doing the Juggernaut line, but I thought better of it. If you're going to invoke the X-Men character, you should use the X-Men TAS version. I also considered "Roada Rolla DA!" But the point of the monster is an unstoppable force and that scene is about stopping both road rollers and time.

Monster of Legend: This is supposed to turn a given monster into a unique divine servant with a few fairly neat abilities (one offensive, two defensive), but at only +2 CR. Even so, it's easily broken: the options include the combo of 5th-level Cleric casting with access to three domains (offense; Clerics ordinarily get two domains) with permanent haste and spell turning (defense), which is beyond bonkers.

Morkoth (OD&D: Supplement 2: Blackmoor): The basics are the same across editions; this one only has the hypnosis and spell reflection.

Mountain Giant (1st ed. AD&D: Fiend Folio): Yet another example of a high-CR monster that looks powerful if you don't know the system, but is actually weak.

Reason Stealer: An Ooze that devours minds, gaining the victim's numeric stats where better (because Str is mental?) and any feats and prepared spells (Fighters and Wizards specifically beware). The idea is fine, but it's wonky and easily becomes a problem encounter.

Runic Guardian: A Shield Guardian into which you can imbue spells, much like the Spellstitched template I discussed before. This really could be an item-like augmentation to existing constructs (a graft) instead of a creature.

Tempest (2nd ed. AD&D: Monstrous Compendium: Forgotten Realms Appendix, Monstrous Manual): The two components (a storm cloud elemental and a quad-elemental) got reworked into the Storm Elemental and Omnimental (both MMIII). This version claims to be the former with the latter as flavor, but it's the reverse. It also grossly underestimates the size of a thunderhead. The 5e couatl-thing is much better, but not an omnimental.

Twig Blight (3.0: The Sunken Citadel): I've already covered this. The conceptual overlap with the Wortling is almost complete (small, humanoid-shaped fruit of an antagonistic tree, poisonous claws), but the execution is poor. 5e's is weaker: it lacks the Strength-sapping poison (in an edition where DC 11 is still viable).

Windghost (2nd ed. AD&D: Monstrous Compendium Annual Vol. 1): Imagine a windsock. Make it a flying monster with anti-magic abilities and a harmonic attack that "throws off equilibrium." Now make that thing Lawful.

Oh wait, I'm not done.

The Tauric Creature Template

This was the template that always stood out to me more than the rest because of the illustration of its example creature, a tauric hobgoblin-griffin (hobgriffin?). With the other templates, you have a bugbear pirate with an ax, an ankheg chimera with a bad palette, an undead warrior, melting people, blocky people, an aura-farming minotaur, yet another zombie by Wayne Reynolds in his early period, a fat toad, and a rhino in barding (because rhinos aren't already armored) with an orc on its back. None of those are inspiring.

There are three ways to make a centaur:

The Traditional Way (Human Not-Centipede): Take a human, cut off its legs. Take a horse, cut off its head and neck. Stitch together. Bam! In game terms, this is complicated; the best thing you could do, IMHO, is treat it as a mounted rider who cannot dismount, but that's effectively running two creatures (the rider and the mount) with one pool of HP. To be fair, the mechanics are the least complicated part of a centaur. It has two thoraces and two abdomens with presumably all of the organs from both, but one brain, one anus (requiring the horse part to digest everything the human part already digested, hence Human Not-Centipede), and one or two sets of genitalia (depending on interpretation; see #3).

The Gisnep Hercules Way: The human part is now proportional to the horse's, meaning it's a four-legged ogre. Ex.: Lynels.

The Pony Way: A four-legged human. In game terms, that's 1.5x your normal carrying capacity, better speed (as you assign it), and something like the Dwarf's Stability (+4 vs. bull rush [push], trip [prone], etc.). Hybsils and Anggitay are probably this. A lot of art of centaurs gives them these proportions (e.g., Fantasia), but it's never consistent. Like, there are versions in Classical art which have a complete human body, legs and all, with the rest of the horse attached at the butt.

Like, mermaids are weird, but at least their only problem is mating. Everything else works out anatomically. But centaurs are a mess and there is no good way to make them not messy, as all of the solutions create further problems.

Anyway, you're led to believe the Tauric template is #1, but it's actually #2. It's less an actual template and more rough guidelines for what to do when merging two monsters because so many of the abilities are dependent upon whether or not they're tied to a head or the humanoid's legs, which is purely flavor. You could and probably should ignore such things if you're making, say, a tauric sahuagin-catoblepas. Pathfinder instead gave such creatures an undersized weapons ability, which works but seems a little limited for all the complication this idea has.

[souperluminal]

05.28 - Nebula

[souperluminal]

05.26 - Wild Wizard

[wearesorcerer]

Sorcerer Reviews Books: Monster Manual II (3.0)

Antepenult: Undead

"Ultimate" means "final." "Penultimate" means "next to last." An antepenult (adj. antepenultimate) is the one before that.

I've only managed to cover six monsters I would have put here: four Undead (the Banshee, Death Knight, Jahi, and Spawn of Kyuss) and two adjacent monsters (the Half-Flesh Golem and the Needlefolk).

Well, let's have the madness take its toll.

Bone Naga: You'd think the Bone Naga would predate the Necrophidius, but no: the Bone Naga is from the 2nd ed. The Ruins of Myth Drannor, while the Necrophidius is from White Dwarf #15 (1st ed.). In 3rd ed., there's no need for it to have its own entry: it's a Dark Naga Lich and could be made that way.

Bone Ooze: A bone-colored ooze that eats bones by ripping bones out of its prey with each hit, potentially all at once. The bones remain in its protoplasm to digest, providing it a bonier frame. Gruesome, but no CR 21.

Corpse Gatherer: One of a few attempts at a living graveyard, corpse collector, and undead swarm. Undead are great to mass, but it's counterproductive here (it eats corpses) until it dies (turns into its HD worth of zombies, yet still provides its aura of desecration).

Crimson Death: 3rd edition dropped the lore about this being the ghost of a person whose body became a vampire (the Heartless to a Nobody), so it doesn't need to be Undead. It would work better as a vampiric Elemental. ("But that's a Mihstu!" WotC never updated the Mihstu.) Because it's incorporeal, it has no Strength score, so has to have several abilities to let it Vader choke.

If this is a consular ship ghost, then where is the ambassador why does it grapple?

Deathbringer: These ogre-sized, high-CR Fighters (who totally aren't Death Knights) lead undead armies, dual-wield flails, and can use greater dispel magic and a negative energy pulse at-will. Everything about this makes me double take.

Dragonflesh Golem (Drolem): Construct 1/2. Drolems come from BD&D, though why not AD&D first is a mystery to me. This version doesn't have a breath weapon (missing the point), but can fly, unlike the BD&D one.

Dread Guard: Construct 2/2. The Codex Keeper says this is very similar to the non-D&D Doomguard, but I think that's in name only: this is a suit of armor that gets mistaken for an undead warrior (there's a few of those in this book), differing from an animated object in its energy resistances and semi-intelligence.

Effigy: Not to be confused with the Effigy Creature template. This is a possessing ghost that is also a fire elemental (kinda like the flavor of one of my favorite spells, death candle). It burns its host alive, then seeks out another host.

Famine Spirit: Ghoulish undead (including vampires and zombles, possibly also wendigo [are they Ghost-types or ogrish transformations?]) already embody gluttony taken to an extreme; these take that to a further extreme. There's at least some fatphobia at play here.

Gravecrawler: Yet another undead-eater, these are undead worms that calcify (petrify) flesh in an aura, then eat that calcium. They can also communicate with the dead, so are lore keepers. Rare neutral undead, but still horribly destructive to the living.

Ragewind: Another undead elemental, this is a pun on "whirlwind" (a core feat in 3.5, it's a spin attack). It's one of several hivemind ghosts, in this case of multiple warriors each wielding their own weapon.

It predates Xaldin by three years; strange that we'd get the same concept (multiweapon fighting + wind) twice in so short of time.

Also, two KH references in one post?!

Nope: three!

Spellstitched: Out of all the Undead in this book, this template is the only one to get reprinted, though many miss it because it's in the back of Complete Arcane, where you don't expect monsters to be. (The Banshee has a duplicate monster, the Keening Spirit [City of the Spider Queen]; exact same concept, different stats.) It lets you put magic tattoos on undead, giving them spell-like abilities (pretty standard for SLAs in 3.0, spontaneous casting in 3.5). It works, but there are a bajillion other versions of the magic tattoo in 3rd edition that also work, from psionic items to flavoring permanency to Dragonmarks.

With that, I'm down to miscellany (old and new) and races.

[wearesorcerer]

Sorcerer Reviews Books: Monster Manual II (3.0)

Weird Animals for Fun, Profit, and/or Summoning

YOU THOUGHT I WAS STILL IN THE MIDST OF PROBLEMS,

I managed to resolve several of them to some extent. Yay. So now I'm moving on to the largest of the remaining sections in MM2: miscellaneous weird animals.

What do I mean by this? For some reason, regardless of actual creature type, a full quarter of the monsters in this book are just real-world animals, sometimes plus something -- sapience, magic, unusual anatomical bits, size, and such.

Fortunately for everyone, I've already covered a lot of these: the Asperi, Chaos Roc, Cloud Ray, Corollax, Darktentacles (kinda), Dinosaurs (Allosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Cryptoclidus, Quetzalcoatlus, Seismosaurus, and Spinosaurus), Ether Scarab (functionally it goes here, IMHO), Forest Sloth, Grizzly Mastodon, Julajimus (it may be a bogey, but it looks like a weird baboon), Legendary Animals (Ape, Bear, Eagle, Horse, Shark, Snake, Tiger, and Wolf), Leviathan, Megalodon, Megapede, Nethersight Mastiff, Phase Wasp, Razor Boar, and Shadow Spider. There are more weird animal monsters in this book than any other monsters.

How are these relevant? Well, you could convert them to 5e. If you want an Improved Familiar, you could work that out with your DM (don't use the guidelines in here, they are wrong). You might be able to summon some, but you'd have to rework your summon monster and summon nature's ally lists.

Ash Rat (Magical Beast): A fiery rat. It has a number of abilities normal Fire Elementals don't have which would be really good for incorporating into fire and fire-adjacent elementals: a ranged fire attack, fire healing, and a smoky aura like obscuring mist.

Blood Ape (Magical Beast): Nonhuman Primate 1/4. The name is just edgelordery: they're usually peaceful, red-furred gorillas which have an "alpha" that can cast animal growth on the family unit.

You'd think I could find a gif of Donkey Kong using a super mushroom to enlarge, but no.

Chimeric Creature Template: Instead of letting you fuse monsters, this lets you replace the lion in the standard Chimera with another monster (the example given is an Ankheg). Mechanically, it's the Half-Dragon template, but worse.

Cloaked Ape (Magical Beast): Nonhuman Primate 2/4. It could easily have been a Beast, but it's ~magical (non-magical fast healing) and ~sapient (Int 3). In appearance, think a Hadozee, but if it were a lemur.

Desmodu Bats (Guard, Hunting, War; Animals): Giant bats bred for specific purposes (like dogs or horses). They take up far more text than they should, which I'll explain when I get to Desmodu in another post.

Dire Elephant, Elk, and Horse: I have no idea why they put the Dire Elephant, Dire Horse, Grizzly (should be Grizzled) Mastodon, and Legendary Horse in the same book. These dire animals all have bony plates, which from the illustration suggests they look diseased (with Shope papilloma virus, which affects bunnies and is responsible for skvaders, wolpertingers, and probably jackalopes). Contrast with PF's Megaloceras.

Dire Hawk: Pidgeot. Normally it's Medium (= game), but can be Large (= anime).

Sadly, the Dire Hawk still has the dumb bony plates here. But it's definitely Pidgeot.

Dire Snake: A viper-constrictor, just like the Legendary Snake. It's much too big for Arbok (roughly Onix-sized).

Dire Toad: 3.0 also made the Giant Toad (Oriental Adventures), which has almost the same stats. Because WotC does that.

Fire Bat (Elemental): Fire Bats should be Magical Beasts because they're on fire rather than being made out of fire. Precedent: the Ash Rat. They have a listing for use as Familiars, but you have to be 15th level and aren't worth the wait.

Gambol (Magical Beast): Nonhuman Primate 3/4. A giant, purple-skinned, blue-furred baboon with haste, agility-oriented Rogue class features, and a scary howl like that of the Julajimus (Nonhuman Primate 4/4).

This minus stick plus Large size and weirder colors.

Gravorg (Magical Beast): From the illustration, you'd think this is just a possum/cat/sloth-thing, but it's Large. It uses reverse gravity to kill prey. Needlessly. The Codex Keeper identifies this as a lemur; I thought at first it was a weird cat and then an Australian possum; the text mentions a sloth.

Grimalkin (Magical Beast [Shapechanger], formerly Shapechanger): A human-sized house cat that shapeshifts into other animals. Though it's not listed as a familiar option, it will bond with someone for life and gradually adopt their mannerisms. And it does not shut up.

Leechwalker (Vermin): A swarm of leeches that takes a vaguely humanoid form, yet isn't associated with Kyuss.

Mooncalf (Magical Beast): A bat-winged squid (minus two arms) from the moon (yet lacks any space flight abilities) and uses some Druid spells. Obv. Lovecraftian, but off from its inspiration. Neither telepathic nor an Aberration.

Moonrat (Magical Beast): When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, the rats gain Int (and Str) and start carrying out diabolical plans. So like reverse wererats filtered through Pinky and the Brain.

Mudmaw (Magical Beast): An alligator with a pair of tentacles coming out of the corners of its mouth. Though magical, it's functionally just an alligator.

Spellgaunt (Magical Beast): A giant, magic-eating spider. Like the Adamantine Horror, it can use Mordenkainen's disjunction at-will. Unlike the Horror, it has a drawback in keeping with the spell: if it disjoins an Artifact, it might die, rather than permanently and irrevocably lose casting ability. Since it eats magic, it would die either way, but this version is more direct.

Swamplight Lynx: A tiger-sized lynx with light, dancing lights, daze, and blur -- so a swampy Coeurl/Displacer Beast but no weird appendages. It hunts elves, who famously don't usually live in swamps. Who needs to understand ecology, amiright?

Titanic Creature Template: For making mediocre kaiju, but you can already embiggen without a template. It does impact non-magical AoE sizes, but that's an oversight in the normal rules.

Warbeast Template: This is meant to let you make normal animals (etc.) into war mounts like with horses to warhorses. However, such a template is easily backwards engineered, the stat bonuses differ bizarrely from what they should be, Warbeast can be applied to Vermin but won't let them be mounts (because they're mindless, so cannot be trained) even though that's the entire point of the template, and everything about this should be part of Handle Animal without needing a template.

[escuerzoresucitado]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

dump his ass. move to a walkable city. start hormones. get into fiber crafts. dye your hair weird. grow an herb garden. foster a distrustful cat. take a welding class. invite your friends over for tea and cake. get way too into obscure media. explore a new cuisine. lie to the police. protest in the streets. life has so many possibilities don't it?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

make out with a frenemy. buy noise cancelling headphones. wear office inappropriate attire. quit a toxic workplace. improve your apartment. start a dog walking sidegig. get on first name basis with your local librarians. bully politicians at town hall meetings. get an unexpected piercing. cultivate farmer's market connections. trade recipes with a gossipy old neighbor. unionize your apartment complex. move to the countryside. let a friend take you larping. keep a sword on your mantleplace

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

get a tattoo on your 40th birthday. be tempted to buy a loom. do a charity drag show. sue your landlord. buy a really nice kitchen appliance. volunteer at an anarchist soup kitchen. rediscover a tv show you watched when you were 8. spam your state senators. shop at asian grocery stores. do cosplay. buy trans flags in bulk and mount them along the highway. go viral for unexpected reasons. move in with your best friend. make lemoncello with leftover lemon rinds. run for school board membership. explore pegging.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

update: i'm delighted to report this post has been responsible for at least one person dumping his ass

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

update: three four people

[wearesorcerer]

Succumb to the amulet?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Succumb to the amulet!!!

[dailyadventureprompts]

So one of the things that you don't notice about D&D until you start playing other games is that by its very design (and despite the complaints of almost every single dungeon master,) D&D conditions players to be passive and uninventive.

Think about it this way...If a player wants to do something, they require:

the DM to allow them to do so (either in their role as referee or narrator)

the mechanics to be arranged in their favour (everything from class builds to environmental penalties to limited use abilities)

the dice to cooperate

If any one of these things isn't checked off, the player simply CAN'T do what they wanted to do. How many times have players come up with a solution for a challenge that SHOULD work, only to be foiled when either DM fiat or poor dicerolls said no?

Unless it’s something they’ve specc’d their character to be good at, players become pessimistic about the outcome of their actions, so they don’t try things.  They don’t speak up in dialogue because they don't want their uncharismatic character to roll persuasion, they don't poke around the room because their afraid their unperceptive character will trigger a trap. They wait until the DM HANDS them the answer

DMs lament that their parties aren’t taking risks (because risks are supposed to be where the fun is), despite the fact that they’ve thoroughly punished players for taking risks in the past. This problem’s gotten so bad  I’ve had completely new players start compulsively checking EVERY room for mimics because d&d’s “gotcha” attitude has pervaded out into the cultural consciousness surrounding the game. 

Compare this with something like blades in the dark, which uses a d6 system where 1-3 is a failure, 4-5 is a success with a drawback, and 6 is a complete success. That’s a 50% chance of the player getting to do (at least partially) what they want, and that’s before we get into tossing multiple dice or expending resources to affect the roll.

Games like BitD train their players to be proactive about making moves in story/gameplay because those moves have a (mechanically incentivised) likelihood of paying off. It's one of the reasons that one of the best D&D hacks that I've ever used is the Tales of the Valiant's version of inspiration, which encourages players to make rolls by giving you rewards when you fail.

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

stop using chatgpt!!!! take a bronze pin and carve your questions onto an ox scapula, then toss it into the fire!!!! use the cracks to divine the gods answer!!!!

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

citations still have to be APA 7th edition though. if you plagiarise, the gods will flood the yellow river again. and you'll lose your academic standing.

[dkpsyhog]

(The Gods, personal communication, July 18, 2024)

[the-wizards-den]

Enchantress by Julia Kovalyova