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October Brew Festival Week 2: Warriors
To finish off Week 2 with a bang, we’ve got the first anvil piece I’ve put up on this site- meaning it’s not quite taken its final shape. This is Chapter 1 (so far) of Robilar’s Treatise on Combat. There’s a lot to be done here, but these Subclasses, Superiority Feats, and Battle Master Maneuvers will help expand Battlefield Superiority to any class that wants to lay hands on it. We’re getting close to Halloween, and next week’s theme will be Strange Magic.
Week 4: Festivals and Fear
For the morning of Day 1, I’ll present these two on-theme unit type monster stat-blocks. Later in the day, I’ll drop another statblock.
These are combination statblocks that let you deploy either large numbers or mixed groups of creatures coordinating closely.
Today we have the Zombie Horde and Infested Zombie, representing collectives and symbiotics, complementing our earlier preview of mounted type units.
I’ll post a lot more of these by the end of the week, but just to keep things moving, here’s another taste.
I’d love some feedback on this Unit idea- I’m honestly not super confident in it. I really like the blended statblocks for mounted units, but perhaps I should be taking another route with symbiotic and collective type units. Plenty to consider.
Tomorrow I’ll drop the Bard College of Masks- so keep an eye out for that.
So here’s one that’s been a thorn in my side for a while: The College of Masks, based on the 3.5 Master of Masks prestige class. I just couldn’t get those masks of power to feel right! Still, it seemed fitting for the season, so I whipped it into shape for today. This one, I’m going to hold back on calling done just yet- we’ll call it an anvil piece. Despite the recent revisions, I still think I can do better with those last two features, but I want it up in time for the season. Tomorrow, I’ll bring more monster statblocks to the table! Here’s the homebrewery link, in case tumblr kills the document.
Week 4: Festivals and Fear
Paragon Creature Preview
Some of you may remember a while back I mentioned a I was working on a “Sub-Legendary creature” I was referring to as Paragons. The idea is starting to take shape a little bit, though it may not look like much.
The idea here is that these creatures produce more interesting encounters than a normal creature by reacting to the things that the party does, but because these reactions have specific triggers, clever parties can deny them the opportunity to take extra actions.
In lieu of legendary resistance, we simply have the ‘Resist’ paragon reaction. This lets Paragon Creatures have some means of resisting the most debilitating effects, but they can’t simply say no in the way that legendary creatures can. There’s more tweaks coming to this idea for sure. You might notice the little blurb on ‘Force Actions’ near the bottom of the page. I’ll be playing with these later, but the general idea is to represent monsters with the backing of an army or force that is not taking direct part in the battle. I’m imagining Siege Weapons, Archer Volleys, or (on a wildly more specific note) a ship captain having his helmsman suddenly tilt the ship to unbalance boarders. There’s only one stat block for now, because this is more a dry run of an idea than anything. Tomorrow: The School of the (Ethereal) Border for Wizards.
Week 4: Festivals and Fear Paragon Creature Preview (With Approximately 200% more statblocks) All right, all right, I’m cheating a little- I’m going to have to break schedule this week. The School of the Veil (formerly of the Border) isn’t quite working out for me just yet, so it’s being delayed. It might be better off as a sorcerous origin, but that’s for another time. Today, I offer you Two Additional Paragon Monsters to ease any potential frustrations and keep up that breakneck Brewfest pace. This serves as a sort of proof of concept- that concept being that Paragons are both a quick and dirty alternative to Legendary monsters, and one which offers a slightly different experience. I knocked these two additional statblocks out in roughly 30 minutes, because I generally just expanded on the existing abilities of the monster. The Centaur took the most work because it lacks existing special actions, so I had to expand on its skirmishing themes. I hope you Enjoy- our Final post for the October Brew Festival is going to be a compilation of monster statblocks, including several that have already gone up, but potentially many more. Enjoy! (Fixing a typo on my phone appears to have annihilated the formatting on this post- I’ll have to fix it when I get off work, sorry folks!)
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I'm actually not a big fan of April Fools' Day. It's like I'm on edge the entire day. Always watching for some crazy thing to hap-- WHERE DID THAT ANVIL COME FROM
Always watching. Good, I'm out of range in case he points that water hose at me. Always vigilant. Okay, Google's site preview shows the site is fine. Always two steps ahead. I saw that shadow from behind the door, you can come out now.
In the end, however... always paranoid.
The best April Fools' Joke: Legitimately release something totally awesome at midnight. Watch as people squirm for 24 hours, possibly more. That just sounds amazing... and totally better than what I'm doing.
forced myself to fill a page - april 2024 - pam wishbow
Blacksmith
Working with fire and steel.