Sunday, December 9, 2012

Beast of the Week: Snow Queen

Hans Christian Andersen (and C.S. Lewis who appears to have borrowed from Andersen) provides us with another nice winter-themed monster as we enter the final stretch here on my Beast of the Week feature.  Only 3 more to go after this one, and only last week's one was late by a day. 

Let me tell you, it hasn't been easy trying to come up with a monster that's both new to D&D and provides something other than just a collection of hit points and XP for players to harvest.  I haven't always been able to craft something novel, but I've given it my best shot.  When I've failed to find a way to make the creature an interesting challenge in game, I've hopefully at least given it something cool so that some gamer somewhere will encounter it and enjoy the experience.  But enough blather.  Here's Andersen's Snow Queen for D&D:

Snow Queen
AC: 1 (19)
HD: 9***
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 1 kiss
Damage: special
No. Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: M9
Morale: 7
Treasure Type: G
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 3000

Snow Queens are tall, beautiful humanoid females, usually with extremely pale skin, white or pale blonde hair, and sky blue or grey eyes.  They can be found in arctic climes, high mountains, or deep in frozen dungeons.  Their manner is haughty and they are easily offended, but if treated with deference they may help adventurers.  Snow Queens refrain from physical combat when they can, preferring to let their minions protect them.  However, they have a magical kiss that they can bestow.  The first kiss causes the target to be affected as the Clerical spell Resist Cold.  A second kiss requires a Save vs. Spells or the target suffers from amnesia and is open to mental domination by the Snow Queen, with a successful Save still resulting in a Charm Person effect.  The third and further kisses require a Save vs. Death Ray or the target dies.  In addition to their magical kiss, Snow Queens can cast spells as a 9th level Magic-User, and may prepare spells from any class's spell lists.

Snow Queens are often served and protected by Chaotic dwarves, wolves and dire wolves, savage humanoids or various cold-based monsters.  They are fond of riding in sleighs pulled by reindeer or polar bears, and their castles are often made of solid ice.

3 comments:

  1. Beauty and beast are one in the same -- nice job!
    I've always been captivated by this and similar figures. (Self-serving example.) There's also Japan's Yuki-onna. Do you have anything like that in Korea?

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  2. could do the fox with nine tails. woman/fox that eats the hearts of men?

    or the korean ghosts (woman again)

    congrates on almost finishing this. there have been some interesting ones.

    Josh

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  3. Theodric - I haven't heard of anything similar to yuki-onna in Korea, but I lived in Japan long enough that I'm familiar with them. They're also in Oriental Adventures already and I'm trying not to do creatures that are already in AD&D in this series.

    Nine-tail foxes are in Flying Swordsmen.

    Thanks, guys! I'm looking forward to putting all of these into one PDF for people to download.

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