Sunday last week, as well as yesterday, I went out to the local English used bookstore/cafe to play board games. I haven't made it out to a board game meet-up in a long time, and the Busan Board Game club has now climbed up to 50 members on the Facebook page. It's become a thing.
Anyway, Josh is back in town and he brought a few games, and Bill took advantage of sales on an internet vendor's site and bought a bunch of new games as well. So I had the chance to play five new (to me at least) games.
The first game we played was Shadows Over Camelot, by Days of Wonder. This is a cooperative game with an (obviously) Arthurian theme. The object is for the various knights of the Round Table to go on quests. Success results in earning white swords to put on the table. Failure gains black swords. If the table is full and there are more black swords (or twelve catapults are placed in front of Camelot by the besiegers), the players lose. Earn 7 or more white swords before there are 12 catapults and the players win.
The wrinkle in the game comes from the Traitor mechanic, which we actually didn't use last week because it was a first run sort of game to learn the rules. We had planned to play the full game yesterday, but unfortunately Josh couldn't make it. Anyway, in the full game, one player could possibly be a traitor, trying to sabotage the various quests.
Sidenote: Josh, if you're reading this, and you've got time to play this week, I'm on vacation. Let's make it happen.
The physical components are really high quality, including some nice plastic figures for the Knights, Saxons and Picts, and the catapults. DoW even produces and sells the knight figures separately and I may pick up that set just to use for gaming. They're larger than normal gaming minis, but then my collection is fairly haphazard anyway. The boards (main board and various side quest boards) all look nice, and the cards are nicely sized as well (unlike, say, Arkham Horror, which has so many cards that they needed to make them all tiny).
I'd been waiting for a chance to play this game for several years. I had even talked about it on my radio show - way back when I had a radio show. I wasn't disappointed. Even playing it knowing there wasn't a traitor, it was fun and challenging. We managed to win, but it wasn't a given. If you're in to cooperative board games, it's definitely worth trying out.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Beast of the Week: Father Time
Here it is folks, the final one! 52 weeks, and 52 new monsters for D&D. I'll try to get the .pdf compilation ready over my vacation (this coming week).
Anyway, for the end of the year, here's Father Time.
Father Time*
AC: -2 (22)
HD: 15+2***
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 1 weapon or 1 touch
Damage: by weapon+3/aging
No. Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: F15
Morale: 10
Treasure Type: H
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 4200
Father Times are grizzled old men with long flowing beards, typically wearing somber hooded robes and carrying a scythe.* They are only harmed by magical weapons and spells, and are immune to spells of 3rd level or less. In combat, they may attack with their scythe or may touch a target, causing either 10-40 years of aging (as a Ghost), or 10 years of reversed aging (as a potion of longevity). They may also use the following spells as a 15th level caster: Haste/Slow, Dispel Magic at will, Timestop 1/Turn, Disintegrate, Teleport 3/day. Any creature slain by aging cannot be raised by any means short of a Wish spell. Any creature slain by reverse aging transforms into a Baby New Year, a cherub-like sprite with 1HD but similar resistances and spell powers as a Father Time. If the Father Time is slain but the Babies New Year are not, on the next New Year's Day, one Baby transforms into a new Father Time.
*treat as a battle axe for systems that don't have it listed and use variable weapon damage, two handed, 1d8 damage
Anyway, for the end of the year, here's Father Time.
AC: -2 (22)
HD: 15+2***
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 1 weapon or 1 touch
Damage: by weapon+3/aging
No. Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: F15
Morale: 10
Treasure Type: H
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 4200
Father Times are grizzled old men with long flowing beards, typically wearing somber hooded robes and carrying a scythe.* They are only harmed by magical weapons and spells, and are immune to spells of 3rd level or less. In combat, they may attack with their scythe or may touch a target, causing either 10-40 years of aging (as a Ghost), or 10 years of reversed aging (as a potion of longevity). They may also use the following spells as a 15th level caster: Haste/Slow, Dispel Magic at will, Timestop 1/Turn, Disintegrate, Teleport 3/day. Any creature slain by aging cannot be raised by any means short of a Wish spell. Any creature slain by reverse aging transforms into a Baby New Year, a cherub-like sprite with 1HD but similar resistances and spell powers as a Father Time. If the Father Time is slain but the Babies New Year are not, on the next New Year's Day, one Baby transforms into a new Father Time.
*treat as a battle axe for systems that don't have it listed and use variable weapon damage, two handed, 1d8 damage
Thursday, December 27, 2012
The Stak is Back!
Yes, Thidrek the Sleestak is back in action in Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign. Last Saturday we had another session, and since Fantasmo the Luchador went to the square circle in the sky, Thidrek returned from his short hiatus.
And with Justin's combination of typical Ur wackiness, Stars Without Number as a base rule-set, and feats for Warriors from Spears of the Dawn, Thidrek now is back in classic naked sleestak form, having ditched the banded mail for his newly improved sleestak reflexes.
This session, despite inviting numerous other players, the only players were myself, Dean - playing the Venerable Carolus of course, and Jeremy - still chugging away with Borg the Orc Pitfighter. Ralex the NPC Fighter and Robert's mage Yargrob Elderbob (also being NPCed since Robert couldn't make it) and Yargrob's attack beetle were there as well.
Well, the party was on the shore of the underground river when we left off the last session, trying to remove goo from arms and armor. Thidrek conveniently washed up on shore. Since everyone but Thidrek was in bad shape, they decided to rest up. During Thidrek's watch, he heard lots of noises - yelling, hooting, hollering - and when he went to investigate, he saw lots of strange movement to the west (toward the severed but still living head pillar and giant renegade beetle's lair). He woke up Ralex and Burg, but after brief consultation decided not to press things.
During Ralex's watch, undercity dwellers attacked. One of them was flinging paralytic slime from a sling and Elderbob was hit. We managed to kill the slinger and the others retreated. We went on the offensive, with Elder Karl casting striking on Thidrek's crossbow, and the Sleestak using his stealth to try to scout out the underdwellers' tunnels while the rest of the party took care of the screaming heads on the pillar. Also, the giant renegade beetle's body was there, hacked to pieces and its head atop the pillar. Must have been what happened on Thidrek's watch.
Anyway, Thidrek got too far ahead of the party and a worm-centaur thing attacked. One max damage crossbow bolt with striking and one nasty gash from the worm-thing's mantis-like arms sent both parties into a fighting withdrawal. As the rest of the party caught up, we got to the top (we think) of the tunnels, but found too many branching corridors to feel safe with a blitzkrieg style attack. We retreated all the way to behind the door we could only open with the magical key.
After a bit of scouting to see if things were more or less safe, we rested again. Exploring these tunnels after the rest, we encountered more of the pillar-slime things that killed Fantasmo. Yargrob was able to communicate with them by name-dropping some of Ur's famous past residents that the party had learned of. They seemed to be responding. Little did we know that they were actually trying to herd us into a trap (which they did).
Anyway, we finally came to a room with a large pool of clear liquid. Unsure, Thidrek decided to test it on his Level 3 chicken (a long story). The pool was acidic and the chicken lost its head. The last one, poor thing. Thidrek and crew will not let its death go for naught. Thidrek knows the 11 secret herbs and spices, after all...
Anyway, the pool was of course a monster and it attacked, along with the pillar things from all but one of the passages out of the chamber. With Karl and Yargrob paralyzed, we managed to sever the pseudopods trying to drag them into the water and ran up the unguarded passage... to a dead end.
There was another room with a black water pool. No other exits. Looking around, we noticed the eight-pointed star symbol of our magical key on a floor tile. Popping it in, the pool changed color, showing us a room in another location, as if seen from inside the floor. After tossing in an iron spike, Borg took the plunge. We could see him through the portal. We all came through. Our last minute plan to pull the key out with us using a length of chain didn't work, however. We'll need to try to locate another key.
But for now, we're on a small island to the north of the Golden Pyramid (AKA much farther than we've ever been from Fort Low and with lots of hostile territory between us and home) but we're out of the damn tunnels. To be continued...
And with Justin's combination of typical Ur wackiness, Stars Without Number as a base rule-set, and feats for Warriors from Spears of the Dawn, Thidrek now is back in classic naked sleestak form, having ditched the banded mail for his newly improved sleestak reflexes.
This session, despite inviting numerous other players, the only players were myself, Dean - playing the Venerable Carolus of course, and Jeremy - still chugging away with Borg the Orc Pitfighter. Ralex the NPC Fighter and Robert's mage Yargrob Elderbob (also being NPCed since Robert couldn't make it) and Yargrob's attack beetle were there as well.
Well, the party was on the shore of the underground river when we left off the last session, trying to remove goo from arms and armor. Thidrek conveniently washed up on shore. Since everyone but Thidrek was in bad shape, they decided to rest up. During Thidrek's watch, he heard lots of noises - yelling, hooting, hollering - and when he went to investigate, he saw lots of strange movement to the west (toward the severed but still living head pillar and giant renegade beetle's lair). He woke up Ralex and Burg, but after brief consultation decided not to press things.
During Ralex's watch, undercity dwellers attacked. One of them was flinging paralytic slime from a sling and Elderbob was hit. We managed to kill the slinger and the others retreated. We went on the offensive, with Elder Karl casting striking on Thidrek's crossbow, and the Sleestak using his stealth to try to scout out the underdwellers' tunnels while the rest of the party took care of the screaming heads on the pillar. Also, the giant renegade beetle's body was there, hacked to pieces and its head atop the pillar. Must have been what happened on Thidrek's watch.
Anyway, Thidrek got too far ahead of the party and a worm-centaur thing attacked. One max damage crossbow bolt with striking and one nasty gash from the worm-thing's mantis-like arms sent both parties into a fighting withdrawal. As the rest of the party caught up, we got to the top (we think) of the tunnels, but found too many branching corridors to feel safe with a blitzkrieg style attack. We retreated all the way to behind the door we could only open with the magical key.
After a bit of scouting to see if things were more or less safe, we rested again. Exploring these tunnels after the rest, we encountered more of the pillar-slime things that killed Fantasmo. Yargrob was able to communicate with them by name-dropping some of Ur's famous past residents that the party had learned of. They seemed to be responding. Little did we know that they were actually trying to herd us into a trap (which they did).
Anyway, we finally came to a room with a large pool of clear liquid. Unsure, Thidrek decided to test it on his Level 3 chicken (a long story). The pool was acidic and the chicken lost its head. The last one, poor thing. Thidrek and crew will not let its death go for naught. Thidrek knows the 11 secret herbs and spices, after all...
Anyway, the pool was of course a monster and it attacked, along with the pillar things from all but one of the passages out of the chamber. With Karl and Yargrob paralyzed, we managed to sever the pseudopods trying to drag them into the water and ran up the unguarded passage... to a dead end.
There was another room with a black water pool. No other exits. Looking around, we noticed the eight-pointed star symbol of our magical key on a floor tile. Popping it in, the pool changed color, showing us a room in another location, as if seen from inside the floor. After tossing in an iron spike, Borg took the plunge. We could see him through the portal. We all came through. Our last minute plan to pull the key out with us using a length of chain didn't work, however. We'll need to try to locate another key.
But for now, we're on a small island to the north of the Golden Pyramid (AKA much farther than we've ever been from Fort Low and with lots of hostile territory between us and home) but we're out of the damn tunnels. To be continued...
Friday, December 21, 2012
Beast of the Week: Chaob
On this day that the Mayans did not predict would be the end of the world, but many people falsely believe that they did (and I'm still here typing this at 20 minutes to midnight local time), how about a Beast inspired by Mayan mythology? There's not much out there, but a quick Google search netted me the idea. The Chaob, the four gods of the winds, were said to be able to one day destroy the world. Sounds appropriate. Now to turn them into a monster for D&D!
Chaob*
AC: 0 (20)
HD: 5**
Move: 120 (40) fly 480 (160)
Attacks: 2 blows
Damage: 1d10/1d10
No. Appearing: 1d4 (1d4)
Save As: F5
Morale: 9 or more
Treasure Type: B
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 425
Chaob are transparent, blue humanoid figures from the Elemental Plane of Air. They are slightly larger than humans, averaging 7' tall. They can fly naturally at great speed. In combat, they attack with buffets of wind from their fists. Each can also use the following magical powers: Slow 3/day, Ice Storm/Wall 3/day, Hold Monster 1/day, Earthquake 1/week. When encountered in groups, Chaob tend to be more aggressive. Reduce reaction rolls by 1 and increase morale by 1 for each chaob in a group beyond the first. If they do not attack immediately, chaobs can be bargained with to perform services for parties, but only if they can be paid in magic items or art objects of at least 1,000 gp value for each hour of service rendered.
Chaob*
AC: 0 (20)
HD: 5**
Move: 120 (40) fly 480 (160)
Attacks: 2 blows
Damage: 1d10/1d10
No. Appearing: 1d4 (1d4)
Save As: F5
Morale: 9 or more
Treasure Type: B
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 425
Chaob are transparent, blue humanoid figures from the Elemental Plane of Air. They are slightly larger than humans, averaging 7' tall. They can fly naturally at great speed. In combat, they attack with buffets of wind from their fists. Each can also use the following magical powers: Slow 3/day, Ice Storm/Wall 3/day, Hold Monster 1/day, Earthquake 1/week. When encountered in groups, Chaob tend to be more aggressive. Reduce reaction rolls by 1 and increase morale by 1 for each chaob in a group beyond the first. If they do not attack immediately, chaobs can be bargained with to perform services for parties, but only if they can be paid in magic items or art objects of at least 1,000 gp value for each hour of service rendered.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Simple answers
I was reading this article on Time's website about D&D and why it's not more popular than it is.
Of course, they mention the problem of the uninitiated person asking, "So, how do you win?"
In the past, every time I've been asked that question, I went into some paraphrase of Frank Mentzer's Basic Set about how there's no win conditions, you keep playing the same character, blah blah blah.
Probably lost more players than I gained that way.
From now on, I'm going to give a simple answer whenever I hear that question.
Q: So how do you win?
A: By playing.
Of course, they mention the problem of the uninitiated person asking, "So, how do you win?"
In the past, every time I've been asked that question, I went into some paraphrase of Frank Mentzer's Basic Set about how there's no win conditions, you keep playing the same character, blah blah blah.
Probably lost more players than I gained that way.
From now on, I'm going to give a simple answer whenever I hear that question.
Q: So how do you win?
A: By playing.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Movie Review - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
My wife and I dropped off our son at his grandparents' house this morning and went to an early showing of The Hobbit. We saw it in 48fps (no choice, a buddy in Japan told me it's only available in standard 24fps there) 2D. We considered IMAX, but it was IMAX 3D and we are not (as you'd probably guess if you read most of my movie reviews) not fans of 3D, especially for a three hour movie.
Standard Warning: Due to the title of this blog, I get lots of web search hits from people wanting to know if there are "curse words" in movies I've reviewed. Rest assured, parental unit types, this is from Tolkien so there are no curse words in the movie. That said, this is also from Peter Jackson so there are plenty of lopped off body parts (the reason our 4-year-old stayed behind).
Now on to the review. I doubt this will be spoiler free, because I assume most of my readership has read the book. But we'll see. If I get to the end and didn't spoil anything, I'll delete these sentences.
Did you like Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies? I sure did. Yes, they don't follow the books as closely as they could even considering the liberties that need to be taken to transfer a book to film. If you liked LotR, you'll get more of the same from The Hobbit (at least from this first part).
Technical stuff first. The 48fps took a bit of adjusting to. At first, there were lots of fast camera sweeps and the high frame rate made them very blurry, but my eyes seemed to adjust after a little while. The images were - how to best describe it? - crisper than a normal 24fps movie. I wonder if this will indeed become the new standard or not. It might require higher CGI budgets for romantic comedies to hide all the little blemishes on the actors and actresses!
The cinematography was gorgeous. Again, very similar to LotR. A few locations "in the wild" even seemed like some of the locations from LotR (of course The Shire, Rivendell, and the road between did cover the same path). The amazing New Zealand landscapes alone make it worth the price of admission IMO. The fact that we're getting Professor Tolkien's works put up on the big screen in a loving manner is just icing on the cake (OK, hyperbole there, the landscapes are the icing on the Tolkien cake).
Some people have complained that there are too many dwarves and that they aren't all distinguishable. Well, I say read the book. Ask me to tell you about the dwarves in The Hobbit (the book) and I can tell you off the top of my head on any given day:
Thorin is the pompous ass
Balin is the resourceful and sensible one
Filli and Killi are the young brash ones who seem to do all the work
Bombur is the fat one
Gloin is... um, Gimli's dad
The rest are there...
Now, as for the fact that many of the dwarves don't look like typical dwarves, this is a good thing! These dwarves seemed more real by not all having long ZZ Top style beards. Just like the actors playing hobbits were more or less as varied as typical humans (counting all the extras in Hobbiton in LotR), we see that dwarves are "people" even if they aren't human.
Now, on to the story. It's good. It more or less sticks to the book, and I can see why certain changes were made for the screen. The pacing was good for an action movie, but this is one of the movie's failings, I think. The Hobbit is not an action story, it's an adventure story. PJ added in lots of extra fighting to make it "more exciting" but that's not the sort of story Tokien told. The Hobbit (the book) really shows JRRT's fondness for Haggard's Alan Quatermain stories. The basic pacing is travel-explore-action. By splitting the story into three parts, they felt the need to ramp up the action. Likely they would have ramped up the action anyway, but if they'd kept it to one or two movies, they could have condensed to just the action scenes if that's the way they wanted it played out. Oh well, the movie's not perfect, but it was still pretty good.
One good thing about stretching the movie out was that they were able to include some unnecessary but cool scenes, like for instance the Stone Giants. Of course, PJ kinda overdid it, but it was fun to watch. Reminiscent of the Moria staircase.
Another thing they could have done away with was the frame story, with old Bilbo telling Frodo about how Smaug came to Erebor, which is of course shown with Bilbo's narration over it. Cool, and they kept Smaug mostly off camera - gotta build up excitement for the next installment! - but since we learn all of that stuff in the story as Bilbo learns it, it was kinda unnecessary.
Some of the other additions, like making Azog the Orc actively hunting down Thorin and Co. and the scenes involving Radagast the Brown and his jack rabbit sled adds more of a sense of continuity for those unfamiliar with the book, I suppose. It also allows for more fight scenes. I'm sure that when we get to The Battle of Five Armies and the White Council's battle with the Necromancer, these now apparently extraneous set-ups will pay off.
Despite the flaws, the movie was exciting, beautiful, funny, and moving. And it's not even a complete story! While it ended at a fairly good place to end action-wise, with the party just past the Misty Mountains on the borders of Wilderland, as far as the emotional development/character arcs go, it was sort of a lukewarm ending.
I really enjoyed this first chapter of The Hobbit. And as I said above, if you enjoyed PJ's take on Middle-Earth in the Lord of the Rings movies, you should enjoy this. If you didn't like PJ's LotR, you likely won't enjoy this one either. As for me, Dec. 2013 and "The Desolation of Smaug" can't come soon enough!
Standard Warning: Due to the title of this blog, I get lots of web search hits from people wanting to know if there are "curse words" in movies I've reviewed. Rest assured, parental unit types, this is from Tolkien so there are no curse words in the movie. That said, this is also from Peter Jackson so there are plenty of lopped off body parts (the reason our 4-year-old stayed behind).
Now on to the review. I doubt this will be spoiler free, because I assume most of my readership has read the book. But we'll see. If I get to the end and didn't spoil anything, I'll delete these sentences.
Did you like Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies? I sure did. Yes, they don't follow the books as closely as they could even considering the liberties that need to be taken to transfer a book to film. If you liked LotR, you'll get more of the same from The Hobbit (at least from this first part).
Technical stuff first. The 48fps took a bit of adjusting to. At first, there were lots of fast camera sweeps and the high frame rate made them very blurry, but my eyes seemed to adjust after a little while. The images were - how to best describe it? - crisper than a normal 24fps movie. I wonder if this will indeed become the new standard or not. It might require higher CGI budgets for romantic comedies to hide all the little blemishes on the actors and actresses!
The cinematography was gorgeous. Again, very similar to LotR. A few locations "in the wild" even seemed like some of the locations from LotR (of course The Shire, Rivendell, and the road between did cover the same path). The amazing New Zealand landscapes alone make it worth the price of admission IMO. The fact that we're getting Professor Tolkien's works put up on the big screen in a loving manner is just icing on the cake (OK, hyperbole there, the landscapes are the icing on the Tolkien cake).
Some people have complained that there are too many dwarves and that they aren't all distinguishable. Well, I say read the book. Ask me to tell you about the dwarves in The Hobbit (the book) and I can tell you off the top of my head on any given day:
Thorin is the pompous ass
Balin is the resourceful and sensible one
Filli and Killi are the young brash ones who seem to do all the work
Bombur is the fat one
Gloin is... um, Gimli's dad
The rest are there...
Now, as for the fact that many of the dwarves don't look like typical dwarves, this is a good thing! These dwarves seemed more real by not all having long ZZ Top style beards. Just like the actors playing hobbits were more or less as varied as typical humans (counting all the extras in Hobbiton in LotR), we see that dwarves are "people" even if they aren't human.
Now, on to the story. It's good. It more or less sticks to the book, and I can see why certain changes were made for the screen. The pacing was good for an action movie, but this is one of the movie's failings, I think. The Hobbit is not an action story, it's an adventure story. PJ added in lots of extra fighting to make it "more exciting" but that's not the sort of story Tokien told. The Hobbit (the book) really shows JRRT's fondness for Haggard's Alan Quatermain stories. The basic pacing is travel-explore-action. By splitting the story into three parts, they felt the need to ramp up the action. Likely they would have ramped up the action anyway, but if they'd kept it to one or two movies, they could have condensed to just the action scenes if that's the way they wanted it played out. Oh well, the movie's not perfect, but it was still pretty good.
One good thing about stretching the movie out was that they were able to include some unnecessary but cool scenes, like for instance the Stone Giants. Of course, PJ kinda overdid it, but it was fun to watch. Reminiscent of the Moria staircase.
Another thing they could have done away with was the frame story, with old Bilbo telling Frodo about how Smaug came to Erebor, which is of course shown with Bilbo's narration over it. Cool, and they kept Smaug mostly off camera - gotta build up excitement for the next installment! - but since we learn all of that stuff in the story as Bilbo learns it, it was kinda unnecessary.
Some of the other additions, like making Azog the Orc actively hunting down Thorin and Co. and the scenes involving Radagast the Brown and his jack rabbit sled adds more of a sense of continuity for those unfamiliar with the book, I suppose. It also allows for more fight scenes. I'm sure that when we get to The Battle of Five Armies and the White Council's battle with the Necromancer, these now apparently extraneous set-ups will pay off.
Despite the flaws, the movie was exciting, beautiful, funny, and moving. And it's not even a complete story! While it ended at a fairly good place to end action-wise, with the party just past the Misty Mountains on the borders of Wilderland, as far as the emotional development/character arcs go, it was sort of a lukewarm ending.
I really enjoyed this first chapter of The Hobbit. And as I said above, if you enjoyed PJ's take on Middle-Earth in the Lord of the Rings movies, you should enjoy this. If you didn't like PJ's LotR, you likely won't enjoy this one either. As for me, Dec. 2013 and "The Desolation of Smaug" can't come soon enough!
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Beast of the Week: Tupilaq
Inuit legends give us our Beast for this week. I had been looking around for a Tolkien-inspired creature because I'm going to see The Hobbit tomorrow, but decided to stick with the winter/cold themed creatures for another week. The Tupilaq was a magical construct created by Inuit shamans and sent after their enemies. Sorta like the Invisible Stalker already in D&D, except crafted rather than summoned from another plane.
Tupilaq*
AC: 3 (17)
HD: 8*
Move: 120 (40) swim 90 (30)
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 2d8
No. Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: F8
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: nil
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 1200
A tupilaq is a magical construct created by the shamanistic Clerics of tribes inhabiting the polar regions. They have humanoid bodies with pointed heads, bulging eyes, and wide shark-like mouths, and smell of rotting flesh. The rituals for creating one are known only to these tribesmen, and are not shared with outsiders. The tupilaq is created from a variety of body parts, hair, skin and bones taken from sea and land animals native to the region, as well as the heart of a human or demi-human child. A tupilac, once created, will serve its creator by hunting down one victim or group of related victims and killing them. Tupilaqs can be defeated with spells and magic weapons. A tupilaq can be turned against its creator by a dispel evil spell. If the tupilaq fails a Save vs. Spells, its creator becomes its new target.
Tupilaq*
AC: 3 (17)
HD: 8*
Move: 120 (40) swim 90 (30)
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 2d8
No. Appearing: 1 (1)
Save As: F8
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: nil
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 1200
A tupilaq is a magical construct created by the shamanistic Clerics of tribes inhabiting the polar regions. They have humanoid bodies with pointed heads, bulging eyes, and wide shark-like mouths, and smell of rotting flesh. The rituals for creating one are known only to these tribesmen, and are not shared with outsiders. The tupilaq is created from a variety of body parts, hair, skin and bones taken from sea and land animals native to the region, as well as the heart of a human or demi-human child. A tupilac, once created, will serve its creator by hunting down one victim or group of related victims and killing them. Tupilaqs can be defeated with spells and magic weapons. A tupilaq can be turned against its creator by a dispel evil spell. If the tupilaq fails a Save vs. Spells, its creator becomes its new target.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
