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Yora
2013-01-25, 09:36 AM
Taking hints from some Conan stories and some of the more bizare Underdark creatures from D&D, I want to create a bigger role for aberrations in the setting for my campaign. Now D&D 3rd (and I think 4th) Edition have gone increasingly in the Psi-tech direction with time travel and magical cyborgs, but personally I prefer more of a "thing that should not be" approach. Alien creatures of immense power that can only be fought directly with very powerful magic and not be reasoned or bargained with.

I'm open to all suggestions.

Probably the main classic beast of this kind is the Shoggoth. A giant black mass that slithers around and constantly forms new eyes all over its body, screaming immitations of sounds that it had heard before. In the original stories, they were artificial creatures made as heavy construction workers that can survive and work in hostile conditions, such as the artic or the bottom of the sea. But eventually their masters lost control and got eaten, leaving the Shoggoth to continue wandering around aimlessly. This can be adapted to making them some sort of alchemical golems created by sorcerers as guardians. Or they could be natural creatures from some kind of alien world or another dimension. The gibbering mouther from D&D are a significantly downsized knockoff, but for a 3rd Edition game advancing one to maximum Hit Dice might do the trick.

I also like Chthonians. Giant worm-like squids that burrow through the ground causing earthquakes. I think D&D neothelids are based on them and were just given a bunch of psionic powers. I'm not exactly sure about the original creatures, but I think making them sentient instead of large dumb animals makes them a lot cooler. Though characters would never really know, since you can't really have conversations with them and attempting telepathic contact might be "problematic". But still, they could head straight for specific targets to destroy instead of just randomly burrowing through the ground and damaging buildings in areas they are passing through.

One of my favorite D&D 3rd Edition monsters are Tsochari from Lords of Madness. Tsochari are small eel-like worms that are barely conscious, but they bite into each other and permanently fuse their primitive nervous systems together to form a single larger worm-like creature. With their brain pretty much spread throughout the entire body, they are as smart as humans. However, they also have the ability to burrow into the bodies of larger creatures and attach themselves to the brain, by which they gain full control of the body. But since a grown and combined tsochar does have considerable mass of its own, packing it between the host bodies organs does not always work out perfectly, so there might be some unusual bulges under the skin, that even might move slightly as the worms rearrange themselves into a more comfortable position.
As cool as they are, they have the downside that to be able to infiltrate human society, they have to be able to think like humans, which does make them somewhat less alien. Bizare anatomy isn't something that unusual in most fantasy settings, and its the alien minds that really sells them as horror creatures. But I guess that can be compensated for by giving them really strange and incomprehensible plans they are working towards to.

Morph Bark
2013-01-25, 09:59 AM
For the Tsochari, you could have them acting largely zombie-like, as they keep to the most simple human actions, as the more complex ones (especially social interaction) is tougher for them due to their alien minds. It would make the threat somewhat less big though, perhaps, as they might be easier to discover.

My personal favourite creation are the Skuaatho, who have a roughly humanoid shape, but mouths for eyes, no nose or ears, an eye-covered tongue and are covered in what appears to be a fine layer of hair but is actually elastic tentacles. Their masters sometimes dress them up in suits and masks to infiltrate human society and "collect specimens" to figure out the differences between human and their own aberrant biology, to figure out what's wrong with humans and make them more like their own through experimentation.

Zahhak
2013-01-25, 10:03 AM
I think there are few key points to dealing with Lovecraftian horrors, and indeed any horrors. I've never run a horror game, but I've written some horror short stories, and this is more or less my advice. Use it as you like.

1. The enemies should be massively stronger then the protagonist
- DND makes this kind of nice, because I can say something like "the CR should be at least twice the parties combined level". In fact, 1st level commoners would probably be better, because they don't have the hope of fighting their way out. They can run and hide, or die.

2. People should die
- You should frankly open the first session with "my goal is to kill as many of you as I can"

3. The enemy cannot be avoided
- It's cliche, but locked in a cabin, or trapped out in the woods basically forces the party to deal with something they simply cannot. If they can avoid the enemy they have no chance of beating, why would they engage? Exactly. It's better to use a cliche if you have to, then leave a massive plot hole.

4. Monster sightings and fear of the monster are inversely correlated.
- Mathy way of saying, the more you see it, the less likely you are to poo your pants when it approaches

5. Have a plan and a good story line
- Flow charting out all possible actions and their consequences isn't a terrible plan, but I wont say you have to. Basically just be prepared. And if the party starts to predict the events or notice plot holes, the whole event is going to be just as ruined as premature ejaculation.

6. Good horror is like good sex: slow and methodical
- OK, that's poor wording, but the whole event of good horror is kind of like good sex. There's the non-sexual but arousing opening (the general exploration of some place), the undressing (finding a corpse), the foreplay (doors closing on their own, strange sounds and sights), the actual sex (the first hint of the monster and running in the opposite direction), the climax (party members start dying), and the orgasm (escaping, or everyone dying).

7. Pacing
This is last because pacing is kind of built on the rest. A big thing with horror is that it's continuous. Continuing the sex metaphor that will probably get deleted, it isn't sexy to get to the climax and walk away and come back a week later. Getting there, backing off to the beginning and working your way back up, sure. But don't take week long breaks. If you goal is horror, you need to get the whole story resolved in a single session, or a few very quickly related sessions.

Also, this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXuIZstyM7E)

GolemsVoice
2013-01-25, 10:15 AM
1. The enemies should be massively stronger then the protagonist
- DND makes this kind of nice, because I can say something like "the CR should be at least twice the parties combined level". In fact, 1st level commoners would probably be better, because they don't have the hope of fighting their way out. They can run and hide, or die.

I'd actually disagree here. To me, D&D, even in horror games, is about FIGHTING folks. Fighting is basically was D&D is made for. That doesn't mean that you can't do other things, but if you want to run a game were the PCs are just normal folks, why pick D&D, the game centered around the PCs NOT being normal folks?


2. People should die
- You should frankly open the first session with "my goal is to kill as many of you as I can"

And again, I'd disagree. If you arrive with a whole heap of character sheets and change them like other people change the magazines in their guns, there won't be much horror, but rather a Final Destination-esqu series of grizzly killings which soon become stale. Of course, don't shrink from killing people, but I find characters that have witnessed and been touched by the horror much more interesting. We once had a CoC character who traveled around with nothing but a suitcase full of occult books and cryptic warnings, because he had seen a bit more than was good for him. However, to do that, he had to survice long enough.

hamlet
2013-01-25, 10:18 AM
I is gonna go out on a limb here and say that I don't think that D&D 3.5 is the optimal idea for this kind of campaign without a bit of jiggering and a bit of unfair play on the part of the DM. As has been mentioned, one of the key elements of Mythos stories is that the entities in question are so alien that we cannot comprehend them or even perceive them let alone interact with them (consider, for instance, the Colour, which is literally a sentient color that took us forever to realize was even living) and are also likely dramatically more powerful than individual humans or demi-humans. D&D 3.5 was kind of built around the concept of fair challenges and I'm not sure how it would fair outside of that realm.

Instead, I would actually suggest grabbing up the Cthulhu D20 book as a starting point. Its mechanics are jiggered the right way for this kind of thing and all you have to do is reskin things.

However, if you really want to use D&D 3.x, I recommend an approach where major entities are not actual monsters so much as they are events. They're not a creature with stats that you can stand up to and fight, but a being who's coming causes a number of effects and such and who can be driven off or avoided via a set of pre-determined activities. Kind of like how war is handled in the Red Hand of Doom (I think that's what it was called) module. The players have a list of activities they can complete in order to gain a certain number of points towards victory and if they garner enough, they can drive the entity back to its own realm or into the outer darkness or whatever.

Also also, I recommend avoiding the use of brand name entities. They're kind of tired to many people nowadays. You can use the same kind of themes, but if Cthulhu himself pops up, I assure you there will be lots of eyes rolling. Develop your own creatures instead, and a mythos of your own for the players to explore.

By the by, Tharizdun in Greyhawk is custom made for this. Seriously. Go back and read some of the old Tharizdun stuff (I think that one of them at least is now on the D&D Classics website for something like $5, and it's a very good one) for inspiration. Also, some of the rooms in G1-3 and D1-3 really scream HP Lovecraft. Head on over to Dragonsfoot and read Predavolk(sp?)'s Crazy Canuks Giants campaign log. It's really good and he highlights some of those elements and does make a good point that the drow in G3 (Eilserves and Eclavdre) are not worshipping Lolth, but . . . something . . . something else.

Morph Bark
2013-01-25, 10:19 AM
While at least one character should die to drive home the horror, it should be drawn out. Bam, dead? That's no way to do it. Starting right away with it too is also in bad taste. Using a death as a climax or halfway point is one of the best things.

As for horror in D&D, yes, people are supposed to fight the monsters, that's how the game is set up. You can easily play with it though. They fight the monsters, but they find out just how hard doing so is. And it's not simply because the monsters are just that tough, it's because of something unusual about them that makes it just that hard.

awa
2013-01-25, 10:20 AM
fist i would point out that for say azathoh sure hes basically a god you cant fight him, but cultists, ghouls, deep ones even low level pcs can win against them. Also mi-go and the more human monster in the dunwich horror were both killed by large dogs even cuthulu himself was inconvenienced enough by the actions of a normal human that he went back to bed so lovecraftian monster are not unbeatable.

I think the trick for a lovecraftian feel to the setting would not be the pc can never win and all monsters are unbeatable but that in the long run nothing you do is going to matter you may push back the end of the world but your not gonna stop it.

pathfinder has a lot of Lovecraft and Lovecraft inspired monsters as well all on their handy dandy srds

Ashtagon
2013-01-25, 10:29 AM
While at least one character should die to drive home the horror, it should be drawn out. Bam, dead? That's no way to do it. Starting right away with it too is also in bad taste. Using a death as a climax or halfway point is one of the best things.

Disagree. Lovecraftian horror is quite distinct from most modern horror. Modern horror expects people to die. Lovecraftian horror is more likely to drive people to some form of despair, transmogrification, or insanity, rather than kill them. Plenty of Lovecraftian stories feature no deaths, or no main character deaths, at all.

Death, even drawn out, is too clean for truly Lovecraftian horror. Lovecraftian horror isn't about "your life is over", it's about "your family, your culture, your entire species and civilisation, is meaningless". And that doesn't require any deaths at all.

Yora
2013-01-25, 10:32 AM
How about suggesting monsters? :smalleek:

awa
2013-01-25, 10:34 AM
lots of pcs death just encourages the pcs not to care about their characters which is anti horror. Also go light on metal illnesses other wise it just becomes goofy to many people confuse insanity with being wacky and if you hand derangement's out like candy you are just encouraging that mentality.



lovecrafty pf monster cr 1-4
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/incutilis

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/monstrous-humanoids/contemplative-of-ashok

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/monstrous-humanoids/morlock

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/ubashki-swarm

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/monstrous-humanoids/adherer

obryn
2013-01-25, 10:35 AM
If you are mostly interested in 3e, d20 Call of Cthulhu is a good resource.

-O

Yora
2013-01-25, 10:38 AM
I'm interested in fictional creatures to inhabit a fantasy world.

hamlet
2013-01-25, 10:57 AM
Suggested monsters?

Uhm . . . not an easy answer.

I've actually had a bit of success in those regards by reskinning standard monsters. A giant octopus, for example, can do double duty as a drone fighter type minion for something greater. Just gussy up the description a bit and make sure that the players know all about the slimy terrible feeling and squamos horror and etc.

Gibbering Mouthers are pre-made for this as are Aboleths.

Will-O-Wisps are good as long as you up the eerie attitude (or, at least they were in AD&D where they were fairly scary strong, I don't know what they're like in D20).

Vampiric Mist and Crimson Death are great for Lovecraftian Vampires.

To go with your other threads, the Derro are a great Lovecraftian element and give the players something they can confront. Just make sure that those little creeps are cozying up to something unspeakable in the meantime. Or are doing wierd experiments on humans, grafting limbs on them or something suitably squicky. Or maybe they're the only race in the entire world with psionic powers and little of what those entail is known in the above world and in the Underdark, the only thing they really know is "run the hell away from it!"

Mind Flayers, again, are a good addition, but again you have to make sure that they're up to something and not just rely on their inherent Lovecraftian-ness to do the job since they're old news. Perhaps they're taking people's brains out and replacing them with others' in a strange varient on the body snatcher angle.

And speaking of body snatcher, AD&D 2e Ravenloft had what was known as the Doppleganger Plant. Find it, learn it, love it. It literally is Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

EDIT: Also also also, either tone back or change the humanoids. Don't have the players fighting lots of orcs. They're dull. Instead, have orcs come in a little later on. And give them the ability to infect PC's with some virus or something that will transform the victim into a new orc over a period of a week or so. Some good body horror there.

Goblins kidnap helpless women from various villages to use for breeding stock since there are no goblin females. Bugbears require the death of a sentient being in order to have their own females go into heat. That kind of stuff.

awa
2013-01-25, 11:01 AM
missed these
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/zoog

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/ratling

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/elder-thing

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/gibbering-mouther

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/oozes/globster

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/plants/mi-go

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/seugathi

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/oozes/tear-of-nuruu-gal

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/aboleth

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/hound-of-tindalos

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/denizen-of-leng

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/dimensional-shambler

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/neh-thalggu

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/wolf-in-sheep-s-clothing

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/shantak

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/yithian

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/oozes/colour-out-of-space

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/gug

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/moon-beast

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/dark-young-of-shub-niggurath

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/scarlet-walker

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/shining-child

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/irlgaunt

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/leng-spider

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/neothelid

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/ugash-iram

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/oozes/shoggoth

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/star-spawn-of-cthulhu

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/gnoph-keh

for humanoids the easiest way is to play up there fallen nature talk about how once they were great, mighty, wise and beautiful but in there hubris they looked to far and reached to high and now are barely more then animals give them the mockery of their former glory. If you have a lot of races like this make the pcs own downfall seem inevitable as well that no matter how much they strive how tightly their people cling to civilization and reason this will be there fate to.

joe
2013-01-25, 04:21 PM
Some additional monsters I can think of off the top of my head are

Chaos Beast

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/nehThalggu.htm

Fihyr (MM2): Would require a little bit of 3.0 to 3.5 conversion, but is essentially a Lovecraftian Nightmare literally come to life.

The Kaorti (Fiend Folio): Creatures from the Far Realm that are twisted and disturbing. In truth, anything from the Far Realm is likely open game.

Pseudonatural Creature Template (Complete Arcane)

Just about anything out of Lords of Madness (the Beholders not so much)

Just as much as Aberrations, there are a lot of Lovecraft style Outsiders.

Zahhak
2013-01-25, 05:31 PM
I'd actually disagree here. To me, D&D, even in horror games, is about FIGHTING folks. Fighting is basically was D&D is made for. That doesn't mean that you can't do other things, but if you want to run a game were the PCs are just normal folks, why pick D&D, the game centered around the PCs NOT being normal folks?

I prefer Call of Cthulhu for horror/investigation games, but my advice was meant much more generally about horror fiction. Like I said, I've never actually run a horror game, just written horror fiction.


And again, I'd disagree. If you arrive with a whole heap of character sheets and change them like other people change the magazines in their guns, there won't be much horror, but rather a Final Destination-esqu series of grizzly killings which soon become stale.

If you're running a single, 8 hour session of a game, there is no reason to have multiple character sheets, even if (hell, especially if) the DM is looking to kill everyone. A big part of that is the pacing issue. The players should fall in love with the character so that its death is something they do their best to avoid, and which upsets them. Saying "I'm going to try to kill you all" helps avoid some hurt feelings.

And just because the DM tries to kill the party does not mean he will actually succeed. I imagine it rather like a competitive game where the DM has an ace in the hole.


I is gonna go out on a limb here and say that I don't think that D&D 3.5 is the optimal idea for this kind of campaign without a bit of jiggering and a bit of unfair play on the part of the DM.

There's a setting published by WOTC that's a gothic horror setting. Not quite Lovecraftian, but it is close. Cannot remember the name of the setting, and I'm not familiar with it, but I know it exists.


Lovecraftian horror is quite distinct from most modern horror. Modern horror expects people to die. Lovecraftian horror is more likely to drive people to some form of despair, transmogrification, or insanity, rather than kill them. Plenty of Lovecraftian stories feature no deaths, or no main character deaths, at all.

And on that note:
Sanity is Charisma times 5, max 100. It represents a percent of your total possible sanity. Nothing you do can increase sanity. Various events cause you to lose 1d4 sanity (like watching someone die, seeing the victim of human sacrifice, etc), 2d4 sanity (watching human sacrifice, glimpsing the limb of an aberration, etc), or 3d4 sanity (seeing an aberration, watching cultists summon Cthulhu). The more sanity you lose the more paranoid and twitchy your character becomes (suggestions below), with more severe loses causing more symptoms or more pronounced symptoms developing. Large loses in sanity from start (like 20%) should cause your character to basically have a psychotic episode and become unplayable.

Ideas for characters going insane:
* Find the symptoms of PTSD and make a table with the symptoms, with the PC having to roll on it. Doubles of the same symptom makes it more pronounced
* The DM could simply say "your character develops this symptom", which could be based on the symptoms for PTSD or a phobia relevant to the situation.

At some point I had more ideas, but they're escaping me. If I think about it later I'll update my list.


I'm interested in fictional creatures to inhabit a fantasy world.

We're horror nerds. We will argue about everything but the monsters, because if we see the monster enough to really notice anything about it, the monster has failed. If you want to come up with unique horror creatures, basically just start with an animal, and start adding appendages. Or removing them. Or changing them. Or remove its skin.

hamlet
2013-01-25, 05:42 PM
There's a setting published by WOTC that's a gothic horror setting. Not quite Lovecraftian, but it is close. Cannot remember the name of the setting, and I'm not familiar with it, but I know it exists.




You might be thinking of TSR's Masque of the Red Death setting, which is an offshoot of Ravenloft. It's not Lovecraftian in any sense, really, and you'd have to stretch it to the breaking point to make it so I think.

NichG
2013-01-25, 06:30 PM
The real problem I think with using D&D 3.5 for horror is not necessarily that its a game that encourages fighting - you can have all the actual things the PCs fight be other people on their scale, and it can still work out. Rather, its how difficult it is to have permanent consequences in D&D. There's always a spell or a method (and most players know all these methods by now) to undo almost anything that could happen to someone:

Lose a limb? Regeneration!
Get killed? Raise Dead!
Get turned into undead? Kill them, then Raise Dead!
Mind control? Protection from evil!
Insanity? Heal!
Horrible physical alterations? Restoration series!

So you lose a lot of sources of visceral fear. You can still do things though - kidnapping or just having someone be 'lost elsewhere' can be frightening. If people just start disappearing and there's no visible sign of what causes it, they don't register as valid targets for a Resurrection or divination spells, etc, then that can still be worrisome.

The other thing to do is to add things to the system that the players are unfamiliar with and don't know how to deal with. Its good when done well, but it can also fall flat if its too obviously ridiculous.

Zahhak
2013-01-25, 07:08 PM
You might be thinking of TSR's Masque of the Red Death setting, which is an offshoot of Ravenloft. It's not Lovecraftian in any sense, really, and you'd have to stretch it to the breaking point to make it so I think.

Actually, it was Ravenloft. The first sentence of the actual article on wikipedia is "Ravenloft is primarily a Gothic horror setting."

Bhu
2013-01-25, 10:24 PM
OP: Are you wanting homebrew or monsters already made for d20 or movie/book suggestions?

hamlet
2013-01-26, 06:16 AM
Actually, it was Ravenloft. The first sentence of the actual article on wikipedia is "Ravenloft is primarily a Gothic horror setting."

Ravenloft isn't exactly Lovecraftian either. Gothic Horror and Lovecraft are two different traditions in horror.

Yora
2013-01-26, 07:23 AM
OP: Are you wanting homebrew or monsters already made for d20 or movie/book suggestions?
Doesn't matter, I probably stat them myself anyway.

Kol Korran
2013-01-26, 10:49 AM
Before i begin, I always found it hard to use such incomprehensible horrors since they rarely echo with the players. The players can't quite understand them, or worse- relate to them in any way, so they chalk it up to "quirks of creation/ the game", kill them or run from them, and move on. I found I could generate horror with other things, that made their own sense, but something the characters could grasp, could conceive, that did not seem arbitrarily cruel or weird.

That said, I don't have much to add, except that I as quite intrigued by Eberron's aberrations:

At the top there are the Daelkyr. The basic books makes them humanoid in form, but unfathomable in the way they perceive and interact with the world. The little we know of them is that they are creators and shapers of new races and symbionts, Xoriat is far away, but a few Daelkyr are locked in the Khyber, and that they don't seem to mind- no one quite understand any reason behind what they do, want, or anything...

I'm not sure they would fit as lovecraftian horrors, since those are often inaccessible, where the Daelkyr have stat blocks, also they haven't tried to take over the world in quite a long, long, long time. Do they harbor any hatred to the common races? It doesn't seem so... Stillm for whatever reason, I find them fascinating. I'd wish anyone would expand on them some more, I think they have too little fluff, and I feel I'm inadequate to expand on them myself, since well... unfathomable.

But I also like the minor creations detailed in the ECS, as possible "minions horrors"- the Dolgrim and Dolgaunt. I like them because of the history of the setting, and having their "right form" counterparts right there. They are quite an affront to any goblinoid.

The Dolgrim might be interesting to explore in the aspect of "two minds in the same body", but that is nothing new to D&D. the Dolgaunt however... a creature that senses the air through minute and major tendrils, and also have the tendency and will to form monastic orders, a sort of society, though probably also quite mad with pain and suffering? I think there is potential here.

Last thing I'd like to add- I've made a sort of refluffing of the Gibbering Mouther, turning it more into a creature of horror. Might be useful. check the first post of this thread. number 12 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81051)

Zahhak
2013-01-26, 02:16 PM
Ravenloft isn't exactly Lovecraftian either. Gothic Horror and Lovecraft are two different traditions in horror.

That may be why I said "a gothic horror setting". I don't know. Sometimes I say things without realizing I'm saying them, or indeed, comprehending their meaning in any possible way.

Frozen_Feet
2013-01-26, 03:03 PM
I'm interested in fictional creatures to inhabit a fantasy world.

Well, my suggestion is more about changing the default cosmology, but here are the basic details of "deaths" in my setting:

They only become tangible when it's cold and dark. They are formless, gathering up their physical bodies from dust, snow or the like. Their touch causes you to age, until your soul leaves your body. They eat souls of the dead, after which no resurrection etc. is possible. Best way to "fight" them is to flee to a warm and lit area.

So what makes these "Lovecraftian"? Well, they are all that is really true about death. All those fancy words about heavens and hells? Pure fiction. Instead of some celestial reward or punishment, your soul-turned-ghost gets chased down and eaten by formless thing when you die, and that's it.

And the "deaths" are silent. There is no real communication between them and mortals. All the reasons for whatever they do are left to pure guesswork.

So while they are cheap "scare" monster on the surface, the real fear comes from what they imply about the setting's cosmology. Granted, it will only really work if you make your players / player characters think that the cosmology is different and more humane.

Zahhak
2013-01-26, 04:07 PM
Am I crazy, or was that at least partly inspired by Bleach?

Frozen_Feet
2013-01-26, 04:40 PM
It's inspired by myths that Bleach's afterlife is inspired by. :smalltongue:

Bhu
2013-01-27, 02:21 AM
Doesn't matter, I probably stat them myself anyway.

Gimme a CR range and I'll have somehting for you :smallbiggrin:

Cerlis
2013-01-28, 04:12 AM
I think that the splinterwaif from MM3 is good. Maybe give it the ability to attempt a free grapple check on anything it spears (turning its thorn projectiles into a barbed tongue) so it can drag its victims to it, and turn it into an aberration instead of a fey, maybe alter the looks a little ( i imagine the players see them crawling around like a cross between panthers and Xenomorphs).

at the beginning 1 or two is bad enough. They can still be used later on because while the bigger monsters are attacking them, even if each party member can dispatch a whole splinterwaif with a single standard action the threat of being harpooned and dragged away (even by a creature that when it eventually does real you in, you can dispatch it easily) makes the main challenge that much harder.

The more fragile casters cant stand up to a bruiser and need to run if the melees are pulled out of the fight. Really that mechanic applies to any party member.

tbok1992
2013-01-29, 02:31 AM
Well, might as well repost this relevant post I put in the Paizo forums on a dungeon in The Dominion of the Black:


Well, as a big fan of the setting, might I suggest adapting some of Mortasheen's (http://bogleech.com/mortasheen.htm) Unknown class of monsters. A lot of their powers and the weird quirks of their biology work a lot better at conveying the alien-ness of Aberrations than most of the D&D ones.

I'd reccomend the Xenogog (http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/xenogog.htm), Longfellow (http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/longfellow.htm), Radiovade (http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/radiovade.htm), Visidron (http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/visidron.htm), Snile (http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/snile.htm), Genetisaur (http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/genetisaur.htm) and Genetimorph (http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/genetimorph.htm) as the best ones to adapt,