Beast Breeding Facility

[Telonius]

If you happen to be in the "Bell, Book, and Candle" campaign... please avert your eyes. :smallsmile:



So, I'm planning a series of encounters for a group of 6th-level adventurers. The premise is that they're investigating a noble's secret beast-breeding facility. More or less, an underground fighting club run by the noble. They'll be fighting through a few (low-level) handlers. But at some point the beasts are going to be let loose on the party. I have a few ideas about templated creatures (the final encounter is going to be a pair of Advanced War Beast crocodiles), but I'm looking for ideas for some of the other encounters in the dungeon.

So, what are the craziest animals you can come up with? Doesn't have to be something that has official stats, I'm fine with homebrewing up a creature or two. Templates, adding hitdice; go nuts. The prince is supposed to have been at this for a while, so I'm looking for a wide range of creatures (not necessarily all combat encounters, either; basically, stuff to show he's been messing around with breeding lots of different species).

The party composition is a Rogue/Beguiler, an inexperienced (but taking advice from the DM) Artificer, a Ranger (houseruled to trade animal companions with the Druid), and a Cleric.

[Coidzor]

You may want to look at the Fleshweaving thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=216912) that Eldan was doing a few years back. That's the only iteration I can find, but I think there was one or two older threads as well.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

I've been called an evil DM for throwing an undead rust monster at a group and it wasn't even a spell stitched skeletal creature.

My Half Blue Dragon Minotaur gladiator was much more well recieved.

I got a lot of mileage out of pseudonatural dinosaurs; the combination of the pseudonatural template and the swarm traits on needle tooth swarm were especially tricky.

[Tvtyrant]

The toughest CR 6 I can think of for a dumb magicless brute is a Half-Dragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/halfDragon.htm) Mineral Warrior (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20031003e) That Darn Crab (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a).

It has an int of 1, a strength of 30, can fly 80 ft. a turn, and does 1.5 strength damage on its claw attacks. Also DR 8/Adamant

Speaking of lobster monsters, there is always the Velobsterapter (http://tvtyrant.deviantart.com/art/Splice-Lobsteraptor-163875921).

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/132/2/4/24910c945a9f8532f1a1d8267aebde2d.png

Or this thing combined with an Owlbear to make a feathery mindflayer.

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/296/8/c/barn_owl_octopus_by_meglyman-d5irlff.jpg

[gurgleflep]

So, if I understand this right, you're looking for crazy animal hybrids or something along the lines of that.

If I'm right: you can't go wrong with a velociraptor/badger/tortoise! I call it the Velocadgtoise :smallbiggrin:
It's a velociraptor for the most part, but with badger markings and front arms, giving it the ability to burrow, plus it's in a tortoise shell for extra AC!

If I'm wrong: Use one of the other suggestions :smalltongue:

[Spuddles]

I read the title of this thread as "Breast Feeding Facility". (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQl68Glcii8)

[Jeff the Green]

You could adapt the tauric template from Savage Species. It requires a humanoid and an animal, magic beast, or vermin, but you could easily change it to be two of the latter category. In the same vein, symbiotic, reptilian, winged, multiheaded, monstrous, insectile, and gelatinous are all good templates from that book.

[themourningstar]

Well, first and foremost: Aberrations. From breeding snakes, I can assure you that not every animal you breed is going to come out right. Maybe have some creatures that are severely malformed that he kept- either it was accidental malformity, or maybe the prince was magically experimenting on them and deformed them? You could even have a room full of glass jars full of formaldehyde that have dead and deformed fetuses or creatures in them if you REALLY want to get macabre.

Also, and this is something I was wanting to do for the underdark lizard mounts... Add some small trait. When you are running a breeding program, you have goals that you are trying to meet: You want to come out with this morph (color pattern in reptiles), or you want to breed the animal to be stronger, or faster, or larger or smaller. Possibilities are endless. So, instead of putting in a jillion different monsters, you could have a jillion varieties of a few- you want to have a large amount of dna to work with, obviously. So, you could have riding lizards that have a special coloration (bright red and blue stripes, albino, leucistic, etc) for a purely cosmetic change- these would be more valuable in the world's economy though. Or add +2 str +2 con to show that they were bred for strength- again, such a mount would be more valuable. You could add horns, a trample attack, a sticky tounge attack, etc etc. I had lists for all of this, just never got around to finalizing it lol