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View Full Version : DM Help Mad Scientist's Lab: Making the Xenomorph



Bobby Baratheon
2015-12-23, 11:45 PM
Recently the DM of my campaign dropped out (getting married will do that, apparently :smallbiggrin:), and he left me in charge of holding down the fort indefinitely. I've come up with some interesting monsters for them to fight, but recently the idea came to me to make a Xenomorph template to apply to my monsters (in case you were wondering, by Xenomorph I'm referring to the titular alien from the movie Alien). The main opponents of my players (that I'm introducing, at least) is a secret cabal of elvish wizards hellbent on conquest. They have the resources of the main elvish nation behind them, and one of their favorite tactics is to concoct weird creatures in their labs to fill their ranks. Their favorite foot soldiers, for example, are half-golem ogres.
I think the Xenomorph would fit surprisingly well into D&D, especially if you make it a template that you can add to "normal" monsters to make them even weirder and more unpredictable.

Well, let's get to work. These are some attributes of the Xenomorph that I thought of, although I'm sure you fine folks will remind me of others. I guess my main reason for this post is to help me come up with at least somewhat accurate mechanical implementations of the xenomorph's abilities/lifecycle. Also, for the purposes of this thread, we're primarily talking about the original xenomorph.

Here's the list (will edit as more are brought up)
-Acidic blood
-Barbed tail
-Propagation methods
-Size increase? (the aliens birthed from humans are noticably larger than their hosts)
-Incubation period in host
-Fast growth
-Body temperature matches ambient
-Stealthiness
-Enhanced strength and agility
-Natural armor
-The tongue

CrazyNoob
2015-12-24, 12:42 AM
You might want to consider the Aliens D20 (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi72Z_V4_PJAhVK_WMKHSMzDtoQFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmembers.toast.net%2Ftalien%2Fmich ael%2Fpdfs%2Faliens.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEkQ0A-4NTAdHOwgJAmDEBT56OXwQ&sig2=2qjid9EkxW3HXimiXedNKA). Id ignore all the future stuff and some of the psionic stuff and use mostly the templates and other info. I ran acrossed it a while back ago thought it would haven been interesting.

Slivers from MtG also comes to mind, there was several posts regarding slivers here on the forum years ago as well.

Pluto!
2015-12-24, 08:14 AM
You might want to check out Kythons from the Book of Vile Darkness. They're basically Aliens, minus the impregnation part, plus a couple weird options the writers apparently thought were neat (some can shoot bones or phase into incorporeality temporarily). But the monsters themselves are pretty close, with acid, extra mouth, impaling body weapons and all.