Monster improvement.

[Doomboy911]

Working with a spectral lyricist as a monster and was considering making a lateral change to her, rather than simply stealing charisma I was thinking she stole attributes like the barbarians deep voice or the bards good looks and added them to herself, thoughts?

[Flickerdart]

Working with a spectral lyricist as a monster and was considering making a lateral change to her, rather than simply stealing charisma I was thinking she stole attributes like the barbarians deep voice or the bards good looks and added them to herself, thoughts?

In what way is this an improvement? Voice pitch or attractiveness are not game mechanics.

[Doomboy911]

I feel it makes the encounter more memorable, rather than simply draining charisma it drains parts of you that make up your charisma. Also the attributes they would drain could be explained in numbers. A barbarian losing their deep intimidating voice might mean they take a penalty to their intimidation check while a bard losing their rakish good looks might mean they suffer in attempts to charm others.

[Flickerdart]

Also the attributes they would drain could be explained in numbers. A barbarian losing their deep intimidating voice might mean they take a penalty to their intimidation check while a bard losing their rakish good looks might mean they suffer in attempts to charm others.

Both of these things are already baked into the Charisma damage. You're just coming up with a flowery way to describe it.

[Inevitability]

You're refluffing a poorly-described monster to make the game more enjoyable for you and your players?

How dare you!

[Doomboy911]

You're refluffing a poorly-described monster to make the game more enjoyable for you and your players?

How dare you!

Seppuku

I feel it's not to hard to go beyond simple charisma stuff, say for example she stole the fighter's physique and added on an extra 25 or so pounds or took some muscle mass, now they've got a reduction to damage, or the noble paladin's maturity reducing their age and making it harder to be taken seriously. I feel it makes the creature a bit more unique and with it's nature of deceiving adventurers it could just try and make deals with players to steal a bit from them.

[Inevitability]

Seppuku

I feel it's not to hard to go beyond simple charisma stuff, say for example she stole the fighter's physique and added on an extra 25 or so pounds or took some muscle mass, now they've got a reduction to damage, or the noble paladin's maturity reducing their age and making it harder to be taken seriously. I feel it makes the creature a bit more unique and with it's nature of deceiving adventurers it could just try and make deals with players to steal a bit from them.

I know: I like it. I was being sarcastic, as indicated by the blue text.

[Doomboy911]

More at the other fellow that was less sarcastic. Thank you though.

[Crake]

More at the other fellow that was less sarcastic. Thank you though.

He was saying that what you are doing has no bearing whatsoever on the mechanics itself, and as such is not an "improvement" or even a mechanical change, but simply fluffing the monster's ability.

[Doomboy911]

Basic debuffs wouldn't be difficult to come up with.

[Flickerdart]

Basic debuffs wouldn't be difficult to come up with.

This is a completely different question, phrased like this: "I want to add an extra penalty on top of my monster's Charisma drain, what are some flavorful penalties?" The key difference is that stealing the barbarian's muscles* disadvantages him much more than stealing the bard's deep voice. You want all the possible penalties to be balanced, and not screw over a PC just because of the class he picked.

*The amount of muscles has less to do with how muscly you look than you'd think. The keys to a good-looking bod are a) training specific muscles and b) lowering body fat to show definition. A creature that steals attractiveness might take away muscle tone, but the barbarian probably doesn't have much of it anyway, because having a layer of protective body fat is very useful when cushioning blows or freezing in the snow.

[ExLibrisMortis]

By default, spectral lyricists do not steal charisma. They drain charisma, and gain temporary hit points. That said, if your spectral lyricist adds a -4 penalty to a single skill whenever it drains charisma, that isn't going to be too problematic. If the lyricist then gets a +4 bonus to that skill, that shouldn't be a problem, either. For some skills, it'll be practically unnoticable (Decipher Script), for others, quite useful (Intimidate).

The main thing you need to be careful about is stacking. How often the ability should stack is a matter of duration: if the stolen skill is permanent (maybe until the lyricist dies), then don't let it stack; if it's a one-round thing, let it stack into the stratosphere.