Waldmarschallin
2018-11-26, 05:01 PM
Good afternoon, all
Has anyone ever introduced the Night Twist from Monster Manual 3 (3.5 edition) into their game? It's a great example of flawed planning, as it seems to be a thoroughly appropriate encounter for a mid-high level party in the wilderness, but has the capacity to depopulate entire continents just by normal behavior.
Specifically it has a mind-influencing spell like ability that compels all who hear it to follow to the source or begin taking damage. there is no limit to the number of creatures it can affect with this power, and the only criteria is that they be vulnerable to mind-influences, and have intelligence of at least 5. It has a range of 5 miles per hit die of the horrid plant (default 14, or 70 miles I think). The book does not specify whether the keening sound can automatically be detected, but since most sound wouldn't naturally carry that far, I think we can assume so. It does this every night at dusk.
The will DC is low, only 15 or something, so the chances of more than one PC in a team falling victim to it is pretty low. However, if the Night Twist is placed on, say, a boat, entire coastlines will become uninhabitable. Even considering a fairly developed, educated city where the most common level is 3-5, you'd easily be looking at 1/2-3/4 of a city just walking into the water until they drown from exhaustion.
In my primary world, the Realm of Wisland (the good guys) were able to capture one of these horrible monsters after a shoggoth cult found the plans for breeding one in the study of our top science advisor and loosed it upon a remote Fey island. Since acquiring it, the Realm has transferred population out of a large block of territory (nearly 1000 square miles) on their north eastern coast, and built a fortified U-Boot pen guarded by constructs and Shambling mounds. The Twist itself is stored aboard one of their Hunley-type submarines, crewed by undead with a living crew of only two Commissars (clerics) , who have high enough will saves to be pretty safe from it. It has been unleashed exactly once- destroying an entire invasion force of 20,000 men at sea. Obviously, enough castings of Commune will yield the information of what caused such carnage, which means it's only a matter of time before rival powers get their own. No coastline would ever be safe, barring large scale magical infrastructure to protect residents.
This monster has the potential to completely reshape international politics and destroy much of civilization. Obviously, a CR 11 monster should not be able to do this, but its impact on long-running campaigns promises to be interesting, doesn't it?
Apparently this has been errata-ed, as different versions of the MM3 have the range sharply reduced
Has anyone ever introduced the Night Twist from Monster Manual 3 (3.5 edition) into their game? It's a great example of flawed planning, as it seems to be a thoroughly appropriate encounter for a mid-high level party in the wilderness, but has the capacity to depopulate entire continents just by normal behavior.
Specifically it has a mind-influencing spell like ability that compels all who hear it to follow to the source or begin taking damage. there is no limit to the number of creatures it can affect with this power, and the only criteria is that they be vulnerable to mind-influences, and have intelligence of at least 5. It has a range of 5 miles per hit die of the horrid plant (default 14, or 70 miles I think). The book does not specify whether the keening sound can automatically be detected, but since most sound wouldn't naturally carry that far, I think we can assume so. It does this every night at dusk.
The will DC is low, only 15 or something, so the chances of more than one PC in a team falling victim to it is pretty low. However, if the Night Twist is placed on, say, a boat, entire coastlines will become uninhabitable. Even considering a fairly developed, educated city where the most common level is 3-5, you'd easily be looking at 1/2-3/4 of a city just walking into the water until they drown from exhaustion.
In my primary world, the Realm of Wisland (the good guys) were able to capture one of these horrible monsters after a shoggoth cult found the plans for breeding one in the study of our top science advisor and loosed it upon a remote Fey island. Since acquiring it, the Realm has transferred population out of a large block of territory (nearly 1000 square miles) on their north eastern coast, and built a fortified U-Boot pen guarded by constructs and Shambling mounds. The Twist itself is stored aboard one of their Hunley-type submarines, crewed by undead with a living crew of only two Commissars (clerics) , who have high enough will saves to be pretty safe from it. It has been unleashed exactly once- destroying an entire invasion force of 20,000 men at sea. Obviously, enough castings of Commune will yield the information of what caused such carnage, which means it's only a matter of time before rival powers get their own. No coastline would ever be safe, barring large scale magical infrastructure to protect residents.
This monster has the potential to completely reshape international politics and destroy much of civilization. Obviously, a CR 11 monster should not be able to do this, but its impact on long-running campaigns promises to be interesting, doesn't it?
Apparently this has been errata-ed, as different versions of the MM3 have the range sharply reduced