Hunting the greatest game

[ChudoJogurt]

Hi all, I need an advice from people who know a lot about monsters.

Right now my party (about ECL 9) is trekkibg through the jungle and I want to etertain then with a hunt against some sort of monster.
I need a good target for the hunt with following parameters:.
*id like it to be at least Huge
*id like it to be an outsuder (evil), magical beast, animal or abomination. Defintely not a construct or an elemental, not with a humanoid shape and preferably something you can roast and spit after the party murderizes it.
*MOST IMPORTANTLY, and that is the whole point of the hunt, it has to be something that is a very hard encounter unless party knows some specific weaknesses or modes of attack of the beast so that they can prepare and thibk out a strategy, something that isnt immediately obvious from the general shape of the beast.

Tgat latter bit is a bit hard to search for, and if someone knows of such a beast, it would save me a lit of brute-force searching through the monster manuals.

[Mike Miller]

Hi all, I need an advice from people who know a lot about monsters.

Right now my party (about ECL 9) is trekkibg through the jungle and I want to etertain then with a hunt against some sort of monster.
I need a good target for the hunt with following parameters:.
*id like it to be at least Huge
*id like it to be an outsuder (evil), magical beast, animal or abomination. Defintely not a construct or an elemental, not with a humanoid shape and preferably something you can roast and spit after the party murderizes it.
*MOST IMPORTANTLY, and that is the whole point of the hunt, it has to be something that is a very hard encounter unless party knows some specific weaknesses or modes of attack of the beast so that they can prepare and thibk out a strategy, something that isnt immediately obvious from the general shape of the beast.

Tgat latter bit is a bit hard to search for, and if someone knows of such a beast, it would save me a lit of brute-force searching through the monster manuals.

I'm sure you meant aberration and not abomination. (Unless you want an epic monster to wreck the party) Also, look into the Book of Vile Darkness's Kython. It is just like the xenomorph from Alien.

[AvatarVecna]

Hi all, I need an advice from people who know a lot about monsters.

Right now my party (about ECL 9) is trekkibg through the jungle and I want to etertain then with a hunt against some sort of monster.
I need a good target for the hunt with following parameters:.
*id like it to be at least Huge
*id like it to be an outsuder (evil), magical beast, animal or abomination. Defintely not a construct or an elemental, not with a humanoid shape and preferably something you can roast and spit after the party murderizes it.
*MOST IMPORTANTLY, and that is the whole point of the hunt, it has to be something that is a very hard encounter unless party knows some specific weaknesses or modes of attack of the beast so that they can prepare and thibk out a strategy, something that isnt immediately obvious from the general shape of the beast.

Tgat latter bit is a bit hard to search for, and if someone knows of such a beast, it would save me a lit of brute-force searching through the monster manuals.

So my first general point: you need to toss "animal" out of your list of preferred types. Most creature types, all the creatures in that type are just kinda biologically similar in a grander sense but are very different, but there's a few types that have...incredibly persistent stereotypes: oozes are unintelligent, humanoids don't advance by humanoid hit dice, and animals are boring. Animals will not be any kind of particularly interesting hunt, because if they were smart enough or magic enough to be interesting, they would be magical beasts instead and would be allowed to have nice things. :smalltongue:

My second general point: I would recommend you look for creatures a 3-6 CR lower than what you're wanting the final product to be, and then use HD advancement, class level advancement, and/or templates to improve it until it reaches the desired CR, and maybe play around with its skill ranks and feats. If the goal here is to make for an interesting hunt, then making the Greatest Game an atypical and impressive specimen of its own kind is a good idea. A simple example would be finding a way to give a creature the [Fire] or [Cold] subtype, which will give it resistance to its own damage type and vulnerability to the other. I'd recommend the [Fire] subtype, because a lot of Cold effects also involve some kind of movement interference effect, which would make using cold effects both slow down an opponent potentially dependent on its mobility and take advantage of its vulnerability.

From there...I do have a few suggestions, depending on just how optimized, patient, cunning, and "up to the challenge" your players are.

An Acidborn X-headed Pyrohydra is a Huge Magical Beast [Fire] anywhere from CR 7 to CR 14 (depending on the number of heads). It's immune to fire and acid, so that's not a way to stop stumps from growing back, but it has cold vulnerability (which will also let you stop heads from regrowing if applied to the stumps). I also recommend swapping out Toughness for Improved Toughness, and Blind-Fight for Final Strike.

Tarrasque, full stop. It's over-CR'd, and there's lots of little tricks that can be used to exploit it, but unless your players are cheese-weasels they aren't gonna be winning a straight-up fight with it at this level, even as a group. They're gonna need a solid plan...there have been many previous threads dedicated to taking down the tarrasque before you're supposed to, peruse them for interesting ideas to seed.

Throw out the Fiendwurm from MM2, CR 28. It's kinda like a purple worm...a purple worm that constantly sweats acid, coughs up demons, and will poop you out into the Abyss if it swallows you. Freedom Of Movement will make getting swallowed difficult, AMF will mean swallowed people don't necessarily get interplanarly pooped out, hit-and-run tactics could cause it to use its minion-summon ability (and, when it has no remaining prey, it will consume them itself, making it easier to defeat later if you can get it to expend all uses of that ability unhelpfully), ranged weapons will mean the acid sweat only melts ammunition, specialty weapons that repair themselves, are immune to acid, or can be enchanted to constantly douse themselves in water can allow melee to also be useful...well, as useful as you can be against AC 27, DR 15/-, and 348 HP.

[Mechalich]

Somewhat overly simple perhaps since its right in the SRD, but the Abyssal Great Basilisk (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/basilisk.htm) might fit the bill. It's big, it's non-humanoid, and it's got a gimmick in the petrifying gaze that if you're not prepared for can definitely mess the party up. Also, in a jungle environment it's not especially recognizable at once, since it's just a big lizard. If the party has previously encountered giant monitor lizards they could very easily be fooled (meaning you'd be justified in making the Knowledge check a bit harder).

Even simpler, a Purple Worm (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/purpleWorm.htm) straight up, could also work. Certainly it's got the size factor down, and it's particularly nasty in a canyon or something where it can burrow through the walls to attack.

[ChudoJogurt]

Mike Miller, sir, you are a genius. I love the idea of doing one of the Alien movies in DnD. Hnters will become the hunted and vice verca. Brilliant.
Anyone know where to get the DnD map for one of them temples from Alien vs Predator Requiem movie?

Mechalich, I thought of basilisk, but everyobe knows of their petrifying gaze so at least out of characters players wont be surprised

[noob]

The Xixecal is probably an appropriate encounter for a level 9 party.
Unless they does not have anything that protects from cold such as clothes in which case they died some days ago.

[OgresAreCute]

Came here to suggest pyro- or cryohydra just to see it in one of the first replies. :smallmad:
But yeah I think it should work quite well, ticks all the boxes as far as I can see. Magical Beast (and looks like an animal apart from the extra heads), big size, huge damage potential with the breath weapon and standard action full attacks and an obvious, easily exploitable weakness (cold or fire damage, respectively). Only problem is the weakness might be a bit TOO obvious and powerful if they know about it ahead of time, and if you use a very powerful hydra so that they need to use the weakness to realistically take it down, it might just nuke the entire party to death with its breath weapon.

[ChudoJogurt]

We already fought a hydra, unfortunaly, wouldnt want to repeat it too soon

[OgresAreCute]

We already fought a hydra, unfortunaly, wouldnt want to repeat it too soon

You could use a Dragon (it's not on your list of types, but bear with me) with some form of Feral template to make them more stupid and dinosaur-like. I found one here (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/feral-dragon-cr-varies/) if you're playing PF, if you're playing 3.5e I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of templates to this effect in various dragon magazines. This way you get a big, scary, dumb dinosaur that can fly and has various abilities so it isn't just a total "me me big T-Rex, me walk up and attack each turn". Dragons with elemental subtypes (at least fire and cold subtypes) also have an exploitable weakness, just like the hydras.

Bonus: Dragon heads make great trophies, hide can be scavenged and sold since it's a valuable material and then you can just get a big, ol' spitroast going on the rest of the body.

[Mike Miller]

Mike Miller, sir, you are a genius. I love the idea of doing one of the Alien movies in DnD. Hnters will become the hunted and vice verca. Brilliant.
Anyone know where to get the DnD map for one of them temples from Alien vs Predator Requiem movie?

Mechalich, I thought of basilisk, but everyobe knows of their petrifying gaze so at least out of characters players wont be surprised

If you set the scene up well, it can be amazing. There is a great campaign journal (silverclaw?) that used the kythons.