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rferries
2019-02-05, 09:00 PM
Elementals are extraplanar spirits - they may not be talkative, but they should have alien intellects and natures rather than being dumb brutes. A fire elemental certainly shouldn't have a physical body - it makes more sense as an incorporeal creature if anything. This revision will take a look at the four classical elementals.

[Elemental] Subtype & Traits
Certain outsiders embody one of the four classical elements (air, earth, fire, and water), just as celestials and fiends embody the powers of good and evil. These elemental outsiders possess the [Elemental] subtype.

A creature with the [Elemental] subtype always possess one of the elemental subtypes ([Air], [Earth], [Fire], or [Water]), as well as the following traits (unless otherwise noted in the creature's entry):

Amorphous (Ex)
An [Elemental] creature is composed of an animate mass of elemental material (soil, water, wind, flames, sand, metal, etc.) and has no true physiology. It is not subject nonmagical disease, poison, fatigue, ability damage, or nonlethal damage. It is immune to critical hits and cannot be flanked.

[Swarm] Attack (Ex)
Any creature in an [Elemental]'s space is subject to a swarm attack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#swarmSubtype) from the swirling mass of animate matter or energy that makes up the creature's body. An elemental cannot make physical attacks other than swarm attacks against a creature sharing its space.

Unearthly Grace (Su)
An [Elemental] adds its Charisma bonus as a resistance bonus on its saves and as a deflection bonus to its Armour Class.

[Earth] Subtype
This subtype is usually applied to outsiders native to [Earth]-dominant planes. These outsiders usually possess the [Elemental] subtype as well, though exceptions exist (e.g. the non-[Elemental] dao genies). [Earth] creatures always have burrow speeds, and may burrow through rock and metal as easily as soil and sand. While burrowing they may choose to leave passages for non-burrowing creatures to follow, or to leave the ground completely undisturbed by their passage.

ELEMENTAL, EARTHLARGE OUTSIDER ([Earth], [Elemental], [Extraplanar])
Hit Dice: 12d8+60 (114 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), burrow 100 ft.
Armor Class: 25 (+3 deflection, +1 Dex, +12 natural, -1 size), touch 13, flat-footed 24
Base Attack/Grapple: +12/+26
Attack: Slam +21 melee (1d6+10) or rock +15 ranged (1d6+10) or swarm attack (3d6)
Full Attack: 3 slams +21 melee (1d6+10 melee) or 3 rocks +12 ranged (1d6+10) or swarm attack (3d6)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft.
Special Attacks: Earthquake, entomb, spell-like abilities, swarm attack
Special Qualities: Darkvision 60 ft, [Elemental] traits, fast healing 10, hardness 8, outsider traits, tremorsense 120 ft.
Saves: Fort +18, Ref +12, Will +14
Abilities: Str 30, Dex 12, Con 20, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 16
Skills: Diplomacy +5, Knowledge (arcana, dungeoneering, geography, nature, religion, the planes) +16, Listen +18, Sense Motive +18, Spellcraft +18, Survival +1 (+3 aboveground natural, avoid hazards, underground, or other planes)
Feats: Awesome Blow, Cleave, Great Fortitude, Improved Bull Rush, Power Attack
Environment: An [Earth]-dominant plane
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 12
Treasure: Triple standard
Alignment: Usually lawful neutral
Advancement: 13-15 HD (Large), 16-19 HD (Huge), 20-23 HD (Gargantuan), 24-27 HD (Colossal)
Level Adjustment: +2

The creature is a rough-hewn mass of rock and soil with gleaming gemstone "eyes". Psudopods like massive clubs lash out from the creature.

Earth elementals are relatively benign creatures, as strong and wise as the earth itself. Although terrible to behold in battle, they are generally slow to anger and dangerous only if provoked. Furthermore, they have knowledge of the secret places and hidden treasures of the world - dwarves in particular revere and conjure them for this purpose.

Earth elementals speak Dwarven, Sylvan, Terran, and Undercommon with rumbling voices as loud as earthquakes. However, they are taciturn even compared to other types of elementals.

Combat
An earth elemental hurls boulders at airborne foes and crushes melee opponents with mighty blows. Although slow aboveground, it can swiftly and effortlessly merge into the ground to travel at great speed - often emerging to entomb unwary foes within its body, before depositing them underground. Finally, it can use its spell-like abilities to manipulate the battlefield to suit its desires (or those of its summoner).

An earth elemental's natural weapons, as well as its swarm attack and any weapons it wields, are treated as magic weapons.

Earthquake (Su)
As a standard action an earth elemental may create an earthquake, as the spell (caster level 13th or the elemental's character level, whichever is greater). An elemental may only use this ability once every 1d4 rounds.

Entomb (Ex)
An earth elemental makes automatic grapple checks each round against all creatures of Medium or smaller size that share its space. Grappled creatures are buried alive in the creature's mass and must hold their breath or begin to suffocate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm#suffocation) until they break free or are released. The elemental is never considered grappled itself by this effect, and is free to act and move (dragging grappled creatures with it). An elemental may grapple any number of creatures in this way provided that they are all at least one size smaller than it.

Fast Healing (Su)
An earth elemental's fast healing functions only while it is in contact with earthen, stony, or metallic ground.

Hardness (Ex)
An earth elemental is as hard as stone. Do not halve or quarter energy damage or the damage from ranged weapons before applying this hardness.

Spell-Like Abilities (Sp)
Caster level 12th. The save DCs are Charisma-based.
Always active - stone tell
At will - magic stone, move earth, plane shift (self plus any willing creatures to/from an [Earth]-dominant plane only), soften earth and stone, spike stones (DC 17), stone shape, transmute mud to rock (DC 18), transmute rock to mud (18), wall of stone (DC 18).

Swarm Attack (Ex)
All creatures in an earth elemental's space (grappled or not) are subject to the elemental's swarm attack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#swarmSubtype). An earth elemental's swarm attack deals bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from the crush of earth and shards of rock.

Variant Earth Elementals
The above describes an earth elemental composed primarily of rock and soil, but other variants exist.

Adamantine
These elementals have hardness 20. Their natural weapons (including their swarm attacks) are treated as adamantine for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Cold Iron
These elementals have hardness 10 and spell resistance equal to their character level +15. Their natural weapons (including their swarm attacks) are treated as cold iron for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Mythril
These elementals have hardness 15. They may take an additional move action each turn. Their natural weapons (including their swarm attacks) are treated as silver for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Treasure
These elementals have been summoned to animate treasure hoards, and are composed of masses of gold coins and glittering jewels. They have statistics as a standard earth elemental, but possess quadruple standard treasure.


Redefine air/earth/fire/water subtypes

Flow (Ex)
The base creature can squeeze through any opening that a Fine creature could fit through.
An elemental is a mass of animat mattr or energy
swarm, incorporeal, manifesattion, fire brunt hrough walls,
fire-slams and swarm and breath weapon all fire
amorphous forms or dragons/serpents/phoenixes etc
fire elemntal-ingnite
balance, tumble, swim, climb
fire elementals -fly (not as well as air)
earth-hardness, air-immune to missile weapons/incorporeal, water-dr/bludgeoning...

lightning bolt, wind gusts/call lightning (from self)
water/air-fitthrough small openings

[Air] Subtype
This subtype is usually used by outsiders from the Elemental Plane of Air (usually outsiders with both the [Air] and [Elemental] subtypes, though some [Air] outsiders such as djinn do not possess the [Elemental] subtype). [Air] outsiders always possess fly speeds, and always have perfect maneuverability.

Traits
An [Air]

rferries
2019-02-05, 09:01 PM
Reserved 1

nonsi
2019-02-06, 04:32 AM
.

Very impressive work overall.
I do detect several issues that merit attention though.

1. Mud = earth + water, so rock to mud seems a bit inappropriate.
2. Size changes with HD accumulation seem a bit too rapid to me. I'd make it every 4 HD - at 16/20/24 (huge/gargantuan/colossal respectively), with 27 HD max. This will also allow you to go down as far as small-sized elementals at 4 HD (maybe as familiars?).
3. Burrow speed is way too fast. Not even a level 20 monk can keep up with that. Speed 100 means that it's almost guaranteed to successfully chase or runaway, regardless of party power.
4. You should specify high BAB in the Elemental Traits section, as well as any other changes from core.
5. I notice that range damage is higher than melee damage. That's highly unusual.

Ranged Ranger
2019-02-09, 10:51 PM
As Nonsi says, this is a great start, but there are some issues...

.

Very impressive work overall.
I do detect several issues that merit attention though.

1. Mud = earth + water, so rock to mud seems a bit inappropriate.
2. Size changes with HD accumulation seem a bit too rapid to me. I'd make it every 4 HD - at 16/20/24 (huge/gargantuan/colossal respectively), with 27 HD max. This will also allow you to go down as far as small-sized elementals at 4 HD (maybe as familiars?).
3. Burrow speed is way too fast. Not even a level 20 monk can keep up with that. Speed 100 means that it's almost guaranteed to successfully chase or runaway, regardless of party power.
4. You should specify high BAB in the Elemental Traits section, as well as any other changes from core.
5. I notice that range damage is higher than melee damage. That's highly unusual.
1. Is there a transmutation spell between metal/rock or rock/metal?
2. I like the current progression, but I suppose you could make medium a breakpoint, with 0-2 dim, 3-5 tiny, 6-8 small, 9-11 medium, 12-15 large, 16-19 huge, 20-23 garg, 24-27 colos... Just please don't make diminutive elementals non existent. I've read a number of cool stories with match-book sized elementals..
3. 100 ft does seem a bit to fast for a standard version....

rferries
2019-02-15, 11:17 PM
Thanks both for your comments!


.

Very impressive work overall.
I do detect several issues that merit attention though.

1. Mud = earth + water, so rock to mud seems a bit inappropriate.
2. Size changes with HD accumulation seem a bit too rapid to me. I'd make it every 4 HD - at 16/20/24 (huge/gargantuan/colossal respectively), with 27 HD max. This will also allow you to go down as far as small-sized elementals at 4 HD (maybe as familiars?).
3. Burrow speed is way too fast. Not even a level 20 monk can keep up with that. Speed 100 means that it's almost guaranteed to successfully chase or runaway, regardless of party power.
4. You should specify high BAB in the Elemental Traits section, as well as any other changes from core.
5. I notice that range damage is higher than melee damage. That's highly unusual.

1. Agreed, but it still has the [Earth] descriptor and I like the idea of the elemental trapping multiple foes that way.

2. Aargh good catch, that was from an earlier draft that started as a much smaller elemental. Fixed.

3. It's comparable to the fly speed of the official elder air elemental (and still less than the swim speed of the official elder water elemental). Elementals should be able to travel through their element almost at the speed of thought, IMHO.

4. Since these versions are outsiders, they get high BAB automatically. It's sort of a hybrid of the 3.5 (outsiders =high BAB) and Pathfinder (elementals = a type of outsider) versions... though since I wrote this up before I saw how PF handled them I wish I hadn't bothered now haha.

5. A hold-over from when I was copying the stone-throwing of giants. Streamlined now though.


As Nonsi says, this is a great start, but there are some issues...

1. Is there a transmutation spell between metal/rock or rock/metal?
2. I like the current progression, but I suppose you could make medium a breakpoint, with 0-2 dim, 3-5 tiny, 6-8 small, 9-11 medium, 12-15 large, 16-19 huge, 20-23 garg, 24-27 colos... Just please don't make diminutive elementals non existent. I've read a number of cool stories with match-book sized elementals..
3. 100 ft does seem a bit to fast for a standard version....

1. Not that I'm aware of in Core - transmute metal to wood, I guess?

2. Yes that was my original idea. I just didn't want to have to write up a chart of the Str/Con/Dex adjustments they'd get with increasing size etc.

3. See comment above.


Thanks again guys!

MReav
2019-02-17, 03:06 AM
Swarm Attack (Ex)
All creatures in an earth elemental's space (grappled or not) are subject to the elemental's swarm attack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#swarmSubtype). An earth elemental's swarm attack deals bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from the crush of earth and shards of rock.

I always imagine Earth Elementals as hulking rock monsters. It's cool that you have the swarm stuff, but I think Earth Elementals should have a transform option that allows them to switch from Swarm mode to a more solid state with more conventional attacks. Also, wouldn't a swarm not have reach?

rferries
2019-02-24, 01:15 AM
I always imagine Earth Elementals as hulking rock monsters. It's cool that you have the swarm stuff, but I think Earth Elementals should have a transform option that allows them to switch from Swarm mode to a more solid state with more conventional attacks. Also, wouldn't a swarm not have reach?

I was trying to make all the elementals symmetrical with respect to being able to engulf foes - if I ever get around to posting the others, my air elementals will effectively be a permanent whirlwind that vacuum up enemies, water elementals will engulf and drown them, and fire elementals will simply burn all creatures in their space. The earth elementals are admittedly the least elegant example of this... soil/sand/mud are relatively soft but rock/metal ones make less sense as being able to engulf foes. Maybe think of rock ones as being composed of boulders but also some fine gravel, and metal ones as being composed of metal shards and nuggets?

The transform option is something I definitely considered - I was thinking of even making them all incorporeal until they possessed an appropriate mass of matter. Anyways it's effectively covered by the current creature (can be described as being amorphous or solid by the DM at any given time without practical changes to its stats).

Also, the swarm attack is used for ease of reference (an attack that automatically hits all creatures sharing the elemental's space). They aren't actually swarms (think of them like gelatinous cubes), though at one point I had considered directly giving them that subtype too.

Thanks for the comment!