An Evolving Opponent. (Idea)

[Leliel]

What would you, the responders, do to design a constantly evolving and/or changing race of creatures?

I ask becuse frankly, Darwin rules, and it makes a group of enemies that provide a constant menace throughout the campagin.

Just remember, not all mutations are successful, and I want it to be the same with these guys.

[Azerian Kelimon]

A beast of chaos supreme. Beasts of chaos can take any shape or form, but are hindered by a rampant chaoticness. What would happen if they could focus and improve themselves? What if, also, they were brilliantly cunning and horrendously evil? It really would be an evolving monster. The longer it lives, the more powerful morphs it can muster.

[Prometheus]

Theoretically a chaos beast could learn to emulate any form of movement, any extraordinary special attack or special quality and some supernatural special attacks and special qualities.

[Azerian Kelimon]

But it's so chaotic it can't mantain it or do more than 2 attacks per round. Heck, it even says so in it's desc. It's TOO chaotic, else, it would be a CR17 encounter, AT LEAST. And that would be if they couldn't morph into Sarruhk, or you'd have a monstrous Pun-Pun as soon as it gets class levels.

[bugsysservant]

Things to consider:
1. Darwinian Evolution is incredibly slow. Even allowing for punctuated equilibrium (and any decent biologist should) the most you're going to see in any one campaign is one big adaptation.

2. Many of the common races would never have survived in the D&D world. In a world with uber intelligent magical dragons that can take out small armies and live for thousands of years, the is very little place for little ol' humanity. Brining in evolution will draw attention to this, and undermine the realism of the world.

3. Numerous supposedly distinct species can breed and produce fertile offspring. If the elf and human, or the orc and the human can produce young, than they are the product of divergent evolution and you should keep this in mind. Not game breaking, but an interesting point nonetheless.

4.Magic is hereditary in D&D. Monsters come with standard spell like abilities which they pass on. Consider the impact of spell like abilities when creating monsters. If the ability to kill other animals with a growl can arise, why doesn't everybody either have it, or have some form of defense against it?

[Emperor Tippy]

Go with the complete embodiment of chaos.

Roll everything randomly, and reroll it all every 1d100 game hours.

1 day Bob the Chaos guy could have straight 30's in his attributes and essentially be a walking god. The next he could be a 2 foot tall weakling with less than animal intelligence and 20 Psion levels (the fact that he can't use any of his powers is unimportant).

[Username]

Slivers, from M:TG make a good uber-evolution foe. Rather than individuals mutating, whenever slivers need to adapt a few will mutate to a new form and grant their abilities to all other slivers.

I think I remember seeing a conversion done on ENworld, dunno if it's still there.

[Wooter]

There's no way Darwinian evolution could be shown in a single campaign. It takes too long and has too many variables. Lamarckian evolution on the other had could work. It doesn't happen in nature, but you can just say that these are magical creatures who work that way.

[Guy_Whozevl]

Demons and Devils change from a lowly form to a much more powerful one as time progresses (it's somewhere in the flavor text). If the party fights Bob the Dretch, he could be killed off on the Material Plane, be sent to his home plane, evolve into a slightly stronger, but not that much stronger form. After his evolution, he could return to fight the party, lusting for revenge. It could perpetuate until he returns as a Balor to combat the high level party.
Evolution by Divine could work. Just assume that an individual's diety grants him a boon, permanently changing his form into something stronger.
Another suggestion is that you pile on templates on the monster. It could represent the assimilation of a culture or race by this "evolving race," which grants new characteristics.

[Belteshazzar]

Kythons from the Book o Vile Deeds. They are basically aliens without the facehugger stage (actualy they are closer to Zerg and Tyranids) and several different strains within one main brood. Check the "Army of Commoners" thread for some ingame usage of them. I plan to take them away from the demonic flavor and run them as being native to the Shadowlands. They come built in with many lovely mutations and biotic weaponry and the list of these mutations could be easily expanded.

[Tor the Fallen]

There's no way Darwinian evolution could be shown in a single campaign. It takes too long and has too many variables. Lamarckian evolution on the other had could work. It doesn't happen in nature, but you can just say that these are magical creatures who work that way.

Unless you had a race that bred incredibly quickly.
Or used a disease.

[DraPrime]

Don't even do evolution through natural selection. Have them change during their very own lifetime. If they fight the PCs who use the spell fireball a lot, then give them resistance (or immunity) to fire, and see how the PCs react. After a few time of using a tactic, change the race again. You're players will become more and more creative over time. This also adds the benefit of increasing the CR on the evolving race while the campaign moves on.

[BardicDuelist]

While not Darwinian, I think I get what the OP is going for.

I would look at the Warshaper class in CW (or was it CAd, I can't remember). Many of the abilities would work nicely with a creature with this flavor.

[Khanderas]

All I can think of resembles the Zerg.
A hive of somekind would work. Things that are easy to kill, stops being produced, and more efficient beings would be produced more (in relative to the cost of "making")

[Freelance Henchman]

What would you, the responders, do to design a constantly evolving and/or changing race of creatures?

I ask becuse frankly, Darwin rules, and it makes a group of enemies that provide a constant menace throughout the campagin.

Just remember, not all mutations are successful, and I want it to be the same with these guys.

Assuming you want to do this sort of like an evolutionary algorithm, you would need a "population" of N individuals, of which the first might be totally random or hand-picked. Then, every encounter with the party would determine the "fitness" of each individual. The higher the fitness of the individual, the higher a chance he has to create offspring that carry his genes.

The problem I see here is that you would need to somehow allow the "winners" of the encounter to breed and create offspring, some of which carry the inherited traits of the parent. But the parents would die in the encounter (or the party dies, but then the game is over), unless you make them run away if they took too much damage. Also, this sort of thing usually only works with rather large populations and a high number of generations.

[Fishy]

I'm thinking Borg. Warforged/golems that slap grafts and infusions on each other, based on what gets thrown at them and what seems to not get them killed?

[BrotherMick]

I actually based an enemy like this from "The Dreamers" by Leigh & David Eddings. Basicly it was a bug type colony and every time the bugs battled with something they took something from the enemy and made it their own .
1st battle they had animalist attacks
2nd Battle Thick carapaces ( they encountered ppl in armor)
3rd poison from run ins with snakes
4th arrows
5th they discovered fire &/or gained fire resistance

They functioned on a hive mind and each generation lived only a few weeks. So after every main battle the Brood lord would hatch another generation based on what they had encountered.

[JWhitehead]

That sounds an awful lot like the klickiss from Anderson's Hidden Empire series. Now theres an evolutionary idea:P

[Leliel]

What's Anderson's Hidden Empire?:smallconfused:

And as to concerns that they will evolve too slowly, I just have to insert an ability that states that their DNA mutates at a much more frequent rate then normal creatures, except for the part that gives them their base abilities.

And I was thinking more along the lines of a "Group Mind" for the sentient members of the race. As in "they're in constant communication with each other, but are individuals who can think and plan on their own." Sort of like if the Borg were composed entirely of Locutus-like entities, or Gaia from Issac Asimov's Foundation series. "True" hive minds have been done to death, and I doubt that, realistically, they'd be able to plan on their own without something that innovates.

And believe me, it is quite possible that humans could co-exist with dragons. If that weren't true, we'd have never evolved with predators like tigers.

[sikyon]

DOOMSDAY!!!

Seriously, from superman. If you kill him with disintegrate the first time, he comes back with SR 100. Kill him with acid arrows the second time, he comes back with acid immunity. Kill him with power attack, he can only take X damage a round when he comes back. Etc.

[Prometheus]

I think this works particularly good with a race, tribe, or ideology. In my last campaign, my players were all too willing to wipe out the threat and check the block. Imagine their surprise when the toughest survived , the dead became martyrs, the survivors were angry, and the group knew what to expect and how to combat the party.

Example: Mutants living on a desolate island wake up from their enchantment and decide to dedicate their lives to destroying magic. They cross over to the nearby prosperous merchant town and ransack the magic bazaars. At the cost of many noblemen's deaths, the player eventually kill the bulk of the mutants and their estranged leader. All is quiet until the ramblings of a lesser known anti-monachist are published by a local mob boss (who they earlier twarted but didn't kill) and extends the message to anti-burgeoise communist ideals. Upon this, a brilliant military general sees the opportunity and leaves the mainland to go to the island of revolution, where his island hopping strategy takes over the archipelago and grows is strength. When the characters support a separatist anarchist group (lead by the same anti-monarch ironically) to significantly weaken the authoritarian communists, they make allies with an invading race of authoritarian dictatorship who in turn, are polluting the prophecies of the religious fanatics. These religious fanatics also happen to be the haven for the nemesis of one of the PCs. While many of these groups end up switching over to the PCs side or dying out entirely, there is a strong continuity that exists from the very begining. Social Darwinism on a campaign term scale.

[tahu88810]

Simply put, any creature with an ability like this would work:


Quick Evolution:
After 2 rounds of taking damage from one type of source, and only one source (force, adamantite, mithral, cold steel, slashing, bludgeon, fire, cold, etc.) this creature will gain DR 1/(Everything but the thing they were hit with). For every point of damage reduced by this DR, the DR goes up by 1 the next round. This stays the same and a second DR is added when a second type of attack is used non-stop for 2 rounds.


Although slightly over powered, it should work. You should probably raise CR...

An example would be:

Bob the Zergling as Quick Evolution. The party of 4 fighting him is also fighting 3 other creatures. The party splits up to fight. The fighter fighting Bob is using a slashing weapon.
Two rounds into the battle, Bob gains DR 1/Everything but Slash
The next round, the fighter continues to use his slashing weapon.
On the 4th round, that DR goes up to DR2.
The Fighter switches to another opponent and the Wizard handles Bob.
The wizard favors Fireball.
Somehow surviving the fireballs for two rounds, Bob now has:
Dr 2/Everything but Slash
Dr 1/Everything but fire

can you see how this is going?
--
Note: its probably way to overpowered, though...

[Wooter]

DOOMSDAY!!!

Seriously, from superman. If you kill him with disintegrate the first time, he comes back with SR 100. Kill him with acid arrows the second time, he comes back with acid immunity. Kill him with power attack, he can only take X damage a round when he comes back. Etc.

He will eventually kill you. But don't worry. You'll come back with Xtreme 90s hair.

[Doresain]

i was thinking of something more along the lines of the flood from halo...they start out with almost animalistic instincts, killing simply to consume and endure...over time they are capable of piloting vehicles, using weaponry, and are able to evolve individual beings into something more advanced and powerful than the original...