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View Full Version : Advancing a Wolf's HD? [also brainstorming ideas]



Tyrael
2008-10-08, 02:40 PM
Hey, folks. Last night, I ran an impromptu game for my party (due to schedule conflicts, our normal Friday night game wasn't going to work out, and we've missed the past 2 weekly sessions due to more conflicts, so we wanted to do something), and since it was spur-of-the-moment, I was flying by the seat of my pants. Our third player, a female movement-based Monk, was absent, so we just had a Rogue/Swashbuckler and a Druid/Tempest. The players ventured into a forest and were PlotCaptured by a group of Gnoll hunters who promptly stripped their equipment and stuck them underground.

The players awoke in a cold cave cell, in pitch darkness with their hands and feet bound. One successful Escape Artist and Use Rope check later, they were free. Listen checks only gave them the steady "bloop...bloop...bloop..." of a far off trickle of water, echoing in the cavern. Big, thick iron bars were rammed horizontally across the cave alcove, roughly a 20ft x 40ft opening, with a humanoid-sized door in the middle, fitted with smaller bars. They did some feeling around, located the door, then reached through the big horizontal bars to the other side of the door and grabbed the handle, curiously unlocked. It was rusted shut, and the Rogue failed his STR check. The Tempest joined in, and between the two of them, opened it, jerking it backwards with a combined STR 27 vs DC 14. The rusted metal shot back with loud clang. "Bloop...bloop...bloop..." I muttered in the background to represent their hearing while they debated about where to go from there. Then, in the middle of a minor argument, I abruptly switched from "bloops" and made a growling, snarling noise in my throat. "GrrAWWWWrrr."

I fell silent. They stared at me with wide eyes. "Throughthedoor, throughthedoor!" the Rogue yelped, and the two of them bolted through. The eager pad of paws followed them, followed by enraged snarling as something slammed into the door, clawing at them. They shoved the bolt back in the door, and retreated. Keeping a hand on the wall to navigate, they eventually found a bricklaid hallway with a few torches. Grabbing them, they made their way back to the cell, where the flames revealed a snarling, threadbare wolf trying to claw them through the bars, though it shied back when the players brought the torches near. The torchlight caught the glint of metal in the back of the cage, which the Tempest successfully spotted as the blade of a sword. They made a plan to run in and snatch the sword while one of them held the wolf at bay. They cautiously went inside, and the wolf retreated from the torchlight, backing towards the metallic glints in the corner, growling. The Tempest made a successful Handle Animal check, and the wolf stopped growling, tilting its head to the side. “You almost feel as if it’s scrutinizing you,” I told him. The Tempest’s player grinned, taking it as part of the spontaneous silliness that I sometimes engage in (another example had them both making lewd jokes about handling packages, and I had a random Gnoll pop up and join in, before vanishing). He said, “I ask the wolf, ‘Hey, are you scrutinizing me?’”

“The wolf nods.”

The Tempest blinked. “Ummm….Gavin(Rogue)? I think this wolf nodded at me.”

Gavin returned from his searching of some bones in the corner (several Kobold skeletons, including a rotted shortbow and some chewed-up arrows) and stared at the wolf. “Do you understand us?”

The wolf nodded again, and after a little wheedling, they persuaded it to join the party. It was guarding the metallic pile, which contained a dagger, two short swords, and a bracelet. The PCs took the weapons, and they put the bracelet on the wolf’s paw. With their new companion, they ventured forward, back into the bricklaid hall, which was covered in dust. They asked the wolf some questions, and it wrote in the dust with a paw, revealing that the wolf used to be a human traveler at some point, was transformed by magic at some point, was captured by the Gnolls about 5-10 years ago, and had been living in that cell ever since. It had forgotten its name, purpose for traveling, and any other details. (It also growled aggressively when the Rogue suggested naming him Mr. Fluffers :smallsmile:). A battle with some Gnoll guards followed (in which the wolf tore one of their throats out), and the session stopped there for the night due to homework.



TLDR Summary
I'm trying to advance the HD of a wolf companion that has joined the party. An intelligent wolf with a strange bracelet has joined the party in a prison break, and I’m looking for ideas about what the wolf should have been in its previous life, how it came to be transformed, what the bracelet should do, how it could be turned back into a human, or anything else you could think of. This is a low-magic, low-level (5-10) world, so Polymorph isn’t in the cards unless the circumstances were really weird.

If any of you have ideas for brainstorming, that'd be appreciated too. Posted below is my attempt to raise a MM Wolf from 2HD to 6HD without increasing its size. Is it correct?

streakster
2008-10-08, 04:12 PM
Hmm. My suggestion? Swordsage.

The wolf was a wandering disciple of the Nine Swords who was searching for a mysterious, hidden martial school. She found it - but then gnolls attacked the school. In a vain attempt to defend the school, she took on an insane gnoll warlock on her own. One word of changing later, and she's a wolf. She still beat the warlock, though the school's students fled. She found the bracelet in the wreckage, and kept it with her.

The bracelet was used for martial meditation by the destroyed school - when a swordsage or other martial character meditates using it, they can prepare some other maneuvers in place of the ones they know. I'd recommend some of the cool homebrewed disciplines - Masked moon is focused on minor shapeshifting, and has lots of appropiate maneuvers., and Rending Scream would be awesome if refluffed to be howls.

Anyway, now she's a wolf. She's got her martial meditation bracelet, and has been practicing and meditating in her cell long enough to adapt some styles to her new form: Tiger Claw, Shadow Hand, Stone Dragon.

The one way back to normalcy? It was a Warlock's infernal magic that changed her - so it will take a celestial to cure her permanently. The other way out is for her to get infected by a werewolf - thus allowing her to shift into a human.

LINKS:
Homebrew Disciplines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93025)

Tyrael
2008-10-08, 05:07 PM
Veeery interesting. I'll consider that, but I've never been a 100% fan of Tome of Battle. I know it's 4.0 lite, but it's a bit hard to keep track of so many different powers and things. I like the idea of a Gnoll Warlock, though. The established backstory is that there was once a giant war between Arcane magic and Psionics, and they mostly wiped each other out, leaving Divine magic just about the only type around (the monk is a disciple of Wee Jas though, questing to restore magic to the world). I hadn't considered how Infernal magic would fit in. It would probably fit just fine.


Side note: I'm currently trying to advance the basic MM wolf from 2HD to 6 HD, to keep up with the level 6 party, but advancing a monster by HD is a complete headache. Are there any HD monster stat calculators out there? I found [url=http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/shadows/Handbook/MonsterCalc.html\this[/url] out there, but based on its publication date (2002), I suspect that it's 3.0, not 3.5.




Tell me, is this advancement correct?



Wolf guy (level 1)
Size/Type: Medium Animal
Hit Dice: 2d8+4 (13 hp)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 50 ft. (10 squares)
Armor Class: 14 (+2 Dex, +2 natural), touch 12, flat-footed 12
Base Attack/Grapple: +1/+2
Attack: Bite +3 melee (1d6+1)
Full Attack: Bite +3 melee (1d6+1)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Trip
Special Qualities: Low-light vision, scent
Saves: Fort +5, Ref +5, Will +1
Abilities: Str 13, Dex 15, Con 15, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 6
Skills: Hide +2, Listen +3, Move Silently +3, Spot +3, Survival +1
Feats: Track, Weapon Focus (bite)
Environment: Temperate forests
Organization: Solitary, pair, or pack (7-16)
Challenge Rating: 1
Advancement: 3 HD (Medium); 4-6 HD (Large)
Level Adjustment: —


Wolf guy (level 6[+5 HD])
Size/Type: Medium Animal
Hit Dice: 6d8+12 (39 hp)
Initiative: +6
Speed: 50 ft. (10 squares)
Armor Class: 14 (+2 Dex, +2 natural), touch 12, flat-footed 12
Base Attack/Grapple: +5/+5
Attack: Bite +7 melee (1d6+1)
Full Attack: Bite +7 melee (1d6+1)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Trip(+1)
Special Qualities: Low-light vision, scent
Saves: Fort +7, Ref +7, Will +3
Abilities: Str 13, Dex 15, Con 15, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 6
Skills(+15 points): Hide +2, Listen +8, Move Silently +8, Spot +8, Survival +1
Feats: Track, Weapon Focus (bite), Improved Initiative
Environment: Temperate forests
Organization: Solitary, pair, or pack (7-16)
Challenge Rating: 1
Advancement: 3 HD (Medium); 4-6 HD (Large)
Level Adjustment: —


Changes: I want to keep him Medium size, not Large, because I've already established him as kind of thin and threadbare from hunger. So, the various stat increases from Large don't apply. Other than that, does it check out?