Quote Originally Posted by SirKazum View Post
I'm working on a few 4th edition monsters, for a potential campaign that would make heavy use of custom / new monsters (so I'll probably need to really get the hang of monster creation). So, as a start, I'm working on a skirmisher beastie that can jump hella high (and far), as well as swallow other creatures whole. I'm aiming at a level 4 Standard skirmisher, Large size (since it's usable as a mount). The questions for the moment are:

1) Is there any creature with some "Jump" ability I can draw on for inspiration? A look over the MM turned up nothing. I'm thinking of giving it an at-will power, using a move action, that lets it fly up to 6 squares, but only in a straight line, and the movement must begin and end in solid ground. (FYI, the creature's base movement is 10 squares. Yes, very fast.) That any good?

2) For the swallowing ability, while there are a few creatures that can do it, the current writeup isn't much to my liking. Creatures with such abilities can grab with their bite, then use Clamping Jaws, then Swallow, always at-will, and against enemies two or more sizes smaller. The problems with that are a) it's too involved (and makes the power list look kinda inflated); b) it's at-will (I was initially intending for an encounter power, something they're not going to use all the time); and c) for Large beasts, it affects only Small or smaller enemies, which limits its usability against most PC parties a lot. My initial idea (before doing the research) was something like an encounter power that lets the monster swallow a Medium or smaller creature immediately, upon an attack roll, with little (but not negligible) HP damage. Would that be too jarring? On the other hand, would the standard grab, clamping jaws, swallow Small or smaller enemies thing work well in a creature like this?

Any advice is welcome. I've got other things I'm working on as well, but I'll leave them for later.
For the Jump, just do whatever seems reasonable.

For the swallow hole stuff, unless it's easy to get out, it's really, really overpowered to break the conventions of swallowing. In the spirit of the system nothing probably fatal shouldn't be done without intermediate steps to allow for escape. Large swallowing a medium is a bit much, too. I wouldn't go much further than dropping it to two steps instead of three, and neither if it's an elite or solo with action points.

Then again, if you want to break with what is considered balanced by the system generically, it's your game. Just make sure your players know that you're doing away with some of the built in safeguards for them or it's a bit unfair to them. You'd have to play differently with that kind of stuff back in the game.