The Metal Legion

[rferries]

Once an archwizard of surpassing greed and ambition decided that she should reign supreme over all the world. To that end, she constructed an army of gleaming mechanical soldiers capable of repairing each other and constructing more of themselves. Her plot was successful, though she soon tired of playing the sovereign and had her armies entombed with her in her desert sanctum. Although the archwizard has long since become a demilich and moved on from this plane, her Metal Legion lies waiting beneath the sands, eternally loyal and ever ready for new orders of conquest...

Based on the Golden Legion (from Hellboy) and the Automatons (Age of Mythology). The sample bronze legionnaire is a base creature; advance it and add special abilities from the other metals as you wish.

Bronze Legionnaire
Size/Type: Medium Construct
Hit Dice: 4d10+20 (42 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 25 (+1 Dex, +9 +1 full plate, +5 +1 tower shield), touch 11, flat-footed 24
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+8
Attack: +1 longsword +9 melee (1d8+5)
Full Attack: +1 longsword +9 melee (1d8+5)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: -
Special Qualities: Construct traits, damage reduction 5/adamantine, darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, imbued, reconstruction
Saves: Fort +1, Ref +2, Will +1
Abilities: Str 20, Dex 12, Con Ø, Int 10, Wis 11, Cha 1
Skills: Craft (armorsmith) +10, Craft (weaponsmith) +10
Feats: Craft Construct^B, Skill Focus (armorsmith), Skill Focus (weaponsmith)
Environment: Any
Organization: Patrol (2-4 plus silver legionnaire), or legion (10-100, plus 3-6 silver legionnaires and 1 gold legionnaire)
Challenge Rating: 4
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: —
Level Adjustment: —

This soldier is fully armoured and seems crafted from pure gleaming bronze. It strides forward confidently, moving in perfect unison with its fellows.

A bronze legionnaire is a remnant of a great mechanical army from antiquity. Encountering even one is cause for great concern, for it signals that others have reactivated and are generating more of themselves -and more powerful versions, besides! The legionnaires wish to pacify and dominate all civilisations in the name of their long-vanished creator, and commandeer vast supplies of metal to achieve that goal.

Bronze legionnaires speak Common, but generally only to give orders or acknowledge they have received them.

Combat
Bronze legionnaires are perfectly loyal soldiers. They fight with impeccable discipline (and often benefit from the intelligent direction of other metal varieties), and never retreat unless ordered to do so.

A bronze legionnaire that is reduced to 0 hit points is destroyed, but may be reconstructed by another bronze legionnaire after 24 hours (provided there is a sufficient amount of its body left and sufficient repair supplies available).

A bronze legionnaire's weapons, as well as any weapons it wields, are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction and regeneration.

Imbued (Su)
A bronze legionnaire's sword, armour, and shield each benefit from a +1 enhancement bonus (as if from permanent inherent greater magic weapon and magic vestment effects, caster level 4th).

Reconstruction (Su)
Bronze legionnaires can use their Craft Construct feat to construct other legionnaires and to fully repair themselves and each other in a single day at no cost. They must have access to appropriate supplies of scrap metal and/or a functioning smithy to do so, however.

Variant Legionnaires
The imbued special quality improves (caster level = Hit Dice) for these variants, in addition to any other special qualities.

Silver
These legionnaires have 8 Hit Dice, and Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom scores of 12. They have ranks in Intimidate. Their weapons are treated as silver and magic.

Gold
These legionnaires have 12 Hit Dice, and Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom scores of 14. They have ranks in Intimidate and Sense Motive. Their damage reduction is 10/adamantine.

Mithral
These legionnaires have 16 Hit Dice, and Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom scores of 16. They have ranks in Intimidate, Knowledge (any one), and Sense Motive. Their damage reduction is 10/adamantine.

Adamantine
These legionnaires have 20 Hit Dice, and Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom scores of 18. They have ranks in Intimidate, Knowledge (any two), and Sense Motive. Their weapons are treated as adamantine and magic and their damage reduction is 15/adamantine.

[nonsi]

FYI: officially, mithral has no special quality of bypassing DR.

[rferries]

FYI: officially, mithral has no special quality of bypassing DR.

Yeah I know, always felt like that was an oversight (and that adamantine should overcome DR/cold iron). However if it's a glaring oversight I've edited them.

[AOKost]

I'd suggest dropping the Bronze Legionares Int down to 6 due to the Hellboy reference. They could understand, and had limited inteligence, but weren't very smart at all. But overall, I love the concept. I would suggest their recostruction ability to allow them to use it like Fast Healing equal to their HD...

[rferries]

I'd suggest dropping the Bronze Legionares Int down to 6 due to the Hellboy reference. They could understand, and had limited inteligence, but weren't very smart at all. But overall, I love the concept. I would suggest their recostruction ability to allow them to use it like Fast Healing equal to their HD...

Yes I was torn about the Intelligence... they should be "dumb muscle" but the trouble is I also wanted them to have ranks in the two Craft skills (and no ability penalty). I could give them a racial bonus to the skills but that would be a bit ham-fisted so I'll leave them as they are.

Fast healing was originally part of the stat block! However this way they have a motivation to acquire more metal, rather than just healing automatically.

[AOKost]

Then I would suggest giving a time bonus to their repairing skills, and reducing the amount of materials/cost it takes to repair damage... Otherwise, it'll take forever to RAW repair any of them... X weight of metal used in conjunction with X Craft skill can 'recover' X HP per check. The skill checks for X skill and X skill are reduced to 1/2 the normal time, so 2 checks can be made every 8 hours to determine the amount of damage repaired. And since they don't sleep, they can do that 6 times a day.

[rferries]

Via Craft Construct they can regain 20 hp per day (more than natural healing, but slower than cure spells, albeit at great expense. Edited so that it's free and can be done in a day though.