What's this? A new Monster collection? (Monsters for D&D&D&D)

So, I'm not sure this is ever going to be relevant considering how few people visit this place anymore, but for posterity's sake I still want to keep a record of the enemies the party has defeated in my campaign, Dungeons and Dungeons and Dragons and Dungeons.

Keep in mind I play statblocks fast and loose, and if they've overpowered I'll nerf them mid-combat so it's not a stomp. Do expect some of these to require a little more fine tuning.

The Queen of Greenwood
An owlbear turned enormous from eating magical golden apples in her youth, the Queen of Greenwood terrorized the Greenwood region for some time before mating with an Ursa and becoming pregnant with 2 eggs. In its egg-bearing state, the Queen is actually a good deal more vulnerable than it otherwise be.

Queen of Greenwood (Solo):

This makes for a fast and heart-pounding boss fight against a party of 4. It can drop a player in a round, but with only 100 HP a decently put together and well organized assault can easily take it out. Expect panic on the battlefield as the first guy falls over.

The Burrowing Chimera
The Burrowing Chimera is a hybrid monstrosity created by the villainous wizard Alabaster, fusing changeling, earth pony, unicorn and scorpion DNA together to create a horrific monster with an earth pony for a head (yes, a whole earth pony), the torso of a van-sized scorpion, and a tail with a stinger comprised of six unicorn horns, each capable of dispensing a different type of curse magic.

Burrowing Chimera (Elite):

Faced up against 4 instead of 3 PCs as intended, and being constantly dazed lil Burrower was on the back foot for most of the fight, unable to dispense its most powerful attacks due to the hex powers not going off. It still managed to down a player though! Good job, Burrow-buddy.

Queen Ataraxia
A starved changeling queen with absolute command of the drone-bodies in her hive, Ataraxia calls drones and praetorians to her aid in defending their hive.

Ataraxia (Solo):

Ataraxia actually was never fought in game, the party successfully diplomacied her. But they fought her out of game for fun anyway. She wiped them.

Sakhovir, the Khan's Guardian
Sakhovir is a dragon slain in ancient times in defense of a great conquering Khan. When the Khan eventually died, he was buried in the same spot where his friend was entombed. Centuries later, a necromancer disturbed the grave, raising the skeletal dragon to defend the Khan's tomb against pesky adventurers. Despite an incomplete revival weakening it more than the necromancer expected, Sakhovir is still a formidable opponent in combat.

Sakhovir ('Solo'):

Initially Sakhovir was going to be much more powerful. However, right as the fight started I made a few on-the-fly adjustments to nerf the dragon so it doesn't wipe the party. After dropping a character and forcing one to use phoenix rising, they focused down Sakhovir's head and killed it before it could siphon energy.

Titan and Skullcrusher
Two champions of an underground fighting ring. Titan is a brass-colored drake who bleeds enemies down, while Skullcrusher is a tough bruiser who beats opponents hard and fast.

Titan:

Skullcrusher:

A little non-standard due to the both of them being come up on the fly. They fought two PCs one on one, resulting in a win and a loss.

Those who aren't playing in the campaign, feel free to leave a comment about your thoughts, and those who are, feel free to comment about your experience with them!

Oh dang, the ult on that chimera though.
I'm glad we kept it on daze-lock...

AleneShazam wrote:So, I'm not sure this is ever going to be relevant considering how few people visit this place anymore

It's still relevant.  If anything, I think lack of content and lack of discussion are playing vicious circle with each other (and I'm just as guilty of not posting discussion).

Just to verify, the builds presented are for Pony Tales: Aspirations of Harmony/Living Legends as opposed to Wanderlust, correct?  Looks like the former due to notation but just checking.

The Queen of Greenwood: It's interesting since it seems like assaulting it with crowd control is the key due to Anger Howl.  Anger Howl also winds up being the only aoe available to the monster so the threat level overall can be mitigated if someone can tank it.

The Burrowing Chimera: Seems good.  I can't think of any direct comments.

Queen Ataraxia: For "Get Yamcha’d", when you mention converting the damage die, is it a d12 or exactly 12 damage?  You may want to note if you can mix drones and praetorians in the sacrifice.

ZamuelNow wrote:

AleneShazam wrote:So, I'm not sure this is ever going to be relevant considering how few people visit this place anymore

It's still relevant.  If anything, I think lack of content and lack of discussion are playing vicious circle with each other (and I'm just as guilty of not posting discussion).

Just to verify, the builds presented are for Pony Tales: Aspirations of Harmony/Living Legends as opposed to Wanderlust, correct?  Looks like the former due to notation but just checking.

The Queen of Greenwood: It's interesting since it seems like assaulting it with crowd control is the key due to Anger Howl.  Anger Howl also winds up being the only aoe available to the monster so the threat level overall can be mitigated if someone can tank it.

The Burrowing Chimera: Seems good.  I can't think of any direct comments.

Queen Ataraxia: For "Get Yamcha’d", when you mention converting the damage die, is it a d12 or exactly 12 damage?  You may want to note if you can mix drones and praetorians in the sacrifice.

indeed it's PT

For Get Yamcha'd it's converting it to a d12. It gets a little ridiculous if the drones pile up but from experience that doesn't happen (much). Most of the time it ends up being a 3d12 or 4d12 big attack that completely depletes Ataraxia's resources. However it's designed to be a hard encounter, a semi-punishment for players failing the diplomatic route, so I'm ok with Ataraxia winning, even.

As for the Queen, that's the general idea of it: She's a big bruiser that can't really handle swarm tactics.

As an aside: wahey! Interaction! How exciting ^^

Having fought against Ataraxia, she's weak against AOE as it chews up her minions and leaves her fairly helpless. The praetorians are a bit troublesome but if you have two damage sources in the party that can alternate between AOE and single damage it's theoretically an easy counter for her.

(didn't quite work out for us but whatever right)

Honestly, the more I look at Queen Ataraxia's stat block, the more terrorfying I find her. To the point where I feel she's obnoxious to fight. Assuming I'm reading it right and the drones/praetorians work like summons and go after her. So, first turn, she essentially deals at least (1d4+1)d8 damage to the party per turn and gains 1d4+2 energy, plus any energy she steals. Any attack that deals three or less damage automatically fails. Any single-target attack against her fails. Any AoE attack against her fails (due to the perhaps not well known interaction retargeting abilities have when the new target is already being hit by the attack). From turn two onwards she can comfortably transfrom one (and most likely two 'cus it's a minor action) drones into praetorians, which deal more damage and adds more room for drones, and gets their cost refunded immediately because their abilities are +2. Remember that damage you needed? Gone. Remember how that damage does no damage if it is three or less damage? That goes up to six or less now. And to top it all off, she gets two turns per initiative round...

So, per initiative round, she summons 2d4-4 drones, summons 4 praetorians, deals (2d4-4)d8 + Xd8 (X = the amount of drones attacks outside of the turn the drone spawns) + 4d12 damage (which this alone averages out at ~26 damage, so the spawn praetorians alone can almost kill a party member per round) + Yd12 damage (Y = the amount of praetorians attacks outside of the turn the praetorian spawns), gains (bear with me here) something like (2d4-4) + (X) + (Z*2) energy (Z = total praetorian actions outside of the turn the praetorian spawns, so basically Y + those using Harden Carapace), and that's not including stolen energy. Against a party of four you will more or less always have enough praetorians to apply the -3 damage penalty accros the party before their turn, so any attack, AoE or not, that does six or less damage is ignored. Since the party's turns are split by your multiple turns you can reliably kill one or perhaps multiple players before their turn to reduce the party's chances. She will grind a party down blindingly quickly while denying a lot of them turns...

So how do you beat her? Utilties, I guess, they ignore her defence options. She has no healing or save ends effect modifiers (outside of rolling twice per initiative round), so any damage you do sticks, and Ongoing Damage is easy damage. Insta-gibbing her turn one before she has drones (or especially praetorians) is good, but chances are she will have a turn before you, maybe even two. Daze slows her praetorian production line down and stops drones from protecting her, meaning she needs to spend energy to use praetorians to do it, but we know she's got crazy energy gain and those praetorians can get free protects off. Stuns work too but the only non-attack stun I could find was Dazzling Performance's 10 Crit and that's still a coin flip. AoE can buy you time but AoE attacks do less damage than single target attacks so you're more likely to fail due to the damage penalty and resist, and even if you pass it, with enough energy or carapace'd praetorians, the attack will be filed down to one target. Life loss reliably kills drones and hurts praetorians, but sadly there doesn't seem to be any AoE Life Loss effects. Adjacency attacks could work, depending on how your GM rules, as the Queen isn't being targetted, she's just also getting hit by the attack, but it stops working once the production line is in full swing and a praetorian down the line takes the target. Ironically enough, I consider Get Yamcha’d her biggest weakness, as if she gets dominated you just get her to blow up her drone reserve on herself and then gets beaten up by any praetorians that remain. What else? Pray to your respecitve Dice God that she only rolls 1s on her drone summons and you get lots of juicy uninterruptable specials and 32+ damage rolls on all AoE attacks?

Of course this is just my theorising about this, but this seems like a very oppressive boss. In fact, I will make the bold claim that if a party of four hasn't won before Queen Ataraxia's third turn, then they lose outside of a miracle (or something like she's down to 10hp and someone has Blood is Power + Kindle Pain combo)...

Hmm. You have a point. She's pretty OP, though I guess not as much for our party. We have a strong single-target fighter (when it works) a strong multi-target hitter (the hurricane blade -2 talent) So they've been fairly good at taking down the minions as they come.

If the single target fighter could have hit more if she circumvented blind, I think they'd have stood a fighting chance.

But if I'm going to honest I wanted it to be an uphill battle considering they'd had ample opportunities to diplomacy her out of the fight beforehand.

New monster added: Sakhovir the skeletal dragon! A 'Solo' monster that is actually a small squad in disguise.

While I'm rusty on PT combat values, it immediately stands out that the head can use Necrotic Breath on turn 2. Granted, if the players make any sort of accurate guess that the head is the important part, there's the potential for it to be taken out somewhat quickly pending on the team.

ZamuelNow wrote:While I'm rusty on PT combat values, it immediately stands out that the head can use Necrotic Breath on turn 2.  Granted, if the players make any sort of accurate guess that the head is the important part, there's the potential for it to be taken out somewhat quickly pending on the team.

Ah, I guess I forgot to add that part in the play advice bit. And also mixed up some + and -'s (sorry about that, my notes are a little... all over the place)
The head doesn't use Necrotic breath until it's out of temporary HP. Wind is only used when no enemies are dazed, and Ghostfire/Snapping teeth is supposed to be a -1.
I think the version I pulled up was the pre-combat nerf one, my bad
should be good now.