Monsters by Sable

Right, had some monster ideas, and I guess I'm supposed to put them here? though, they're kinda more battlefield hazards then monsters I suppose? Criticism is always welcome

Flashbug – 5 HP
Vulnerability 4
Trait: Unstable – When this creature is defeated, all creatures in the encounter are blinded for 1d6 rounds, save ends

[+1] Buzz
For 1 round, Target creature's attacks will target a random enemy

[-2] Flash
Target creature is blinded for 2 round (save ends)

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Poison Joke – 5 HP

Trait: Prankster Plant – Whenever a creature hits a Poison Joke with a melee attack (I.e, they actually touch it) they take random effect as determined by the poison joke table

1: Tongues: You speaks in an unknown language
2: Gender Bender: Your gender is reversed.
3: Voice change: Flip a coin, if heads, your voice raises an octave, if tails, it lowers an octave
4: Mop head: Your hair is a mess, take a -5 to all sight or balance related checks
5: Mini-me: You've shrunk to the size of a rabbit. All attacks deal 1 dice size lower, but you gain resistance 2
6: Itchy feet: you have an irresistible urge to dance, you gain vulnerability 2 as you can't dodge
7: Changing colors: every time you sneeze, you change colors. Dust is now rather attracted to you
8: Loaded Pun: Next pun spoken becomes literal in a manner as embarassing as possible, but non-lethal
9: Zebraspeak: Must speak entirely in rhyme, meter, or puns
10: Racial affliction:

Unicorn: Floppy horn, Cannot use Ponykenesis
Pegasus: Upside down wings, take a -20 to fly checks
Earth Pony: Wall eyed: your vision is messed up! You lose access to your racial abilities due to clumsiness
Changeling: Shapeshifter hiccups; you now have the hiccups, but you randomly change form with each hiccup
Griffon: Molt; All your feathers fall off, you cannot fly

Poison joke effects last until cured.

[+1] Buzz
For 1 round, Target creature's attacks will target a random enemy

When you say "Random enemy", do you mean the Flashbug's enemies, or the target's enemies?

[-2] Flash
Target creature is blinded for 2 round (save ends)

Why bother with the "for 2 round[s]"? Most save ends attacks that I see last until the save is made.

Trait: Prankster Plant – Whenever a creature hits a Poison Joke with a melee attack (I.e, they actually touch it) they take random effect as determined by the poison joke table

I like the idea, but this kind of penalizes players who flavor their characters a certain way. From the Player's Handbook:

If it doesn’t make sense for your pony to hurl lightning (like if you’re an Earth Pony) - you can still take the talent because the effect looks fun and just rename it/reflavor it to be a buck-to-the-face.

Perhaps a better trigger is required?

1: Tongues: You speaks in an unknown language
3: Voice change: Flip a coin, if heads, your voice raises an octave, if tails, it lowers an octave
9: Zebraspeak: Must speak entirely in rhyme, meter, or puns

These three are a problem, since this is a voice chat system. The first requires you to know another language that none of the other players do. The third... isn't exactly the easiest thing to do, not consistently. The ninth is cruel to non-native speakers and to anyone who can't pull stuff like that out of a hat.

Earth Pony: Wall eyed: your vision is messed up! You lose access to your racial abilities due to clumsiness
Unicorn: Floppy horn, Cannot use Ponykenesis
Griffon: Molt; All your feathers fall off, you cannot fly

These three can be worse than the others. The Pegasus and Changeling pranks are the least annoying, as it just messes with one racial trait. The Unicorn and Griffon both lose a racial trait, and depending on their Utility Talent builds, end up with several useless talents. For Earth Ponies, they lose ALL their racial traits, including Freaky Knowledge. This is definitely worse than the Pegasus and Changeling penalties, and in the case of Unicorns and Griffons, I can just imagine the arguments between a player who's flavor makes use of magic or their wings in combat, and a GM.

I disagree with poison Joak's build. My interpretation was more along the lines of "it subverts your cutie mark."

Sable Shroud wrote:Right, had some monster ideas, and I guess I'm supposed to put them here? though, they're kinda more battlefield hazards then monsters I suppose? Criticism is always welcome

Flashbug – 5 HP
Vulnerability 4
Trait: Unstable – When this creature is defeated, all creatures in the encounter are blinded for 1d6 rounds, save ends

[+1] Buzz
For 1 round, Target creature's attacks will target a random enemy

[-2] Flash
Target creature is blinded for 2 round (save ends)

-----

Poison Joke – 5 HP

Trait: Prankster Plant – Whenever a creature hits a Poison Joke with a melee attack (I.e, they actually touch it) they take random effect as determined by the poison joke table

1: Tongues: You speaks in an unknown language
2: Gender Bender: Your gender is reversed.
3: Voice change: Flip a coin, if heads, your voice raises an octave, if tails, it lowers an octave
4: Mop head: Your hair is a mess, take a -5 to all sight or balance related checks
5: Mini-me: You've shrunk to the size of a rabbit. All attacks deal 1 dice size lower, but you gain resistance 2
6: Itchy feet: you have an irresistible urge to dance, you gain vulnerability 2 as you can't dodge
7: Changing colors: every time you sneeze, you change colors. Dust is now rather attracted to you
8: Loaded Pun: Next pun spoken becomes literal in a manner as embarassing as possible, but non-lethal
9: Zebraspeak: Must speak entirely in rhyme, meter, or puns
10: Racial affliction:

Unicorn: Floppy horn, Cannot use Ponykenesis
Pegasus: Upside down wings, take a -20 to fly checks
Earth Pony: Wall eyed: your vision is messed up! You lose access to your racial abilities due to clumsiness
Changeling: Shapeshifter hiccups; you now have the hiccups, but you randomly change form with each hiccup
Griffon: Molt; All your feathers fall off, you cannot fly

Poison joke effects last until cured.

I think you may have created something that players will dread for quite some time with that Flashbug. All that blinding! So irritating for something that doesn't damage you at all. Granted, leaving the Flashbug for last might alleviate its effects somewhat; it can only blind one person at a time that way.

As for Poison Joke, I also have to say that this should really be more affected by Cutie Marks or whatever's important to the character, rather than random effects. As such, this should be more like "Take -15 to your Cutie Mark Skill." Plus, you might want to put a time limit on the effects; to be honest, while true to the show, indefinite effects make it necessary to have someone competent with potions in the group, which is a huge hassle. Another suggestion: maybe instead of the vague "contact", maybe you should just have whoever kills it be affected.

Or heck, just leave the Poison Joke for last and then run from the battle. (Is that an option?)

Huzzah! feedback! not sure if it's obvious by now, but I'm more used to designing monsters and such for tabletop or forum based games

Well, let's get the Flashbug outta the way first. By random enemy, i mean a random monster on the opposing team. What I essentially was going for is it distracting/annoying players so that their attacks don't hit who they intended, but not enough so that they would hit an ally. As for the save ends on the 2 round blindness, the theory behind that was more that it's like a short bright flash that disorients you for a little while, but you recover from it fairly quickly. kinda like accidentally turning a light on in your face, the save is just there to give an option to shake it off earlier. no one really commented on it, but my intention that the large blind on death would also effect the things on the monster's side as well.

As for the Poison Joke, I did make it rather late at night, and do see the points you made. The reason I made it on contact was twofold really. Firstly, I wanted to add something in that would make the players watch where they hit, sorta something to make them think more tactically I guess? Second, as far as we know it only effects people on contact, wouldn't really make sense for say, a unicorn freezing it with magic to be infected by it, right? I debated changing it to spores that would effect the entire party, but thought that would be too mean.

On to the effects, the fact that I didn't really do this with voice chatting in mind is rather obvious, isn't it Looking at it now, I do agree that the earth pony version is rather severe, perhaps just change it to losing the assist bonus and wider crit range? Most of the things messing with the voice and such I meant to be in-universe only. I.E. the player wouldn't need to actually change their voice, but it would sound as such in game to the other characters as the effect. The speaking in rhyme/meter/pun one was mostly a last minute addition to fill up a slot so it would be an even 10, and could probably change as needed.

In that respect, I may have forgotten to mention this, but I mostly put the table in there as an example that the GM could change as desired. As for the lasts until cured thing? again, I was trying to remain true to the source materiel, but was also thinking it was something the GM could throw in as a plot hook for the party to go find an NPC who could cure them as sort of a sidequest, or tying into the main quest later.

I haven't gone over everything here, it's late, but wow I like the concepts!

One thing about Poison Joke. Subverting your cutie mark is fine, but according to Zecora - the plant just wants a laugh. Even if the winds of canon force you to call it something else, I love the idea of a plant that forces the player to speak in rhyme for a little while.

Another monster I came up with.

Diamond Dog Runt - 10 HP
Trait: Pack mentality: Whenever a Diamond Dog Runt Dies, all it's remaining PiPs are distributed amongst any other Diamond Dog Runts currently alive.

[+1] Gnaw at their ankles!
Deal 1d4 damage

[-2] Ride da pony!
Deal 1d10 damage to target. For the next round, any area of effect attack that damages this Diamond Dog Runt also damages the target.

[-10] Pack cry
Deal X damage to all players, where X is the total amount of Diamond Dog Runts currently alive


And on the subject of the Poison Joke (or should that be Poison Joak?) I was always of the opinion that it was more of a prankster, rather than something that prevented Cuite Marks or the like, which is why I tried to strike a balance of funny effects and things that would actually be a detriment to dice rolls.

Is Gnaw supposed to be a [+] Power? Otherwise how does the dog get pips?

oops, yeah. Bloody laptop keyboards >.< Fixed now

Sable Shroud wrote:Another monster I came up with.

Diamond Dog Runt - 10 HP
Trait: Pack mentality: Whenever a Diamond Dog Runt Dies, all it's remaining PiPs are distributed amongst any other Diamond Dog Runts currently alive.

[+1] Gnaw at their ankles!
Deal 1d4 damage

[-2] Ride da pony!
Deal 1d10 damage to target. For the next round, any area of effect attack that damages this Diamond Dog Runt also damages the target.

[-10] Pack cry
Deal X damage to all players, where X is the total amount of Diamond Dog Runts currently alive

Shiny! I especially like Ride da Pony; it's a unique effect that makes perfect sense.