[Creature & Spell] To the neon god they made...

This was inspired by actual encounters with a creature some folks from my sister's workplace have sworn they've seen by the dumpsters behind the building.

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Llymha

http://my.photosleeve.com/TheVorpalT...lbum03/agy.jpg

Medium Fey
Hit Dice: 4d6+12 (26 hp)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 16 (+2 dex, +4 natural)
Base Attack/Grapple: +2/+2
Attack: Unarmed strike +4 melee (1d3) or improvised weapon +4 (varies)
Full Attack: Unarmed strike +4 melee (1d3) or improvised weapon +4 (varies)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Hole in the pocket, impoverishing gaze, improvising master, skill tricks, spells
Special Qualities: Damage reduction 5/cold iron or silver, low-light vision, resistance to cold and fire 5, slum gullet, weaknesses
Saves: Fort +4, Ref +6, Will +5
Abilities: Str 10, Dex 15, Con 17, Int 15, Wis 13, Cha 10
Skills: Appraise +7, Climb +9, Escape Artist +13, Hide +9, Knowledge (local) +9, Sense Motive +8, Sleight of Hand +13, Tumble +7
Feats: Combat Expertise, Improved Disarm, Weapon Finesse(B)
Environment: Any urban
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 4
Treasure: Half-standard items
Alignment: Usually chaotic evil
Advancement: By character class (favored class: rogue)
Level Adjustment: +3

This creature appear vaguely as starved old men or women, their unclothed condition displaying a body of deathly pallor and seemingly wracked with illness. They are completely hairless and possessed of many deep wrinkles in odd places upon the body. They are disturbingly inhuman, especially with their over-large eye sockets as if from advanced malnutrition.

Llymhas are creatures of poverty and misfortune. They can be found squatting in filthy alleyways or perched along gutters, waiting fo victims to come along. In particular they love to prey upon merchants and the nobility, anyone of status and wealth, cursing them with failure and playing many sadistic tricks upon them. In particular they will often torture or kill their loved ones as they possess value to their victim.

Llymhas stand as high as an average human though only weigh around 80 lbs. They speak Sylvan and any native languages of the area.

Combat
Llymhas tend not to wish to join in on combat, instead attempting to relieve passerbys of their valuables and curse them and their previous owner. The exception to this rule is that the family and friends of the rich or influential the llymhas will attempt to kidnap or kill or both.

Hole In the Pocket (Su): As a standard action a llymhas can spread a curse over any object it can lift and handle. This object, if taken by another, has a cumulative 1% chance every day to disapear from its current owner. It wears a hole in a pocket and disapears, or is handled in the sleep and lost, stolen, or in some way removed from the owner without their knowledge.

If the object is gold, silver or a gem, instead of being cursed as above the metals become copper or iron, respectively, and the gem converts into glass.

Impoverishing Gaze (Su): Just meeting a llymhas is great bad luck. Any that meet his gaze within 30 feet must succeed on a DC 16 will save or become forever cursed with misfortune.

The target takes a -4 penalty to all Craft, Perform and Profession checks, as well as all checks dealing with financial matters. For example a diplomacy check to haggle the price of an object would be done at a -4 penalty. This can all be nulled with a Remove Curse, Limited Wish, or similiar spell, though there is a 20% chance the curse moves on to the caster of the spell unless it's the target doing the casting.

Penalties from multiple curses do not stack. The save DC is Charisma-based, with a +4 racial bonus added to the check.

Improvising Master (Ex): A llymhas may use improvised weapons without penalty and gains a +2 circumstance bonus to disarm checks with such weapons.

Skill Tricks: Slipping Past and Tumbling Crawl.

Slum Gullet (Ex): A llymhas is immune to poison and gains a +6 racial bonus on saves against disease.

Spell-like Abilities:
At will - *Detect Wealth, Invisibility, Locate Object; 3/day Crushing Despair (DC 14), Knock. 1/day Freedom of Movement. Caster level 5th. The save DC's are Charisma-based.

* See new spell below.

Skills: A llymhas gains a +4 racial bonus to Climb, Escape Artist and Sleight of Hand checks, and uses their Dexterity modifier for climb checks.


Weaknesses
Extravagant living and signs of wealth are anethma to the llymha. They recoil from strongly presented gold pieces, gem or jewels. These things don’t harm the llymha - they merely keep it at bay. A recoiling llymha must stay at least 5 feet away from a creature holding the gem or gold piece and cannot touch or make melee attacks against the creature holding the item for the rest of the encounter. Holding a llymha at bay takes a standard action.

As well, a llymha cannot enter an area specifically symbolizing wealth, such as a mansion, merchant guild building or similiar. Churches and temples, unless devoted to a deity of wealth and gain, do not count towards this.


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Detect Wealth
Divination
Level: Brd 1
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target or Area: One creature, one object, or a 20-ft. cube
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 min./level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes

You detect levels of wealth. The amount of information revealed depends on how long you study a particular area or subject.

1st Round: Presence or absence of possessions totalling 50 gold pieces or more.

2nd Round: Exact collective value of all objects upon the person.

3rd Round: Percentage of value based on one of the following: Medium of exchange (coins), gems and jewels, weapons, magical items, masterwork items, or any object other object worth more than 10 gp).

4th Round: Exact numbers of each of the above. Example: You would know they have on their person 100 gp worth of coins, a masterwork dagger, and a ruby worth 500 gp.

5th Round: Knowledge of the place in society and subsequent worth of the target themselves and how much they could be ransomed for if anything.

Thats crazy... and highly intriguing... must say... you create some amazing things.

*bows with a flourish*

Neat. A couple nitpicks, though—first, how do you overcome DR/cold iron and silver? Second, the Special Attacks entry lists spells; was that supposed to be spell-like abilities?

Detect Wealth, heh. Man, that would be dangerous in the hands of stereotypical Chaotic Neutral players. Fortunately, it's a bard-only spell, so not much chance of that.

I like the Hole in the Pocket ability. Fun times if the llymha picks the pockets of the players; even if they catch him and demand their stuff back, it'll be too late.

Heehee, very fun, I like the spell. I suggest adding sor/wiz for it as well, seems like something they could use.

I like that curse. very fun. especially the gems to glass part.

Vt you have done it again. i swear ive seen people that look like that before when i was in chicago, wierd, maybe thats why i dont have any money.

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Originally Posted by The_Snark

how do you overcome DR/cold iron and silver?

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With a cold iron or silvered weapon?

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Heehee, very fun, I like the spell. I suggest adding sor/wiz for it as well, seems like something they could use.

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Not very wizardly though.

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Vt you have done it again. i swear ive seen people that look like that before when i was in chicago, wierd, maybe thats why i dont have any money.

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Hope they had clothes on at least?

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Originally Posted by The Vorpal Tribble

With a cold iron or silvered weapon?

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Do you mean Cold Iron or Silver or do you mean Cold Iron and Silver. They mean radically differant things. For example Babau demon has DR Cold Iron or Good while a Balor demon has DR Cold Iron and Good. A Babau can be killed with a good aligned weapon or a weapon that's made of cold iron but not aligned to good. A Balor needs a good aligned cold iron weapon (for example a Holy Avenger).

*Shudders imagining a naked one...*

It burns my eyes!

This is awesome, Vorpal. I heart it.

Also, thumbs up for referencing an awesome song in the title.

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Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun

This is awesome, Vorpal. I heart it.

Also, thumbs up for referencing an awesome song in the title.

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what song is it? The words are familiar and I'm trying to figure out why

Sound of Silence, Simon and Garfunkel, on the Wednesday Morning, 3AM album.

I'm a folk rock freak, and I am learning it on the guitar right now.

cool. Dunno why it was familiar than since I haven't listened to much of them

Song of silence is great
"And the people bowed and prayed
to the neon god them made"

Anyways, would they guys work together with eachother to overthrow the goverement. Could make scary terrorists
from,
EE

Creepy, affecting, cool...
Definitely appearing in my urban campaign.
Bravo!

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Originally Posted by The Vorpal Tribble

Hope they had clothes on at least?

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i would call them rags but what ever

Very nice. Though the weakness to strongly-presented valuables seems a little odd. For one thing, I keep imagining a guy in a business suit holding one of these things at bay by pulling out a wad of bills and screaming, "You can't kill me! I have money!" For another thing, surely a display of wealth would simply enrage the Llymha, and since most of the Llymha's targets will be wealthy people, they end up unable to perform the kidnappings you mention. Though the restriction from entering a place of wealth makes sense: These guys are the essence of poverty.

Is that just a name made of random elf sounding syllables?

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Anyways, would they guys work together with each other to overthrow the goverement.

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I'm quite certain they wouldn't mind getting together.

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Very nice. Though the weakness to strongly-presented valuables seems a little odd. For one thing, I keep imagining a guy in a business suit holding one of these things at bay by pulling out a wad of bills and screaming, "You can't kill me! I have money!" For another thing, surely a display of wealth would simply enrage the Llymha, and since most of the Llymha's targets will be wealthy people, they end up unable to perform the kidnappings you mention.

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Oh, it would enrage them incredibly. Thats why they go after their wealth, then their family, and basically impoverish them to the point they can no longer fend off the Llymha.

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Originally Posted by Closet_Skeleton

Is that just a name made of random elf sounding syllables?

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Llymha is a complicated gaelic word baically meaning 'I impoverish and make bare'.

I use gaelic for a good chunk of my fey creatures names, like I use swahili for magical beasts and innuit or russian for arctic creatures.

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Originally Posted by The Vorpal Tribble

Llymha is a complicated gaelic word baically meaning 'I impoverish and make bare'.

I use gaelic for a good chunk of my fey creatures names, like I use swahili for magical beasts and innuit or russian for arctic creatures.

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I tried using Gaelic a few times myself but I find that English often works fine. I phrased my question so I didn't look like I was being too clever only to have someone give a really simple explanation.

If I remember, most "Detect" spells leave a faint aura/stun the user if the source is more powerful than the caster...

If the "Detect Wealth" spell does that, then what would the amounts be? How much GP Value would constitute a level Enough gold to hire a PC-classed NPC of a certain level? Character-creation starting gold amounts?

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Originally Posted by Mojotech

If I remember, most "Detect" spells leave a faint aura/stun the user if the source is more powerful than the caster...

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Some of those spells might, but in this case I don't think it's quite neccessary :smallwink:

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Originally Posted by Mojotech

If I remember, most "Detect" spells leave a faint aura/stun the user if the source is more powerful than the caster...

If the "Detect Wealth" spell does that, then what would the amounts be? How much GP Value would constitute a level Enough gold to hire a PC-classed NPC of a certain level? Character-creation starting gold amounts?

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Sorry, but "AAAAH! He's... too... rich!" doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "Agh! The evil! It is so strong!"

Well, it could dazzle?

"WOW he's got a lot of gold!"

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Originally Posted by Inyssius Tor

Well, it could dazzle?

"WOW he's got a lot of gold!"

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Heh, maybe if it was in the middle of sunlight and he had a handful to display.