Monster Contest: Making a Mockery -- Voting Thread

[ezkajii]

Well, the first Flesh Alchemist's Convention has come to a close. We had two entries into the competition, we'll see if we can get at least that many votes!

Because we only have two entries, voting will work a little differently than normal. Simply state your favorite of the two, and that entry will earn one point. The highest points wins! You cannot vote for your own entry. It helps the general spirit of homebrewing and forum community if you provide at least a small blurb about what influenced your vote one way or the other, so please give these great authors a few words of critique/praise when you vote.

Voting will be open until midnight on April 25th. Commence!

Author	Creature	Total
Jormengand	Envy
Zaydos	Mimonkey	3

[Bhu]

1 vote for mimonkey. Nice to see the monster comp is back. I can see it being used to disturbing effect in either a horror or silly campaign.

[ezkajii]

Come on guys, let's get some more votes in here!

[wooglycakes]

Another vote for mimonkey.

Spoiler: Rationale

Show

Mimonkey: I think this monster can fit into a variety of roles, in social encounters as well as combat, as allies or enemies. Copy spirit, mimic action, and mimic stance flesh out their concept as mimes, and make combat against them interesting: I can imagine the look of horror on my wizard players' face when 4d6 mimonkeys throw his fireball right back at him.

My first, minor gripe is that I'm not sold on the name. Every time I try to pronounce it, it ends up sounding like "my monkey," though I understand the pun behind it well enough.

The voice imitation special ability has a listed Will save but not what it does. I'm guessing that it's to figure out that it's just a replica? But then, wouldn't an opposed Sense Motive check be more fitting?

Lastly, as a monster with the possibility of becoming a player character (at LA +4), it feels surprisingly less... bestial than what I think a magical beast should feel like. A mimonkey doesn't have skill ranks in Survival or Hide, so I'm guessing that they've moved past foraging and hiding from predators... but there isn't anything on how mimonkeys act outside of combat. I'm guessing that it's to let each DM decide on his own, but some information in that regard would help.

Envy: In contrast, Envy is designed to be part of a boss encounter for a party of 16th-level characters, along with six other sins. The opening narration sets the mood and fluff for the encounter, but it's difficult to rate Envy as a separate entity without knowing how he interacts with the other pieces in the room... though with its special abilities, I think I can make a decent guess.

First thing to note is that a movement speed of 60 ft. should be 12 squares, not 6.

Second thing to note is that most of the stat block felt really sub-par for a CR 10 creature until I realized what it did. Curse of Green Eyes means your 16th-level martial dude ("toughest customer", I guess, unless Envy wants to ruin a caster's day) suddenly has 9 less BAB and piss-poor stats, which should lock him out of some of his feat choices. Meanwhile, Envy's Combat Reflexes and Power Attack start shining once he uses his Curse, and he should be able to put out some damage with his new 16th-level stats.

What I'm not too sure is how the Curse of Green Eyes ends. It says Envy can choose to end the Curse by designating a new target, and it mentions a duration, but I don't know how long it is. Is it permanent? Is it a curse effect that break enchantment or remove curse can interact with? Why does Envy not want his source of borrowed power to die? I don't know how to answer these questions by reading the stat block.

Apart from that, deadly sin and shrug off feel like defensive abilities any respectable BBEG should have.

My main issue with Envy is how I can use it as a GM. It's a unique devil, so I can't exactly put multiple in a room; it makes it more likely that one of my players will feel immense Wrath, and I worry how a sudden and drastic change in a PC's hp and abilities will affect the encounter. Lastly, it feels like a one-trick pony: once my players have experienced it, they know pretty much what's up if they face it again.

[Debihuman]

I vote for the minmokey as well.

I brought up my issues with Envy early on but I'll reiterate them here.

• It's noted as being a 10-level monk, which has class features and none of them are noted in the statistics block.
• There is no indication how long the curse of green eyes lasts or what the range of the curse is.Plus, there are no game mechanics to avoid the curse. Does break enchantment end it? It's also very difficult to use in combat if Players have to spend a lot of time switching their character's stats (and skills and saves...) around. That is not going to be fun but drudgery.
• Shrug off should have been clearer; it should have just said that the creature can spend 20% of its (total or current as it's not clear) hit points to avoid being affected by any spell, spell-like effect, supernatural effect or it can spend those hit points to avoid taking any adverse condition. While this could be overpowered, it also means that a clever party can trick it into spending hit points.
• The devil traits were badly tacked on. These belong in the statistics block. There's no indication of what kind of telepathy it has (does it need a common language) and no indication of how far the range is.
• The CR should be defined. It has 10 levels of monk so it is a least CR 10.
• My last complaint is that the party receives far too much experience for defeating it.

Despite these problems, it's not a bad monster but it clearly needs a lot of work to make me want to use it.

[ezkajii]

Votes tallied.

[ezkajii]

Only one day left to vote!

[ezkajii]

The voting is now closed. Congratulations, Zaydos! You have won this contest!