Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Emberlily]

the connection to gamma world is something I hadn't ever considered for any D&D thing before.... fun thing to have my eyes opened for

also, regardless of the typing weirdness or the mechanical troubles of the creatures, I do think its 3rd edition art is really fun. really weird but striking body plan, and a characterful pose even

[Beni-Kujaku]

Swarms (all of them)

This is fine.

"When that many creatures work together, they often prove to be deadlier than if working separately". Thank you Fiend Folio for this insightful piece of wisdom, that has been often paraphrased through the ages as : "Don't split the party!"

The Fiend Folio's swarm have surprisingly little personality. With the notable exception of the Cranium rat swarms, they're either regular animal swarms or regular animal swarms from the fiendish planes. Their CR is also all over the place, which generally translates directly to number of RHD for swarms. And you know what they say about high-level swarms : they don't work as PCs.

Abyssal Ant Swarm, 20 RHD: Like a regular ant swarm, but as a hive mind from the abyss. Also one of the very rare creatures with no ability score above its CR, which is not a good thing. It's supposedly CR 16 and its highest stat is 16 in Con. It's a pain to fight because of its weapon immunity, its SR 2+HD, fire, cold and electricity resistance 20 and acid immunity, but its only offensive ability beyond the regular Distraction is 2d8 acid damage on its swarm attack and it being able to ignore DR as a +5 weapon (which may mean it goes through any kind of DR except DR/- and DR/Epic, or simply mean it goes through DR/Magic, depending on your DM). Swarms are really the worst kind of creatures in the game. Let's go with 5 RHD, DLA-12.

Plague Ant Swarm, 10 RHD: Like a regular ant swarm, now with a disease on its swarm attack. Yep, it's useless. 2 RHD, DLA-7

Lesser Cranium Rat Swarm, 6 RHD: The only good swarms in this book, the cranium rats are rats with a slightly bigger brain that bulges through their skull, and allows them to link in a hive mind with all rats in a 10ft radius, gaining intelligence and even psionic powers the more rats are gathered. Surprisingly, we know almost nothing about their motivations, except that they want to keep said motivations secret, and thus kill anyone who discovers that they have a hive mind. In 2e, the hive mind itself, scattered across the cranium rats of the world and simply gathering its own powers as the rats come together, is called the vishkar (non-capitalized, implying that there could be several of them), and supposed to act as a spy for the mind flayer god Ilsensine. There is definitely a campaign idea in there.
The lesser swarm is composed of 75 rats and does not yet have any magic power, but can already use the illithid mind blast every two turns to stun opponents. Swarms with actual use for their actions is actually a really good idea, both as a monster and as a PC, especially when the ability in question is a save-or-lose. All cranium rats have the same stats (-8 Str, +6 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Wis) except Int and Cha, which increase with the number of rats. It's also quite fast (40ft) and can climb. Let's go with 4 RHD, DLA-1.

Average Cranium Rat Swarm, 12 RHD: When 150 cranium rats come together, their collective intelligence and charisma becomes 13. They gain telepathy up to 80ft, cold resistance 10, they can use their mind blast at will, and above all they can cast spells or manifest powers as either a 4th level sorcerer or a 4th level psion. Casting spells from the relative safety of swarm immunities while having a chance to distract warriors coming too close is extremely good, though not enough to lose more than a few CL. 7 RHD, DLA-4

Greater Cranium Rat Swarm, 24 RHD: The final form of cranium rats is achieved by gathering more than 300 rats, which gives them Int and Cha 19, a CL or ML 10, and nothing else compared to the Average swarm. At that point, the bad body shape starts to outweigh the swarm defenses, and the decent stats and telepathy do not make this worth more than 11 RHD, DLA-11.

Bloodfiend Locust Swarm, 14 RHD: This one could be fun, but it's still not good. First, it flies, though pretty slowly, but the interesting part is that its swarm attacks also imparts a negative level on the target. Should a creature die from it (not an easy task to kill them with negative levels without killing them from damage first), it rises as a fiendish vampire spawn 1d6 hours later. This is one of the few printed ways to explicitly bypass a template's type restriction, but since the spawns are uncontrolled, it will be a nuisance more than it will help. It also has +8 Dex, so maybe 4 RHD? And DLA-8?

Rapture Locust Swarm, 10 RHD: A flying swarm that shines with rainbow colors hypnotizing people looking at it (an unfriendly constant AoE duplicating Hypnotic Pattern). Also, instead of distraction, this swarm hypnotizes its target further. Instead of nauseating on a failed Con-based Fort save, the target can't take any action at all on a failed Cha-based Will save. All in all not bad, but the hypnotic pattern will be super annoying. 5 RHD, DLA-3.

Scarab Beetle Swarm, 15 RHD : Can burrow, and swarm attack deals Con damage on a failed Fort save. 3 RHD, DLA-10.

Viper Swarm, 5 RHD: Why is an animal swarm noted as having a hive mind again? No matter, this one's terrible. 2 RHD, DLA-3.

Wasp Swarm, 4 RHD: It flies and damages Dex. Sure, 3 RHD, DLA-1.

The rapture locust swarm makes for a fun way to attract the PCs towards a plot-relevant location : "You can see, in the distance, a rainbow lightshow." Next time, we're going to look at the flying shark itself, the Terlen! See you next week!

[GreatWyrmGold]

The Quth-Maren has the stats and many abilities of a CR 3-4 monster, decent to good energy resistances, and then its gaze is the purest definition of a Save-or-Lose, disabling those affected until the end of combat (RAW is forever, but RAW is stupid, probably the most sane reading would be "until the Quth-Maren is more than 30ft away"). Fun way to balance your monster, WotC.

It's the Rust Monster problem, but on accident this time.

- Huge 16 RHD incorporeal Aberration. Did you notice that it did not have full BAB on top of not having a Str score? Such a good design for a grappler.
- No Str, +16 Dex, +10 Con, +0 Int, +4 Wis, +8 Cha
- One bite, two tentacles with Improved Grab and Constrict. All attacks have Ghost Touch, but are still touch attacks, which is pretty good for a melee fighter. However, they don't have Str bonuses, of course.

The spectral lurker really needs some ability that lets it use its Charisma score as an ersatz Strength score. That's not its only problem, but it's a problem.

That's a glorified giant eagle, but smaller.

If only there was a word for a smaller giant eagle...

The only good swarms in this book, the cranium rats are rats with a slightly bigger brain that bulges through their skull, and allows them to link in a hive mind with all rats in a 10ft radius, gaining intelligence and even psionic powers the more rats are gathered. Surprisingly, we know almost nothing about their motivations, except that they want to keep said motivations secret, and thus kill anyone who discovers that they have a hive mind. In 2e, the hive mind itself, scattered across the cranium rats of the world and simply gathering its own powers as the rats come together, is called the vishkar (non-capitalized, implying that there could be several of them), and supposed to act as a spy for the mind flayer god Ilsensine. There is definitely a campaign idea in there.

The novel Mother of Learning (which has several monsters obviously inspired by their D&D equivalents) makes interesting use of cranium rats, which is hard to explain without spoilers.

Spoiler: So I boxed it in a spoiler box

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Near the start of the novel, Zorian (the protagonist) notices a cranium rat as he gets off the train. Much later, he discovers that the cranium rat swarm is working with the main villains, basically spying on the city for them...which is why his first attempt to reach out to the authorities to deal with the invasion ends with him getting murdered. (There's a time loop, he's fine.)

There's also a bit where Zorian helps psychic spiders wage war on the cranium rats. But that's getting into a whole other mess of spoilers.

Psychic hivemind rats are cool. Way better than "ants with disease" or "vipers with an unexplained hivemind" or "locusts that keep eating people they want to necromantize".

[Beni-Kujaku]

Terlen

Environment : Any land or aquatic, or sharknado.

The Terlen is another monster who originated in Gamma World, or at least is inspired by a monster there, probably the Terl (a psionically flying barracuda), maybe with some sprinkling of the Fleshin (a flying fish/reptile that can grow legs to walk on land as something resembling a half-dragon or kobold). And once again, the conversion was wonky, leading to this flying shark that does not have legs anymore, but still has a 60ft land speed and only breathes air rather than being aquatic. Actually, there is no reference to ever having legs in any D&D iteration, with the 2e Terlen slithering across the ground, which was said at the time to be uncomfortable and slow, compared to the equal speed of the 3e iteration. It's fun to see that these sharks just live in trees and are ambush predators on land. I guess it's just a way for the DM to show how weird the Outer planes can be to PCs visiting them for the first time.

Terlens are very rogue-coded as monsters. They deal double damage with their bite against flat-footed opponents, and their grey skin somehow gives them a bonus to Hide (that does not seem to be supernatural, they're just extraordinarily good at blending in their environment). The problem is that since they don't have hands, they cannot dual-wield daggers for that sweet sneak attack damage, and since they have animal intelligence, advancing as a rogue would make it lose most of its skills. The best way to use it is probably to just be a Warblade and take Tiger Claw maneuvers to both make opponents flat-footed and deal extra damage (Jump checks are a formality with such a high speed and a Str bonus).


- 4 RHD Medium Magical Beast. Being Large would be better. At least it does not have many RHD.
- +6 Str, +4 Dex, +4 Con, -8 Int, +0 Wis, -4 Cha, +8 NA. The natural armor is really good, the rest is average for a 4 RHD Animal, which is to say not that good.
- 60ft land, swim and flying (average) speed. That is really good, and probably the main selling point of the monster.
- One bite dealing double damage against flat-footed opponents. It also has Improved Grab and Worry, but the Terlen is not a good grappler.
- +8 to Hide checks.

It's really not that bad of a chassis, and could deserve +0 on a humanoid-shaped-body. As it is, 2 RHD, DLA-1.

Remind me why this is a Magical Beast again? It has no supernatural ability, it having Int 3 rather than Int 2 has no mechanical impact, and its behavior is considered as instinctual. I crave more extraplanar animals! Fortunately, next time is the Terror Bird, a very native (and sadly, very boring) animal.

[Tzardok]

Remind me why this is a Magical Beast again? It has no supernatural ability, it having Int 3 rather than Int 2 has no mechanical impact, and its behavior is considered as instinctual. I crave more extraplanar animals!

Maybe the flight is magical? I dunno, I don't have the book with me, but it looks like a shark flying with fins. Elongated fins, but still fins.

[Metastachydium]

Remind me why this is a Magical Beast again? It has no supernatural ability, it having Int 3 rather than Int 2 has no mechanical impact, and its behavior is considered as instinctual.

INT 3 does have an impact of sorts: it lets them have sufficient moral agency to have an actual alignment. They wanted to make it Neutral Evil, if I had to guess, and this was both a nice buff for combat purposes and an excuse to do that.

[Beni-Kujaku]

It's the Rust Monster problem, but on accident this time.

I'm not even sure they knew what they were doing with the Quth-Maren. On the one hand, CR 7 is only appropriate if the cowering indeed lasts until end of combat, but on the other hand it's so weird to not see a duration that I can't help but think that it was supposed to only be for 1 round, with a repeated save each round as long as the Quth-Maren was still in range.

The spectral lurker really needs some ability that lets it use its Charisma score as an ersatz Strength score. That's not its only problem, but it's a problem.

Oh, that would be good! And actually, there might actually be one. From Libris Mortis : "A creature that is forced to become corporeal [...] gains a Strength score equal to its Charisma score (not including any nonpermanent modifiers to Charisma, such as an eagle’s splendor spell). Its incorporeal touch attacks become normal touch attacks (and it uses its Strength modifier on attack rolls unless it has Weapon Finesse)." You could say that since the Lurker chooses whether its bite is corporeal or not at all time, it can choose it to be corporeal and use its Charisma score on the subsequent grappling check. The RAW is shaky, and obviously LM was published after FF, but I think many DMs would agree on that.

If only there was a word for a smaller giant eagle...

I know, right! I keep needing one! My best guess is "Miniature Giant Space Eagle", but most of them don't even go to space!

The novel Mother of Learning (which has several monsters obviously inspired by their D&D equivalents) makes interesting use of cranium rats, which is hard to explain without spoilers.

Spoiler: So I boxed it in a spoiler box

Show

Near the start of the novel, Zorian (the protagonist) notices a cranium rat as he gets off the train. Much later, he discovers that the cranium rat swarm is working with the main villains, basically spying on the city for them...which is why his first attempt to reach out to the authorities to deal with the invasion ends with him getting murdered. (There's a time loop, he's fine.)

There's also a bit where Zorian helps psychic spiders wage war on the cranium rats. But that's getting into a whole other mess of spoilers.

Psychic hivemind rats are cool. Way better than "ants with disease" or "vipers with an unexplained hivemind" or "locusts that keep eating people they want to necromantize".

I love the tropes of "inconspicuous vermin being everywhere that nobody suspects but are actually the masterminds of the story" and "You know, every scale has its own stories to tell, even if you don't notice it until the smaller scale interacts with yours". Reminds me of Bernard Werber's "Empire of the ants" ("Les Fourmis" in french), where you follow the life of ants as well as humans who both end up discovering things about a certain ant-obsessed biologist. Good read, though I don't know if the translation is good.

Maybe the flight is magical? I dunno, I don't have the book with me, but it looks like a shark flying with fins. Elongated fins, but still fins.

INT 3 does have an impact of sorts: it lets them have sufficient moral agency to have an actual alignment. They wanted to make it Neutral Evil, if I had to guess, and this was both a nice buff for combat purposes and an excuse to do that.

The flight itself does not seem to be magical, or at least there's no indication that it is (if it was (Good) or (Perfect), maybe, but an (Average) flight does not seem out of place considering the wings of the Terlen).
The alignment thing seems to be the reason. You can't have something that lives in Carceri, Gehenna and Hades not be evil, after all. It's ironic that Fiend Folio gave us the first and only Extraplanar Animal living in the Outlands (the Fhorge), but could not have animals for the aligned planes, just because they would have to not be true neutral. That makes it seem like the Outlands are more "normal" than the aligned planes, even though it's definitely not, and probably the weirdest plane of all.

[Tzardok]

And that when MM3 includes a true neutral bloodsucking plant in the Beastlands.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Remind me why this is a Magical Beast again? It has no supernatural ability, it having Int 3 rather than Int 2 has no mechanical impact, and its behavior is considered as instinctual.

Same reason girallons, owlbears, sea cats, and stirges are: They're animal-like creatures which don't exist IRL. They're weird mixes of real-world animals, or one real-world animal and unusual but nonmagical traits, so they can't be animals.

Oh hey, what's this link to the sea tiger stat block doing here?

Spoiler: Big Image

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[Beni-Kujaku]

Terror Bird

The Terror Bird, scientifically named Phorusrhacos by biologists, inaccurately named Phororhacos by 1e d&d writers, and funnily named Chocobo or Carakiller if you're feeling spicy. Basically a larger and scarier emu, and fully willing to wage war on Australia.

There is next to nothing to say about this bird mechanically. "Large Animal, 7 RHD, +8/+6/+4/-8/+4/+0, 5 NA, one bite, Improved Grab, 50 feet speed". Total, 25 words, even counting the "plus" and "minus" for the stats. One Sending can contain the entirety of this monster's statblock. 3 RHD, DLA-3, see you next time for the Thunder Worm.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Thunder Worm

The Thunder Worm is an immense cloud-like worm creature living in storm clouds and probably feeding off the lightning in there. It is surprisingly intelligent (14) but does not seem to have any interest in coming down to earth, or eating actual living creatures, and in fact it probably cannot, since it is the only fully incorporeal Magical Beast in the game (the Shadow Asp, Spectral Panther and Mist Wolf all can bite corporeal creatures while incorporeal and thus feed off them).
This begs two questions. First, why is it incorporeal? This very book has the Living Holocaust, which is a flaming tornado, and the Phiuhl, which is a vaguely humanoid bunch of poisonous gas. Both are gaseous, and crucially not incorporeal. Then why does the Phiuhl have a Str score, why does the Living Holocaust not have one, and why is the Thunder Worm incorporeal? How is it any different from the other two?
The other question is then: how do you even use this monster as a DM? It lives in the clouds, so PCs will not encounter it by chance, and it does not eat so it will not seek the PCs in return. It does not speak, so it's not a quest-giver, and I don't see any creature on the Material that would want this as a pet, except maybe Storm giants, but the Thunder Worm is almost as intelligent as them and much more powerful. I could see a bunch of storm giants either offering to use their control weather ability to give a Thunder Worm enough food for weeks in exchange for it destroying a city, or creating a path of storm towards a city to lure the worm towards it. Once the worm comes down, it is indeed a threat, since it deals electricity and sonic damage to everything in its vicinity. However, this denies the worm's intelligence and shows it as a glorified animal. The thunder worm is kind of the epitome of the common D&D pitfall : "If it does not talk, has no society and you don't want to give it a goal or anything to do with its life except mindlessly eating, then there is no need for it to be more intelligent than humans", and it actually makes no sense for it to be so intelligent and not do anything interesting (interesting can be as mundane as observing the life of humanoids, acting a mercenary, taking lower creatures as pets, crafting things, seeking powerful opponents, or sadistically slaughtering humanoids that they don't think deserve to live). If it has more than around Int 6 and a mindset even remotely close to ours, it can get bored, so why doesn't it?
Well, maybe it goes adventuring! But not with so many RHD. Let's change this!

- 48 RHD Colossal incorporeal Magical Beast. How many? We have work to do.
- No Str, +10 Dex, +18 Con, +4 Int, +8 Wis, +32 Cha. It's pretty hilarious how absurdly high you have to pump that charisma in order to make an incorporeal creature with a decent AC. To give you an idea, even a Great Gold Wyrm only has +22 Cha. Malcanthet, the freaking queen of the succubi, only has +30, and Aphrodite herself, the most charismatic god of all, only has +36. Even better since literally none of the worm's abilities key off its insane charisma.
- Incorporeal touch dealing 4d6 electricity and sonic, that also applies to any creature in the worm's space if they fail a Con-based Reflex save.
- 2d6 electricity to anyone attacking it in melee unless they make a Ref save (not including any ability score bonus).
- Thunderclap, every 1d4 rounds: deals 24d8 sonic damage to everyone in a 30ft radius. Con-based Ref for half.
- SR HD-18 (Haha), sonic and electricity immunity, Blindsight 90ft

Impressive how they thought 2d6 damage was significant for a creature that throw 24d8 AoEs every few rounds. Still, the worm has no ability except damage, no hand, no speech, and nothing a PC requires, but its stats are incredible, and it could gain 19 turn attempts with a level of cleric, or have an almost irresistible Greater Kiai Shout in DNLA, or Daunting Presence in RHDR. 4 levels of Knight of Test of Mettle could be interesting, and a level of Crusader or Paladin for a Charisma bonus to saves could be good. D&D has so many ways to add your Cha bonus to anything or gain access to SLAs that the possibilities are almost endless. 14 RHD, DLA-28. I'd like to see what could come out of something with such absurd numbers at ECL 20 in DNLA, but I don't think having so many feats immediately makes it epic-worthy with no class level, though I'm open to argumentation.

For your convenience, I have scoured the web for other hooks to use a CR 21 storm worm in your high-level campaigns :

Spoiler: "Let me in, let me iiiinnn!" by Sleeper

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Maybe these were ghost worms, giant gray things that slid through the soil and rock and denizens of the Underdark like they weren't even there. So big you might not even know it's a worm, just a wave of gray dimness that swallows your burrows and then inexplicably passes on.

Over time, they went up. They broached the surface, then dove back. Huge moving arcs would appear in a field of grain, or on a barren slope. They continued to explore, never fully leaving their familiar Earth, but going further and further up. Then BOOM. Lightning. They didn't die, being intangible, but it gave them a huge shock, a huge potential. This flung them away from the metals of the earth, into the sky.

That's the thunderworm. A denizen of the Underdark, cast out of its home by a repelling charge, unable to immerse itself again in soil, and wrapped in a cloak of dark clouds and irritating lighting.

Their appearance isn't malice or evil, it's a natural disaster. They might plunge themselves to the ground again and again, trying to bury themselves in the safety of soil, but keep bouncing back, throwing off bolts and bringing torrential rain and hurricane force winds with each attempt. If that happens in a city or along a trade route, it's a calamity. They might lash out randomly, or be attracted to large flying things, like dragons or airships. They might be attracted to electrical discharges, or walls of iron or other large pieces of metal. They might seek out the highest place in the world, or the lowest. They might be manipulated or lured, though this is dangerous. Druids might speak of past occurrences. When one is overcome or a method is found to return it to its home, that might be only the start, because the other worms scattered across the sky and are besieging other nations, other realms, with their frenzied fear and desperation.

Spoiler: "Consequences of your actions", by Talisman and RobertEdwards

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Thunder worms are attracted to unnatural/magical meddling with the weather, so whenever some jerkass casts storm of vengeance, or when a druid rains lightning bolts on his enemies, there's a chance a nearby thunder worm will take notice.

Spirit of Vengence for a Neutral Nature God? I had a relative who'd always go "Gods Trying To Tell Us Something" whenever there was a bad storm.

Spoiler: "Epic demiplane of storm", by Capellan and SuperG

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The thunder worm isn't a cloud shaped like a worm, it's an actual worm; from a plane where "60 ft long flying electrical monstrosity" fills the same ecological niche as an earthworm does in ours.

Sometimes, these things accidentally tunnel into the prime material. They're pretty harmless in and of themselves, but you need to do something about them. Why? Because in their home realm there are things that hunt them, things that fill the role of moles in their reality. And sometimes, those "moles" can sniff out a thunder worm in our world and "dig" there way to it.

And trust me, you do not want to meet one of those moles ...

This homeland has been dubbed the "Storm Material Plane" by some sages, and it is rumoured that Storm Giants come from there.

Or, as they are known in that land, "Pixies".

Next time is another worm-like creature that smart players should never interact with : the Tunnel Terror! See you!