Yet Another Earth Delta Update
Once more, a smallish update to Earth Delta (Lizard’s take on post-apocalyptic mutant gaming for Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition), very possibly the start of longer and more regular updates. This comes, oddly, just as I’m starting to really get into my design for Stellar Warriors, having come up with a really cool (I think) mechanic for the Medic class and a nice start on “Force” (name changed in the actual text for obvious reasons) powers. I am simply tired of leaving things unfinished, and I am going to try to really complete ED, at least up to 20th level in terms of monsters, paragon paths, mutations, items, etc. This segment is more of a “filling in the gaps” bit, adding a new mutant animal type — Boars –and a few more Heritage Mutations. In the actual PDF, they’ll be nicely formatted, etc, but here, I’m just pasting them from Word and losing all the styles. (Eventually, I will learn enough CSS to get things to look good on this damn blog. It astounds me how few (that is to day, no) blog editors there are that will generate CSS in a WYSIWYG format while you type. A few have partial functionality, but I want things like spacing between paragraphs, borders, and so on.)
Boar
Boars are powerful, vicious, creatures renowned for ferocity and stubbornness, as well as great big tusks and questionable hygiene. Very often, they are portrayed as crude, belching, beer (or whatever fermented beverage exists in the post-apocalyptic ruins) swilling lechers, or, if you will, male chauvinist pigs. While this portrayal has appeal, and no one who chooses to play a boaroid should be faulted for wanting to indulge in it, these are not the only traits boaroids possess. For example, many also have a fondness for motorcycles. Whether indulging in their stereotypical crudity or not, they are larger-than-life creatures whose presence can be very commanding.
Boaroid Racial Traits
Average Height: 5′ 6″ to 7′
Average Weight: 160-300 lbs
Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Strength or Charisma
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares
Vision: Normal
Languages: Common, Growl (Languages are listed on page 350.)
Skills: +2 racial bonus Intimidate (from Terrifying Demeanor), +2 racial bonus to Endurance (from Efficient Lungs)
Defenses: -1 Will (from Weak Minded)
Heritage Mutations: Efficient Lungs, Terrifying Visage, Large Fangs, Weak Minded, Double Heart
Other Mutations: You have 2 points to spend on beneficial heritage mutations. You may acquire a negative heritage mutation for additional points.
Boar’s Tenacity: When you are reduced to fewer than 0 hit points, you do not just go quietly into that good night. First, you do not fall prone as part of being reduced to 0 hit points, though you are dazed. Second, on your next turn, you may take one standard action before falling prone. From this point on, you follow the normal rules for dying. Lastly, you add your Constitution modifier to your death saves.
New Heritage Mutations
Alluring Scent (Utility)
Benefit: You emit a scent, subsonic noise, or psychic call that calms and attracts animals. You gain a +2 bonus to all Charisma based skills against creatures with an intelligence of 2 or less, and a +4 bonus on Nature checks when foraging for food.
Cost: 1
Cyberpath (Utility)
Benefit: You have a special affinity for self-aware machines (perhaps you are one, perhaps not). This may be an electromagnetic aura, an odd form of telepathy, or unusual senses. You gain a +2 to all Charisma based skills when used on creatures with the Android, Cyborg, and/or Robot keywords, and a +2 bonus to Technology checks when dealing with robots, cybernetic, etc, devices.
Cost: 1
Flexible Features (Utility)
Benefit: You can alter your appearance. While you can’t change your basic size or type (usually humanoid), you can significantly change the details. You can look like any humanoid of your size, and gain a +5 racial bonus to Bluff checks to resist attempts to penetrate this disguise. Looking like a specific individual is more difficult; you gain only a +2 racial bonus. Changing features is a minor action. You gain no additional powers or abilities by changing shape.
(Some may note this is pretty much identical to the morph power that’s part of the Polymorphic Bloodline; if you have this mutation and choose that bloodline, you get some useful enhancements to your shapechanging. )
Cost: 1
Love the boar’s tenacity racial ability. Alternatively, you could have called the power ‘too stupid to die’ given the boar’s weak will – but that would probably lessen its chances of being used by players (and being able to do something special when you are about to die is very popular with some players – I had a friend who wanted to play the gallant kit in 2e purely because it had the benefit of being able to stay alive long enough to recite an epic poem when he received mortal wounds).
I know that GW came up with porkers first, but whenever I think of creatures like this the cover to TMNT Road Hogs comes to mind 🙂
The “Too dumb to die” power is inspired by the dire boar in 3.x, which was annoyingly hard to put down because it had de facto +10 hit points compared to a creature of its level, and it was low level enough that +10 hit points was a goodly amount, usually enough to add at least one combat round. (It’s worse in Pathfinder, because it now lasts until -Constitution…)
The “Road Hog” literalization is a pretty old trope; I suspect the only reason Jack Kirby never used it in Kamandi was that he never quite got around to it. The wordplay of “boor” and “boar” feeds into the imagery as well, as well as the use of “pig” for any number of unsavory traits, even if this is unfair to the animal, as it is very savory. Mmmm…. bacon….
(I’m not sure, but I *think* there was a feat in some third party 3.x book that was “Too Stupid To Die”, and you needed an Int of 8- to take it.) (Well, let’s face it, much like Rule 34, the odds are that if you can imagine a D&D 3.x mechanic for something, some third-party publisher published it, and given how much of that stuff I wrote, I may have been responsible. 🙂 I sometimes find I have “original” ideas for mechanics that, when I look back into my own archives, I’ve actually written up more than once before with minor variants…)