So, years ago I started a dnd campaign with some college buddies. It was homebrew, all written by me. While I won't go into the ENTIRE story, I will go over the main villain and a mechanic he had. To make a very very very long story short, the BBEG had somewhat possessed an NPC to help free his soul and power that was locked away during an ancient war. To do this, the BBEG taught this NPC runes belonging to an ancient yet terrible magic. These runes gave this NPC the ability to create creatures I called Cursed Variants.
They are basically... chimeras on steroids!!! Some of my favorite creations are as followed: A 2 Headed Cockatrice that could turn things to stone and then summon normal cockatrice from those stone creatures, A Sand Elemental that would split into smaller weaker versions as it took damage, A NPC half-orc he fused with a Storm Giant against the half-orc's will, A Flower monster he fused with one of the PCs (a let the PC control the monster, it was fun), A Pair of Hellhounds that controlled fire and lightning and many others. They are basically a creature the BBEG's magic would fuse with other creatures or monster's parts (like dragon horns, pieces of elementals, etc). Mechanically, I would use a creature as a base, look at what I was combining it with, and start just hitting them together. I'd change stats to take from all creatures involved to find good balances, add new abilities to the base to make it seem more dangerous (like a manticore combined with a baby red dragon that could set it's tail spikes on fire before shooting them off), etc.
That campaign had to end suddenly but recently I am reworking the setting to run it with some of the members again, with it taking place 20 years later in a reality where the BBEG won! With the BBEG winning, I wanted to expand the "Cursed Variant" idea! The BBEG is still trapped, with the NPC he made his puppet for a while trying to figure out how to make him a new body but no combo is working (I won't put the reason why in case one of my players decides to snoop. Look away don't get spoiled now).
The original idea I had was the NPC teaching more individuals this ancient magic. These new Mages, which I'm calling Cursed Enhancers (unless someone can give me a cooler name), can create Cursed Variants quickly using a special arcane potion/drug that they can inject into themselves before taking out creature parts to fuse to an individual within their range. This creates a sort of arcane cocoon for about 1 round before the Cursed Variant breaks out and starts, well, fighting. I want to show off this idea to the players with a boss fight against a Dragonborn Warrior that gets fused with parts from a Dracohydra by 2 Cursed Enhancers. Be aware these Enhancers are not HEALERS and usually don't stick around during a fight, often just doing their thing before disappearing.
I wanted to see other people's opinions on how else to use and expand this idea, showing how much has changed with the BBEG and the NPC's magic over the last 20 years.
Absolutely, yes, especially because it’s effectively nerfing other players healing attempts on that PC. No one would trade losing all healing except for the occasional lucky roll for a dozen-ish damage on average and healing of half that.
So, years ago I started a dnd campaign with some college buddies. It was homebrew, all written by me. While I won't go into the ENTIRE story, I will go over the main villain and a mechanic he had. To make a very very very long story short, the BBEG had somewhat possessed an NPC to help free his soul and power that was locked away during an ancient war. To do this, the BBEG taught this NPC runes belonging to an ancient yet terrible magic. These runes gave this NPC the ability to create creatures I called Cursed Variants.
They are basically... chimeras on steroids!!! Some of my favorite creations are as followed: A 2 Headed Cockatrice that could turn things to stone and then summon normal cockatrice from those stone creatures, A Sand Elemental that would split into smaller weaker versions as it took damage, A NPC half-orc he fused with a Storm Giant against the half-orc's will, A Flower monster he fused with one of the PCs (a let the PC control the monster, it was fun), A Pair of Hellhounds that controlled fire and lightning and many others. They are basically a creature the BBEG's magic would fuse with other creatures or monster's parts (like dragon horns, pieces of elementals, etc). Mechanically, I would use a creature as a base, look at what I was combining it with, and start just hitting them together. I'd change stats to take from all creatures involved to find good balances, add new abilities to the base to make it seem more dangerous (like a manticore combined with a baby red dragon that could set it's tail spikes on fire before shooting them off), etc.
That campaign had to end suddenly but recently I am reworking the setting to run it with some of the members again, with it taking place 20 years later in a reality where the BBEG won! With the BBEG winning, I wanted to expand the "Cursed Variant" idea! The BBEG is still trapped, with the NPC he made his puppet for a while trying to figure out how to make him a new body but no combo is working (I won't put the reason why in case one of my players decides to snoop. Look away don't get spoiled now).
The original idea I had was the NPC teaching more individuals this ancient magic. These new Mages, which I'm calling Cursed Enhancers (unless someone can give me a cooler name), can create Cursed Variants quickly using a special arcane potion/drug that they can inject into themselves before taking out creature parts to fuse to an individual within their range. This creates a sort of arcane cocoon for about 1 round before the Cursed Variant breaks out and starts, well, fighting. I want to show off this idea to the players with a boss fight against a Dragonborn Warrior that gets fused with parts from a Dracohydra by 2 Cursed Enhancers. Be aware these Enhancers are not HEALERS and usually don't stick around during a fight, often just doing their thing before disappearing.
I wanted to see other people's opinions on how else to use and expand this idea, showing how much has changed with the BBEG and the NPC's magic over the last 20 years.
Absolutely, yes, especially because it’s effectively nerfing other players healing attempts on that PC. No one would trade losing all healing except for the occasional lucky roll for a dozen-ish damage on average and healing of half that.
9apps