Back when I was running a PbP game in the Dwimmermount setting I was creating lairs to stock a hex. The dice came up with a cluster of cats in this mountain hex that also had a wizard’s tower and I started thinking on that combination.
I came up with the idea of a Wizard that had decided that a good way to defend his tower in layers would be to take some natural creatures and tweak them to be loyal, territorial and vicious. A sort of natural layer of defense in lairs of creatures that could stop invaders. I started thinking on what kind of modifications to those cats might a Wizard make. In the PbP they were Snow Leopards, I called them Phase Leopards, that were more intelligent and could blur their location. That brought be back to a creature I love and that I missed in ACKS … the Displacer Beast.
So this will be a good example of how to use the Monster Creation rules from the Monstrous Manual for ACKS II.
I’m going to go with the classic look of six legs and the spiked tentacles coming off the back.
I’m going to build the Phase Leopard as a Monstrosity. While it will greatly resemble a Snow Leopard, the Cat, Leopard entry from the Monstrous Manual, the base creature has been heavily changed from it’s original form.
A stock Cat, Leopard comes in at 4* HD … I’m going to look at a 6HD to 7HD range and see what that gets me. That puts it in the category with Tigers and Polar Bears which seems like a good range. Let’s go with 7HD.
Saving Throws … hmmm … I might make it save as a Mage to reflect its Special Abilities if I get a good roll but Fighter is always a solid choice. Either way it’s going to save at a level of HD/4 x 1d8 … so a base of 2 rounded up from 1.5 and multiplied by a dice roll of 6. So it’ll save as a 14th level creature. Fighter. That’s a solid choice.
Since it’s form is a feline I’ll take that as the base form. That will give a range of 1.50 to 1.53 for Body Mass Exponent. I’m going to go with the base 1.50. Lean and mean. The formula is (HD × 10)BME, as an exponent. So a weight of 585lbs. That’s pretty large. In the listing of cat sizes that puts it under Tigers and Lions for weight. I like it.
With the feline CCF of .06 it will have a carrying capacity of 35 stone. That will give it a large range of prey that it will be able to drag off.
That’s going to put it in the Large category for mass and size which is just where I wanted it to be. Keeps it in line with the other large cats.
Armor class is done at a rate of .8AC per HD up to 9HD. We’re at 7HD so that’s AC 6 with a -1 for Large size ending up at AC 5
A Feline form has an attack pattern of 2 claws and 1 bite with an average of 2HP of damage per HD so 14. Hmmm, a base Leopard is 1d4/1d4/1d8. That seems like a good pattern to follow just ramped up for size. A 1d6/1d6/2d6 would work perfectly with a average of 3.5/3.5/7. Who am I to argue with clean numbers like that.
Speed wise the Feline form is listed at 150’ to 360’ so a big range. I picture these creatures as being quite fast even for cats so I’m going to check the other cat entries for their speeds. Cheetah at 360’, Leopard at 180’, Lion at 180’, Sabre-tooth at 150’. Hmmm. I’m going to put them in the 240’ range. That makes them very fast for their size, those extra two legs are good for something.
Special Abilities, where the rubber meets the road. A Monstrosity has 2d6-7. So a range of 0-5. Normally I’d roll this out but I’ve got a vision for this creature that will need a certain number of powers so I’ll keep the cap of 5 in mind as I assign them.
The first thing on the list is the displacement ability. I pondered back and forth for a week or so exactly how to do it. Finally I bounced the idea off Arbrethil , excellent creator and wonderful writer, and decided that going with Illusory Duplicates would be the easiest way. His suggestion was a slight modification that each round on its initiative the creature rolls a 1d4 and if it has fewer duplicates than the result it increases its number of duplicates by the dice roll. Nasty. That will cost 2*.
Next I need to pay for those cat-like senses. Acute hearing and acute olfaction will be 2#. Class proficiencies Acrobatics, Climbing, Swimming will get me Quite Agile, Good Climbers, and Adept at Swimming for 2#. Swimming is General Proficiency so is ignored. Also Lightning Reflexes for 2# and Naturally stealthy for 1#. That’s 7# so almost 1*, I’ll count it as one.
The cat’s pouncing can be simulated with the Grab/Restrain power for another 1* leaving me one more power …. hmmm … I can take Bonus Attack, the pair of secondary's for 1d6 each and that will only be 2# since it keeps the average damage under 28 per round at 21 per round. I’m also going to take the Berserk ability for the other 2#, that will add a +2 to attack throws and immunity to fear.
That makes a total of 5 major abilities. So a 7***** creature. Pretty damned nasty.
Now comes Morale. I’m going to go with a +2 Morale.
Another fun part, the XP value. A 7HD starts at 440 with another 350 per * the creature has. So that works out to 2190XP.
Now the typical dungeon or wilderness encounter. For this I go looking back through the lore of previous editions to see how the creature was organized in the past. Treating them as large cat here seems to be a pretty good choice. But in that there’s some variety in pack size. I like the idea of treating them as a pride, like Lions but smaller in size to keep with the recommended levels. That would be Pride of 1d4+1 and a Den of 1d4+1 for both dungeon and wilderness. That would also help with their creator wanting a creature that would be protective of their territory. The standard 10% in Lair works as well. That simulates them out patrolling and hunting in their territory.
Monster Intelligence … hmmm … I see the base creature as animal intelligence. An instinctual hunter. I’m going to increase the trainability modifier from +1 to +2 and modify the training period from 4 months to 6 months. The creature is more trainable the the average cat given its background but its still willful and requires more than average time to train. Plus these creature would be very popular once trained, not so much in civilization.
Alignment. I pondered this one for a bit and there was a case to be made for Lawful, to make them structured protectors and Chaotic to highlight their creation against the natural order by a Wizard. However I’m going to go with Neutral and split the difference.
Monster Spoils, the natural urge of players to chop everything up for fun and profit. These are generally valued at the XP of the creature so 2190gp. Generally the spoils for a creature should be roughly equal to the number of *’s and this bad boy has five. I’m going to keep the list shorter and make the Spoils equal in value. I’ll start with the heart as a standard large cat, the brain as the source of the illusory duplicates, and the tentacles. The number of associated effects that go with those spoils are usually capped at the number of HD or special components. I’m going to go with the HD.
Brain (3/6 st, 1200gp, illusory duplicates, chameleon)
Heart (7 1/6 st, 545gp, silent step, swift sword, weapon +1)
Tentacles (4 st, 445gp, choking grip, weapon +1)
The pelt of a Phase Leopard based on its weight will come in at 1.55 stones and 150gp of value.
Lifespan I’m going to make close to large cat standards. The issue of Phase Leopards being breed in captivity for their value will likely be covered by their general rarity and the difficulty in capturing them. So that’ll be 0/2.5/5/7.5/14/21/28/35.
Trained Value following the formula on MM pg 399 comes in at 49,392gp. Untrained value comes in at just about an even 5,000gp so we’ve going to put it there.
Monster Treasure Type is going to be Incidental since they’re not Horders or Raiders. Based on their XP and the average number in a group it’s going to be just over 30K at 30,660 so that a P,M,K Treasure Type.
Whew, that was a pile of steps. Lets take a look at the stat block.
Phase Leopard: MV 80’/240’, AC 5, HD 7*****, #AT 5 (claw, claw, bite, tentacle, tentacle 2+), Dmg 1d6/1d6/2d6/1d6/1d6, Save F14, ML +2, AL N, SZ L, XP 2190; Special: Grab Attack, Illusionary Duplicates (at-will), Immune to Fear.
For the paid backers I’m going to do a few lairs, and try my hand at mapping them, and when I get back to Dwimmermount I’m going to map out that tower and surrounding lairs of Phase Leopards.
