Ménage à Monster slowly stirs from its torpor, gathering the strength to birth more horrors into the world… But this isn’t a lame filler post (well not entirely) – unlike my last post, I actually have real content to present. It just happens to be on another website.
At the end of August, the good reptilians at Kobold Quarterly posted one of my creations on their website: the flesh mime.
I’ve never been completely satisfied with the direction 3e and 4e D&D took with the doppelganger. So I designed the flesh mime to move the monster away from being a sophisticated assassin infiltrating surface society, and return it to the predatory shapeshifter of the 1e Monster Manual that viewed humans as food. My second design goal was to make better use of the ‘spot the imposter’ trope (you know, ‘shoot both of us it’s the only way to be sure’) than the game had in the past, so flesh mime not only impersonates you and steals your abilities, but only the truly observant can tell you apart from the monster (I think that skills are an under-utilized dimension of 4e combat: ‘Insight, it’s not just for skill challenges anymore’).
The picture is J.J. Abrams’ updated version of the salt vampire from Star Trek (whose cameo was unfortunately cut from the finished film), which, it should be obvious by now, was one of the inspirations for the flesh mime.
While you’re at KQ, you should also check out the Nihilimentis, a monster I designed for them way back before Ménage à Monster existed. The Nihilimentis owes its inspiration to another monster from a long running SF show – the weeping angels from Doctor Who. I’m proud of the risks I took with this creature, but keep in mind that it was created before the Dungeon Master’s Guide II, so the damage output needs to be tweaked a little to use it in current games.
In house news, unpacking is just about done, and despite problems with the closing (which I’m told is not out of the ordinary), and the city digging a giant hole in our driveway on the day we took possession (not quite as normal), my partner and I are settling in very nicely. The city even fixed our driveway this week which is good, because I was half expecting the aforementioned giant hole to start spawning hordes of tiny stop-motion animated demons like the ones from The Gate. I hope there aren’t any zombie workers trapped in our walls – drywalling after they break out is a pain in the ass.
Tags: 4e, Blather, D&D, Pop Culture
