Skin, Sinew, and Bone: (re-)Imagining Fantastic Creatures

Loggerhead turtle, Image by David Mark from Pixabay, contrast tweaked by Mike.
Is it 2 feet across or 2 hundred – how can you tell?
Of late, I’ve had to create fantastic creatures for several of my campaigns, and despite the clear and obvious differences between the game systems employed, I found myself struck by a number of similarities in the process employed.
When I tried to articulate those similarities for an article here at Campaign Mastery, it refused to gel into a coherent picture.
Now, I’ve been at this game long enough to recognize that when that happens, it means that you are on the edge of a fairly profound breakthrough in terms of process and awareness, so I tried again.
The discussion promptly skewed off into side-discussions that were ultimately irrelevant to the core question. So I scrapped it again, and started work again, from a slightly different perspective.
Which took me back to experiencing problem #1.
To cut a long story short, I had to discard a few assumptions that had been part of my approach to creating new creatures for almost a decade before I discovered a logical path through the process at a conceptual level.
Almost immediately, the results began to pay big dividends. In my superhero campaign, the PCs are about to have an encounter. I’d been dropping some hints as to the nature of that encounter as they played through the previous game session, and thought I had a good handle on what it was going to be. The only problem: not only was the nature of this encounter fairly predictable, given the circumstances and environment, but the hints and clues presented only made it more so. True, I had a plot twist in mind that would have put a new spin on the encounter, but that would have altered the result only in details, and not in kind. The predictability would remain.
This new perspective permitted me to reappraise the whole concept of the creatures to be encountered, while remaining true to the hints I had been dropping, and to produce an infinitely more interesting choice of creature – and one that the players will never see coming, despite the clues that have been given them.
So far as I am concerned, this validates the conceptual framework involved, so today’s article will offer it for the consideration and understanding of my readers.
Skin
I hadn’t been writing for Campaign Mastery for very long before I was introduced to the concept of re-skinning creatures from published sources to create new varieties of critter to encounter. If you factor in ad-hoc translations between game systems, this was the foundation of the approach that I have been using ever since.
In essence, Re-skinning means taking an existing stat block and set of abilities (defined within a set of game mechanics) from an existing creature and wrapping a new concept or idea around them. The name and some of the flavor text change, but the core mechanics remain as per the original – but because the trappings of the encounter have changed, and the concept of the encounter is different, the players never recognize the original model.
Yeah, right. If the players never recognize the original, it’s either because they’re lazy, or because there are a great many similar creatures that could have been the foundation. Because it can advise them as to the tactics to employ, they have a vested interest in making the effort, and that begins to defeat the purpose.
On top of that, there are the sociological problems that come with re-skinning. These are a little more difficult to explain, but I’ll do my best: it’s rare to throw away all the flavor text, that would constitute reinventing the wheel; but also preserved are the underlying assumptions that manifest in that flavor text, and sometimes those can be incongruous with the creatures as they manifest as a social structure. The distaff consequence is that you may have thrown something away that you should have kept.
In a nutshell, either way, re-skinning assumes that the resulting creatures as they manifest within your game will posses a homogeneity and consistency that makes rational sense – and that’s not always the case. Heck, it’s not always the case with the source material – though most of the monster source-books these days are far better than the AD&D monster manual (or worse, the creatures from Tunnels & Trolls).
Frankenstein’s monsters rarely posses more clarity of focus than the source donors.
It’s almost enough to cause me to recommend that the social structure of the creature should be the dominant factor in choice of the creature to be re-skinned – but, while that solves the consistency issue, it will rarely yield creature you want, even when re-skinned.
That’s because most GMs look at creatures from a game mechanics perspective first and foremost, and not as literary creations. To achieve what we want, if we are to start with this foundation, we have to look beyond mere re-skinning to replacing sinew and possibly even bone.
Sinew
The term “re-skinning” is highly appropriate, and embodies the problems that result – because what we’re talking about when we use the term is an act of superficial creation.
And if you only get the superficialities right, there’s a slim chance that the substance underneath will match the re-imagined surface details.
The ‘Sinew’ and ‘Bone’ of a creature contains the abilities that characterize it, both those explicitly defined within game mechanics and those merely implied by terms such as social organization, and the creature’s stat block contents. Everything, in other words, that remains unchanged in traditional re-skinning.
If we are to base our creature on something with the correct social organization, some of this material will be compatible with the substance underneath, and some will not. The material that is compatible is the ‘bone’, the core social constructs of the species and the abilities, both defined and assumed, that make that social structure a reasonable one for the target creation.
So the first step is to choose a creature that has the right social structure, and the second is to determine what parts of the description must be retained and what should be replaced so that our desired “skin” fits.
This often involves rather more analysis than is compatible with the quick-and-dirty “pick a monster from the book and make it fit” approach that is often recommended by proponents of re-skinning – or, at least, that’s how it might seem at first glance. The reality is just a little different – so long as you keep the core concept that you want to create in mind, the reality is that you can do this almost as quickly as you can glance and make a tick or a cross.
Except, of course, that you don’t want to mark up your source-books – if no other reason than the possibility that you will want to use the same source creature in multiple different “skins”. Nor are abilities etc often indexed, even numerically. So it will take slightly longer while you make notes.
Once you have the essential abilities selected, you then have to consider the bone.
Bone
The bone of a creature, the skeletal structure, starts with any template and the size and the number of Hit Dice or equivalent.
These decisions are fundamental to the capabilities of the end creation, so much so that some people have suggested that getting them right should be the starting point of any re-skinning process.
- Template: is this correct, and appropriate? If so, then any elements that the template provides elsewhere – which may be bonuses, stats, abilities, and more flavor text – also need to be conserved. If not, then those become voids that may be self-closing or may need to be patched.
- Size: in game mechanics, a creature’s size has relatively minimal impact. Psychologically it’s a different story; greater size justifying greater stat values, more hit dice, more abilities and more potent expressions of those abilities. But the importance of size is even greater than this already-murky relationship suggests; size is inextricably linked to behavior in ways that few understand very well, and one of the ultimate expressions of that behavior is social structure, which we have already determined. It follows that any size adjustment needs to be reflected in both the elements that we have already chosen to retain and any that we have marked as needing separate consideration.
- Of course, the relationship between size and Hit Dice (or points spend in a point-based system) must then be considered. It’s impossible to do this until any contributions from template and size are earmarked, because those are only indirectly part of this assessment. In a nutshell, the number of abilities typically goes up with increases in Hit Dice (sometimes in a linear relationship, sometimes not), and any already-included abilities including those from templates etc will increase in potency. It follows that if you are going to reduce the number of Hit Dice, you will need to reduce the breadth of abilities and may need to reduce the potency of those not so eliminated – whether these have been tagged to be retained or not.
- These considerations may also dictate the incorporation or modification of additional flavor text and explanatory material within the creature description.
The Re-skinning
Progress report: So far, we have chosen a template that reflects the social organization that is appropriate to the creation being assembled, marked for retention any flavor text that relates to it and any abilities that justify or reflect it. We have considered and either retained or removed the impacts of any templates that are part of this source, possibly replacing them with a different template completely; we have considered the size of the source creature and adjusted that to match the creation’s desired characteristics, reshaping the abilities and stats of the source creature accordingly; we have then considered the HD that do not derive or reflect size or template and scaled the results up or down accordingly, altering the number and potency of abilities accordingly.
So we’ve made major strides; in fact, by a process of elimination, we have eliminated from consideration everything that should not be impacted by a re-skinning, and scaled everything to a level appropriate for the re-skinning. In a nutshell, we know what we’re keeping and what we can replace.
It’s also been a lot more work than a traditional simple “re-skinning”.
In effect, the totality of the original source creature has been split into constituent elements which sum to provide those sources, and individually tweaked and marked as independent of the re-skinning process. Everything that’s left can now be re-skinned. as usual.
The best approach to doing so is to select a secondary source, preferably one that is already at the appropriate scale and has no templates to complicate the picture. Considering this secondary source one item at a time, answer one simple question: does this conflict with the material already established?
- If it conflicts, it needs to excluded, leaving a blank slot to be filled by the GM.
- If it doesn’t, it gets incorporated directly into the creation.
You then need to incorporate a description for the new creature.
Fur, Hair and Textures
The final steps are to fill in any blanks, if necessary by importing something from still a third source, and then read over the totality and make sure that it holds water. Because the results are polishing and usually even more superficial than a traditional re-skinning, I think if this as applying the final cosmetics – fur, hair, and texture – to the creation.
Part of this process is totaling the various elements that you have selected into the whole that belongs to the creation that you have assembled.
Making your life simpler
The way you annotate your work can make your future life a lot simpler. Rather than taking the time to write everything out, you can simply refer yourself to the source material, especially when it comes to abilities, together with any adjustments. The results are a list of bullet points that capture the entirety of that part of the description:
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A couple of explanatory comments about the above generic example:
- Note the separation of Abilities into three blocks – those from the source creature (bone), those from templates (sinew), and those from the second (or third) source creatures or created by the GM. This makes further adjustments and variations easier to implement.
- Note also the sequence of passages of flavor text at the bottom, which are numbered in the sequence of their generation but presented in a more typical and useful sequence. Each of these would (in reality) be one or more paragraphs.
There’s nothing inherently “wrong” with the concept of re-skinning. It’s when too many shortcuts are taken that problems begin to present themselves.
An Example
The GM has an idea: Giant Seahorses that are akin to underwater-dwelling oriental dragons. The only creature source-books he has available is the Pathfinder (1st edition) Bestiary and Bestiary 2.
The Sinew
First problem: the GM has no idea of the normal social organization of seahorses, so he can’t use that as a guide to the social organization of his Dracohorses, but he’s fairly certain that the standard Dragon social models won’t fit. After reflecting on the choices, he decides to let the size be his guide, and to base the creatures on marine life of equivalent size: Whales. In particular, he likes the notion of these creatures swimming in pods.
He also likes the notion that this species is sentient but uses this sentience merely to construct elaborate fiction, communicated in song – not something that’s mentioned in the Bestiary 2 entry for Whales, but that the GM is bringing in from the outside. He theorizes that they incorporate real events and navigational references as they are experienced, and that his Dracohorses would be able to navigate simply by recalling the story describing the route. This requires that they somehow tag their stories with markers that differentiate real experiences from fiction creation.
Reading over the Whale entry, he starts listing things that he thinks would carry over. Gargantuan, yes. Initiative +2: no. Blindsight, yes, low-light vision yes, perception +23 – to be unpacked, it seems high. +18 natural AC, no. Swim speed 40′, to be improved. Tail slap, needs more thought. Bite, no. Capsize attack – needs more thought. Stats – extremely high STR – to be reduced. High Con, yes. Average Wis, yes. Low Int and Cha – no. Can’t be tripped, yes. Feats: diehard, yes; great fortitude, no; improved bull rush; no; improved initiative, no; iron will, yes; power attack, no; skill focus (perception), yes. Which begins to answer the perception question from earlier. Skills, perception, yes, swimming, yes. Racial modifier +4 perception – no. CR 10, HP 15d8+90 – the +90 is from CON, so that will be a yes. The 15d8, and CR 10, maybe not – the first seems high relative to the second, and must be due to the size. That means that if the CR increases (which seems likely), the HD will also increase, at a x1.5 factor.
If I trim out all the “no” answers from that litany, I’m left with: Gargantuan, Blindsight, low-light vision, perception +19, Swim speed 40’+, Stats – high STR and Con, Average Wis, yes. Can’t be tripped, diehard, iron will, skill focus (perception), yes. Skills, perception, yes, swimming, yes. HP +90 (CON) at 15 HD from CR 10. There are a couple of maybes: Tail slap, and Capsize attack.
That tells the GM that he needs to think some more about his creations’ attack modes. He realizes that he’s been thinking about draconic breath weapons, but those don’t make a lot of sense underwater. Reading up on the Capsize special attack, he decides that his creature is to appear far more delicate than a whale, which is a blunt instrument in comparison; that says that the capsize attack is a no. He rather likes the thought of the tail slap being expanded into an area attack, a sweep through a range of hexes attacking multiple targets, but realizes that he will need some custom rules to cover the idea, which means that as written for the whale, the answer is no.
That’s all sinew, and a starting point for Bone.
The Bone
Bone consists of Template, Size, HD, consequent impacts on ability slots and potency, and any flavor text to be imported from these sources.
The Template
Whales use the Animal creature type, which the intention to increase INT rules out immediately. Instead, the GM wants to apply the Dragon template. That has a number of profound implications:
- HD: d8 becomes d12.
- Base Attack Bonus equal to total HD instead of 3/4 of HD. With whale at 15HD, this is a +4 to all attack totals.
- Creation keeps the good Fort and Reflex saves and upgrades the Will save from Poor to Good, to boot.
- Skill points increase by 4 per HD.
- Acrobatics is no longer treated as a Class Skill. Climb, Fly, Perception, Stealth and Swim are still treated that way. Added to the Class Skills list are Appraise, Bluff, Craft, Diplomacy, Heal, Intimidate, Knowledge (all), Linguistics, Sense Motive, Spellcraft, Survival, and Use Magical Device. However, many of these make no sense in terms of an underwater creature – Craft and Use Magical Device are particularly problematic, and Appraise and Survival are dubious, as are any knowledges related purely to inland/surface world conditions.
- Lose the restriction to INT 1-2.
- Add Darkvsion 60′ – except that we already have Blindsight from the Whale, so this seems to be redundant.
- Lose the Alignment restriction. However, some flavor of Neutral is probably still appropriate.
- Lose the Lack of treasure. However, it makes more sense if this remains as an added attribute to the finished creation.
- Weapons proficiencies are less restricted, especially if the Dragon can assume humanoid form. In this case, it can’t. The important thing is that if the Creation has a Breath Weapon described as a natural weapon, it is automatically proficient in its use.
- Lose the ability to be trained to wear armor.
- Add Immunity to Magic Sleep effects and Paralysis effects.
- The flavor text associated with the “Dragon” template doesn’t really fit – “reptile-like” isn’t right, and the wings don’t make a lot of sense in the context of the Dracohorse.
There’s a lot of things that appear to be common to most dragons but are not listed as part of the template. To find them, you need to turn to page 90, and the entry details on Dragons:
- Age Category Table: In general, this should be applicable to the Dracohorse. However, sea creatures generally mature faster and live longer than terrestrial creatures, so the “Age in Years” column probably needs some adjustment: 0-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-10, 11-20, 21-120, 121-360, 361-600, 601-900, 901-1200, 1201-1800, and 1801+ would seem more appropriate.
- The Ability Scores Table: We’ve already looked at the stats of a Whale in generic terms. The question is, do those adjustments fit the Draconic table, and if so, what are the “Base” scores for a Dracohorse? That requires an age category assumption, that we’re comparing adult with adult.
- The Whale has STR 38, but we’ve already said that we want to dial that back. However, page 292 of The Bestiary gives a base STR for Gargantuan creatures of 34 (and a base DEX of 6, a base CON of 22, which we’ll get to in due course), so if we take that off, we get a STR improvement of just 4, while an adult Dragon gets base+14 – which comes to STR 48, not a reduction at all. Which means that any further reduction has to be balanced with an increase that we can apply elsewhere. So let’s adjust the whale base STR by -10 for our creation, giving a total of 40 and a racial Base of 26 after size adjustment.
- The Whale has DEX 6, equal to the base value for creatures of this size. Dragons of adult age get Base-4 Dex, which suggests a DEX of just 2. That doesn’t fit with the view we have of nimble, maneuverable sea horses (albeit giant and draconic ones) – so let’s use that entire +10, and +6 besides, boosting the base. That gives us a DEX of 18 and a racial base value of 22. It also means that we have to find a -6 adjustment somewhere.
- The Whale has a CON of 23, which is one better than the base CON for size of 22. Adult Dragons get a CON 8 better than the base – but we’ve already said that this CON seems about right to us, so dropping the base for the Dracohorse by 8 not only pays the 6 we owe, but gives us +2 to apply elsewhere. That gives a CON of 23, unchanged, and a base CON of 15.
- The Whale has am INT of 2, to which it is limited by the Animal Template (that no longer applies). Dragons of adult age get an INT of Base+6 – so even if we leave the base at 2, the INT would rise to 8. That doesn’t seem enough, but applying the +2 left over from CON gets us up to a total of 10. Still not quite enough – Dragons are notorious for being smarter than they look – but it’s close. I think increasing the base to 6 – another +2 on top of the CON-derived adjustment – is good enough. So that’s INT 12, and INT Base of 6.
- The Whale has a WIS of 11, which we have already said seems about right. On reflection, it might even be a point or two too high – or too low. Dragons of adult age get base +6, and while that fits the general perception of dragons, it’s rather too high for this creature – besides, I already know that I’m going to need some points to boost the CHA. So let’s drop the base to 4, giving a total WIS of 10, and saving 6 points to boost the Charisma base.
- The Whale has a CHA of 5, which is too low in my personal opinion, but it is what it is. The adult dragon gets +6 to charisma – implying that if the two were equivalent (as assumed), the base would be -1. Adding the +6 saved from Wisdom to this gets it up to a base of 5, and a net score of 11. That’s still not enough – Seahorses are often considered quite pretty and iridescent creatures, and even at a gargantuan size, some of that charm should survive. In fact, I’m going to steal 10 more points from STR and apply them to Charisma – giving a base CHA of 15 and a net of 21. However, this also drops STR to base 16 and net 30. Which is only slightly less than the STR of a whale of equivalent size.
- The Draconic Age Category table also preempts the discussion of HD. We’ve already seen that the Whale has 15, and an adult dragon gets Base + 10 HD – so if they are equal, that defines Base for a Dracohorse as 5HD. Whether or not we want to dial this up or down remains to be determined.
- The same table discusses natural armor. The Whale has an AC of 22, comprising 10 base, -2 Dex, +18 Natural, and -4 size. Obviously, the DEX component is going to change because we’ve given the Adult Dracohorse a Dex of 18 instead of 6. That makes a huge difference! The key points here, however, are the +18 Natural and -4 for size. The latter is obviously still applicable, while according to the Dragon Age Category table, Dragons of adult age only get +14 Natural armor. That means that the AC 22 would drop to AC 18 from that alone, which will rise to the mid-twenties once the DEX adjustment is taken into account. That fits our mental image of a seemingly frail creature (relative to a whale) that is quite dexterous and nimble, making it a lot harder to hit than it might seem.
- The final entry in this column is “Breath Weapon” and that’s of particular interest. The adult dragon gets Base x6 Breath Weapon, so a 2d6 base breath weapon would become 12d6, a 3d6 base weapon would become 18d6, and a 4d6 base weapon would become 24d6. This still requires more investigation to nail down, but it’s a foundation.
- Next comes the Dragon Attacks and Speeds table. Gargantuan Dragons have a fly of 250 ft and have the “clumsy” maneuverability trait. That doesn’t fit – the Dracohorse swims, it doesn’t fly, and our vision is that it is anything but clumsy despite it’s size. So that’s one aspect of the Dragon “insertion” that will need custom treatment.
- Bite attack? Not with this creature. But I note a later column, “1 tail sweep”, which seems to fit exactly the default attack mode that we had in mind for this creature. So transposing the content of the two columns should work well, and maybe dropping the results one size category – so that only at Colossal size does the Dracohorse get a bite attack. Consulting the attack mode description, I note that the range of effect would also need to be adjusted for smaller dragons; 30ft is nominated for gargantuan, so 25ft for huge, 20′ for large, 10′ for medium, 5′ for small, and 1 5′ space for tiny, would seem to work.
- 2 claws? Seahorses don’t have arms, so that doesn’t seem right. But losing this attack mode could justify an increase in the breath weapon’s potency, so that a smaller base attack value is needed to reach similar levels of damage. At gargantuan size, two claws doing 2d8 damage each = 4d8; so a 3d6 base breath weapon would become 18d6+4d8 – which is a bit better, on average than 18d6+4d6 would be, which totals 22d6. So that seems to check out.
- The next columns relate to the range of the breath weapon, and requires us to choose between a line attack and a cone attack. To be honest, given the environment in which the two apply, the ranges for the cone weapon seem more rational. But until we decide on the breath weapon’s nature, we can’t decide. Checking the attack description, however, shows this as a Supernatural ability and not a natural attack – and we definitely want it to be the latter. I’m thinking more along the lines of a pressure wave expelled from the snout of the seahorse, perhaps based on a Water Elemental attack mode.
- Dragon Senses – “Dragons have Darkvision 60ft and Blindsense 60ft” according to page 90. This is NOT quite the same thing described in the template. A whale’s blindsight is 120ft. I often find it more useful to contemplate how many rounds of vision creatures have – whales swim at 40ft per round, maximum speed, so that gives them just 3 rounds warning. Dragons are supposed to have acute senses, but 60′ – if the dragon travels at 250ft per round – is less than 1/4 of a round’s warning. Throw in the clumsy maneuverability, and by the time a dragon can perceive an obstacle using these senses, it’s too late. In effect, Dragons can’t use anything close to their natural speed except when the weather is good and the light bright. Underwater is a whole different environment; water is great at absorbing light.
- Ultraviolet light is fully absorbed at approx 25m (82 ft) depth.
- Violet colored light is fully absorbed at approx 100m (328ft) depth.
- Blue colored light is fully absorbed at approx 275m (902ft) depth.
- Green light gets to about 110m (361ft).
- Yellow light gets to about 50m (164ft).
- Orange light gets to only 20m (66ft).
- Red light only gets down about 5m (16ft).
- Infrared light is the least energetic of all, and is fully absorbed at about 3m (10ft) depth.
- Visibility underwater is defined as the distance at which a test pattern called a “Secchi Disc”, and the global record for visibility is 79m (259ft). Many factors act to reduce visibility.
It’s sensible to assume that a creature’s range of vision would evolve to suit its speed and vice-versa, to give it enough time to change course if confronted by an obstacle or predator. The three-round figure used by the whale is reasonable for a creature with good maneuverability and sufficient acuity, which the whale has. If our underwater Dracohorses are to have an underwater speed of 60ft, they need 180ft range of visibility, increasing to 240ft or even 300ft if they stay “clumsy” in maneuverability. It also makes sense that creatures would not retain any capacity to see colors that won’t support this range of vision – green, blue, and violet are in, everything else is out. This focus would enable greater acuity within those color ranges than humans can claim. The base amount provided for Dragons is nowhere close to being sufficient, and will need to be increased.
- Frightful Presence: I’m not sure this quite fits, either. “Charming presence”, however, might be useful.
- Spell-like abilities: A dragon’s caster level for it’s spell-like abilities is equal to its total HD. That’s fine.
- Damage Reduction: Dragons gain this as they age, but it’s different for each different type of Dragon. Their natural abilities are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.
- Immunities: in addition to those listed in the template, Dragons gain immunities to 1-2 additional forms of attack; which ones vary with type of dragon.
- Spell resistance: A dragon’s SR is 11+ it’s CR.
Arguably, almost all of that if not all of it, should have been part of the Template. At the very least, the template should have referred the reader to it! But, setting that aside, let’s think about the specifics of those last couple of items, which vary with Dragon Type – Damage Reduction and Immunities.
- Black Dragons get immunity to acid and the ability to breathe water. They live in swamps. They also get DR 5/magic at Young Adult, rising to DR 20/magic as Wyrms.
- Blue Dragons get immunity to electricity and the ability to create or destroy water. They live in deserts. Damage reduction is as per Black Dragons.
- Green Dragons get the same as Black Dragons, and live in forests. Damage Reduction is as per Black Dragons.
- Red Dragons get the Fire Subtype, which has to be looked up elsewhere in the book. When you do so, you find it confers immunity to fire damage and vulnerability to cold. Damage reduction is as per Black Dragons – again.
- White Dragons get the Cold Subtype, which presumably confers the opposite abilities to the Fire Subtype. Damage reduction is (surprise, surprise) the same as for Black Dragons.
- Brass Dragons: As per Red Dragons.
- Bronze Dragons: Immunity to electricity and the ability to breathe water. Damage Reduction remains unchanged.
- Copper Dragons: Immunity to acid. DR as usual.
- Gold Dragons: as per Red Dragons.
- Silver Dragons: as per White Dragons, plus immunity to acid.
So much for varying by Dragon, at least as far as DR is concerned – I expected that some types would get DR sooner than others, or might get different amounts of it..Not the case at all. So the DR can translate across directly to the Dracohorse. Additional immunities…. I’m tempted to include “Breathe Water” but have another source for that. Electricity tends to be fairly rare underwater, and poisons and acids tend to get diluted very quickly, except in regions where vast quantities are being released – volcanic eruptions and vents – which are also where you’re likely to sustain heat damage, so the Fire Subtype doesn’t make much sense, either. That leaves the cold subtype as the only possible contender from the existing Dragon types, or something new.
According to Wikipedia, “The temperature of the deep ocean drops gradually with depth. As saline water does not freeze until it reaches -2.3?C (27.9?F) (or colder, as depth and pressure increase) the temperature well below the surface is usually not far from zero degrees” (C). That’s cold enough that the cold subtype makes sense, enabling the Dracohorse to penetrate to greater depths.
Except for the effects of pressure, that is. For every 33ft (10m) you drop, the pressure increases by 14.5 psi (1.019451 kg per square cm, or 0.9866665 atmospheres). Humans can only survive pressures of about 2.5 atmospheres – above that, the oxygen we breathe becomes toxic. Tardigrades (tiny creatures also known as water bears, about 1.5mm in length – the exposed tip in a sharpened pencil would make two or three of them), in contrast, can cope with more than 1200 atmospheres. But if we restrict ourselves to normal fishy depths, that’s about 1000m down, or about 100 atmospheres – some forty times what humans can cope with. Using gills instead of lungs can account for some of that, the rest would have to come from different biochemistries. But “immune to crushing damage” seems completely reasonable, under the circumstances.
I mentioned that I had spotted a second source of Water breathing that seemed appropriate to me. That source is the aquatic subtype. “Aquatic creatures always have swim speeds and can move in water without making swim checks” – sounds right. “…can breathe water” – there it is. “…cannot breathe air unless it has the amphibious special quality.” that’s fine. Treat Swim as though it were a class skill – why do they need to, if they don’t have to make swim checks? Maybe there’s a technical reason that escapes me. It doesn’t matter anyway, because they get that from the Dragon template.
Size, CR, & HD
Everything we’ve talked about so far is based on a gargantuan adult. That gives a minimum CR of 6. But, contemplating the scale of such creatures, I am continually tempted to drop them a size category – leave the gargantuan to the Great Wyrms and whales and drop down to something closer to a Dragon Turtle in size. That took me to the core rule-book, and the most confusing table that I’ve ever seen – it seems to imply that a creature that stands about 100 ft tall, i.e. has a footprint, standing, of 20′ x 20′, is the same size class as a creature that is 20′ long and 20′ wide. The terms used in the table are not explained in the rules, and neither are the columns, so I might be misinterpreting them. In search of a little clarity, I turned to my D&D 3.5 PHB, and page 150. I found “gargantuan” illustrated by a purple worm of unknown length, rearing 50′ high, and with a base footprint roughly 20′ wide and about 25′ above-ground. For stability, I would expect the below-ground portion to be at least another 25′ in length, probably more. I couldn’t find an equivalent illustration in the Pathfinder core rules – but the details in the size tables look virtually identical.
In other words, the standard size tables make a lot of assumptions about shape and posture and dimensions that may not apply. But a gargantuan creature would be about 100′ in length, tip to tail, if ‘unfolded’ into a straight line.
Seahorses have a snout and head, a neck, a body, and a tail that coils beneath them. Length is usually measured from the top of the head to the bottom of the lowermost coil. The coil can be as much as 2/3 of the total length of the creature (measured by eye from photographs), but only about 1/2 the usually-measured length (ditto). So one-third of 100ft in length is about 35 ft; giving a rough size of 75′ in head-top-to-coil-bottom length. A Huge creature, in comparison, would only be about 2/3 of the total length, so from 70ft, we would be talking about something only 47′ tall. That makes a big difference – instead of being about 15 times human size, we’re talking about something only about 5 times. On top of that, seahorses tend to be relatively thin, side-to-side – so a huge sized creature would be roughly the same side-to-side width as a human, or a horse. That’s just too thin. So my first instincts, to keep the creature gargantuan, seem to have been correct.
Whales have a CR of 10. Dragons have an age-based CR – so a CR of 10 for an adult creature would be a base CR of 2 for a Wyrmling. Adult dragons, looking at them by individual type, are given CRs of 11 to 15. That suggests that the base needs to be increased in the case of our Dracohorse, and yet, it makes sense to me that an individual Dracohorse would be slightly down on the CR of most Dragons. So I’ll leave that as is.
Which brings me to HD. According to table 1-2, in the Bestiary, a CR10 creature of the Animal type gets 15HD. That matches what we have for the Whale. Looking up Dragon for the same CR, we get 12HD. That seems reasonable, since the HD in question are larger. But it does mean that the bonus HP are going to diminish – from the 90 that they are now, to 12/15ths of that value, or +72.
According to table 1-6, that gives a base BAB (Fast track) of +10, a Good Save of +7, and 5 Feats. It also means that some of the feats that were inherited from Whale may need to be reduced in potency. Well, as it turns out, the only one that might be affected is Skill Focus (Perception). The other feats that were retained from Whale – diehard and iron will – are all or nothing, you have it or you don’t. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have to be taken into account, of course. That leaves space for two more feats. Looking over the list of specifics imported from “Dragon”, I don’t see any feats listed. So we have two feats free to allocate.
But, at the moment, we have Blindsight 60′ and Darkvision 60′, and neither of them adequate, given the Dracohorse’s anticipated speed through the water of 60 ft. I calculated earlier that 240′ would be better. So, if we get rid of the Darkvision, and take a second load of Blindsight, we can go to 120ft. Take Blindsight twice more using those remaining feat slots, and we get it up to the 240′ we want. That gives the Dracohorse four rounds at top speed to maneuver, despite being saddled with a “clumsy” maneuverability.
Come to think of it, what exactly does “clumsy” mean? Maneuverability is not explained in the core rule-book, or anywhere in the bestiary that I could see. I checked twice to be sure. In the Hero System, maneuverability is described by a Turn Mode, which is the number of spaces that you have to travel in a straight line before you can make a 60-degree turn. That works, because it’s a hex-grid based system, and the hexes have a uniform size. What’s more, base Turn Mode is calculated from your current speed of movement – it’s either 1/5th or 1/10th of your speed in the universal scale that they use for character abilities, I forget which. You can buy increases or decreases to that amount. One memorable PC could only turn on a skill check; 75% of the time, he could do so, the rest of the time, he had to advance another Turn Mode worth of spaces before he could try again. For some reason, he was always flying into things…
Flying into things, or swimming into them, is not what I want this creature to be doing – not by accident, anyway. But the squares system used in Pathfinder doesn’t lend itself to a simple conversion of the Hero Games solution. In other words, other than GM interpretation, I can’t tell what “clumsy” means. Never mind, though.
The Re-skinning
Stats have already been determined, so all that remains is spending the extra 4Î12HD=48 skill points, which I won’t bother with right now, and writing up the descriptive paragraphs, which I’ve skimped on more than a little in the course of this example. What I want is a placid, easy-going sea creature with a foul and violent temper when provoked.
Dracohorses tend to aggregate in pods of up to 16 individuals, consisting of one leader of Mature age or better, 3-5 adults of younger age than the leader, at least 3 of whom are females, half of any remainder in young and juveniles, and the balance in wymling and very young. The young are playful, carefree, curious, and explorers; the adults keep close tabs on them and intervene should anything really dangerous approach, but otherwise let the young explore as desired. Every few hours, the leader will cast the latest experiences of the pod in the form of a fictional narrative incorporating real events and settings. What brings these narratives to an end, no-one knows for certain; a single narrative can be sustained and extended for decades or even centuries. Dracohorses have very long memories. While they have a level of Wisdom that leads them to make mistakes on occasion, this memory means that they rarely repeat a mistake. They communicate only through their songs, which no surface-dweller has ever learned to translate. It is believed, however, that marine Deities understand the songs. There is some evidence that Dracohorses can understand Human and Elven languages.
Their breath weapon distinguishes them from other marine life and characterizes them as Draconic. It is a pulse of water that travels in a straight line from their snouts to strike a target. It is relatively more potent than might be expected from the size of an individual.
Dracohorses are at their most dangerous when working as a pod. They are quite intelligent enough to coordinate attacks, and if you thought one breath weapon was bad, contemplate being hit by ten or more at the same time.
With all the core decisions made, and since I’m running out of time to get this article finished, I’ll leave the rest to the reader. What’s important is that you recognize the flaws in the standard process of re-skinning, and can see that this variation on the technique, although a little more work, avoids those pitfalls to yield a better end-product – better in terms of the quality of interaction possible between creature and environment and PCs. This process yields creatures that feel like they “belong” – and not like they were put together using something akin to a dartboard. And it doesn’t matter what your campaign genre or chosen game system is, that’s always beneficial.
Update 22 October 2019: There’s More To The Story
Readers should be aware that I have written a (much shorter) sequel to this article which builds on the content above and integrates it into a more holistic whole-of-campaign approach. You can find the continuation at Further Thoughts On Exotic Creations (opens in a new tab). Cheers!
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October 16th, 2019 at 6:11 pm
A long article, thank you for sharing.
October 17th, 2019 at 3:00 am
My pleasure, Elle.
January 4th, 2020 at 9:16 am
* prologue … NOT “prolog”
January 4th, 2020 at 12:49 pm
Hi, Richard. I’m from Australia, where – like Britain – we use “prologue” and “colour” and “standardised”. But most of my readers are from the USA, where the correct spellings (according to my sources) are “prolog” and “color” and “standardized”. I am told that “prologue” is making some inroads there as the preferred spelling, but it’s not the dominant choice, yet. But thanks for keeping me on my toes :)