I need help sorting the MM by real world culture

[shadowdragon]

I'm going to be starting an OGL Ancients campaign soon and I was wondering if I could get some help from someone who knows more about mythological monsters than I do. I'm trying to pick out the creatures from the D20 MM, MM2, Fiend Folio, and Epic Handbook that are based on real world mythology and sort them into their respective cultures. At the moment I'm only interested in creatures that come from Norse, Celtic (Gaul? The mainland Celts), Greek, Egyptian, and Arabian/Perisan cultures. Creatures from cultures other than those I mentioned (like african, indian, germanic, etc.), and those created about 500BC and later, can be left out for now, although I may do something with them later. Creatures from cultures like Assyria, Phoenicia, maybe Germany, etc. are probably best if they are included in one of the five cultures I'm interested in. If they don't fit anywhere then they should probably just be left out.

Edit: Made my topic a bit more specific.

 

[shadowdragon]

I've also been converting the creatures from the monster manual for use in my OGL ancients campaign and I've run into a bit of a problem. How do I convert spell-like effects? There are a lot of d20 spells that don't exist in any form in OGL ancients, especially the more offencive spell-like effects.

 

[Seroster]

I thought about trying to do conversions, but when I heard that there was originally a larger bestiary for OGL Ancients and that it would appear online (cough), I stopped in my tracks.

Don't know what to suggest about the abilities. What sort of ones are you thinking of?

Unfortunately I don't have time to take a look through the MM... but you might consider simply posting this over at ENWorld because it's a general question, and there are a LOT more people who read the boards there.

 

[shadowdragon]

Don't know what to suggest about the abilities. What sort of ones are you thinking of?

All of the ones possessed by real world myth creatures, like the phoenix from monster manual 2. Thinking about it now I may actually just leave the spell-like abilities alone. They represent inate abilities that just happen to duplicate certain spells from the players handbook. They aren't cast like normal OGL Ancients spells. I'll have to see how many of the spells used for spell-like abilities of real world myth creatures require a tweaking of their mechanics to work with the OGL Ancients system.

 

[Seroster]

What does the phoenix have - a fire explosion power or something? I'm afraid I don't have MM2.

In myth - and I think the tale of the phoenix might have been told in Herodotus - the phoenix was "just" a bird that could reincarnate. So I could see dropping its special powers.

BTW, giants do appear in Greek myth, usually as opponents of the gods. They're generally brutish, so the hill giant would probably be the appropriate type, maybe boosted with some fighter or barbarian levels to arrive at a final monster form.

 

[shadowdragon]

The phoenix has a bunch of spell-like abilities: always active - detect evil, detect magic, protection from evil; at will - blindness, blink, blur, color spray, cure light wounds, dancing lights, find the path, fire traps, fire seeds, heal, invisibility, misdirection, negative energy protection, neutralize poison, polymorph self, produce flame, remove fear, remove curse, see invisibility; 1/day - incendiary cloud, reincarnate, pyrotechnics, summon nature's ally IX, veil, wall of fire.

It has a challenge rating of 24. I would assume that a good chunk of that challenge rating comes from its spell-like abilities. It can also use metamagic feats on its spell-like abilities, which then take a full orund to use.

 

[Mongoose Gar]

BTW, giants do appear in Greek myth, usually as opponents of the gods. They're generally brutish, so the hill giant would probably be the appropriate type, maybe boosted with some fighter or barbarian levels to arrive at a final monster form.

Would the titan be more appropriate?

 

[shadowdragon]

I think the greeks had both titans and giants.

 

[Ordovician]

Yeah, titans were the big semi-godly ones, for the most part, the Atlas and Oceanus and Prometheus. Giants (or gigantes), like Enceladus, were usually fomor-types who were malformed. They were more bent on just destruction, I think.

Still, that said, I haven't seen Ancients, so maybe Mongoose's version of titans will work.

 

[Seroster]

The phoenix has a bunch of spell-like abilities: always active - detect evil, detect magic, protection from evil; at will - blindness, blink, blur, color spray, cure light wounds, dancing lights, find the path, fire traps, fire seeds, heal, invisibility, misdirection, negative energy protection, neutralize poison, polymorph self, produce flame, remove fear, remove curse, see invisibility; 1/day - incendiary cloud, reincarnate, pyrotechnics, summon nature's ally IX, veil, wall of fire.

It has a challenge rating of 24. I would assume that a good chunk of that challenge rating comes from its spell-like abilities. It can also use metamagic feats on its spell-like abilities, which then take a full orund to use.

Wow. That's just crazy IMO. I'd say do what you want with it... maybe give the phoenix a healing power based on something in OGL Ancients (there is one, isn't there?) because all of these powers are D&D'isms. I don't think the legendary phoenix was described as having anything like these. Then again I don't think any myth described anyone trying to kill the phoenix.

 

[shadowdragon]

Wow. That's just crazy IMO. I'd say do what you want with it... maybe give the phoenix a healing power based on something in OGL Ancients (there is one, isn't there?) because all of these powers are D&D'isms. I don't think the legendary phoenix was described as having anything like these. Then again I don't think any myth described anyone trying to kill the phoenix.

Actually, the Phoenix in the MM2 may be based off the Russian Firebird, which was supposed to have several magical abilities, including healing, and I think the ability to produce fire and bright light.