Some ideas about monsters...

[Ethan the Red]

Recently I designed a demon named Iziaxth "Spawn of Dagon" which my PC's will have to face and I am quite looking forward to it. (Stats posted under "person, place, or thing" thread).

One unique idea I had for such a sea demon creature is for it to have a large shell covered in barnacles and odd spikes which has the effect of causing a 50% chance of sundering weapons automatically! I thought this was a surprising twist on an oft neglected combat function. (Sundering is almost unheard of in my game). What about monsters with many tentacles that make automatic trip attempts? Any other ideas? I just like the idea of a sunder possibility for simply attacking! There are other ways to hurt the creature which are outlined again under the "person place or thing" thread.

Feedback would be GREAT!

Also, while I am continuing sharing ideas another simple one I seem to like is "sea lotus" which only grows in the ocean. It appears as a lily and when applied over a subjects mouth is causes them to stop breathing (suffocation starts immediately)- However, when immersed in water land based creatures can effectively breath freely for up to an hour. In essence it reverses normal breathing patterns. Underwater combat here we come! Should be a good session... heh heh

 

[Clovenhoof]

Just some thoughts:

1. if you mean that characters weapons have a chance of getting sundered when _attacking_ the shrew: don't do it. The rules don't even account for this when attacking stone statues with a hardness of 10 or more. Some stupid barnacles ain't gonna justify it.

2. when the sea-demon attacks, you can very well give her a special power that turns parried attacks into successful sunder attempts. In that case I'd make it so that an attack roll that exceeds 10 but doesn't meed the Parry defense counts as a Sunder attempt, so you roll sunder damage normally.

3. Note that Dodging characters will not be affected by this. If you don't stick your weapon out to be hit instead of yourself, it cannot be damaged.
If you want to break a dodging character's weapon, you must call Sunder attempts normally.

4. How is the encounter supposed to end? If you want the characters to flee and not kill the hag, then it's okay if some or most of their weapons break. But if they have to kill the shrew or be killed themselves, you must not rob them of all their means to accomplish the task. Your players will not be impressed by your ability to TPK.

5. I repeat: stick to the rules. You can design a power as described above that performs sunder attacks under credible circumstances, and roll out the sunder damage accordingly. You cannot just sit on your throne and trumpet "the sword crashes against the barnacles and it breaks".

 

[Sutek]

There's some weapon break rules that are optional too. On a CRIT, armor loses -1 to DV. Weapons have a change to break. Look it up.

What you could do is suggest that this happens every blow assailed at the beastie, but that might not end up too fun for the players (as Cloven said). If you just want to toss in a greater change for broken weapons, you can do exactly as you describe (weapon damage on every strike) but you gotta give an out.

Finesses weapons can get round it.

There ya go. Battle axes and bashing away at it will likely rend a weapon useless. But getting shifty, sneaky jabs in here and there is what you need to battle the creatures and get past it's nasty shell.