In our story, the infamous Cult of Fire has been recruiting new members from amongst the monstrous races of the Spine of the World mountains, eventually building up a following of giants that then began raiding the orcish Kingdom of Dark Arrows. The king of the orcs, Obould XIX, soon has little choice but to seek help against the raiders, who're slowly starving his mountain kingdom into submission. The Sellswords took the job of relieving the siege, and off we went. The only problem with this was that the Dungeon Magazine articles aren't written for a giantish fire cult, they're written for regular old giants who've fallen under the sway of some other mysterious power. So that leaves me with the problem of finding ways to introduce the necessary elements of the Fire Cult--a not insurmountable problem, but one that nevertheless requires a little planning and game design.
Fortunately, there are a few obvious places where changes can be made. One of those is in the non-giant monsters that inhabit the adventure, one of which is an adamantine dragon named Ezevon. Now, I like metallic dragons okay, and adamantine dragons in particular have some interesting mechanics, but the backstroy that Wizards of the Coast provided for this particular dragon's inclusion in the story was perfunctory at best. Thus, Ezevon is a prime target for replacement with something that makes a little more sense in our particular game. And that's how we came to the little piece of homebrewing below.
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| My version of Ezevon, built using the Monster Builder. |
So... What do you think?
Very nice! I'm surprised you didn't give it fire and poison resistance of any kind though. Also, don't the triggered actions need to be either immediate interrupts or reactions?
ReplyDeleteI really like the sudden flare especially since powers of that level often have multiple keywords. For Lava Vent, you might want to make it difficult terrain too in addition to the damage. Growing Heat will be a nice surprise, but tough to manage...it's a 4 round build up to a free attack.
And speaking of which, this creature is a one-man wrecking crew! So round 1 it can use Growing Heat (no action), Lava Vent (minor), Breathe Weapon (standard), a bite and claw (double attack, with action point), get a second bite (Instictive Bite), AND finally has two triggered actions. Admittedly the latter two are very situational, but regardless. That is a lot of actions!
Hey, thanks for your thoughts. First off, you've totally convinced me that I should make this a Controller rather than a Soldier.
DeleteBeyond that, the base monster came out of the Monster Manual 3 (as a 15th Level Elite Brute), so I blame WotC for the lack of Fire and Poison resistance. I'll have to add that... and make a few other modifications as well. For example, I realized right after I published this that I should have made the Breath Weapon attack both Fire and Poison, so I've got to fix that, too. There may well be other things as well.
But anyway, I've been considering a post of the way the economy of actions changes between the various tiers of play, and as you note, this monster is an excellent example of that. With that in mind, I actually think the Solos with the newer design elements are TOUGHER at higher levels than multiple monster encounters are. For one thing, you can't kill them off a piece at a time.