STILL Not Dead (Terrors & Tactics Updade)

I was just thinking: with the way that you set the servitor's humanoid form and the optional oversized trait, it doesn't really need a giant form - and neither does the avatar if you expand the avatar's All Shapes And Sizes to include humanoids.

My phone ate my original reply I started shortly after your post, so here's take two on a new day;

First, the reason why the giants are distinct from humanoids with the avatars is because I wanted them to have different ability scores and skills to better reflect their nature as always being gigantic.

Humanoid avatars get two of STR, REF or INT depending on their element and +2 to any three skills.

Giants always get STR and END, Fitness Proficiency and +2 to Intimidate.

If "All Shapes and Sizes" were used the Fire, Sea and Storm Giants would get +1 REF/INT instead of +1 STR/END and that doesn't feel very "giant" to me.

I'm less concerned about that with Servitors because they're not necessarily flesh and blood (I could see an eight-foot tall being of pure light being swift but not strong) and the humanoid has no restriction on STR based on element type so they could easily choose STR if they want a more traditional giant.

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For the Succubi, I'm taking a cue from 4E where they became devils, because temptation rather than destruction was their jam. In my cosmology that always made them Astral, just like devils in 4E came from the Astral Sea part of the cosmos.

My general rule for Avatars vs. Demons/Demonspawn vs. Servitors is that Avatars represent natural forces that would exist whether Man was around or not. Demons represent the corruption of those natural forces. Servitors represent mostly mental concepts or other things dependent on Man. They may have associations with elemental things in the form of symbols, but their core is mental concept.

For example, while the Sky King is associated with the sky (what is always above you) and storms (power incarnate) his true aspect is law and rulership... the rest are just symbols to help Men envision him. Likewise, truth feels like sunlight and lies like darkness and so is associated with sun and night, but the Storyteller's aspect is truth, lies and story.

Even the Earth Queen, who seems relatively elemental is not truly about nature, but man's relationship with it. As the Earth Mother she is about man controlling nature through agriculture and domestication of animals. As the Mother of Monsters she is the terror of the wilds and wild beasts that might prey on Man.

So some examples of what I'm thinking (not all of whom would get a write-up in the monster section because they'd never be fought);

- Banshees: Servitors of The Banshee (might rename them the Moros; i.e. Dooms; which is the Greek term for them).

- Muses: un-statted Servitors of the Storyteller.

- Keres: Choosers of the Slain, Servitors of the Blood God.

- Furies: Punishers of Oathbreakers, Servitors of the Sky King (generally the Tyrant side more, but they are generally regarded as viscous but fair in the myths... so they might also work as an ally against a particularly wicked oathbreaker.

- Nightmares: Embrace the pun, they are the dreams of terrible horses given form.

- Devils: While none of the gods directly claims credit for them, they embody the deadly sins of Pride, Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Sloth and Wrath. They are a common source of further pacts to increase their power for Astral casters who turn Warlock.

- The Sphinx: I dropped it in as an Avatar which happened to have an interest in ancient lore and could produce illusions via "heat mirage", but I think it'd work a LOT better as a Guardian Servitor who protects dangerous knowledge for the Sun Lord and tests worthiness using riddles and illusory puzzles.

- The Earthbound Elven Gods: They're a weird case in that they'd probably be best built as level 16-18 Champion-tier opponents using the Servitor species and the PC-Light rules (though I could use Potent Spark High Elves instead of Servitors if I really had to).*

Ironically, I wouldn't make Valkyries into Servitors at all. Traditionally they are psychopomps; spirits who guide the worthy dead to their rewards. So in my setting they'd be a special order of Fetches within the Grey Host who specialize in sorting through and protecting the worthy dead on the field of battle (which are also breeding grounds for angry and unsettled souls prone to letting the Shadow in and spawning new undead).

Which also means, yes, you CAN play an Earthbound Valkyrie PC right out of the box.

* One interesting thing to ponder is the degree to which Astral gods themselves have free will. Can the God of Truth tell a lie? Can the God of Law break it?

Astral theologians would argue that the gods define the very nature of their aspects and so reality conforms to their wills rather than their wills conforming to reality. Its a bit chicken and the egg though because the gods came into being as these concepts grew in the minds of Men (helped along by the Hegemony of the First Empire getting large numbers of people to believe in the same things).

But its just as likely the Gods are as constrained by the nature of their aspects in what they can and cannot do as the Servitors they create.

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I'm not certain which other Servitor types might have been dumped out into the Mortal World. The only one for certain is the Elves/Archons/Changelings. That may be because the Realm of Dreams was closest at hand when the Cataclysm struck (and death was obviously VERY close at hand) or pure luck of the draw of constellations/planetary alignments at the time.

I'm sure SOME were dumped out somewhere, but my intention was that elves would be the vast vast majority along the same thinking of "down with the easy answers produced by needless symmetry."

More interesting to me than just dumping whole populations of them out into the Mortal World due to the Cataclysm though would be... what happened to those who were in the Mortal World on business when the Cataclysm hit? What happens to a Sphinx guarding a hidden cache of knowledge that gets obliterated by the Cataclysm and, when they to return home in the aftermath, they find themselves stuck in the Mortal World and had to do the most dreaded thing of all... Improvise?

Heck, that might even explain the core of the "break/birth of free will" for Elves. Its not the Cataclysm directly or just exposure to the Mortal World... its being dropped into a situation where their base 'programming' (for wont of a better term) can't resolve what they're experiencing. A succubus stuck in the Mortal World would probably never need to develop free will because it could just keep seducing its way across the world and shapeshifting to move on to the next conquest for eternity without needing to question its existence. The same for a guardian servitor tasked to guard a vault that has laid undisturbed for millennia (it wouldn't even be bored... guarding is its jam... its whole reason for being... and more to the point, its like asking your smoke alarm if it gets bored hanging on your wall for years doing nothing).

But the elves were dumped out of the subjective landscape of the dream realms where every dream was given form into an objective reality where only hard work delivers your dreams. What does a dream servitor do when it is now stuck in objective reality? It has to improvise. It has to essentially break parts of its 'programming' in order to continue to function in a reality it was never intended to do more than visit the insides of people's heads in.

The hierarchy sought to recreate their dream world as closely as possible by forcing the lower tiers to do the dirty of work of maintaining the illusion for their leaders. It somewhat works because their purpose was to fulfill the dreams of Men and they're still fulfilling dreams in a way (just not the dreams of Men anymore).

Meanwhile, dark elves are those whose 'programming' instead broke in the direction of "I'm going to find my own dreams."

Gnomes never had to break because keeping up with children's dreams required so much improv work that the free will necessary to improvise (including becoming physical imaginary friends) was hard coded into them. Ironically, the gnomes were the most advanced and evolved of all the Servitors, so much so that they have their own entry.

Heck, now that I think about it, I've already incorporated the concept of "the break" into my material about gnome psychology and how they deal with learning about the concept of death that you don't just bounce right back from. Specifically;

Learning that other species who die don’t just come back like gnomes do is often a formative moment in a gnome’s current lifetime and often leads either to despair or a determination to risk their own lives to keep others from befalling such a horrible fate (after all, the worst they would lose is a few memories and they can always get more of those).

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Finally, I can see the GM waiving Restricted Archetype and Unbreakable Allegiance for a a PC-allowed Servitor species. On the other hand, some players might actually really enjoy the role-playing challenge of having to work around something so hard-coded into the PC's nature; like having a flaw in some other games like "cannot tell a lie."

Splitting the avatars that way does make sense if you're looking to emphasize the giants' size on a constant basis. You probably could re-rig the humanoid's ability scores, but it really wouldn't be worth the time.

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You're right: the idea of servitors being stranded, and especially those whose programming runs into the blue screen of death, is very interesting. The elves provide the most likely example: the servitor's likely going to try and replicate their programming - the sphinx in your example might try to protect something else.

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The other servitors are interesting - I'm seeing a lot of Greek influence with them, especially the Furies. And the Sphinx does work better as a guardian servitor than as a fire avatar. As for the devils, I thought that you'd blended the devils in with the demons. I know that you mentioned the one acid devil a while back, but I thought he was just a demon.

Well, the other reason for making Giants a specific category inside avatars is the same one behind your logic that even if servitors were a base species the elves should be distinct so people can find them without too much looking or thinking about it.

Elemental themed giants are such a huge part of D&D lore, not to mention the original myths they were pulled from, that I think they should be a clear example vs. something you have to squint to see (my sense is that a lot of people wouldn’t think of 9’ tall as “giant” even though the the average human (5’ 6”) would only reach up to their belt.

Technically dragons should probably be distinct from beasts too for the same reason, but there’s not as much distinct from other large elemental beasts and the jump from elemental beast to “dragon” is a bit more intuitive I think.

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Servitors trying to find the closest match is pretty much my thinking for the majority of stranded servitors; though having some basically do a 180 like the dark elves (from acting out people’s dreams to trying to find their own dreams) will keep PCs on their toes.

For example, the truly broken Sphinx might decide that mankind doesn’t deserve the knowledge it has (after all, that knowledge might be what led to the Cataclysm that destroyed its precious cache of secret knowledge) and so raids the libraries of various realms to steal what it wished and destroyed the rest.

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I went with more Greco-Roman names because the pantheon most Astral PCs are likely to interact with is the Praetorian Imperial Church and their gods are very Greco-Roman as well. It also distinguishes them a bit from the demons with their more Arabic/Babylonian/Semitic mythological names (Ifrit, Shedim, Jinn, Ghouls, Molech, Tiamat, Pazuzu, Lilith).

I should also note that “devil” is more an internal name than what will show up in the book... the Succubus is the “devil” of Lust for example. Devil is a functional shorthand for Servitors that embody negative human emotions and actions and seek to increase them in the world. Sloth Servitors endeavor to get Men to be lazy and neglect their duties. Envy Servitors disguise themselves as other Servitors and grant gifts to the unworthy in order to provoke envy in those who feel they do deserve it.

But like Jessica Rabbit, they’re not bad, they’re just drawn that way. They didn’t choose to inspire bad behavior, that’s just what they’re built for. That’s the distinction between them and demons. Demons were created to be angels, but they chose evil (i.e. they chose to go against their created purpose).

The main reason for the “devils” though is that I agree with 4E’s design assessment that you don’t need monster entries for things you’re not going to fight and most of the Imperial Pantheon’s Servitors are benevolent. You don’t need stats for the Muses who only tend to manifest to provide inspiration to frustrated artists, writers and poets. The healing servitors who actually do the work when an Astral Benedictor uses the Regeneration enhancement on an ally don’t need stats either.

You need stats for the stuff you’re going to fight and in the case of the Astral powers... that’s servitors of the dark gods and “devils” is an excellent shorthand for those.

Not much to report from over the weekend. The start of spring break canceled this past weekend and next’s sessions.

That said, based on the PC-Light changes and Servitor NPC species, I’m doing a bit of shuffling on my demon opponent entries. Specifically I’m re-working them to be in line with their tethers and the Demonic NPC spellcasting path.

The practical result of this is two main lines of each type of demon;

- Summoned [demon name]: standard tier opponents which represent a simple version of what would be summoned up by an Abyssal Spellcaster or from an Abyssal Object.

- [demon name] Host: elite tier opponents representing a simple version of someone used for the Demonic Possession tether (just as a default PC-light custom opponent would be an elite).

The couple of Champion-tiers I’ve designed will be reworked into Hellborn (basically all the non-malfean demonic hybrids like hell hounds and some of the really extreme cambions). The Tiamat entry scaled down to level 13 (maybe with a level 8 huge variant) could be used as is for the Leviathan and Moloch’s entry scaled down a bit would work as a Surtr-like Cambion Lord.

What this means is I need to reshuffle from the previous couple of level journeyman-tier standards, an expert-tier standard and elite, a master-tier elite and a level 16+ champion... to a journeyman, expert and master-tier standard and elite (still six, just a different six).

This will bring the opponent entries more into line with the demon lore and also captures the notion that even Tiamat herself can only manifest so much in the Mortal World (limited by what the host can sustain; Tiamat pouring her full power into a host would “pop” them like an ocean trying to fill a water balloon).

But this also means the PCs can encounters a host of Tiamat in journeyman-tier and work against her plots and she basically levels with them (even if they kill or free one host, she could always turn up in another). The same would go for Molech, Lilith, Pazuzu or some demon lord of the GM’s creation.

There’s also nothing saying she can’t possess a leviathan as a host (perhaps even one upleveled back to 18 because her discples have been strengthening the host with abyssal power for decades) and just use its stats for a big final battle either.

But the more I thought about it, the less my current entries made sense. There’s no reason to ever stat out a demon’s true form because their true form doesn’t even HAVE stats as we understand them. They are immortal and incorporeal (both in the true, not game mechanic, senses of the terms) just like all the primal spirits and only gains stats (and the limitations thereof) when they manifest a body in the Mortal World (i.e. an avatar for those not confined to the Outer Darkness.

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This also does raise a question I’m pondering though. Seeing as how I’ve literally only used it for dragons, the hydra and singular Demon Lords... is a Champion threat type actually needed?

Could the elites pick up some of the champion mechanics and have just grunt, standard and elite threat opponents with most of the really high level elites using mostly half damage split attacks (i.e. instead of one attack for 30 damage it makes two attacks or targets a burst 1 for 15 damage) so they’re still a threat to high level PCs in a larger group, but could be used as a defacto solo against lower level ones?

This is also partly spurred by the thought that PC dragons can never actually become as tough as the champion opponent versions because PC-builds essentially cap at “level 15 elite” in terms of power... which is maybe equal to a level 7.5 champion if you squinted.

I’m not doing anything with it yet beyond looking at numbers, it’s just something I’m pondering because while I really love my champion mechanics (champion’s resolve plus actions stepping down one type from main to minor to free to trait* is just elegant) I’ve found I’m just not seeing a lot of opponents where it’s justified making them champions; whereas I’ve found plenty of cases where elites makes sense.

My thinking at the moment would be that I’d trash the current elite action rules (i.e. one extra attack or attack an area without splitting damage and a minor action removes one condition from you) and replace them with slightly weakened champion rules (stage down or end one effect per tier instead of all effects, actions step down one type but don’t get the free extra target per action like they currently do).

Then maybe expand the opponent level range up to level 20 or higher (which is possible for PCs if using optional rules) or put a bigger focus on actions that provide damage mitigation for things meant to be really tough.

* free actions are only usable once per turn each, so the next quickest version would be for them to be a trait... a benefit that functions every time it’s triggered.

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Another fun notion that came in as an idea for an interesting utility was “falling/climbing/jumping/swimming resistance.” The idea being that you take less damage from a failure when performing that action (only half the margin of failure instead of full damage).

It feels like something fairly situational; especially compared to a utility that gives +5 to the check, both making any damage less likely and effectively reducing any damage you do take by 5; but it was an interesting suggestion in light of forced movement and condition resistance also being a thing.

But maybe as some sort of minor luck based magic item it could find a place (say a “ring of boons”).

I would say hang on to the champion rules - the fact that champions are so rare makes them special. When a champion takes the field, you know some shit is about to go down. Besides, you could easily expand your roster of champions later on - perhaps titanic Hollowers or massive Golems that aren't quite Dreadnought Golem-scaled. Or heck, one of the embodied Elven Gods could easily work as a human-sized champion.

You’ve convinced me about Champions. Even if they’re rare, having the option is probably worth it and, as you mentioned big golems and the embodied elven gods are good candidates for champions. I really do want to establish a line though where they’re all essentially things that are impractical for PCs to be; embodied gods, massive robots, five millennia old cambion lords, hydras and such all have that element to them.

I’m thinking I still might try out the scaled down champion rules I mentioned for some of the elites to see if it makes them any easier to run or build though.

While it hasn’t been “broken” per se, I have noticed that elite monsters with two full strength attacks that run off a single main action (ex. the ogre lord) are a bit swingier than ones where they’re built with an AoE (i.e. can’t target the same creature more than once) or minor action second attack (better scales with action loss effects vs. two full attacks from a single action) instead.

Most obvious is there’s almost no point to dazing or stunning them. Daze them and they still get both attacks with their own main action. Stun them and they use their minor action to end the stun and with their regained main action to use both attacks. Conversely, if they couldn’t remove the stun they’d be unable to attack at all and if the cleanse action only dropped it one stage they’d have used their ownly action on the cleanse and be unable to act as well.

A champion basically gets two things in terms of attacks to make it the equal of four opponents; each attack action is a full strength multi-target attack (can target two-ish creatures per action) and each attack action only costs a minor action to use (so can use two per turn). Combined with champion’s resolve it means the champion always gets at least a minor action so can target two-ish creatures on its turn.

The elite only gets one of those two, but I’m thinking I gave them the wrong default one (target two-ish with one action) and they’d work better with the other (i.e. minor actions allow two per turn). The death knight is one of the few elites that uses the “minor action attack” model (mostly because it was the most interesting way to scale it up from the basic wight) and it is by far the smoothest running of my elite tier opponents.

So I want to try some changing up some of the elites to see if they run any better using the minor action instead of the split main action option. Which allows it one attack action against a single target even if stunned and without needing the ability to remove conditions from themselves.

I’m also thinking of seeing how changing some of the lower level dragons (level 6 or less) into higher level elites looks in that schema. A level 1 champion dragon would have 100 Edge and do 10 damage to two targets each with its two attacks. That’s equivalent to a level 6 elite dragon with 100 Edge and two attacks that do 20 damage each (or 10 to two targets if made into AoEs or multi-attacks).

That said, just a level 6 champion dragon (200 Edge; hit four targets for 20 each) would take a level 16 elite dragon to match that Edge and damage so it would really only work with the smallest of dragons (levels 1-6 at most).

One thing it will do though is increase the treasure for the smallest dragons because level 1-5 is CP times 5c, but level 6-10 is now 10c and 11-15 is 20c).

It also suggests a life cycle where PC dragons are all of the young elite types and they should cycle into the adult stage (where it settles into a lair) about the time the humans and similar mortals are at the end of their lives so 100-120 years or so to reach full adult status and probably enters the “titan” stage around 200-240 years after that (so total of 300-360 years) and this is why the champion dragons aren’t good PC material... they passed the young adventurous social stage by that point.

If there’s a more efficient and effective way to run/build elites I want to know. I want the best game system I can offer for people. I’ve not got any playtests to prep for this weekend so I may as well see whether this amounts to anything.

Minor update: If nothing else, going through the elites caught some math errors. The Ogre Lord was just about the saddest elite out there... no role action boost and damage actually only in line with a level 5 when it’s a level seven.

It makes sense - the ogre lord was one of your oldest elites.

Non-playtest update. I've finished going through all the elite opponents and the switch from "get free main action or multi-target" to "actions stage down one step" has resulted in much cleaner designs where the minor action to end one condition isn't even needed to keep them competitive. It is definitely going to be the standard for elites.

The existing demons have been completely reworked into Lesser (Level 1-5), Default (Level 6-10) and Greater (Level 11-15) Summoned (standard) and Host (elite) varieties). Because of the changes I had a couple of extra stat block layouts which are being re-fluffed as the basis for the additional demons;
the Shamir (Rust), Wendigo (Slush) and Zebul (Vermin).

The stats for the two champions (Molech and Tiamat) are still included, but the background for them has changed. The stat blocks now call them the "Vessel of..." and are the result of particularly intense decade long rituals (involving mass sacrifices and rare components) to create a perfect vessel for the Demon Lords to inhabit that allows them to use considerably more of their power than a typical host (and therefore something for PCs to catch wind of and do their best to thwart).

By contrast, Pazuzu has no such vessel because "Pazuzu is chief of the Shedim; leading by example in bringing as much destruction to the world as it can coax its mortal worshipers to inflict. He is unwilling to wait for his demon priests to create a perfect vessel for his essence, but uses whatever host he can obtain to wreak destruction wherever possible."

Lilith is much the same... "Unlike many of the other demon lords, Lilith doesn’t waste her worshiper’s time with the crafting of special vessels for herself. Instead she swaps from host to host as her whims dictate, though her preference is to possess females of exceptional beauty." Basically Lilith changes hosts the way a fashion model swaps dresses during a show.

Basically, instead of needless symmetry, I'm establishing the demons who are long term schemers (Molech, Tiamat) in bringing maximum ruin and those who just exist in the moment to destroy everything they can reach right now.

Another update is to the dragons. As mentioned, I changed the lowest tier into Elites instead of champions which actually made them more deadly in some ways (as their single target attacks got considerably stronger because the elite varieties were 5-10 levels higher than the champions with the same Edge scores), but also gave them proper sized hordes (even the forest dragon has 1000c in treasure now).

It also led me to create a fourth category for each of the dragons... a young version that's 5 levels lower than the ones I switched from Champion to Elite and more in PC territory (including using the oversized medium rules).

This also led me to a fluff element about dragons that I think works well for explaining PC dragons vs. the champion tier varieties. Young dragons (say under three centuries) are essentially more social and energetic and work as PCs, but once they hit their true adulthood (i.e. go from elite to champion) they not just get bigger, but also become more antisocial and sleep a LOT more (as in, sleep for months on end unless disturbed... even the plotters tend to just lay on their hordes and give instructions to their minions most of the time and woe be to whoever actually makes an adult dragon stir from its rest).

Finally, I've begun working on the Horrors; the dreams of the dead demon emperor. The Horrid Mass and its detachable eyes is complete and I've decided that the Gallu (as a demon that drags people into the underworld) is actually going to be one of these Horrors and got the weakest version of it created.

Another one for the Horror pile is the Dybbuk; a hostile shadow spirit that clings to an individual like a curse and tries to drive them to homicidal paranoia as it corrodes the person's will (the monster version is for a person its driven completely mad with options to allow PCs to rescue them from the Dybbuk; though a Cure Affliction ritual will probably be needed to restore their mind).

I'm going to be trying to hammer out some additional opponents the rest of this week. Now that spring break is over I've got another playtest coming up and we'll see how they like some of these new beasties.

The Zebul is obviously a corruption of Beelzebub, but what is the Shamir? I know it's the chain demon you were talking about earlier, but I couldn't find anything under that name.

The dybbuk is perfect as a shadow monster, and the gallu's habit of dragging people into the darkness to be tortured has more cultural weight than the gallu being a rock monster.

Shamir is actually just the Arabic word for “Rust.” Given Ifrit, Jinn and Shedim, that seemed appropriate.

Also, I decided to rename the brine demons since it seems people are a lot more familiar with your basic undead draug than the nautical myths associated with the name. Instead I’m going with Kul’ul... which is short for Kulullu, a fish demon birthed by Tiamat (one of seven monsters) in her war with the Babylonian gods. So that makes all the primary demon types Arabic/Semitic in origin.

Zebul (which, yes is a corruption of Beelzebub... itself a corruption of Ba’al Zebub) and Shamir round that out. The only reason Slush ended up as the Wendigo is because the ancient Arabic/Semitic just didn’t have anything useful in terms of a snow/cold monster (I could have used Sheleg; the Hebrew word for snow, but it’d just be a Wendigo by another name... so why confuse things).

I also ended up moving the chain demon concept to the Gallu (think something like Bob Morley from a Christmas Carol... only the Gallu IS the chains dragging Morley into Hell/the Shadow World) because the Horrors don’t have to be tied to specific elements like the demons do so unbreakable black chains that bind and enslave you (its special opportunist attack deals psychic damage to those it grabs and stages to compelled... with the fluff that one of the gallu’s chains remains attached to the compelled person (literally burrowing into them at the base of the neck to be extra disturbing) as long as they remain compelled by the gallu.

I envision the Gallu as the embodiment of the dead demon emperor’s dreams of re-enslaving all mankind in inescapable chains.

So instead I’m reworking the Rust demon into something more like an actively malicious rust monster (though it can’t affect magic items)... with a more typical rust monster as one of the demonspawn (like the hell hounds and leviathans).

One common theme for the Horrors ironically is that they don’t actually kill all that much. One important element of my cosmology is the soul is inviolable. You can’t destroy them or imprison them. What the monsters have to do is torment the person until they give themselves over willingly to the shadow. The Horrors need their victims to choose the eternal darkness before it can kill them or their victim’s soul escapes back to The Source.

The dybbuk tries to drive their target to believe everyone is out to get them until they’re stabbing at every shadow lest it hold the things tormenting them in the corners of their vision. It’s ultimate goal is to goad the victim into doing something the victim believes is unforgivable so that in death it’s soul will hide in the shadow rather than return to The Source.

Thanks for the info on the Shamir. Them no longer being the chain demon also works, since the elemental demons are about inversions/corruptions of the element they represent. The rust monster itself was a sadistic invention by Gygax, so making them actively malicious seems to let the DM channel that bit of sadism into the roleplaying.

As for the gallu, I'm used to them being vaguely humanoid, but the idea of them literally being the chains that drag people off is a neat idea. I could easily see them having a somewhat humanoid form when not wrapped around somebody.

Also, them not wanting to kill their prey makes horrific sense, and it's similar to the kind of world that the demons would make - an eternity of torment via possession.

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Given that Arab and Semitic cultures live in the desert, it makes sense that they don't have much for snow/cold monsters. Yeah, the desert gets cold at night, but it still doesn't get snowy.

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I kind of figured that the draug would cause confusion - Skyrim pretty much solidified them as generic undead for the current generation. Now, Kul'ul, that sounds cool as hell. I can't help but note the similarity between the inspiration, Kulullu, and Cthulhu. Given that your demons pretty much ate Lovecraft's shtick alongside the standard Christian demon, it works.

Yeah, I intend the Gallu to essentially be akin to the Chain Devils in appearance... the main difference being that the body inside is a hapless victim (and rules are included for using area effects on them).

As I've fleshed out the Gallu they've gotten, if anything, even more horrific. I ended up giving a Ø END score which makes them immune to a lot of things (like needing to breathe or eat), but also prevents them from regaining Edge without a specific ability. That ability is now Body-Snatcher... the same one that transforms them from a swarm into a humanoid (by engulfing a victim) now also allows them to regain Edge by resting while its in effect as it literally leeches life from its victim (who still needs to eat, drink and breathe).

One weakness they have is that they greatly dislike sunlight and are shadowed by bright light in their chain form, but unlike the undead they aren't damaged by sunlight and, if using its host's eyes, are then not shadowed by bright light. Basically, if you can free the victim or catch them without one, the gallu all get a lot weaker.

The truly horrific part though is the "Gallu Slave Pit"; a Massive Champion version of the Gallu that barely moves, occupies but does not fill its space and uses captured victims to feed its ability to spawn additional Gallu (including new Slave Pits)... making it essentially a plague when one pops up in the mortal world with a quest needed to find the Slave Pit and destroy it in order to end the threat.

I'm actually thinking this "spawning" element might be a common theme to all the Horrors.

The Horrid Mass can spawn Horrid Eye grunts to attack with so maybe there's a champion tier Horrid Mass that spawns other horrid masses (perhaps by absorbing creatures and using their parts to build new ones... its the embodiment of the Demon Emperor's haphazard experiments to augment his slaves (basically an even worse version of how the dwarves with their failing organs were made).

The Dybbuk might be a literal infection (giving me a reason to finally nail down the curse/disease/affliction rules)... a paranoia disease if you will who's final stage is transformation into a full Dybbuk host capable of spreading the disease even further.

Another I'm looking at is basically a monster version of the sphere of annihilation. Given how Edge works in the game, its damage would be you avoiding being sucked into its maw and I'll need to incorporate rules for essentially "if this would reduce you to 0 Edge you can burn a heroic surge to instead remain where you are (basically the equivalent of a failed death save on a hit)."

So enslavement/despair, objectification of others (literally only useful for their body parts), homicidal paranoia and the embodiment of nihilism. I feel like I should probably go read up on the seven deadly sins or something because the Horrors really are shaping up to be the embodiment of every wicked thing men have done to their fellow men.

Yeah, it almost sounds your idea of the astral devils, the embodiments of sin, would be better suited as Hollowers/Horrors. By the way, why did you switch from Hollowers to Horrors?

I’m debating nomenclature for both the dreams of the dead Demon Emperor and for what the dead Demon Emperor should be called. Hollower is 100% contingent on what the thing that was the Demon Emperor is called.

In terms of the debate I’m not sure Hollow is quite the right term. The emptiness is right, but it doesn’t really specify what its empty of.

As cliched as it would be, something like “The Shadow” at least specifies it is the absence of light (the spiritual light of The Source in this case) and is probably less confusing in that it is also the power behind the Shadow spellcasting path (similar to how having everyone refer to it as The Source instead of primals calling it The Great Spirit reduced confusion).

So if it’s The Shadow or Tzel or Zil (the Hebrew or Arabic words for shadow) or something like that... obviously calling them Hollowers doesn’t make much since... especially if they’re not really so much hollowing things out as inflicting the dreams of the dead Demon Emperor on the world.

So Horrors is a convenient term for them until I work that out. They could just as easily be called Banes or Cthons (as in “Cthonic” i.e. things associated with the Underworld)... but Horrors is a nice general term I haven’t used for anything else yet so I won’t get them confused with other stuff until I do work it out.

Another entry for this crew I think are going to be my Shades (i.e. the original iteration of goblins/orcs/ogres; soulless shadows of the murdered) as general foot soldiers for the Horrors... though I might go even more extreme in the idea that instead of being just black and white (like the fetches) they’re entirely pitch black (maybe with pinpoints of light for eyes and maybe a mouth just because pure black wouldn’t suggest emotion very well).

Speaking of orcs and such... one comment I got that I’m not particularly fond of, but figured I should at least float for additional feedback, is that I should drop the species name Mutant for something more fantasy-based (the specific example was that even though they’re clearly robotic, I call them golems).

The suggestion was that I should call them Trolls (since there are countless varieties in actual folklore) and the Troll D&D Classic (long armed, giant, regenerating) could be renamed to something like a Hulk or Fomorian.

My thinking is “Mutant” is nice and clear for players and just how much the Praetorian Empire’s magi-tech resembles sci-fi tech is up in the air enough that Mutant could be a term they used (though why golem and not robot, droid or “Ay’Aigh” is a question... maybe it was just a brandname that stuck... like kleenex for all tissues?).

Still, I’ll least consider anything so figured I’d pitch it out there. One problem I admit to having in this regard is that I stare at this stuff every day and familiar is comfortable, but my eventual audience will be seeing it all for the first time and what impression will they have is a lot harder for me to see at this point. I think Mutant is better than Troll, but is that because of familiarity or fact?

ETA: another thing in Mutant’s favor in my mind is it makes the need for distinct truebreeding subtypes like Orcs, Ogres, Trolls and Trogs more obvious versus “why are only this one type of troll part of the orc empire?” Troll as some sort of singular hyper-variable species vs. multiple species created by the same event.

I'd say that The Hollow is empty of everything - it's an eternally hungry void. On the other hand, if The Hollow doesn't work out, you could call the Hollowers the Cthons.

If you do include the Shades, I think they need to be more grotesque and warped than the previous iterations. They seem too mundane compared to the other Hollowers/Cthons.

***

Another consideration is that somebody like Ms. Bladedancer or Sister Jadia are hardly trolls. On top of that, you've got mutant features for multiple eyes, multiple legs, chitinous armor, tentacles, and other wild things As much as trolls do vary in mythology and media (to the point that TVTropes's "Our Monsters Are Different" entry on trolls goes "All Trolls Are Different."

Well, things got crazy busy over Easter which is why there’s been a lack of updates. I was sponsoring a kid coming into my church so had retreats, special church services and so forth going on, but now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

First, I did decide to stick with Mutants, since, as suggested, Troll doesn’t quite fit every variation of mutant.

Second, I did a bit of streamlining in character creation. I removed base defenses from classes entirely and made it a choice of two arrays assigned to Dodge, Fort and Will as you like; 11/11/11 or 12/11/10.

Some new players were occasionally missing some of the secondary modifiers, particularly with the Spellcasting Paths where it was a couple layers deep (i.e. Spellcasting Archetype says ‘see Spellcasting Path’ and then the Path gives one set of numbers, but another selection for Focus score adds +1 to one score or ‘lower of X or Y’).

This makes it straight forward and entirely contained within the Derived Traits section. It also means someone could choose to go either extreme towards one defense but weak in another (ex. STR 1, END 2, REF 4, WIT 1, INT -1, PRE 3 with base defenses of Dodge 12, Fort 10, Will 11 gives you Dodge 16, Fort 12, Will 14) or go for balanced defenses... the same abilities with a different spread of Base Defenses could be Dodge 14 (10+4), Fort 14 (12+2), Will 14 (11+3) or just relative to Ability Scores (Dodge 11+4, Fort 11+2, Will 11+3).

More options... less complexity. The main supporting rules that needed to be changed were the universal Specializations like “Roll With It” since just using your best score when you could build with a 16 in it would be too strong.

Instead those Specs now let you use the other scores... so if you ended up with a Dodge 16 (12+4) Fort 10 (10+0), taking Roll With It would give you Fort 14 (10+4) instead of Fort 16 (i.e. use Dodge defense instead).

* * * * *

Another minor change, but one I’ve been considering for awhile is that I added the short, long and reinforced bow (along with thrown) to the list of weapons the strong skilled combat style can use their STR for. In real life, strength plays a huge role in being able to draw and fire a bow. The thinking in this case is while they might lack the ability to quickly aim for and strike a vulnerable point (i.e. the REF approach) they have the STR to draw and hold a bow with a heavy draw weight for the extra second or two to line up a solid shot and because their bows have heavier draws the arrows don’t have to be quite as precise to deal damage (i.e. the REF bowman shoots into the helmet’s eye slit, the STR bowman puts it through the helmet’s faceplate entirely).

Crossbows and projectors remain REF only (Crossbows are actually designed to not need STR once loaded and Projectors never need STR at all) since STR can’t help them aim better.

Conversely I decided to put a slight limit on the swift combat style, limiting the melee weapons it can use REF for to one-handed (which by default includes offhand and double weapons) and versatile weapons (whether used one or two handed). This is actually fewer weapons than you’d think... great axes, greatswords and the like mostly. Pole weapons can actually be wielded as double weapons (though this costs them their reach) and normal spears are versatile to begin with.

The reason behind this is that Strong just wasn’t a very popular build choice. Swift really only lost a point of speed from climb/jump/swim (Armor defense os a wash, Ref+2 vs. Str-1+3), full access to every weapon and got better Acrobatics and Stealth checks to boot.

Hopefully that will swing perceptions to a little more balanced between them.

* * * * *

The Horrors are getting more horrific and a common theme is beginning to emerge for them; spawning and transmutation. It started with the Gallu enslaving people and their “Slave Pits” as places that both spawned more Gallu by growing more chains and taking temporarily compelled victims and making them ‘permanent’ meat puppets of the newly created Gallu.

What turned it into a theme was I was looking for where to slot in a critter called the Eyeless who worked in conjunction with the Horrid Mass. The Horrid Mass could already span Horrid Eyes, but I finally decided that it should also create the Eyeless as well; by consuming victims and warping them into the Eyeless (where do you think it gets its eyes to spawn new Horrid Eyes from?)... essentially smelting victims down to make mind-controlled slaves out of (if you can subdue an Eyeless and use the Cure Affliction ritual on them you can actually restore them).

So that’s essentially the theme with the Horrors. They’re cancers inflicted on the Mortal World by the dreams of the dead Demon Emperor. Left unchecked they will continue to grow and consume everything around them and trap Men they consume in unending nightmares of various forms.

Next up for design is Entropos... a living black hole that sucks in everything around it and eventually uses that mass to divide like a cell. Unlike the previous two you’ll need an actual raise dead to recover any of its victims (I’m structuring the mechanics so creatures can spend surges if the Edge loss from resisting being sucked in would result in you hitting 0 Edge... when you’re out of both you’re dead and it sucks you in where victims suffer the time dihilation effects of a black holes; slowly torn apart at the atomic leabel for eternity or until the Entropos is destroyed and you mercifully die and your remains revert back to real space (where they can be raised normally).

As for its spawning aspect, I’m thinking that Entropos might also be the source of Shades... they suck in victims, but leave their shadows which turn into Slender Man-like creatures of shadow that seek out new victims for the Entropos to consume (Entropos itself is very slow... probably Fly 1, but immune to Forced Movement... it relies on Shades to find it large populations to consume and bring it victims in the meantime).

And all of these Horrors are quite willing to work with the Undead and visa versa.

* * * * *

One final bit this week I’m debating about is if I actually need the Astral and Shadow damage types. It turns out only my one of my oldest undead (the Necromancer/Lich) and the (equally ancient) Ogre Mage even use Shadow Damage. The actual undead (Animated, Ghouls, Wights and Wraiths) use a combo of cold (life draining), psychic (fear effects) and untyped damage (physical blows) for their attacks.

Similarly, only Husk Malfeans, Energy Missile and the Shadow specialization allow players to even deal shadow damage (which undead are immune to).

I haven’t designed any Astral monsters past the rough sketch stage yet, but the only astral damage PCs have available is the Astral Spellcasting Path optional trait, Energy Missile, the Radiant Aspect and effects like Bless Weapon and Holy Water that deal damage to things vulnerable to Astral Damage.

In short, I’m wondering if I really need them as distinct damage types or if I could entirely subsume their damage into a mix of cold/psychic (shadow) and fire/psychic (astral) plus appropriate conditions (ex. the wraith’s life draining touch is already a combo of cold damage plus a fatigue condition... similarly undead are already vulnerable to fire damage).

That would make the available damage types... acid, cold, fire, force*, psychic, storm and toxic... which is still a pretty fair range of options.

* I’m thinking of renaming Force to “Impact” or “Kinetic” damage just so each damage type has its own first letter (a, c, f, i/k, p, s, t) for less confusion between Fire and Force and while Force/Impact/Kinetic could be merged with “untyped” in that both are essentially physical force, the main distinction I tend to make is that Force damage generally bypasses armor (telekinetically crushing a target for example doesn’t care about the type of armor you wear) while untyped weapon attacks almost always have to work around armor.

I'm glad your Easter went well. I figured it would be busy.

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Simplifying the base defenses was a good idea, for the reasons you listed. Now, players have even more options. I myself would probably go with the balanced defenses approach, but that's just me.

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Adding the bows to Strong Martial characters makes sense. It also means that guys like Carrack don't have to waste a utility to properly use those bows.

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Okay, your Horrors definitely live up to the name.

I had figured that the Horrid Mass just spawned eyes directly, but it being able to warp people into Eyeless slaves is another level of horrific for that thing.

Also, the shade being the spawn of the Entropos is the best explanation I've seen for them yet. Making them the Slender Man-like spawn of an eldritch horror just works.

So you've got the Gallu, the Entropos, the Dybbuk, and the Horrid Mass for the main Horrors. Is there anything else you've come up with that hasn't been shared yet?

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I was thinking of Astral damage as light-based, more like 4e's Radiant damage than a straight Holy damage. That one you may not want to get rid of, and having Shadow as a source of necrotic damage is also necessary. The bit about undead being immune to shadow damage is a problem, though.

I've always had the thought that undead would be vulnerable to somebody wielding necromancy - the necromancer can either enslave them outright or use its flesh-rotting powers to accelerate the decay that the undead is trying to stave off.

Renaming Force damage to Kinetic damage makes sense, especially since it linguistically calls back to telekinesis.

Astral IS essentially “Light” damage... that’s the main reason I’m considering dropping it. Essentially it’s a holdover from D&D (as is shadow/necrotic damage).

But with the division between Astral and Primal and the ambiguity of which is correct it necessarily had to lose its “holy” connotation so instead it’s just energy related to the Astral realms. And that’s problematic in the cosmology since that energy is just a reflection of the Source colored by various spiritual/psychological concepts.

A related problem that’s grown for me since it lost its “holy” aspect is that my day job is working with a laser engraving machine (going on 15 years now). As such, I know that it’s not any light doing the cutting; it’s the heat caused by the beam of photons exciting the material. In game terms, a laser deals “fire” damage (which bugs me to no end with systems where a creature is immune to fire/hear, but takes full damage from lasers as it’s a different type of energy).

Likewise, from a scientific perspective, there’s no such thing as “life energy” (theologically a soul isn’t energy either, that would imply physical effects like temperature could affect or even disperse it). Biological life is a mix of chemical reactions (mostly exothermic/heat and a tiny bit of electrochemical) that can be interrupted in variety of ways (with cold sufficient to shut down every reaction being the closest to a genuine “anti-life” effect).

With “holiness” already removed, that basically removes the rest of what people generally think of as “Radiant” energy... damaging light is heat; life energy is chemically prodiced heat and very small amounts of electricity.

On the flip side, as I mentioned previously, even my undead don’t use shadow damage (the necromancer does, but only because it’s ancient and I hadn’t bothered to change up its damage to match the rest of the undead) because what IS shadow/necrotic? It can’t destroy souls in my cosmology so all it can really be is “death”... which when you boil it down is an absence of biological chemical reactions.

From the science side, since the undead are generally draining something (versus killing with a poison), that’s essentially cold damage (all vital signs in humans cease at a core temperature of 68F); which is what incorporeal wraiths inflict; or physical damage (draining blood, eating flesh, etc.). Basically they’re sustaining themselves off the same energy everything else is; they just need it in extremely diluted form (kinda like me and direct sunlight without SPF 45 sunblock).

A related point is that even if there is something like shadow/necrotic energy, that doesn’t mean its something that does damage directly. Where I’m going with this thought is that Astral and Shadow might be power sources (as is Primal, Abyssal and the Arcane Web), but that doesn’t mean the power is delivered as direct Astral, Shadow, Primal, Abyssal or Arcane damage.

Instead astral power from the Storm King manifests as storm damage. The Sun God’s radiance deals fire damage if turned up to the degree it burns. The Grey Huntress already deals in cold damage rather than shadow damage (though as with primal spirits this is exposure to cold materials; snow, ice, winds; vs. a wraith just leeching the warmth right out of you).

I’m also wondering too if; instead of vulnerability to “astral” or “shadow” damage; it shouldn’t be that certain abilities deal critical hits to creatures of X origin. So instead of “bless weapon” being “treat hits as if they dealt astral damage to creatures vulnerable to it” it should instead be “treat hits on shadow creatures as critical hits.”

Huh, now that I’m thinking about it, even if I do keep them I might need different names for them anyway. There’s already an Astral species origin and Astral spellcasting path in addition to Astral damage. Shadow isn’t just a species origin and spellcasting path and a damage type, but shadowed is also a fairly common condition.

“The shadow creature deals shadow damage and you are shadowed (by clinging darkness).”

“The Astral creature deals astral damage and you are shadowed (by bright light).”

Hmmm... maybe the term “shadowed” needs to be looked at too... maybe “dimmed” (which goes nicely with “darkened” as the next stage... though there’s a lot of d’s already with dazzled and dazed) or “clouded.”

Mostly I’m just brainstorming and explaining my thought process at this point so feedback can be as effective as possible.

This is one of those “Question Everything” points of the design process that just happened to arrive late because my perceptual blinders didn’t even consider it something that could be streamlined; 3e, 4E and even 5e just took it as a given that “positive and negative energy” damage were things (and the positive and negative planes date back to 1e).

But is it actually the best way to handle things? I’m wondering if fire being generally regarded as one of the weakest damage types isn’t because it’s been split off into fire and “holy light” and so things like undead picked up vulnerability to the holy light half (with almost nothing resisting it), but fire ended up mostly being resisted (with cold creatures only sometimes vulnerable to it).

And the same, to a lesser extent (because it traditionally has better control) is cold damage because ghosts don’t create cold spots or their touch send shivers down your spine... no, that all became negative energy so cold and fire get relegated to rather niche monsters (overtly fire or ice) while “holy fire” and the “chill of the grave” hogged the limelight.

Speaking of which, maybe I should just list out all the other damage types just so we can see if there are any gaps in the ways things can kill/disable you.

Acid - damage by disintegration of chemical/molecular bonds; usually (but not always) due to exposure to an acidic compound. I’d probably rename it “molecular” in a sci-fi setting since it would also apply to a molecular distintegrator effect (ex. a Star Trek phaser set to “kill” and the reason I made my disintegrate spell deal acid damage).

Astral - One of the types we’re trying to figure out.

Cold - rapid loss of body heat causes tissue damage from freezing water expansion and organ failure as the heat needed to sustain life reactions fails. Objects typically resist cold damage as they generally lack the water content to be harmed in this way. Could be either due to exposure to cold materials (ex. liquid nitrogen) or somehow draining heat from a target (a scifi “cryobeam” or a wraith’s chilling touch).

Fire - extreme heat causes tissue damage due to boiling of body fluids and carbonization of organic compounds. Extreme heat causes matter to change states; melting or vaporizing it.

Kinetic (also “untyped”) - damage through transfer of kinetic energy, generally the least resisted or vulnerable damage type due to it being the baseline from which all other damage types against a target are measured.

Psychic - not so much physical damage as psychological disruption; including fear response; that impedes ability, morale and consciousness. In extreme cases the disruption might lead to death due to stroke-like conditions or heart attack from stress. Objects are always immune to this and many psychic damage effects state it can only be used non-lethally (so knock out or so completely demoralize you go catatonic for a time, but can’t kill you on its own).

Shadow - the other one we’re trying to work out.

Storm - technically a hybrid of kinetic, thermal and electromagnetic disruption. Damage is dealt by high voltage electrons transfering kinetic and thermal energy to a target along the path of least resistance (such as the electrically conductive nervous system that it damages thermally and kinetically). It’s a common enough effect that behaves so differently from fire (ex. water can shield you from fire because its good at absorbing heat, but electricity flows right through it unless it’s got zero impurities) and kinetic (it takes quite a bit of raw force to stop a heart... but a few amps of electricity through the heart and you’re dead) and brings electromagnetism into the mix that it needs to be it’s own type. In scifi this would be a particle beam (ex. Star Wars blaster).

Toxic - damage through interference with one or more biological processes leading to debilitation or death. May overlap a bit with acid, but the primary distinction is that toxic damage has no effect on objects (so mustard gas is toxic damage because while it is acidic, it doesn’t react enough with anything less sensitive than organic soft tissue enough to really damage it). In a scifi setting this would also include low-level ionizing radiation (i.e. stuff that’s bad for people) while high energy radiation that can fry electronics and even melt things would be storm or fire damage.

* * * * *

From the above list, Storm is probably the best case for keeping some type of Radiant or Necrotic damage if we could determine a proper hybrid damage delivery with elements that other types really can’t cover (since I’ve deliberately avoided compound damage like “X acid and fire damage” to keep it simple and avoid combos that simply make damage resistance irrelevant... fire and psychic being one I was able to achieve fairly easily and nothing in 4E resisted both).

On the alternative side, NOT having necrotic/shadow or radiant/astral damage keeps whole classes of opponents from being easily nullified. If most undead dealt shadow damage (say the wights’ melee attacks and glares did shadow damage and the wraiths’ touches and auras did shadow damage) then one type of resistance makes an entire class of opponents a cake walk.

But if the undead deal a variety of damage types; untyped/kinetic (weapon strikes, bony fingers and gnashing teeth), cold (life draining touches), psychic (fearsome glares or hypnotic gazes), toxic (the spores from a mummy), even acid (an effect that withers and corrodes everything it touches) then a PC might resist one or two of those, but a variety of undead will still present a challenge and take some tactics to overcome (the PC with cold resistance faces the wraith, the one with a good armor defense goes up against the wights untyped blades, the one who resists toxic can deal with the mummy, etc.).

And further in that thought, if you are playing around with resistances and vulnerabilities then you don’t want too many types or it becomes difficult to ever have a relevant one (basically the inverse of 3.5e’s golf bag of weapons since you needed silver, cold iron, adamatine, magic and alignments in bludgeoning, slashing and piercing varieties to overcome all the possible DRs in the game). Likewise types that are extremely rare will also be way overvalued in cost simply because resistance to “huge piercing attacks” (to use a ridiculously specific type from GURPS) never comes up (because it’s essentially T-Rex/Dragon bites in a game set in medieval France).

I’m not sure where the sweet spot is on number of energy types for that, but nine types (ten including untyped) is probably on the upper end at best.

As I said, I’m questioning it and definitely find feedback helpful.

* * * * *

As to other Horrors... I’ve got a couple more concepts, but they aren’t named yet.

The first is essentially a “Hate Mob.” A creature that stokes peoples’ anger and gathers them into mobs driven by overwhelming rage to destroy whatever draws theirs ire. I suspect it’s going to be more a “template” than a specific creature as I think the true horror will either be non-physical (can be destroyed by finding “patient zero” and using a ritual to drive it out) or weak, but hard to find (like an invisible imp that sits on each affected person’s shoulder whispering to it... so observation and an insight check (to either see the person is moving like there’s something on their shoulder they’re listening to, or if close enough, overhearing its whispers) or see invisibility/blindsight will pick it out.

The second is basically Chaos incarnation. I’m thinking a fairly large aura (5-10 paces) where a random roll each round determines its effects and its attacks would similarly be random effects so the PCs are always having to improvise against it.

You've convinced me with regard to astral/light damage being part of fire damage. Scientifically, you're right. In order to clear up any confusion, though, I'd rename it heat damage and specify in the glossary that heat can be fire or light.

As to necrotic damage (as opposed to previous editions' unholy damage), I had always looked at it as literal necrosis, i.e. you're making the other guy's flesh rot on his bones. And now that I think about it, that could be something caused by Baleful Transformation.

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I rather like dimmed for the new name, since it has alliteration-based and conceptual ties to darkened. The only downside is jokes about being dim.

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Fire and psychic make a very good combination from a fluff perspective as well. Not only is the character on fire, he's got the "oh, $#!t, it burns!" mental reaction. You already know this, but burns are some of the most painful injuries around (until the nerve endings get destroyed, in which case you've got bigger problems).

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The first creature sounds like every bad thing about mobs rolled in one.

I'm noticing a trend of the horrors corresponding to certain sins - not completely, but it's there. You have the Hate Mob as wrath, the Entropus could be gluttony, and the gallu could be despair (which is a sin in certain circles). That leaves sloth, lust, greed, envy, and pride.

If I were going to do a lust demon, I'd base it on the Japanese jorogumo (literally "woman spider" or "whore spider," I've heard both), a shapeshifter that disguises itself as an attractive woman to lure men in, then assumes its true form and devours its prey.

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By the way, I just want to say that your horrors and demons are much more evocative than D&D's, especially in how you've distinguished them from each other.

I’ll think about “heat.” If it were scifi it wouldn’t even be a question.

My main hesitancy is that “fire” just feels a bit more elemental than heat (and the elements play a rather central role in the setting) in the same way I went with storm over electricity.

On the other hand, it also makes general environmental conditions (i.e. extreme temperature would deal heat damage) and make some of the oddball attacks (ex. sprays of searing hot sand) a bit more intuitive on why they’re dealing the damage they are.

* * * *

As for necrosis; my first thought when reading the word in your post was actually “acid damage... like my disintegrate spell. Toxic if it only works on living creatures.” Indeed, actual necrosis is the case of cellular damage causing its own acidic enzymes to disolve itself and often leave behind toxins that can kill the whole organism.

As I said in my general damage descriptions last post... the damage types are a bit broader than their name. The damage type is about how the damage manifests (ex. molecular breakdown) and the name is really just the most common source in a fantasy setting (ex. acid) because calling it “molecular damage” rips you right out of a fantasy mindset. Even if the disintegrate spell isn’t actually a stream of acid but magically breaking down the molecular bonds of the target like Star Trek phaser (which is probably exactly where the original D&D spell came from now that I think about it) it counts as acid damage because the magic is acting like an acid on the target.

Side-bar: if I do a scifi version of the ruleset the damage types would probably be; cryo (cold), EM (storm), heat (fire), kinetic, molecular (acid), psychic and toxic.

* * * *

Another element my musing on damage types got me thinking about is all the Sorcerer (and sorcerer adjacent like avatars) energy replacement abilities and how, ironically, you’re almost always better off picking attacks that don’t line up with the type you can change it to.

So I’m thinking that, kinda like how I added species traits to encourage picking options not in line with their best abilities, maybe I should add in a minor buff for using attack spells that already deal that type of damage.

My thinking is that if they use a spell with the same matching energy type the attack gets an extra implement property. So if you have the fire innate implement, normally it applies Lethal no matter what spell you use (and you can change that spell to fire damage), but if you use it with the flame strike spell (already fire damage) it also gains, say, the Improved Crit property.

The big question is whether this extra property should be built into the innate magic choice (i.e. using fire with fire always grants improved crit) or if it should be one extra property of choice that applies when you use an unaltered attack that lines up with either of your two energy types.

* * * *

As to the Horrors, while they probably do line up with various sins, the actual idea behind them is that each one represents some facet of revenge the Demon Emperor was wishing upon mankind as he died... they’re basically his final curse on Creation.

So the Gallu were born of the dream of getting revenge by chaining up and torturing them for eternity.

The Horrid Mass was his dreams of just melting them all down and reforming them into something that will obey without thinking.

The Dybbuk was his wish that they all turn on each other in suspicion and fear.

Entropos was his desire to just consume it all and drag it into Oblivion with him.

The Chaos critter is essentially the desire to blow it all up and leave everyone to clean up the mess.

The Hate Plague is the classic dream of revenge by lynch mob... like-minded beings gathering together to deliver “justice” to those they believe have wronged them.

The Undead are similarly his desire to take everything good (life, light, love, community) away from those foolish enough to embrace its false promises.

Think of any type of revenge fantasy dreamed up in the dark corners of the Internet and that’s likely the basis for a Horror.

Which is probably why they... and the demons being tied to specific elements instead of the general mishmash that D&D has built up... are more memorable and distinctive than D&Ds. They’re all being designed together with common themes.

Storm's advantage is that it can also include thunder-based attacks like Thunder Wave or Booming Blade.

I really do think that heat is the better option, since it allows for more creative expressions of burning somebody than just open flame. Your example of searing hot sand is a perfect example of that.

As for necrotic damage, you've sold me. We don't need no stinking necrotic damage, we've got acid (and toxic). Kick it and astral to the curb.

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Given that the setting is a post-superscience/science fantasy apocalypse and you've built the system around it, I'd say that you're already most of the way there. The big thing is that gadgeteers would be more prominent, other classes might get projector proficiency instead of bows or crossbows.

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WRT the sorcerer and type-changing abilities, I'm not sure that it's as big a deal as you may think. Sure, they're losing some type versatility, but that's not really a loss of power. The sorcerer still gets the additional effect, the avatars usually get type resistance and an additional alternate focus option, and innate magic users probably shouldn't even be wielding elemental magic weapons to begin with. The Malfean's core type change might be the main one to look at. Maybe you could transplant the avatar's focus-use elemental affinity effects to the Malfean's Elemental Echo, or at least reverse-engineer it.

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The Demon Emperor sampled many flavors of hate, didn't he?

The general demon mishmash that D&D suffers from, and the overlap and the fuzzy concepts, are all a game that's been going for a minimum of five editions, with many, many cooks in the kitchen. Here, you're able to make the demons and horrors your own, without the trappings of legacy hanging over you.

I think you won me over on Heat damage and that I probably don’t need to do anything with damage changing and attacks that already use that damage type.

I’m not really worried about it at the general species level because the attacks it could be applied to already have other properties from the weapon or implement. It’s mainly the things like elemental projection where any properties from the element are the only ones the attack gains.

One thing removing Shadow damage does is make the undead base resistance, immunity and vulnerability a bit easier. Resist cold, Immune toxic (no metabolism), Vulnerable heat (with a clarification under the undead trait that they’re immune to environmental heat).

As to the Demon Emperor... he was once the Celestial Fire; the embodiment of the Source’s presence in The Mortal World and the most powerful of the Source’s creations.

When he was passed over as the favorite for the puny insignificant humans his Fire was turned to fuel Spite and Wrath incarnate.

Some say the Demon Emperor never had any intention of winning his war against the Primal Spirits and the Source. That despite the words he spun to the kin who followed him, the Demon Empire was not founded to give the demons the right to determine the use of all their labors... but simply to torment and corrupt the humans the Source loved so much before it inevitably fell into something the Source would have to reject because they could no longer to withstand the purifying Light of the Source.

Then as his final act of spite against Man and his Creator he punched his own ticket by channeling all his essence, all his spite and wrath, into The Shadow.

And all demons who went along with him because they thought they were going to be the gods of Men got themselves cast into Outer Darkness for their trouble, all the Avatars were exiled to the Mortal World they helped create, but didn’t have the courage to fight for, and all the Necromancers, Ghouls, Wights ans Wraiths who ripped out chunks of their own souls to let the Shadow seep into the wound because they thought it would give them power, but instead made them slaves... all of them suffer because they succumbed to the echo of The Demon Emperor’s hatred of them all.

Which actually is an important point that goes back to the first part... just because it’s not a type of damage doesn’t mean that Shadow is not a power. Indeed, it is probably the most horrible of powers in the entire setting.

The demons may not have won, but the Demon Emperor himself? I'd say that he did win. He f**&ed everybody over, and even though Stormbringer killed him, it didn't stop him from wrecking things even in death.

I had the same thought about the Shadow being the most horrible faction in the setting. Among the Malcers, the demons, El-Phara, the Sun Empire, they all pale to this asshole.