Saturday, March 31, 2012

Hybrid-inator 3000!

A short table perhaps useful in generating hybrid monsters or reskinning current hybrids is here.

Four columns represent man-parts, herbivore-parts, predator-parts, and winged-creature-parts.  I didn't do an all-aquatic column (sorry, hippocamp), but there are some aquatic features in the columns.  Here's how to use the darn thing to reskin a hybrid monster.

1) Select the hybrid you want to reskin.  Let's try an owlbear.
2) Check out the current 'parts'.  With an owlbear, we're looking at a bird head on a predator body.
3) Roll on the appropriate columns for replacement species.  In this case, let's say we rolled 'vulture' and 'weasel'.
4) Decide (very quickly if this is mid-game!) whether you can just reskin it (describe a vulture-weasel and use owlbear stats) or whether you want to tweak the stats.  In this case, I might make the creature slighter (lower HD) but faster or something.

Same thing works with chimeras, pegasi, griffons.  Egyptian gods.  Whatever.

The last result on each column says 'column shift' - you roll on the next column over (to the left or right, as you please, or you can dice for it).

Some sample results:
Hippogriff - was eagle/horse, is now cardinal/koala.
Chimera - was lion/goat/dragon, is now badger/tortoise/squid.
Manticore - was a bat-winged lion with the face of a man; is now a moth-winged cobra with the face of an evil clown.
Sphinx - was an eagle-winged lion with the face of a man/woman/hawk/ram; is now a duck-winged cheetah with the face of a savage ape.

Cedric awoke to find he had lost his job to a raven-faced badger.

4 comments:

  1. My minotaur for tonight is now an innocent child with the head of an ostrich. I like it. It's keeping its axe though.

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  2. Let me know how the emu-moppet fares!

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  3. Awesome! I sent you an e-mail with my visual rendering of the KoardinalBear.

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