Author Topic: Dokufu(WIP)  (Read 9590 times)

Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #20 on: May 10, 2019, 02:02:21 AM »
Both caster progression penalties are in play. I guess i could have worded that better.

So we thinking half HD for total spawn cap(total spawn cap was the intention sorry it didn't read that eay)

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #21 on: May 13, 2019, 03:56:32 AM »
If each minion hits (almost) as hard as you do, then half cap is still as OP as multiplying your damage by that amount. So even one minion that hits almost as hard as you do it's already extremely powerful.

If you want more than 1 minion tagging along, then their damage needs to be significantly lower than the main Dokufu.

Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #22 on: May 13, 2019, 08:46:08 AM »
My d&d group are saying i should move the  spawning abilities away from the end of the class as they are not powerful and thus not capstone...

I am going to do some math, to see if that clears it up with everybody, lets assume 22 str, 20 dex and level 19 for this. So the dokufu parent has to foreclaw attacks at 2d4 each with an attack bonus of 28(size penalty included) each and damage bonus of 11. Spawn as of current text, maximum number-8 1d4 bite+ 6 damage, attack bonuses 23(size penalty still applied).

I have no opinion or analytical skills to this end. I would like to keep the number of spawn higher and not lower. What i am trying to say is i would like to lower their combat potential. Lets remove either the bite damage dice or the ability mod of the damage. Possibly need to add in venom to balance their lack of damage. For attack bonuses, how about every additional spawn attacking has a -5 to attack, would like to grant them their size modifier bonuses to lift these new attack values.

For the these suggested changes with the earliar stats. The spawn would have either 1d4 bite or 6 damage bite, attack rolls 26, 21, 16, 11, 6, 1, -4, -9 (may want to change to -2 penatly to each additional attack if taking multiattack feat) with each spawn attack apply venom?

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #23 on: May 13, 2019, 10:01:29 AM »
Ah yes, it's still starting with poison then losing the poison, which just feels wrong for a class. Classes shouldn't give you an ability then remove it. Either the Dokufu keeps the poison after it has gained it or shouldn't gain it in the first place.

Can't you just give some fixed numbers to the base stats of the spawn?  That makes the math easier and prevents a lot of potential abuse.

Also D&D wasn't really made to run large numbers of combatants. The  average party is 4 players big, and usually just as many enemies if not less. 10 spawns is thus over doubling the number of combatants in your average battle.

So if you want lots of spawns, the better would be some kind of pseudo-swarm be the default state. A baby dokufu shouldn't be a threat at all, only a pack of them should be relevant. Spawns are spawned in swarms and act in swarms, no accounting of them one by one.




Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #24 on: May 15, 2019, 08:05:00 AM »
So how would this a psuedo swarm vrs an actual swarm? Things i know about swarms 50% miss chance with handheld weapons, i image they are not crit-able. Thats it.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #25 on: May 15, 2019, 08:48:57 AM »
Swarm Traits.

More relevant bits:
-A swarm made up of Tiny creatures takes half damage from slashing and piercing weapons. A swarm composed of Fine or Diminutive creatures is immune to all weapon damage. Probably best to go with tiny.
-Swarm have an automatic damage progression based in their HD. That progression isn't very fast so it should be fine if they have something like HD-2 compared to the Dokufu. They also have a scaling DC for distraction.
-Movement can remain the same as Dokufu.
-No natural armor, just Dex and size bonus to AC (swarms use the size bonus from the component creature).

They can start coming online when the Dokufu is large or something, first only one at a time, but up to four, and you can spice them up with extra abilities like making them count as difficult terrain against enemies as well as making anybody inside more vulnerable to the Dokufu itself or the Dokufu can cast spells from their positions. No actual activated abilities in the swarms so they're easier to run (also they're not very smart being newborns), they just move around to wherever ordered and use their basic swarm attack+distraction.

Remember that a swarm of non-flying tiny creatures is a whooping 300 baby dokufus so with 4 swarms around you can brag about having over a thousand of them at a time.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2019, 08:50:55 AM by oslecamo »

Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #26 on: May 15, 2019, 06:39:44 PM »
Just to back track when you said i should either not lose the dokufus bite and venom or not get them in the first place i was trying to stay true to the original monster page, says to treat the spawn as monsterous spiders which have a bite and vemon while the adult dokufu doesn't.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #27 on: May 19, 2019, 12:35:44 AM »
Considering it's only mentioned as a fluff detail, it's precisely the kind of thing that should be changed.

Case in point you're already adding spellcasting and making it a spawn specialist too, so it's not like you're really sticking 100% to the original monster's abilities in the first place. :p

Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #28 on: May 19, 2019, 04:44:56 AM »
Ok i see your point, how about we keep the swarm idea but let them be small using the size conversion of the next 2 smaller size and assume 18 small dofuku spawn make up 4 swarm squares(as 300 tiny creatures make up 4 swarm squares and 5000 diminutive creatures make up 4 spawn squares), well remove the slashing damage reduction so it will just take half damage from piercing damage. Since the swarm does swarm damage i guess they don't need the bite and i can remove it from the dokufu, does the swarm still get venom?

Where can i find this scaling swarm damage and dc?

My friends say i should lower the ammount of domains it has access to from 3 to 2, i told them if i did that i would like to increase their options of domains- whats your opinion on this?

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #29 on: May 20, 2019, 04:37:46 AM »
Ok i see your point, how about we keep the swarm idea but let them be small using the size conversion of the next 2 smaller size and assume 18 small dofuku spawn make up 4 swarm squares(as 300 tiny creatures make up 4 swarm squares and 5000 diminutive creatures make up 4 spawn squares), well remove the slashing damage reduction so it will just take half damage from piercing damage.
Well the usual swarm subtype isn't supposed to work with small sized creatures and those are baby newborn dokufus so  I don't see much of an issue with them starting tiny while the "normal" dokufu starts small (plus there's aflaw for a medium monster class to starting tiny in the feats section), but if you really insist in small sized baby dokufus then 18 per swarm and everything else sounds reasonable.

Since the swarm does swarm damage i guess they don't need the bite and i can remove it from the dokufu, does the swarm still get venom?
Thing is, after re-checking the original entry I strongly believe the poison was a bug, not a feature (pun intended). Basically the author must've went "Ok, I'll make the dokufu spit babies, but I'm too lazy to make up new stats for that so just say to use monstrous spider", completely forgeting that monstrous spiders had poison and the dokufu didn't, so the swarms shouldn't really either.

Where can i find this scaling swarm damage and dc?
There's the table for damage scaling in the right and the distraction DC a bit below.

My friends say i should lower the ammount of domains it has access to from 3 to 2, i told them if i did that i would like to increase their options of domains- whats your opinion on this?
Hmmm, 2 domains from a list sounds like a solid idea and closer to regular cleric.

Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #30 on: May 20, 2019, 10:43:06 AM »
Off topic but their is a soulmeld in dragon magazine about based off broodkeeper and in one of its chakra binds give you swarm traits but now i am confused to what that means.

I think i will go with small dofuku swarm as i don't want to deal with 300 spawn counting, would have to up the egg amount by a lot for that to be viable.

This is what i get for not every playing a 3.5 cleric i don't know how many domains they get.

Thanks for the help

PS (haha) my d&d group says i just should have made this PrC for monsterous spider and they are saying this now after all this time....
« Last Edit: May 20, 2019, 07:43:35 PM by WarHunter »

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #31 on: May 22, 2019, 04:54:57 AM »
Off topic but their is a soulmeld in dragon magazine about based off broodkeeper and in one of its chakra binds give you swarm traits but now i am confused to what that means.
There's a reason why Dragon Magazine has a questionable reputation, I'm not sure what they mean by that either.

I think i will go with small dofuku swarm as i don't want to deal with 300 spawn counting, would have to up the egg amount by a lot for that to be viable.
Species of spiders that tend to enter homes are capable of laying hundreds of eggs at one time. There may be more than 200 eggs in an egg sac and some spiders may lay nine of these sacs.

Bugs are all about egg mass production.

I'll point out the monstrous spider can pump out basic spider swarms.

This is what i get for not every playing a 3.5 cleric i don't know how many domains they get.

Thanks for the help
You're welcome.

PS (haha) my d&d group says i just should have made this PrC for monsterous spider and they are saying this now after all this time....
It would've been a more viable idea if it had been thrown from the start, but I don't think you feel like discarding all your work so far now. :p


Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #32 on: May 22, 2019, 05:19:12 AM »
I didn't know dragon magazine had a questionable reputation.

Yeah but i don't think they make that many eggs in d&d.

Making the swarm out of small creatures would their swarm damage reach adjacent squares?

Also how should the swarm hd scale? Should it increase by time pasted since they hatched, when the parent reaches certain levels, or just match the parents HD?

What should the swarm cap be?

Offline ketaro

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #33 on: May 22, 2019, 05:36:02 AM »
Personal recent experience has me clear on the rule that only Tiny and smaller creatures can be Swarms. Small sized and larger creatures cannot make up swarms.

Considering the original monster doesn't stat its hatchlings or refer to any use for them beyond their chestburster quality of killing creatures they hatch from, why does the Dokufu need to be a Leadership archetype monster? Spiders are not known for their familial qualities.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #34 on: May 23, 2019, 07:15:28 AM »
I didn't know dragon magazine had a questionable reputation.

Yeah but i don't think they make that many eggs in d&d.

Making the swarm out of small creatures would their swarm damage reach adjacent squares?

Also how should the swarm hd scale? Should it increase by time pasted since they hatched, when the parent reaches certain levels, or just match the parents HD?

What should the swarm cap be?

If you insist on small, then I would suggest using the mob template or we'll be stuck here for quite long dealing with the details of using small sized members.

Cap control of ECL of the mobs is Dokufu's CR-2, so either multiple weaker mobs or just one really strong, can produce a full power one right away because long-term waiting time isn't really a resource that's easy to balance.

Considering the original monster doesn't stat its hatchlings or refer to any use for them beyond their chestburster quality of killing creatures they hatch from, why does the Dokufu need to be a Leadership archetype monster? Spiders are not known for their familial qualities.

Usually yes but some species do stick together, although it's usually more "mom taking care of spider babies" rather than "mom sending babies in suicidical charges" or adults cooperating. The spider swarm is a core monster, while the Monstrous spider can have organization of "colony", although interestingly enough the number of spiders per colony decreases when the spider size increases until the gargantuan and colossal are always solitary, so seems like they group while smaller and weaker with grown strong adults prefering some privacy.

« Last Edit: May 23, 2019, 07:17:26 AM by oslecamo »

Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #35 on: May 24, 2019, 06:27:11 PM »
Personal recent experience has me clear on the rule that only Tiny and smaller creatures can be Swarms. Small sized and larger creatures cannot make up swarms.

Considering the original monster doesn't stat its hatchlings or refer to any use for them beyond their chestburster quality of killing creatures they hatch from, why does the Dokufu need to be a Leadership archetype monster? Spiders are not known for their familial qualities.

You reading the l5r dokufu or the oriental adventure dokufu? Cause it mentions shooting at opponents and attacking thing it swallows and they stat as small monsterous spiders. This is neither here nor there.

Magical creatures are not limited buy their mundane counter parts.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2019, 09:34:45 PM by WarHunter »

Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #36 on: May 24, 2019, 07:32:28 PM »
I looked at the mob stuff and that feels like too much. I think i would have to go back on my meds to understand that. Seems more complicated than having individual small dofuku.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #37 on: May 26, 2019, 04:50:04 AM »
Then just use swarms using the normal swarm rules, no "haha since I'm using small dokufus I get to change the swarm rules in Z, X, and Y ways".

Offline WarHunter

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #38 on: May 29, 2019, 06:55:52 AM »
Yeah, I'll get around to it this week hopefully

Offline ~Corvus~

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Re: Dokufu(WIP)
« Reply #39 on: May 31, 2019, 02:32:32 AM »
Considering the original monster doesn't stat its hatchlings or refer to any use for them beyond their chestburster quality of killing creatures they hatch from, why does the Dokufu need to be a Leadership archetype monster? Spiders are not known for their familial qualities.
Funny enough Warhunter found something amusing related to this.
(click to show/hide)
Consider that leadership acts as a maximum cap on spider babies as opposed to the infinite swarms of older posts. At least the swarms aren't all Dragonfire inspiration bards or Evil Inflict swarm clerics.
Quote from: HuskyBoi
I just need a minute to appreciate the words 'goliath lamp-post sneak attack'. That's a thing of beauty, right there.

Greedling avatar by Ceika from Giantitp.