Old School Monsters

[hcobb]

The gelatinous cube has a volume of 10x10x10 = 1000 ft^3

A ten foot high megahex has a volume of 16x7x10 = 1120 ft^3

Ergo the gelatinous cube is a megahex sized monster.

[Skarg]

It has a 3-hex counter though. I expect part of the reason may be that in a corridor of megahexes, how would you move a megahex creature less than three hexes forward?

[phiwum]

A hex is four foot across. Now, it's not clear to me what "across" means, since a line segment from border to border through the center of the hex varies in length according to where it intersects (how near a vertex).

But you concluded a hex is 16 sq ft.

If the side of a hexagon is 2' long (which is what I assume and which would make the vertex-to-vertex measure 4'), its area is

3 sqrt(3)/2 * 2^2

which is about 10.4 sq. ft, not 16 sq. ft.

I mean, nitpicking, sure, but if we're going to do math...

Of course, that makes it considerably larger than a 10' megahex volume.

[Skarg]

4 feet is side to side or center point to center point.

[phiwum]

Okay, then that makes vertex to vertex 8/sqrt(3) or about 4' 7 1/2".

And the length of a side is 4/sqrt(3), making the area

3 sqrt(3)/2 * (4/sqrt(3))^2 = 8 sqrt(3) sq ft

or about 13.9 sq. ft. Still less than 16, but more than I was estimating. 1000 ft^3 is more than 10 * 7 * 13.9 by a small amount (the latter is about 970 sq ft). A megahex is pretty darn close to 10 feet cubed.

So, roughly, the volume is right for a megahex creature. For game play, it has to be reasonably mobile in a megahex corridor. A four hex critter would do fine, flipping it every hex. Or a three hex critter does fine for a game that fudges conversion rates every time we change the scale of the map (from room to labyrinth to village, say).

That fudging of scales brought me no end of misery when I first started mapping things for this game. In the end, I surrendered and promised myself not to think too hard about it. I'm sure that sometimes, I call a distance between two villages six miles and other times five miles, but the players don't seem to notice. Nonetheless, I feel like a lesser person for doing so.

ETA: And now, thanks to Skarg, I realize that all of the furnishings I've put in the maps have been about two inches off per foot in each dimension. I thought that table was 4' across, only to learn it's 4'8". Who builds a table that's 4' 8"? It's crazy. My chairs are all too big. My chests are 5" too long. Dammit.

[Terquem]

A four foot hex (edge to edge not vertex to vertex) has an area of 13.8564 feet

This was calculated in AutoCad drawing a hexagram circumscribed around a circle with a radius of 2 feet.

the area of a 1000 cu foot creature ten feet high fit into hex shaped areas would be 7.2 hexes (approximately) the actual dimensions of a megahex across its widest point would be 12 feet and the the 10x10x10 creature would fit easily inside that dimension but would then encroach upon the four hexes attached to the inner sections of the megahex.

I even drew the mega hex and imposed a 10 x 10 square onto it. That was fun

[phiwum]

I'm digging the Volts. They fill a niche of being worse than a nuisance monster but not life threatening for a prepared party, more interesting than just upping the number of rats, say.

But there's one little thing that I'm not sure about. They are a one-hex creature, so I assume they don't act like a dragonet, which must attack from the same hex. So, perhaps seven (including one from above) can attack a character at once, but they attach to the character and so there's no disengagement once they're attached. You can kill them or knock them off, but if you choose to shift, they move with you.

Does that sound right? Gonna be kinda funny to have characters trying to move about with ugly balloons stuck to them in adjacent hexes. Would you allow a character in that situation to move more than a one-hex shift?

[phiwum]

I rather like the bog mummies. They are pretty tough, since only magic weapons and attacks do damage, aside from unarmed combat. I don't have a lot of PCs with magic weapons, so I'm not sure I can throw one in yet. The Bog Rot disease is also pretty interesting. Again, it's pretty deadly because a Cleansing spell is IQ 17 and does 1d damage.

But here's my question. This is a clever critter, able to listen to the party talking and plan its attack and yet it has IQ 0. How is that supposed to work?

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by phiwum

But here's my question. This is a clever critter, able to listen to the party talking and plan its attack and yet it has IQ 0. How is that supposed to work?

That's strange. Also does non-magical fire do half damage or none?

I'm sure the players will learn from the encounter and their next group of PCs will each take the Staff spell.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by hcobb

That's strange. Also does non-magical fire do half damage or none?

I'm sure the players will learn from the encounter and their next group of PCs will each take the Staff spell.

I'd say that the text is a little odd when it says fire does half damage right before saying that only magical weapons and attacks do damage. And then it adds that unarmed attacks do damage.

So, I think there are four ways to damage a bog mummy.

(*) Fire
(*) Magical weapons
(*) Magical attacks
(*) Unarmed hits

I don't think the Staff spell for heroes is an appropriate response to this critter unless the campaign features a major infestation of the beasts.

Since new bog mummies come from dead people, you could say that they retain a bit of the memory of language from their earlier lives and have a natural instinct to ambush despite having no real intelligence. Still, it's a bit odd.