Re-skinning: Changing A Recipe's Flavor

Have you every seen yourself as the group's healer and enjoying the cleric class, but wanting to be more of a druid-like character? Or perhaps you see yourself as the group's tank but loathe the idea of being just another sword and board in plate. Well, perhaps you can play by the rules without playing by the rules. In fact I am here to tell you that is exactly what you can do. That is the whole point of D&D, after all. To exist in a world where anything is possible and there are no programming restrictions on the choices you make. All subject to DM approval and nerf-hammers, of course.

Today I want to talk about re-skinning the things that sit within a rule book to make them work for you. Such things find themselves to be problems only in mechanics heavy games like Dungeons & Dragons. Other games may have a rule for literally anything, being even more mechanically heavy like earlier forms of D&D. Or they may be universal systems where you get better at something and can skin how that works virtually any way you want.

For 5th Edition, Wizards cut back the fat on the rules in some ways. In 3rd Edition there were so many rules, feats, bonus, penalties, spells, builds, tacked on mechanics, and situational circumstances it was hard to build the character you envisioned without doing a thesis on the idea first. Then came 4th Edition and we got streamlined set of rules that worked similarly across the board (for most of the edition's life anyway). Now all you had to do was decide to build your defender with the defense feats and defensive abilities. Don't want a shield, just make sure not to pick those ones. Want to dual-wield? Grab a couple of those powers to beef that aspect up.

Now, to be fair 4th Edition became as laden with options as 3rd, though they we more easily indexed. And you were limited in the number of "cool moves" you could have at any one time, since leveling had you replace one with another eventually. This was especially true as they released regular supplements, some of which entirely focused on one set of characters (such as martial or divine). In some ways, all of these options are great and many powers are super cool. Hell fighters became a more easily enjoyable option (you can do a lot with 3E feats but, boy, is that some planning and bonus/penalty paperwork). But, when it comes down to it, 5th Edition has become a nice blend of streamlined and unique mechanics. Only certain classes/archetypes get extra attack for example.

And now, two years later, we are still working off of the core books. There have been adventures, one Sword Coast supplement, and Unearthed Arcana articles, but all in all we are working from the Player's Handbook. That doesn't have to limit us and I will use my two original examples as to why.

First off, who says playing a druid has to mean you actually have to take levels in druid? I mean mechanically at their core is shape-shifting and certain spells. But thematically, a druid is a protector of nature. Perhaps you would like the opportunity to expunge shape-shifting for more spell-related abilities. My suggestion to you is to play a cleric of nature (or even life or tempest). Already you are themed toward being druidic. Next, simply forgo claiming any god to worship or call to and refer to yourself as a druid. The final step is, perhaps the most important, and needs to be approved by your DM. In my opinion, however, it is pretty non-issue. Simply use the druid spell list instead of the cleric one. Simple as that. That means no saying, "but I am technically a cleric so can I prepare this just once." And no swapping out cleric spells you don't mind losing for the druid spells you hate to lose. Just do the full switch.

Of course, you may have other problems with this like how do the cleric abilities mesh with a "druid". Let's start with turning undead. That is fairly easy since undead are, often, anathema to druids. Fits right in. Choosing the right domain is another key factor, of course. But perhaps it is divine intervention which you have trouble getting around. Well, why does it have to be divine? Perhaps the druid uses that ability and pulls a Moses parting a sea for refugees to get across. Or, maybe a powerful spirit of nature or ancient fey answers the call of such a powerful druid. Even better the druid may have such command of the elements in that brief moment that nature itself listens to her need. Don't let ability names limit you!

How about for my second example though? A shield-less defender. We actually did this in a recent game. I built my friend the crusader type character he wanted. A wall at the front line, forward defense if you will. He used a polearm. I allowed him the defender fighting style, simply replacing the requirement of shield with polearm. As long as he had that he could still utilize that class feature, but would be unable to do it should he choose or need to take up a shield instead.

Everything else about a paladin works out for the way he wanted to play his character. And none of it really affected that one swap. To make him even more polearm mastered, though, we gave him the feat. Being able to threaten at reach was imperative. Because this feat is a commitment of "build resources" I also allowed it to synergize with that defensive tactic ability. There's no real reason not to. Is it going to break the game to give him that defensive ground? Probably not, since he takes a hit to his AC from not wielding a shield as a tank instead. And frankly, that was the crux of his character idea and having fun is the most important part of the game.

When it comes down to it, both of these examples are simple things that require nothing but a single mechanical swap and a lot of flavoring. There are many ways this could be done and very little reason not to. If it won't break your game and will give someone the opportunity to play the character they want with building a whole new class or looking for one online, just do it!

Re-skinning: New "Classes"

There are a lot of options for characters these days.  Seriously.  A LOT of options.  Many games don't even have classes, allowing you to build your character free form.  Sometimes there are archetypes to work within, but sometimes there aren't even those.  Even in games with classes like D&D and Pathfinder have plenty of options without buying additional books.  Start to buy those and forget about it.  You could pour over the options for days.  Nevertheless, there are times when the classes and archetypes available aren't doing what you want.  There's a class out there that you just can't find the right equivalent.  That's where some creative re-skinning can come in handy.

Today I want to go over how to go about doing such a thing with an example I have thrown out to a few people in the past year or two.  For this example we will be using 5th Edition D&D, because it has a good amount of options, but not overwhelmingly so.  You have magic users, combat experts, and all kinds of things in between.  What doesn't the 5th Edition Player's Handbook have?  Witch doctors.

The voodoo priest / witch doctor is an archetype that is not covered very often for players.  Pathfinder does have a version of it in the voodoo oracle build.  5th Edition D&D does not have anything that really matches it though.  There are, however, a number of classes with features that would belong with a witch doctor.  Now you can go ahead and develop your own class from a mix of features, but that requires design and testing.  The easier method is by using what is already there in the right way.

To start let's list some of the things that make a voodoo priest stand out.  And before that I want to mention that I am going with the more pop culture aspects rather than getting into the technical differences between voodoo, hoodoo, and other related practices.

• nature is a big deal
• aspects of nature are deified
• death is very important
• zombies are a thing
• live in forests, swamps, graveyards
• herbalist medicine
• strange magic

Now that we have a could starting place, let's look at what we can use to fill in these aspects of the witch doctor.  We can start by listing some obvious choices.  For the nature-related things we could go with druid, nature cleric, or perhaps ranger.  For the zombies and death we could go with necromancer or death cleric.  All of these include magic, but we should probably remove ranger because, despite the high nature relation, there is very little magic and a bit too much combat focus.

That narrows it down to some form of druid, wizard, or cleric.  If you ask me, the best way to create such a character where you need a mix of abilities is to multiclass.  Of course you need to be careful with multiclassing.  While 5th edition has some very beneficial methodology here, especially with spell slot figuring, it overloading in class number degrades your abilities over time.  For those who don't understand why there are two reasons.  The first is that the more classes you take the longer it will take to advance to the powerful features of any given one, and less likely you'll achieve any of those.  Secondly, because ability improvements or feats are given by class level (not character level) it will require more time to get any one of those compared to a single class character.  In the end I suggest 2 classes for multiclass characters and, for those who are clever and willing, 3.

Where does that leave us for the witch doctor?  Personally, get cleric our of there.  There is a bit too much basic religion involved in clerics.  Churches, the classic idea of gods and goddesses, and organized ways of thinking.  These don't fit a much more loosely defined, personally acting, witch doctor.  Let us take the druid and the wizard.  The second of these is the easiest to work with.  Simply choose necromancer as your school of magic.  The first, I feel, is also fairly easy.  Don't go with the shapeshifting build, that doesn't fit properly with what we are building.  Instead go with the Circle of the Land.  Then choose swamp.  Not only does swamp fit the dark atmosphere of witch doctors, it also has bonus spells that fit in nicely.  You may say that those bonus spells can be obtained with wizard, well so can many of the ones from other lands.  However, the wizard aspect of the build is meant to focus on necromancy, so this helps free up choices when selecting wizard spells.

Finally, we can fit in even more of the feel of a witch doctor by selecting the Hermit background.  This will grant you proficiencies in medicine and religion which both work well for the witch doctor.  Not only that, it also grants you a proficiency in the artisan tool herbalism kit.  As for the background feature the discovery can involve information about the forces of nature, specifically looking at the concept of Loa.  I would even use the troll's religions in the Warcraft universe as a great magical fantasy example.

From this we have the nature, herbalistic medicine, strange religion, and necromancy of your classic witch doctor.  The key to keeping your character skinned as a witch doctor at this point is you.  Role-playing will be key, as will spell preparation choices.  Most druid spells work just fine and you can focus on whatever aspect here you went through your daily preparation.  As for wizard there are a lot of things that may not seem like a classic choice.  Make that part of your personality and character development.  Focus on choosing necromancy spells and others that fit the feel of your witch doctor.  Perhaps you can even work with your GM to remove some spells from the spell list to add in a couple from other lists.  Hex and witch bolt from the warlock list would be fantastic choices and giving up mage armor and some other classic wizard spell may be a fair trade.  For already available choices stick with spells like: ray of sickness, tasha's hideous laughter, melf's acid arrow, and fear.  As a final note I suggest a fetish (like a voodoo doll or bird skull of some kind) to be used as a focus instead of the standard druid ones.  This is all flavor so most GMs won't have issue with it.

As you can see, there is a ton that can be done with that one book.  There is flexibility built into the classes too, and no reason not to get creative.  Think about multiclassing the eldritch knight and ranger to get an arcane archer.  Maybe you can combine an elemental monk with druid or sorcerer to really get the Airbender feel going for you.  You could even combine assassin with the avenger paladin for a hitman of the gods.  The possibilities are endless!

Re-skinning: Danger of Casting Strange Spells

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article about re-skinning spells in order to flavor them for your characters and games.  Today I want to continue on that subject.  This time though, I am not going to give some more examples of doing this.  There is an unlimited way to re-skin spells and we could come up with new ones for article after article.  The real question is, should we?  For the first time we are talking about something that intersects with the player's side of the game.  We are also talking about something in which there may be a reason that specific spell doesn't exist.

Let's start with what you should absolutely do / allow.  Of all the things, the general look of spells should be given a lot of leeway.  There is no mechanical effect and, thus, no reason to disallow these effects.  If a player wants blue flame or green electricity, let them.  There are lots of ways to do this (think back to the barkskin example).  A lot of fun and role-playing can be had by allowing this to happen.  A good thing to remember is: if there are no needed mechanic changes than there is probably no need to veto it.

Now what problems could we incur from changes in the mechanics of spells?  Well, on the DM's side it becomes rather irrelevant.  Because you are flavoring a specific group or a specific character, the encounters with these unique forms of spell will be short lived.  Even if they are not, they become an obstacle the party can plan for and around.  On the DM's side of the screen making all spells deal fire damage for crazy fire cultists or an efreeti sorcerer would make perfect sense to the players.

But what happens on the player's side?  Well you probably want to decide if there needs to be more changes than just energy type, for example.  Should a cone become a line if fire becomes electricity.  The specific example I am thinking here is burning hands.  Generally speaking, electricity tends to shoot in a arc, or a line in mechanical terms, and not exist in a cone.  Of course, the easiest thing to do would to be to do as little as possible.  Just change damage type.  The end.  This provides no real balance issues.

However you should probably ask if this is something purposefully left out of the rules.  Why is there a level one fire spell with a cone and an acid spell that is a splashing arrow?  Why doesn't each inherently allow any energy type to be chosen when taking the spell?  Partially tradition and partially effect.  A splash of acid and a cone of fire make sense.  Lightning coming from the sky makes sense.  The way the elements act are important to the game and the D&D mythology.  And if you look carefully this shows in the way spells and energy powers tend to work.

Now, if you want to be a specialist you can, but make that an important difference.  Why does the character want it to be different?  How is it different?  What is the purpose both for the character and the function of the spell?  Work with the player and find out the answers to the questions.  Be consistent with the reasoning.  If they want burning hands to become a lightning spell because they are a sorcerer with djinn blood, then make sure other spells are tweaked too.  Use wind, force damage, lightning, thunder, or something similar instead of the basic type.  An acid arrow spell may deal lightning initial damage and thunder splash damage instead of acid for both.  This keeps it in line with both the goal of the player and the design and function of the spell.

Now, this isn't a problem in all games.  Savage Worlds, as we mentioned, has such things inherent to making spells.  Energy type is chosen when you make the spell.  But in a game with a long history of very specific spells, be careful.  Focus on look and, when mechanics become important, maintain a focus and have reason.  The potential for re-skinning spells for role-playing purposes is very high.  Don't lose that in a desire to, say, to nothing but fire damage.  Make it important, make it your own, and make it interesting.

Re-Skinning: Spellcaster's Flair

Good evening everyone!  Tonight I have the re-skinning article I mentioned yesterday: spells.  For this I want to talk about the variety of ways you can change spells in your game (whatever it is) in order to make the game or a character feel different from others.  Why you might do it and the ways it can be useful (or abused) is something I will go over in a future article two week from now.  Before I give any examples though, I want talk about a game that has this inherent to the system and how much it teaches us.

Savage Worlds.  A universal system to cover any situation you will ever need for whatever game you decide to play.  The first question I had, and other wizards like me I am sure, is what about magic?  How do you universalize magic?  Savage Worlds does it quite elegantly and includes everything from psionics to science to super powers.  They do this by having a variety of basic powers or spells that include only the mechanics that result from their use.  Everything else is "trappings".  You can, effectively, describe any power in any way but the mechanics do not change.  There are a few exceptions, mostly for damage types, which can add a few additional effects.  This does however cause other changes such as less damage or increased point cost.  As I said, simple but elegant.

From Savage Worlds you can learn a lot about tweaking spells.  In fact, it reveals a lot about the concept of re-skinning in general.  For this I, once again, urge you to consider adding the core book to your shelves no matter what you play.  But for now, let's take a look at a couple examples of how we can skin a power.  Here are three spells from the Savage Worlds Explorers Handbook:

• bolt
• entangle
• puppet

I pick these because they are perfect examples.  Bolt is a basic attack spell.  Entangle does exactly what you think.  Finally, puppet allows you to take some control over another.  Here are the example trappings given for these spells:

• fire, ice, light, darkness, insects
• glue bomb, vines, handcuffs, spider webs
• glowing eyes, trance-like state, swinging pocket watch, voodoo dolls

As you can see there are a lot of very different ways in which to describe what a spell looks like or what you do when you cast it.  There are a lot of ways to do a thing, why not make it look different for different people?  Or perhaps, why not have it look different when in a different region or plane of existence.  The Curse of Strahd is a great example of this.  On page 24 you can find cosmetic modifications like using a skeletal hand for Bigby's hand and undead familiars for find familiar.  These are simple but telling changes to the world around the players.

So how do we change our spells?  What are the variety of ways spells can be adjusted?  Well, if you haven't gathered by now, the baseline is to go for some kind of theme.  Whether it is a plane they are cast in (Curse of Strahd) or to fit a mad scientist in Savage Worlds (glue bomb, pocket watch), a theme gives you direction and ideas.  For my examples I will use 5th Edition, mostly because it is my most run game and because spells are pretty specific.  More reasons will reveal themselves in the next article where we talk about ramifications.  In order to do this I am going to take a few examples of spells we can manipulate and the different ways we can manipulate them.

• cloud of daggers
• grasping vine
• barkskin
• flame blade
• burning hands

Cloud of daggers is a very simple spell which creates its namesake.  The area it exists in is take up by magically conjured daggers.  As a result it does slashing damage.  But why does it have to be daggers?  A dwarf would, perhaps, conjure a cloud of hammers and maybe an elf would create arrows.  As a result we need only change the damage to bludgeoning and piercing respectively.  We need not stop there though.  We can also change the form to sand, piranha, spiders, or anything relatively small that could damage.  All you need to do is pick something that fits the character, or where the character comes from, and utilize the appropriate damage.

Grasping vines is a, mostly, druid spell which uses a vine to grab onto a creature.  Here is where things are interesting though, the text says that the vine is conjured.  This means (technically...as read), that there doesn't need to be any vines around.  Now, I would say using local plant life to describe this spell is one of the best ways to "re-skin" it.  Whatever is nearby grows and stretches for the spells effect.  Another way to change this would be to pick a plant that the caster prefers or one from their home that always gets conjured for the spell.  Finally you can continue with the conjuring but have the plant relative to the region or plane.  For example, the plane of water would have Sargasso forests and perhaps this sea weed would be what gets conjured out of nowhere for the spell there.

Barkskin is a spell another one that is both specific and very vague.  First off, you skin takes on a quality like bark.  But what kind of bark?  I think a simple way to make this unique for a character would be to pick a specific bark type, especially a recognizable one.  Birch, for example, would certainly be both different and memorable.  How else can you change this spell?  Well it may be called barkskin but the point is to give you a small amount of natural armor.  But there are many ways to do this, such as scales.  For a caster obsessed with reptiles or dragons, scales would make a fantastic alternative.  Or perhaps you could go with a more elemental them and have crystals grow from your flesh and give the skin a stoney quality.

Flame blade and burning hands are two spells I choose because of their damage component.  The first creates a scimitar made of fire and the second spews forth fire from your hands.  There are many damage dealing spells, and in many games these are identified with damage types and keywords.  Perhaps you wish to create a blade of ice or shoot lightning like Palpatine.  Realistically, this is very easy.  All you need to do is change the damage type.  Of course there are other factors that may come into play, such as the splash from acid arrow or items that catch fire in a fireball.  To tweak these requires a slight but more finesse, but not too much and ignoring things like things catching fire makes little difference.

But these spells are the type of thing that brings me to the next article.  In the next article, we are going to talk about damage spells and why truly differentiates spells in games like Savage Worlds to spells in D&D.  How come there are so many different spells in D&D and so few in Savage Worlds?  Is there really?  Perhaps there is a reason Melf created an acid arrow and not a lightning arrow.  Is it possible there is no ice ball spell for a reason?  I will talk a bit about this and whether it matters or not.  It might not, or it may.  That will depend on you and how ramifications can effect your campaign and world.  And how much you let them of course,

Re-skinning: Lizardfolk From Around The World Part 2

Last week I started a re-skin article about lizardfolk.  I mentioned the reasons lizardfolk were my top choice for a re-skin article, including my personal bias.  One of the reasons, though, was that there are so many different types of lizard.  So many of these are unique and/or easily recognizable.  While this is great news for us, the list became extensive and the article long.  If you want to know more and see the list of example lizards we could use check out the article right here.  You'll also find our first two re-skins: the chameleon and the horned lizard.  Finally, before we get into some more, I want to remind you all of the first step.  Throw out the lizardfolk's hold breath and swim, as these are specific to the original lizardfolk and may not be appropriate for other versions.

Now, let's take a look at some more types of lizard:

• Gila Monster
• Tokay Gecko
• Marine Iguana
• Frilled Lizard
• Flying Lizard
• Armadillo Lizard

If you don't recognize any of the names, and even if you do, head over to Google and do some image searches.  Get an idea of what these creatures look like before we go ahead and make some more humanoids of them.  Done?  Excellent.

The gila monster.  One of only two venomous lizards known (though I have been told there may be venom in the saliva of some monitors), these creatures are also distinctive in their pebbly orange and black skin.  Living in the desert, these would make for a perfect orc-analog to the horned lizardfolk we made last week.  These brutish people require very little in the way of adjustment.  Other than some ability score adjustment, all this creature needs is additional damage, poison of course, for its bite attack.  It may do to allow a Constitution save to avoid this damage, and we could take queues from some of the animals in the Monster Manual to do that.

Let's go over the tokay gecko now.  You may be asking why these lizards.  Two reasons.  The first is that of the many geckos we could choose from, these are distinctive in color and known to be rather aggressive.  Second, they are named for the call they make.  Again, there is not much we need to do to make these a unique lizardfolk.  Much of what would make them interesting lies within the description and encounters.  Other than that we can give them a climb speed.  Many lizards can climb, such as the gila monster we just discussed, but geckos are even more adept climbers.  In fact the gecko's unique toe pads give them exceptional ability and, because of this, I think we should give them spider climb.  This small addition allows the lizardfolk to become an oddly challenging enemy.

We are about to go over the easiest of re-skins with the marine iguana.  These guys live on ocean shores and swim into the water to eat algae and seaweeds.  Unlike all of the other re-skins we don't need to remove the hold breath and swim speed from the original lizard folk.  Instead, we should think about increasing their swim speed a little bit and doubling the length of time they can hold their breath for.  Other than that we just need to turn them black.  What could make this lizard folk interesting is the fact that they are not carnivorous.  A unique society of monstrous looking humanoids that farm ocean plants for food makes for a major change of pace in a campaign and an excellent role-playing opportunity.

The frilled lizard.  I am sure that anyone who saw Jurassic Park and then got into reptiles would fall in love with this creature if they have not already.  Like the dilophosaur of the movie, it has a frill around its neck that it can extend in a frightening display.  These lizardfolk would be smaller and more agile than your average lizardfolk.  While they would not get the spit of that movie dinosaur, they would have to have the distinctive frill.  This frill would provide it with an increased ability to intimidate, just to start.  Additionally, I would say that it can utilize the frill, as a reaction, to cause an enemy to have disadvantage on a roll against it.  Such a thing would be quite surprising, at least the first time.  I would even provide an action that allows the lizardfolk to attempt to frighten a creature for a few rounds.  Either of these abilities would not work on the same creature after it succeeds a save within a 24 hour period.  This is a common theme among such abilities.  However, whether or not that immunity overlaps between the two is up to you, the DM.

Flying lizards provide us with another opportunity for an arboreal enemy.  Unlike the chameleon, these lizards would not be utilizing color changing.  We should still grant them a climb speed to represent their ability to move among the branches of trees with ease, especially since we are going to assume that they live up there.  Next we grant them a fly speed of some kind.  Now, this is a bit difficult, since these lizards do not technically fly.  They utilize flaps of skin between their limbs in the same way that a flying squirrel does, gliding from place to place.  As such it would be a good choice to make this an ability of some kind rather than an actual movement speed.  Perhaps we can allow them to move as if they were flying, faster than walking.  They would be restricted in being unable to move up, but perhaps we could allow them maintain height, only falling if they glide for more than one round.  Another benefit of this feature would be the ability to reduce falling damage.  I must admit I don't know the checks and reduction off the top of my head, but I would say base falling damage for a flying lizardfolk is halved and that on a successful check it is reduced entirely.  This of course assumes the ability to move their arms and use those "wings".

Finally we come to the armadillo lizard.  I included this one because I think we can have some fun with it.  First of all we can include it among the various desert-dwelling lizardfolk that we have already made.  Second, if you haven't looked up pictures of any of these go look this one up.  No really.  Do it.  They roll up and bite their tails to become a spiny death ball for protection!  I can picture this thing having an ability like the salamander, except instead of fire damage like heated body its piercing.  And, if we're honest, we can insert some goofiness into the game every once and a while, and these guys can help with that.  Imagine them curling up and roll down a hill at you like a spined bowling ball of death, before popping up and engaging in combat!

As you'll notice this time we have a lot less bullets and not much in the way of actual numbers or stats.  But not all re-skins need this.  Some have very basic adjustments.  To create nearly a dozen different lizardfolk we simply need to take away some abilities, add others, and be creative.  Eventually, I plan on putting all of these guys into a supplement on the DM's Guild like the chimeras.  I will also work on turning some of them in races.  Because who doesn't want more races?  In the mean time, watch for an overview of the article for ease of reference in the re-skin section of the site.

Re-Skinning: Lizardfolk From Around The World

Today it is finally time to take another look at the usefulness of re-skinning.  To do this we are going to look at something a little different from what we have done.  Instead of looking at a monster of some type, like the chimera, we are going to look at a race of humanoids.  Specifically, if it hasn't been made obvious enough, we are going to be looking at lizardfolk.  To me the race has always been one of my favorites.  There are a few reasons for this.  First of all, I am biased towards reptilian entries.  Aside from that, though, they have always seemed like one of the more versatile of monstrous races.  To me they have been a shamanistic race which is more intelligent than they look.  They have always been generally neutral in action, with a range of alignments depending on tribe.  A people not bogged down by an inherent evil like goblinoids and orcs.  At least they have been this way for me.

I also love the lizardfolk because there is so much potential for the race.  As it generally stands, these are swamp-dwelling folk based off the image of an iguana.  Some images have depicted some as larger or more slender, and they can look like even more generic lizards.  However, there are images of different lizardfolk that have shown up over the years.  Some of these are just coloration, and those are fantastic, but I have seen some very cool images of lizardfolk based off certain species.  Below is one such image, by Firat Solhan for Pathfinder (found on deviantart).  

A chameleon-based lizardfolk?? I love the idea!  That is way, today, we are going to come up with some ideas on various lizardfolk that could exist in your fantasy world.  Even if you aren't someone who has a lot of experience with reptiles, or never really cared much for them, you probably can think of a handful of different lizards off the top of your head.  Having been thinking about this there are a few, I think, would make good lizardfolk variants.

• Chameleon
• Horned Lizard
• Gila Monster
• Tokay Gecko
• Marine Iguana
• Frilled Lizard
• Flying Lizard
• Armadillo Lizard

Honestly, I am thinking of more and could likely find more, but we already have more than we can handle in one article.  Let's just pick a couple of these and and start with those.  My personal choices are the following:

• Chameleon
• Horned Lizard

Ok let's start with the chameleon.  The first reason that this is a great choice is the instinctive look that chameleons have.  Most people know one when they see one.  These lizards would make great substitutes to create a subrace that lives not only in forests and jungles, but high in the trees too.  Their feet are zygodactyl and this lets them grasp things really well, meaning they would probably have no trouble running around branches and suddenly stopping to shoot arrows.  As for the eyes looking in different directions, we would definitely be able to do some stuff with that.  Finally they have the ability to change color.  While this is not as complex or quick as tv and movies show, it is something they can do.  When we add dungeons, dragons, and magic to a world we may as well make the ability a bit better.  To recap we need to add the following to create the chameleon folk:

• Their feet and hands have interesting / useful grip
• Their eyes can look in different directions
• They can change color
• They live up in trees

Before we get into that we need to consider the lizardfolk of old.  What do these creatures have that we need to take away?  What is something we don't want to give to just any subrace?  Well ability scores can be tweaked, of course, but a couple things stand out as specific to the original lizardfolk and only specific future subraces.  So, let's throw out the following to create a foundation:

• Hold breath
• Swim

Wasn't that easy!  Ok so we have a list of things to consider for the chameleon folk.  And we have thrown away what we need to from the original.  Now, what can we do with this.  I would say perception should not only be a proficiency, but also get double bonus for those eyes.  Additionally, I think they should eliminate certain disadvantages as they could pay attention to two things at once.  Perhaps they could even get advantage on sight based perception checks, but that may be a bit much.  Color change is actually really easy because we can use it to give them advantage on stealth checks.  See the troglodyte entry as an example.  As for their feet, we should go easy and give them a climb speed.  Perhaps also give them advantage on checks checks that deal with grip, like grappling.  So to make chameleon folk, just use the simpler lizardfolk stats and add the following:

• Advantage on
• stealth checks
• grip related rolls like grappling, snatching on to something
• a climb speed equal to normal speed
• double ability bonus on perception checks
• eliminate disadvantage/advantage from visual distractions
• such as feigning to give ally advantage
• this one could be a much more situational for the DM

Ok so, now what we have a chameleon folk.  Lets make horned lizardfolk.  For these squat guys, I am picturing squat, dwarf-shaped lizard folk with all the spines and horns of a horned lizard.  I picture desert dwellers that herd and eat giant insects.  I also see them shooting blood out of their eyes in order to distract enemies.  Here we have the potential for something really weird and unique.  These guys are a bit slower than most lizards, but I don't think humanoid ones would be so burdened by body type.  The main thing that really makes these lizards worth looking at is the blood squirting eyes.  The lizards can do that up to 5 feet, so these guys should certainly be able to do it up to 15 or maybe even 30.  I think the best way to utilize this is to grant them a reaction ability that causes disadvantage on an enemies attack roll within the range.  Since this is the signature move, I would even make this rechargeable at 5 and/or 6.  Oh and as a final note, I could see this as a playable race with their own problems.  I'm thinking blood mage cultists.

This article ended up being a little longer than I meant it.  There are so many choices for making new lizardfolk, I could go on for a while.  While I am stopping here for today, I think I am going to go two re-skin Tuesdays in a row and make even more for next week!  Keep an eye out for that and comment with any lizards you think would make good lizardfolk!

Old Gods and Chimeras Galore!

Today I have for you five more of Atlazan's Old Gods.  That brings us to ten fleshed out and detailed gods of the Atlazan pantheon from the continent's far past.  I am unsure what the total is looking like for well known / worshiped deities but it is up there.  I think that when I have completed all the detailing I will make a master list, both for myself and the blog.

In addition to that I have a little better knowledge of when you will get the chimera supplement.  Like I mentioned , yesterday?, this will include a great number of chimeras for various levels of play and a variety of locations.  The grand total will end up being 15 stat blocks in all, I believe.  This should go up by the end of the day Monday as long as all my plans play out as they are supposed to.  In addition another update to Paths of Power is coming in the form of another familiar.  This time for the spirit of nature path.  It is only one stat block for this one, and I think I have finalized what I want from it, so that should be up this weekend!

Re-skinning: From A Brand New Look To A Brand New Monster

Before we get into today's article about re-skinning let's talk a little bit about the various steps we have gone through, the things we have done.  This started as an article about re-skinning as a tool for DMs to get the creatures they wanted from ones they already had or to get new types of creatures from existing stats.  It moved forward to utilizing the chimera as an example of how to do this easily, simply changing descriptions and damage types.  Quickly this article series has become a regular thing for Notes of a Wandering Alchemist.  We have explored more radical changes to stats (turning dragons into plants), adding some complexity to re-skins with breath weapon shape changes and monster features, and even got a bit more complicated by creating new chimeras from a concept and adding side effects to the breath weapons of those creatures.

At this point you may be saying that this series isn't strictly about re-skinning anymore, but using existing monsters as examples for creating your own.  But isn't that what re-skinning really is?  The basics of re-skinning is fairly simple, an easy thing to do that is a bit of an art form and requires a bit of practice to come up with idea rather than actually enact.  When you want something specific, quick and easy, that is the best way.  There is no reason to stop there, as I have said, and additional steps to flesh them out can be taken.  Today I want to take that final step.

You have an idea, a re-skin, and may have even tweaked an ability to flesh it out.  Let's really build on this and create a fully realized monster.  For this I am going to use the chimeras that have been made throughout the previous articles.  The best place to start, when taking your re-skin to full fledged monster is that to which I alluded in the last article: Challenge rating.  We have half a dozen different chimeras with different breaths, different habitats, different personalities.  For a one-time use this is fine, but what if you want something more powerful, or less?  And should we even consider all of those chimera types the same strength?

Not in the Nine Hells, if you ask me.  No, I think we should have a variety of CRs for the chimera.  Let's take this a step at a time.  The forest chimera is a good example because of the animal heads that are a part of it.  The original chimera is torn by the various desires of each head, causing it to be wild and unwilling to give up a fight.  The forest chimera has the head of an elk and that of a wolf.  To me, these speaks to a defensive character.  An elk is not so easily frightened as smaller deer and a wolf is certainly territorial and fierce.  This creates a creature that is willing to fight, with no overwhelming fear, but smart enough to run when necessary.  Classically, the red dragon is strongest of chromatics, but this doesn't need to mean anything for chimera.  No, to me, the forest chimera is probably the strongest chimera because of its stable instincts and behavior.

So, what I did was increase the CR of the chimera.  Now this isn't the easiest thing to do.  You will need the Dungeon Master's Guide to help you out and it may take a little work at first.  Once you get a grasp of how they are calculating CR, you will get quicker and things will be easier.  Don't worry.  Personally, the best thing to do first is decide the CR you want and then tweak the ability scores as you think is needed.  Is the new creature stronger, faster, smarter, etc. than the original?  By how much?  After these have been edited go on to attack bonuses, damage bonuses, AC, and skills.  Adjust those based on the new stats and the new CR's proficiency bonus.

For the most part the only other thing to do is decide if the AC needs to change and by how much you need to adjust the HP.  The AC is a bit of finesse and the HP is some mathematical trial and error.  As an example when I increased the HP of the forest chimera after increasing CR, I had to try a couple options.  The chimera has a lower HP for its CR and I wanted to make sure the forest chimera was similar.  The last thing to do is double check the CR of what you have made.  If you have created the proper CR creature, perfect.  If not, figure out what you need to edit and go back to the ability scores.  Maybe you increased them too much or need to increase ones you did not.

Let's not stop there!  To make the forest chimera even more my own, I continued my thoughts about the other heads.  I'm not positive if elk travel in actual herds, but antlered creatures do have a tendency to stick together, at least.  Wolves live in packs and hunt in packs.  The chimera has always been a singular enemy.  A monster harassing a land or a pet to some powerful person.  Why not have packs of them in deep and ancient forests?  The forest chimera is just such a pack hunter, and to reflect this all I did was add pack tactics to the stat block.  This doesn't really affect the CR, but creates the potential for them to be difficult for high level adventurers.  Three attacks per round per creature, all with advantage if working together?  Aside the possible round-robin of breath weapons?  A dangerous prospect indeed.

Something else I mentioned, and wanted to do, was to take a single creature and expand its use by increasing and decreasing the CR.  This resulted in the creation of the chimling, or baby/young chimera.  I reduced the adult's CR by 4, size by 2, and went through the steps to adjust stats.  Now we have a small chimera, dangerous for new adventurers and full of potential plot hooks for higher level adventurers.  I also went ahead and increased the CR of the adult to create a more powerful version, in this case an alpha chimera.  Again everything was tweaked, but this time I added one more thing: damage resistance.  The original chimera never had this and my new one doesn't either, but the strongest of their kind might.

So what do we have now?  I know you don't have the actual stats from this, but lets keep the conversation moving.  We have a brand new chimera that is unique in look, breath type, state of mind, tactics, and strength.  We have three different CRs for this creature increasing its use to a much wider range of uses and challenge.  It took a bit of work to get the mechanics worked out, and some thought for ideas, but it all stems from a simple re-skin.  We went from, "why not have a green dragon head on a chimera," to a forest dwelling chimera that hunts in packs, protecting their young and territory.

This is the process you can take to create more meaningful creatures to your campaign.  It is the process I have begun using on all of the chimeras we have made up.  In fact, I may take a step forward with the catastrophe chimeras and give them some weather adjusting abilities.  If you're wondering why I didn't get into specifics (other than time) it is because a cannot release the stat blocks as they will be up on the DM's Guild next week sometime.  If you have been following along you can create many of these yourself, and edit them however you see fit.  But for those of you who grab the supplement there will be a number of bonuses (aside having the stats right there): chimlings for each type, special advanced versions of my own devising, and two more whole types I have thought up but did not include in the series.  As for the next re-skinning article I want to get back to the creative process and look at how much we can do with what we have.  The topic?  Lizardfolk.  Stay tuned!

Catastrophe Chimeras, Old Gods, And Warlock Familiars

Hey everyone and welcome to Wednesday's homebrew.  Today I have updated more than I had expected and it finally feels like I am getting back on track.  If you head over to the chimera re-skins page, I have added a small fluff piece for each of the new catastrophe chimeras.  Now that we have plenty of variations to work with, I am definitely going to be working out a supplement for the DM's Guild.

The other thing that I managed to get done, and up, are five of the Old Gods of Atlazan.  If you head over there, you won't even have to search for them.  I did the first five to start you see.  This included completed titles/honorifics, favored weapons, symbols, and descriptions.  These will continue for the next two weeks or so as I fill out the rest of them.  We are getting closer and closer to Atlazan being somewhere I can start making PDFs out of the setting.

Finally want you all to know I am working on my current and future DM'S Guild supplements still.  If you follow twitter, you may have noticed my notebook picture a couple days ago.  A bit of a mess, as making creatures from scratch is new to me (at least for this edition).  If you look closely you can even figure out what I was working on.  I'll give you a hint.  They'll be included in my Paths of Power supplement as suggested Genie Noble patron familiars.  If you haven't checked out Paths of Power, you can go get it now for just a dollar over on the DM's Guild.  If you do, please leave me feedback, comments, or a rating!

Re-Skinning: Getting Crazy With Chimeras

Today we are going to take another step forward in the world of re-skinning.  We are going to continue with monsters and take a side step from what we have done before.  The first time we did some re-skinning we took the chimera and made a variation for three specific climates / ecosystems.  Second we took some dragons and went crazy, making new plant dragons out of existing dragon stats.  Today we are going to pull from these experiences to make even more chimeras.

Why stop at those different colored dragon heads?  Why stick to colors?  Today we are going to make some catastrophe chimeras.  If you have looked at the old 3rd Edition Draconomicon or some of the 4th Edition stuff you know that there have occasionally been dragons made paced on the elements and natural disasters.  Pathfinder has also done similar things.  Magma dragons or earthquake dragons; things like that.  Having thought about some specifics to focus on, the following natural disasters are the ones we will use today.

• volcanic eruption
• earthquake
• avalanche

The first thing I think we should do in the process of making catastrophe chimeras is to pick a base chimera (since we have a few choices now).  Keep in mind while I did not design a white dragon chimera, Paizo did for an adventure path.  Utilize cold in place of fire damage as well as walrus and polar bear heads.  So we have plenty of options.  Let's use the following.

• original chimera (red head & fire damage)
• original chimera
• tundra chimera (white head & cold damage)

The choices for the volcano chimera and the avalanche chimera are pretty obvious.  An earthquake chimera is a bit more difficult, lets start with the base one for safety.  For the volcano chimera we can make the look of the wings and other draconic portions as cooling lava.  Glowing red between basalt black scales.  For the avalanche, we can go with a smooth white color, almost blue, with scales like ice.  For the earthquake a nice rich brown with rough almost granite colored scales.  But what should we do for his breath weapon.  I'm thinking that we keep the cone attack and fill it with stone and sand.  This attack would do bludgeoning damage.

Next we have to take care of the other two heads.  The first question is, do we even need to change them?  I would say yes.  First why not?  Second, it will help make them unique.  Following the path we took originally, we need a head that will bit and one that will gore.  We also want to make sure it matches the habitat of the chimera in question.  We may have to get a little obscure or random with this, but that's ok.  I think the following will be best.

• a mountain goat head and a bear head
• a gargoyle head and a bulette head 
• a yak head and a snow leopard head

With these we get some individuality among the various chimeras we have now created.  With these three chimera you can introduce a variety of dangers that can synergize with weather.  Weather on its own should never be forgotten as a formidable foe and these chimeras can give something behind the weather, something for the PCs to fight back against.  This brings me to something I wanted to do with these chimeras and help lead into the next re-skin article:  additional capability.  

To me the catastrophe chimeras would do well to have an additional, weather/disaster related, ability.  For today let's go simple and just add an effect to their breaths.  To keep things easy we will make the secondary effect happen on a failed save, but not a successful one.  These effects will last for 1 minute but allow a saving throw at the end of each of the affected character's turns.  So, what should we use.  Personally I think the following a pretty good choices.

• restrained (STR save)
• knocked prone and blinded (stand up and CON save)
• stunned (CON save)

There are a few ways to take these, and other options, but let's talk about why I chose these real quick.  In terms of restrained, I picture magma filling the fire breath of the volcano chimera.  This would dry around the feet of the target and keep them in place.  Perhaps you would even allow attacking the stone would give you advantage or actually break you free.  The earthquake chimera, I picture rocks knocking you down and sand in your eyes.  I felt adding the prone effect as adding to the blind which, in general, is not as debilitating as the other two chimeras.  For the avalanche snow and ice covers you and freezes you to the bone, causing the stun effect.

Is this enough.  For now, but not in total.  With these re-skinning articles and all the chimeras I have been working on I have thought about the fact that this is a whole load of CR 6 creatures.  Should they all be the same?  Why or why not?  What else can we do?  How can we make the chimera a staple of a campaign and not a one-off encounter?  That will be the topic of the next article, two weeks from now.  I am going to go over my thoughts on what can be done to effect these.  And with all these chimera, I will (eventually) be creating a DM's Guild supplement with actual stat blocks to reference for all of these.  Fair warning, it will take time as I have a list of things I need to finish already.

Re-Skinning: Stepping Away From Easy

Re-skinning one thing to make it completely different generally takes one part need for something and one part cleverness.  We have gone over some examples of doing things the easy way by just changing the appearance of the creature and a a key word here and there.  With the chimeras we made a variety that fit better in different habitats.  With the dragons we went with something stranger and made them all plants.  Today we're going to look at these and address some of the reasons you may want to put a little more effort in and how that should be handled.

First off, why should you put more effort in if this whole time I have been telling you re-skinning is easy?  Repeat uses and questioning players.  If you are going to use a creature more than once, or if you are looking to make it a staple of your world you may want stats fleshed out and rounded off for it.  Players are also going to ask questions.  Are plant dragons vulnerable to fire?  What about the fire-breathing ones, how does that work?  You may get lucky and the first encounter won't include anything too thought-provoking, but with repeated encounters players will try and should come to understand the creature more.  With that, you need to know more about the creature too.

So, let's start with the simpler of the two re-skin sets we did: the chimeras.  How can we tweak these creatures?  I think the first thing that needs to be done is to properly shape the breath weapons.  Is it necessary?  Probably not, but different energy breath weapons have tendencies in D&D that it wouldn't be a bad idea to maintain.  First we need to compare the original chimera breath to the red dragon's.  The large red dragon has a 30 foot cone of fire while the chimera has a 15 foot cone of fire.  So let's take the breath type of the large version of the dragon head the chimera has and use a half size of that breath.

• Blue - 60 foot line (5 feet wide) of lightning becomes 30 foot line (5 feet wide)
• Black - 30 foot line (5 feet wide) of acid becomes 15 foot line (5 feet wide)
• Green - 30 foot cone of poison becomes 15 foot cone

Is there anything else that might make the different chimera unique?  That comes down to looking at the dragon stats and determining the core features of that type.  The key things of note here are the damage immunities that the dragons have.  The chimera has no such immunity, or even resistance, so we will not add those in.  However, the green dragon is additionally immune to poisons and the poisoned condition.  I think it would be fair to grant the green-headed chimera that immunity to add to its flavor.

The other thing of not is that green and black dragons have the amphibious feature.  Let's consider the green chimera.  Both other heads are terrestrial in nature.  It makes little sense to add the amphibious feature to that chimera.  Besides, we already granted it immunity to poisons.  For the black chimera, the other heads are associated with water.  The hog generally enjoys mud and crocodiles, while not amphibious, spend much of their time in water.  Granting the amphibious feature to the black chimera seems fair to me.  So let's recap the additions:

• Blue - no adjustment
• Black - Amphibious
• Green - Condition Immunities: poison

Now that we have done some straight forward re-skin advancement, let's move on to the plant dragons.  If you remember the previous article, there were a number of breath weapon possibilities and options that we disregarded for ease.  Some of you have even mentioned to me the improved ways in which we could re-skin.  We are going to check those out now.

The concern we had in that article was that some of the pepper dragons, given their base dragons, could have had additional breath attacks.  This included gold's weakening effect and brass's sleeping effect.  Before we get into how to re-skin these, we need to consider something.  The strongest of the pepper dragons is based off the red dragon, which does not have any additional breath options.  Personally, if we are creating a line of related pepper dragons, they need to have some consistency.  That means we cannot leave the most powerful of their kind without a second breath option.  So, what we are going to do is grant the ghost pepper dragon a second option as well.

In order to do this we need to decide what numbers to use for the ghost pepper (red) dragon's optional breath.  I suggest using the same DC as the fire breath, as that seems to be what happens with the metallic dragons.  The next thing is to decide what conditions to use to replace the given ones.  I think we should use the ones suggested by LongStrider in the comment left on the plant dragon post:

• itching/scratching
• weaken
• blind

The question becomes which dragon gets which one.  There are two ways to do this.  First we can consider which is the strongest effect of peppers in real life.  This is pretty subjective but I think blindness would be the most debilitating and weakness the least.  Of course in terms of mechanical conditions, blindness would probably cause the incapacitated condition as well as blind for most people.  If you ever got hot sauce in your eye, you know what I mean.  The other way, and more mechanically sound, is to take the strongest condition for the strongest dragon.  This is what we will do here:

• Jalapeno - weaken
• Habanero - blind
• Ghost Pepper - incapacited (via itching and scratching)

All of these should be Constitution saves to avoid.  How long do these things last though?  I suggest following the gold dragon's optional breath as a template.  Each one should last up to 1 minute and the affected creatures should get a save at the end of each turn to overcome the debilitating effect.

The last thing I want to consider for these creatures is the complication that comes with some re-skins.  Here we have taken fire-breathing dragons and made them into plants.  All of the base creatures have fire immunity.  Plant's are often vulnerable to fire though.  How do we reconcile this?  Well we could easily wave off that fact due to the magical, draconic nature of these creatures.  However, it may be better to reconcile it.  Personally I would judge that the plant dragons have vulnerability to fire, except for the pepper dragons.  These should have their immunity reduced to a resistance to show that they are not as fire-proof as red or gold dragons would be.  Of course if you disagree, keep the immunity.

Now we have taken another step in making re-skinning more complicated.  Or have we?  While they aren't as last minute applicable, the steps we have taken are somewhat intuitive.  We are simply following through with questions of abilities and discrepancies that become apparent in re-skinning.  The more you play with monsters and re-skinning things, the easier these further adjustments become.  The line between re-skinning a creature and creating a new one may begin to blur the deeper you go.  But that's ok.  If you use an existing creature as a baseline, you're using a good and tested foundation.  Not only is there nothing wrong with that, but it is generally a good idea.  Use the tools you are given!

Next time we head into re-skinning I am going to do a more complex re-skin.  Instead of going with something basic (even if weird) and fleshing it out, I am going to take up a concept that we are going to have to pull from other editions and games for advice.  That means we may have to make some things from the ground up.  We may even have to adjust CR.  Keep watch for that in two weeks!

Chimeras Of A Different Color, Plant Dragons, And Rearrangement

Hello everyone.  I have begun rearranging the site a little bit.  Up above, the Resources and World Building sections have their own tabs now.  Additionally I have added a Re-skin page and tab from which you can find both the re-skinning articles I have posted (and will post) and pages for each monsters that have been re-skinned.  For now, those pages hold what has been done, in the articles, to re-skin those creatures.  This is so you can replicate those creatures.  Finally each one has a short narrative to help give the feel and look of the creature.  These pages will all be updated, and added to, as I continue with my re-skinning articles.  Stay tuned for more!

Re-skinning: Plant Dragons or Dragon Plants?

I am sure many a sage have spent their lives trying to answer the title question, but that isn't why you are here.  You are here to get some more examples of re-skinning monsters, this time using dragons as the base creatures.  This idea came about in the form of a spearmint dragon, initially.  I thought, what kind of dragons would live in an area where basic plants and animals have been enhanced, extensively, through natural magics.  A primordial (not in the elemental, but historical sense) forest touched by the Feywild.  Somehow, my mind alighted on the idea of a spearmint dragon with a frost breath, for what should be obvious reasons.  Today I want to expand upon the idea and create a number of similar creatures, but how to start?

The best way we can start, I think, is with the spearmint dragon and deciding on an edition to use.  I am going to be using 5th Edition D&D, but the method should hold for Pathfinder and systems with the chromatic and metallic dragon types, though you may have to tweak something on your own.  So, the spearmint dragon is going to have a nice cool, minty breath.  A nice cool, minty, deadly breath of course.  From here we have two choices: the white dragon or the silver dragon.

Before we get any further let's address something that could raise some question or cause some decision making.  Dragon alignment is deeply rooted in D&D with the two types being divided between good and evil.  For the purposes of this article we are going to ignore the base dragons' alignments.  Personally I like the idea of a good chromatic dragon or an evil metallic dragon, but let's not assign anything to these new ones.  I'll leave that up to you for now.

Oh, and I don't know abut you guys but I give all the older dragons change shape in my games so let's ignore whether or not they'll have that too.

Back to the spearmint dragon.  What are the main differences between white and silver?  Silver has a higher CR and can utilize it's breath weapon to paralyze instead of dealing cold damage.  This lies a bit beyond the scope of a spearmint dragon, I think, so lets go with the white dragon.  The question now becomes what we need to change to make this idea a reality.  Honestly, we don't need to do anything.  The only difference that exists is in describing the creature to your players.

Let's move on to creating some more by addressing the different breaths the dragons have.  When it comes down to mechanics, the most significant difference between all the dragons are their breath weapons.  Some of them have a number of wielders and the metallic dragons have extra capabilities, so there are more than enough options.  We can look at the possibilities below.

• Fire - Gold, Brass, Red
• Acid - Copper, Black
• Lightning - Bronze, Blue
• Poison - Green
• Slowing - Copper
• Weakening - Gold
• Repulsion - Bronze
• Sleep - Brass
• Paralyzing - Silver

While I would love to work out an example for all of these, there isn't the time today.  Instead I will go over two more choices.  First let's make a plant dragon that can breath fire.  Fire is the classic weapon of dragons, so we have to do that one.  I also think it to be one of the easiest to work out.  If you don't know where I am going with this I may be a little disappointed.  Maybe you never watched cartoons though.  The answer for fire breathing plant dragons is peppers, what else?

The real question is, what kind of peppers?  There are so many hot peppers out there, all of which with warning of the dangers of skin contact, eye contact, and eating.  If you have ever made hot sauce and accidentally got some in your eye, or even just enjoy eating it, you know why the cartoons depict the reaction as literally breathing fire.  Luckily for us, we have three fire breathing dragons to choose from!  Let's go with three commonly used hot peppers:

• jalapeno
• habanero
• ghost

Those are in order from weakest to strongest heat.  To keep with this, we should go in the same direction with challenge rating.  This will make brass dragons the base stats for the jalapeno dragons.  We do come into a problem here, utilizing this dragon though.  Brass dragons also get a sleep breath, but spicy food is not a good way to get sleep.  In order to rectify this, we're going to do something crazy.  Throw out the sleep breath.  Get rid of it.  It's an option that shares a cool down with the fire breath, so not having it should do very little in the way of changing CR.  All it does is make the creature a little more damage based.

So, which dragon do we use for habanero and which do we use for ghost?  The problem here is that the red and gold dragons have the same CR.  What is the difference between the two?  Red dragons deal more damage with their fire breath, but gold dragons can use their breath to weaken the enemy.  This could create a tough choice in design.  The best thing to do is to follow our crazy line of thought and through out the weaken ability, unless it means a lot to you.  In the end, if you use this, it's up to you.  By doing this we can use gold dragons for habanero dragons and red dragon stats for the ghost pepper dragon.

Ok let's get down to our last dragon.  The choice here is easy for me, because I have had a great idea.  Let's go with acid breath.  What plants have something akin to acid?  There are a few I can think of off the top of my head and they are all carnivorous.  From here we have to pick a plant and a dragon.  My idea is to use the copper dragon stats but take some cues from the black dragon.  Why?  Because many carnivorous plants can be found in wet, warm, and swampy areas.

That's the black dragon influence but why the copper?  The additional use of breath to slow.  The pitcher plant is where I am going with this.  For those who don't know what a pitcher plant is, they are plants that create little pitchers full of sweet smelling fluid that attracts insects.  These insects get stuck in the somewhat thick fluid and are slowly digested by that fluid.  In that we have the use of breath in both ways.  We also have a plant dragon that could hide within a swamp, mouth askew and agape waiting for giant insects to fall into its maw.

Your party has been travelling through the deep woods trying to find your way to its eastern edge.  Following the sun is difficult, but you long lost the path through.  Occasionally you come across a grove, devoid of trees but full of lower growth.  Your druid warns you of some of the fey that may make their home in such groves and prove to be dangerous to encounter.  Each time your ranger looks for signs left by others of his kind before you make camp.  This time the grove is full of low growing spearmint, providing a lovely and relaxing smell.  Looking for danger, you find an incredibly large hole in the center of the grove.  Dropping a torch the dark hole begins to shimmer and sparkle with the light of a giant pile of coins and gems.  As you look down the scent of spearmint grows and the chill wind of night begins.  Before you can begin contemplating what this all means, you hear a roar.  Turning you a frozen in place as the icy cold breath of a dragon washes over you, the green plant-like form descending from the canopy.

Some of you may have noticed that there are a few problems with today's re-skins, especially if you are completionist or focused on the details.  First the habanero and the ghost pepper dragons are the same CR, but perhaps they shouldn't be with the loss of the weakening breath.  The second thing is that I have completely ignored all of the lair actions of the dragons that are a key feature of major 5th Edition monsters.  These things were done on purpose, because this article is about the basic forms of re-skinning.  It was made to represent a more abstract version of what we did with the chimera.  The next article of re-skinning will get into deeper adjustments of creatures that have been re-skinned and I will then use these examples to illustrate those point, not to worry!

Plant Dragons, Untamed Dice, And Chaugnar Faugn

Happy Monday all!  A number of things have happened in the past few days.  First of all, Brave New Worlds has been renamed (with some Twitter input) to Untamed Dice.  Originally the account and podcast were made with the intention of our Savage Worlds game.  This campaign was made for the podcast and is, as you know, called Brave New Worlds because of the multiverse aspect to it.  With the test sessions I realized we should put them up (and did obviously) and quickly changed to the idea of also including a variety of games that don't get podcasts themselves (at least not like D&D and Pathfinder for example).  So, before the main game starts we came up with some ideas, polled twitter, and now we have Untamed Dice!  All these changes also lead us up to the official start to Brave New Worlds this Friday.  I am also keeping playlists up here at the blog AND I have finally submitted the podcast to iTunes for review.  The link will show up here when that goes through, and we plan on adding it to other podcast apps.

You may have also noticed some picture changes.  The profile pic for all things Wandering Alchemist is now the visage of Chaugnar Faugn, provided by my friend Zackery Keys.  He's working on some other stuff and finishing up the full logo, but for now we can have the eldritch horror's face.  If you check out the SoundCloud playlists you'll notice a bit of an expansion where two of the monsters arms hold dice set at 1 and 20, of course.  I also went for the more generic dice splash background.

The last big event from this weekend, was the release of my Paths to Power supplement on the DM's Guild.  This features four new otherworldly patrons for warlocks, a new pact boon, and a few invocations.  Do me a favor and check it out if you have the dollar, and please send me some feedback.  If you don't have the dollar hit up my other supplements (both paladin oaths) and leave me feedback on those.  Feedback will really help me improve what I am doing and how I attack my current and future projects.

Finally, some preview of this week.  I am going to continue cleaning up the site and adding pages for future homebrew and podcast playlists.  Tomorrow is another re-skin, this time a little more abstract but hopefully still very simple: plant dragons.  Wednesday I will have two re-skin pages up, one for the chimera and one for the dragons.  These will, initially, have some flavor text like that provided at the end of the chimera article.  One of these for each individual creature to expand upon the articles themselves.  Eventually I may create ready-to-use stat blocks to reflect the re-skins.  Thursday I have a few interesting authors to inspire you.

Thanks everyone for keeping up, the page hits keep growing, and I cannot wait to share Brave New Worlds with you!