Anthony Li and Alexander Augunas are talking homebrew with their third installment of Create Demiplane, a segment in which the Private Sanctuary Podcast’s Man Behind the Screens and Everyman Gamer talk about world building. If that wasn’t cool enough, they’ll be showing off the various strategies that they talk about each week by actually BUILDING a world to play in. (Specifically, a demiplane.)
In Create Demiplane’s latest installment, Alex and Anthony talk about building monsters for your campaign setting.
Listen Now!
Create Demiplane Thus Far ….
A quick summary of our Demiplane after Episode 259.
“Subartic Plane” – Everything has been frozen over by ice and snow. No sunlight. Think Alaska in the dead of winter, year-round.
Major Deity — Codename “Flame Deity.” True Neutral. Major Deity. Has the following domains: Community, Healing, Fire, Protection, and SCALYKIN (You Decide winner!).
Settlements are “fueled” by dragons; their fire keeps the settlements running.
Primarily Red and Golds. Need mortals to build them shelters because red/gold dragons are vulnerable to cold and would eventually die without a place to retreat to.
Dragons are seen by mortals as avatars/children of the Major Fire Deity. Governments are theocracies with the settlement’s dragons acting as rulers.
New settlements are given an egg and a group of clerics to act as the wyrmling’s regents. The clerics have full power over the new settlement until the dragon reaches Adulthood (101 years).
Dragon flames provide heat and light for living, cooking, and growing food.
Silver and white dragons are in the setting; don’t know about other colors.
Dragon Alignment isn’t set in stone; dragons tend towards their bestiary alignments, but their alignment is overall fluid.
Magma dragons are forces of nature and aren’t commonly used for settlements. One, maybe two known examples. (Thought: Forge city with magma dragon in a massive furnace.)
Brass dragons are also city dwellers. Together, a brass and a gold dragon might have forced reds into the current symbiotic arrangement.
Whooly Rhinocerraptors are a major danger. Need to figure out what they eat.
Less powerful, domestic rhinoceraptors exist. They are primary mounts / modes of travel.
The Whooly Rhinoceraptor
OH MY GOD ITS LOOKIG AT MEEEEE!
Special thanks to our artist, Emily Lubanko! Do her a solid and check out her portfolio here!
Woolly Rhinoceratpr CR 7
N Large Animal
Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light, scent; Perception +##
—– Defense —–
AC 19, touch 13, flat-footed 17 (+3 Dex, +7 natural armor, –1, size)
hp 95 (10d8+50)
Fort +10, Ref +8, Will +3
—– Offense —–
Speed 40 ft.
Melee bite (1d8+4 plus grab), 2 claws (1d6+2), gore (1d8+4), sting (1d8+4 plus bleed)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft, (15 ft. with sting).
SpecialAttacks bleed (1d6), pounce, powerful charge, rake (2 claws, 1d6)
—– Statistics —–
Str 18 Dex 16 Con 21, Int 3, Wis 13, Cha 3
BaseAtk +7; CMB +12 (+16 while grappling); CMD 25
Feats Diehard, Endurance, Improved Initiative, Skill Focus (Perception), Weapon Focus (bite)
Skills Acrobatics +7, Perception +11, Survival +11 (+15 when tracking blood with scent), Stealth +9; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Survival (+8 Survival when tracking blood with scent).
SQ cold stride, keen tracker
—– Ecology —–
Environment any cold
Organization solitary, pair, or pack (3-8)
Treasure incidental
—– SpecialAbilities —–
Cold Stride (Ex): Whooly rhinoceraptors can move through natural difficult terrain at their normal speed while within cold terrain. Magically altered terrain affects them normally.
Keen Tracker (Ex): A whooly rhinoceraptor adds Survival to its list of class skills and gains a +4 racial bonus on Survival checks made to track blood or bleeding targets with its scent ability.
You Decide!
After listening to Episode 264, come back here and vote in the comments section about whether Anthony and Alex should cover magic in the demiplane or the demiplane’s underworld next. Leave your votes in the comments, and the winning topic will be the subject of the next Create Demiplane!
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Actually animals have 1 or 2 they can’t have 3 int because it makes them sentient. From the bestiary, all animals have “Intelligence score of 1 or 2 (no creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher can be an animal).” So unless it is sentient and can understand a language then it has 2 int like all the other predator dinosaurs. Cool episode! And I think magic will more interesting so my vote is for you to do that first.
Also are you going to make animal companion/mount stats for it.
I love the Wooly Velociraptor so much!
I personally would like a description of the underworld for the setting as there’s so much interesting things you could do there.
One solution to the Endure Elements discussion would have it’s use attract a monster. Maybe a variant of a Shadow that’s the soul of someone who froze to death? They’re attracted to these types of spells like moths to a flame, so even a large creature like a dragon would have to deal with these swarms of shadows. This might result in the practice just generally being frowned upon.
Loving this series, guys. I look forward to each installment!
1) I think that covering magic first could lay some important groundwork because it’s helpful to know how prevalent magic is around the world before deciding how different portions of the world have been effected by magic. You talked about this in this episode when you described how different monsters came to be. This is going to be the same for regions, too.
2) Also, when you have the world more fully developed, would you consider hosting and recording a short actual play podcast of an adventure in this world? It’d be great to hear your GMing and/or play styles to go along with this place.
Thanks!
Endure elements is easy to address… say that the temp is under -50 degree’s at night, that is the limit of that spell, and on Earth the lowest recorded temp in Antarctica is about -83 degree’s so it’s not unreal.
That way you could have endure elements as a way to travel during the day, but at night your toast.
That could be interesting for trading between towns, as you would need to have them a ‘day’ travel, so if you had Earth like tilt, then you could have a consistent amount of time for day (at or near equator) but at the poles you would have pretty much warm and cold seasons. This would be interesting. It would isolate towns near poles, and near equator it would make towns about 1/2 day away from each other.
On a trade route that is far out, on the edge of civilization you could have it be cut off by removing a town in an area where there is only a couple nearby towns, you would sever the route by removing a town since there is no shelter for the night available…. that could be a hook for adventures right there.
I totally want to steal this idea for a post apocalyptic, nuclear winter setting on Earth…
Shadowrun has dragons… Nuclear Winter Shadowrun… Awesome!
Maybe in a non dragon world you could have some nuclear device be the warming unit…. perhaps it leaks and irradiates the people that huddle around it for heat…
Cool world ideas guys!
Hey endure elements only works to -50…so make it colder out side of cities?
Another option for endure elements is for that one spell not to exist. Seems the simplest solution.
We have seen this regularly in ladies, and even additional often in women who have
been engaging in extended-duration exercise for a lot of years.