I’ve so far avoided talking about the
Hydes, the Servants, and the Baskerville Hounds. That will change right now.
The Hydes are detailed in the D20
Past. They have their intelligence
unchanged, but are naturally odious and inspire onlookers to attack them in
short order. They are also impulsive and
give free reign to their vices. At the
time the PCs are entering the house, the Hydes are already permanently changed,
abandoned to their darker sides as Dr. Jekyll feared was happening to
himself. One slight change that I add to the cannon is
cannibalism, as the Hydes sustain themselves on the victims that they have carted
in from London.
Powers: +6 bonus to Intimidate, Rage
# of rounds = half con
Please see D20 Past page 63 for more
information.
There should not be excessive numbers
of Hydes in the mansion, probably 4, maybe 8 at the most. They should unique and memorable dangers to
the PCs, and 4 Hydes hunting them corridor to corridor and herding them towards
either the Master’s trap or the guest quarters occupied by Richter (and the
other in turn) should prove dangerous but not impossible for the PCs to
overcome.
The servants are another matter. Formerly dedicated functionaries of Baron
Larksley, they have become rather mindless, until struck. The following is their monster profile:
Medium Sized Dedicated Ordinary Human
Type becomes Humanoid
Use standard scores for Ordinary
Humans
Max Int, Wis, Cha is reduced to
4. Any attribute score over those
maximums is removed. For every two
attribute scores lost in this way, the creature gains 3 hit points. If there is one attribute point left over any
maximum after this process, discard (creature gains no hit points).
This process makes the creature,
though alive, incapable of taking proper care of itself. Hair grows in and becomes matted, nails grow
and curl, new hair patches grow on palms of hands, disabling the creature from
fine delicate manual work. Creature
gains the Monstrous Odour flaw.
While at peace, the creature will rest,
looking to any inspection except close inspection as though dead. It is incapable of higher level thought. When it detects prey (prefers humans, cannot
detect Hydes at all), it will move and stand, then start moving slowly towards
the source of the food. Creature has no
extra senses, and very weak sense of smell.
If it captures prey, it will gorge
itself, never full. Its actions are in
this order, grapple, bite, rend (with teeth).
It doesn’t have the presence of mind to change this, even when it isn’t
working.
These apparent zombie characteristics
change the instant the creature is wounded.
Sensing a danger, it will start making morale checks, gauging fight or
flight and assessing the danger. Like
all living things, it will avoid harm, but cannot change its attack
patterns. If it chooses to fight, it
will resume grappling the closest target, even if that target is not the source
of the major damage. Successful attacks
of any kind cause it’s morale check to take cumulative -1 modifiers.
If it decides to flee, it will flee,
knowing nothing about where it is going.
It will find a space that seams removed from the threat, and curl up and
hide. It has no racial bonus to hide
checks. It has no den, and no instinct
to protect a den. If attacked again, it
will make a new morale check to fight or flee.
Over the span of an hour, it will completely forget all previous encounters
and start over from neutral morale.
As it is now a humanoid, it cannot be
turned as though undead or animal (as Druids can). Spells and spell-like abilities must target
humanoids to target this creature. It is
no longer considered a person. Changing
the Servant back into a human is an impossible feat given what is known on
entering the mansion, but there might be an adventure in it if the PCs are
willing to quest far afield for it. In
any case, that’s another role playing supplement
As a thought, all of the NPCs in the
house serving the Master are likely to be Dedicated Ordinaries. Their -1 challenge rating will all be undone
by their transformations.
No comments:
Post a Comment