You call THAT a hydra??

Continuing from my brother's post which continues from Goblinpunch. (Arnold stole it from Chris McDowell I think but I'm really not willing to chase it back to Hesiod or whoever)

I see London, I see France

Corpushydra

HD 7 AC leather Attacks (see below)

Move 15 Int 3 Mor 7

A corpushydra has only one, mean-eyed head, but a hundred bodies. It lives in cold swamps (a lot of bodies is a lot of excess heat) and slurps up anything even slightly edible with its long, hollow tongue.

Corpushydras attack in two ways: by trampling enemies into pulp, and by using their many hearts to build up pressure in their veins until blood shoots from their eyes with enough force to dent armour. Each of the hydra's bodies occupies a 5-foot square, but will happily share this space with a human-sized creature as part of its trample attack.

Trample

When you try to move through a corpushydra's space or it moves through yours, make an opposed strength check. If you fail, you have been knocked prone, and you take trample damage every turn until you pass a strength check and can stand up again. The hydra tramples for 1d6 + 1 for every adjacent square it also occupies (max 1d6+8)

Blood Spray

A corpushydra will use blood spray on anyone attempting to attack it from afar, or any creature that looks like it can win a lot of opposed strength checks. Blood spray is a ranged attack dealing 1d8 damage, reflex save to avoid being blinded by cloying blood.

Petting Zoo Hydra

HD 1-20 AC leather Attacks (1 per head)

Move 12 Int 3 Mor 7

A petting zoo hydra is created whenever some really weird shit happens at the petting zoo, which is pretty rare, frankly.  The heads will regrow in 1 round unless salt or fresh milk is applied to the stump.  It has one head for every HD.

Heads [d20, or just go down the list]

1. Duckling - Nibble 1d4-1, but with a -2 to hit.
2. Chick - Peck 1d3-1.  Pecked target must save vs giggling.
3. Kid - Nubby horn attack 1d4-1.
4. Rooster - Crows.  Every turn, has a 10% chance of attracting a new random encounter
5. Goose - Smashes for 1d4.  Ridiculous 20' reach.
6. Puppy Skull With Glowing Red Eyes - Bites for 1d3.  Can reanimate dead things as friendly zombies, 1/turn.
7. Mistreated Blue-Tongue - Bites for 1d3 + disease.
8. Emu - Pecks for 1d4.  Easy to sever: neck only has 1 HP.
9. Bag of Grain - Can cast cure light wounds at will.
10. Ibis - Peck 1d3-1.  Save or lose an eye.
11. Spider Monkey Hand - Attempts to steal your weapon and hit you with it.  Str 12, Dex 16.
12. Ram - Gores for 1d4 damage.  On a miss, there is a 2-in-6 chance that the horns gets jammed in something, trapping the ram head there for 1 turn.
13. Sow - Bites for 1d4.  Never forgets.  (Attacks whoever attacks it first, and never changes targets.)
14. Llama - Bites for 1d6.  If the attack roll is 1-3, it attacks another head instead.  If the other head is having a bad morning, the two heads will start fighting, only stopping when one head is bitten off or starts crying.  (This causes two heads to grow, as normal.)
15. Sloth - Sleeps until it takes damage, at which point it wakes up and starts biting for 1d3-1.
16. Mule - Bite 1d4 damage, save or it whinnies upsettingly at you.
17. Fairy Penguin - Peck 1d3-1, Every 3 turns, breath a cone of frozen air, 1d6, 20' cone.
18. Teen on Work Experience - Does nothing except scream about baby animals and madness, begs to be sent home, yells at players to bring salt.
19. Pen - On a hit, traps a player inside.  On subsequent turns, beats "head" against ground, dealing 1d6 damage to occupant automatically.  Made of chickenwire, and the lock can be opened by anyone with greater int than the hydra.
20. Koi - Doesn't want to fight.  It will just make weird fish noises all fight.  If it is the only head remaining on the body (i.e. it is a koiydra) it will run away.  It's also tamable, if you have patience.

Basically this but even fluffier

Transplanar Hydra

HD 8 AC plate Attacks (1 per head)

Move 12 Int 5 Mor 7

It is unclear whether these things are incredible war-machines or slightly uncomfortable accidents. Each of a transplanar hydras heads is from a different plane of reality. Cutting off a head causes a different head to rotate in from the closest reality, while two fresh heads bud in further planes. Further growth may be prevented by applying an antithetical element to a fresh stump. A transplanar hydra will never grow a head in a plane it has already visited.

Most transplanar hydras begin with at least five heads, in the classic planes of earth, fire, air and water as well as one in the material plane. Possible heads include:

1. Fire - Burning oil saliva. Bites will set targets alight, and the ground beneath the hydra's head will smolder until put out.
2. Water - Can breathe a Fog Cloud 1/day. Will try to catch people in its mouth and drown them.
3. Air - Two swift attacks per turn, at a -2 penalty. Looks like a dumb bird.
4. Earth - Stone or metal weaponry striking the head will be absorbed on a failed strength check. Absorbing something sword-sized or larger grants the head +1 damage (max +5).
5. Magnetism - Reverse Gravity 1/day, affecting only metal objects (someone in chainmail or above counts)
6. Ooze - Engulfs on a successful attack, as per your favourite kind of ooze
7. Light - Eye contact with the head blinds anyone failing a reflex save. Creatures with darkvision don't get a save.
8. Bone - Anyone attacking the head in melee combat takes 1d6 damage from bony quills.
9. Glass - Head reflects all spells towards new, random targets.
10. Mind - Everybody stands still and thinks through the moves of the coming fight. Replace dex with int, str with cha, con with wis, maybe? Play through the fight otherwise as normal. When the combat is over - hyrda head/players dead/retreated - return everyone to where they were at the start of the fight, except now running away/catatonic.
11. Confluence - N-th dimensional head exists to the full definition of this plane of existence. Can attack anyone that has ever been, or ever will be, within a normal hydra's reach of anywhere the hydra's body ever has been or will be. Players use this same set of rules for attacking the hydra.
12. Life - Contact with the head's fluids impregnates the affected surface/person with d100 species of random creatures. Remember that probably about 97% of the world's species are invertebrates; bugs and fish.
13. Subtext - Position of the head can only be inferred from environmental clues. Head takes 1d10 damage for every uncomfortable, unspoken topic broached between characters.
14. Luck - Treat every dice roll made near the hydra as though it rolled the maximum value. All attacks are crits, all saves are passed, every improbable plan works for both hydra and players.
15. Faith - Resembles the head of all gods. Anyone watching it die must save vs crisis of faith 1d6 weeks later. Failure means you need to get a new life goal.
16. Oscillation - Head is constantly making a noise like a jack-hammer. After two rounds spent within 50' start saving vs deafness. At three rounds take 1d4 damage as your bones start to shake. Fourth round, 1d6 damage. Fifth, 1d8. Etc. Leaving the radius resets this effect.
17. Math - Head can only be damaged by prime numbers. This should mean that your damage is likely to be better with 2d3 than 1d10??
18. Narrative - Cannot be reduced below 1hp except by something that makes somebody at the table go, "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn."
19. Logic - Will attack anyone perceived as illogical (that's pretty much everyone on the material plane). Will totally ignore anyone that starts sorting things. Will probably allow itself to be sorted.
20. Hydra - The head is one of these. If you kill all the other heads and this is the only one left, the hydra stops being transplanar are starts just being a hydrada.

Took me like 3 days to get 17, 18 and 19.
Pretty sure the joke's dead by now.

More Hydras

Microhydra. Size of a small dog. Carried around in handbags by fashionable society ladies. Excitable. If it grows too many heads the din of its yipping will become intolerable. Shortly thereafter, its heart will give out from the strain of pumping all that blood. Like all hydras, unbelievably poisonous.

Larger microhydras, maintained at a reasonable three heads, are often kept as guard animals. Their primary advantage over more conventional creatures is that foolish adventurers will go to the trouble of cutting off the heads and cauterizing the stump with fire instead of just stabbing it through the chest like they would with a dog.

Monohydra. Cut off the head, one more grows in its place. No net gain for the hydra. The new head will be slightly different in appearance, have a different personality and only retain 2/3 of the memories of the old head.

Monohydras are less confused than what they insist on referring to as "polyhydras" and, as a result, are more likely to participate in civilized society. They have a massive inferiority complex that they will go to some effort to disguise. Instead of openly terrorizing villages they will become involved in protection rackets, extorting money and livestock with promises to keep the villagers safe from some poorly-defined greater threat that may or may not actually exist. Their blood is so poisonous that the blood of anybody killed with it will also become poisonous, as is normal for hydras.

There are various myths and rumours about how a monohydra might become a regular hydra. Monohydras will pretend not to care about any of them. It is secretly the thing they yearn for above all.

Chronohydra. Grows two new heads before you have cut off the original. Which is to say, can grow two new heads as a move action, guaranteeing one attacker a critical hit at some point in the next three rounds. Can't use this ability if you have brought fire and are openly considering cauterizing the stumps. Temporal paradoxes cause minor earthquakes and deal d6 damage to everyone in the immediate vicinity, plus d6 more for every other temporal paradox you've participated in today.

inspired by Goblin Punch, as usual

Holiday Games: SESSION RECAP

This is a long one - buckle up, or just read the fun, hacky ruleset at the top.

So I was on holiday recently like a month ago I took so damn long to write this up oh my lord. Obviously the Thing To Do was play some rpg games with my two cousins: Lucie (14) and Jack (18)

We played two games, using my AP system for both. 4AP and 6 Health to break among as many characters as you want. I couldn't find my d20, so we used a coin instead, totally winging an entire ruleset as we went. Basically, hard things had a 25% chance of success (two heads), easy things 75% (one head in two flips). You get it. Lack of dice also meant we didn't use normal damage. Instead, people trained in a weapon did 2 damage a hit, the untrained (or weak monsters) did 1 damage. You could probably simulate 1d2, 1d4, 1d8, 1d16 with this, but doing binary at the table is not my favourite thing.

First game was run by me, the second by Jack. His first ever DM experience too! gj Jack I am so very, very proud. I will continue to weep openly as I type this.

If I ever write a DnD sitcom these will be the stars
Two white dudes. Because I fucking suck. 

The games went like this:

Sally Sells Sea Spells By The Seashore

Instead of going to bed like a normal person I'm going to write these until I pass out.

I love the sea

1. Crabalanche
   Point at a crevice and crabs start pouring out of it. Like a thousand crabs. Maybe two thousand. They don't really do anything, just mill around for a while and then wander off. If you can't make this work you suck and I hate you.
2. Be Foam
   Turn into sea foam. Only able to reconstitute self when immersed in sea water. Can be used as a reaction to being squashed/crushed to death.
3. You Can't Drink Salt Water You Total Mong
   Make somebody start puking. Unless that person is a fish. Fish can probably drink salt water. The probably is there because, like, do fish drink at all? It feels like they don't need to but they probably do.
4. Slick
   Cover an area in thin layer of water. Functions like whatever that spell is that already does this. Alternatively, use this spell to make all your flirtations super effective. Or do anything else that's a meaning of the word 'slick'.
5. Eelpal
   Vomit out an electric eel. It is your friend and it loves you. Also it is one of your non-vital organs and you should probably swallow it again before the spell wears off.
6. Bubblebutt
   Summon a giant soap-bubble, centered on yourself. The bubble will absorb a kind of stupid amount of force, but can be cut reasonably easily with a sword/dagger/arrow.
7. Breathe Underwater
   Man that was a fucking obvious one.
8. Inksquirt
   Exactly as erotic as it sounds. Would be way more effective underwater, but still works like the way colour spray sounds like it should. 
9. Eight Arm Strike
   Use this to give yourself 8 actions in one turn. They're unarmed though, I guess, to stop this being disgustingly OP. It probably still is. Fuck you.
10. Swallow
    Swallow a thing. Big, metal and pointy. Huge, semi-solid ooze. Doesn't fucking matter. There's some kinda fish somewhere that could do it and now you can too.
11. Wave
    Wave comes outta somewhere. Rises up from ground, rushes out of cupboard, falls from chimney. Whatever makes least sense. Everyone falls over now.
12. Cephaloghost
    Spooky cephalopod spectre attaches to somebody. They gotta win a grapple or whatever, and get fucked up by suckerspikes every round it takes them. Like 1d3 or something?
13. Shellter
    Ha pun. Somebody's skin grows hard and thick and kinda gross. More armour less dex or whatever. Makes you really heavy, too.
14. Tradewind
    A stiff, reliable breeze starts blowing wherever you want it to, for as long as you keep concentrating plus a couple rounds of lee-way.
15. Stonefish Surprise
    Somebody gets stung in the foot by a stonefish. Save vs agony. Not even sure if this is a spell that stonefish mighta been there this whole time there is basically no way to be empirically certain.
16. Planulae Release
    Everything that isn't vigourously moving starts to get covered in coral. Focused on a small area or in a corridor or whatever, this makes the region unpassable. Broader areas just develop a rock-hard crust.
17. Luminesce
    Glow with the freaky light-show of a deep water beastie. Everyone watching has to save vs pretty colours or be entranced.
18. Swim
    Like Fly but, you know, you have to swim.
19. Drag to the Depths
    A big ol' tentacle pops out of the nearest man-sized hole and starts grabbing shit. Anything dragged in is in the nearest ocean now.
20. Landshark
    A friendly tiger shark shows up, leaving a nausea-inducing wake in the earth and biting chunks out of your enemies.

Fish are so scary

So You’ve Glimpsed The Afterlife

1. Nothing. Forever. Acquire a penetrating fear of death in all its forms. Quit adventuring and settle down to a lifetime of utmost seclusion and frenzied research into immortality.
2. Fire and pain. Repent all your sins, donate all worldly wealth to the nearest orphanage and dedicate yourself to attaining sainthood.
3. Eternal bliss. Calls to you. Lose all fear of death, gain permanent -2 AC and spend the rest of your life seeking out righteous causes to die in aid of.
4. Hall of warriors. Gain +2 attack bonus and learn the hiding-place of the axe of a legendary queen. Develop inflexible honour code and fear dying in any other way than battle.
5. Boreal waste. Gain weakness to cold, migrate to the warmest lands, cling to fire as an ally and comforter.
6. Sisyphean torment. For each day you spend doing the same thing that you did the day before, save vs. panic or run off into the wilderness.
7. Grey purgatory. Emerge 80% more boring than you were before. Become unable to sustain relationships or correctly estimate the passage of time.
8. Bacchanalia. Gain +2 attack, AC and the ability to prophesize in strange tongues under the influence of alcohol, on which you are now dependent.
9. Realm of the gods. You are now on a first-name basis with one randomly selected divinity. You owe them a favour and they owe you a favour.
10. River of souls. +2 to swim checks. On moonless nights, cannot sleep unless two-thirds submerged in cold water.
11. Briefly reincarnated. Gain faint memories of and a powerful attachment to a grieving mother in a distant land.
12. Hunger and thirst. Become permanently ravenous. If prevented with lake or banquet, must save to avoid drinking and eating until stomach bursts.
13. Darkness below earth. Lose pigmentation, eyesight. Develop supersensitive hearing and other subterranean adaptations. Can talk to stone and learn its secrets.
14. Four-year trek to paradise. Cannot settle down. Enter into perpetual search for gateway to next layer of underworld. Are offered clues in dreams by winged psychopomp who seeks to reclaim you.
15. Honeyed garden. Develop infinite appetite for luxuries - fine food, sex, beautiful objects. Have trouble with the concept of actually paying for these things. Become master thief, probably.
16. Trapped in coffin. Can never again venture underground.
17. Infernal bureaucracy. Develop superhuman patience with finer points of terrestrial law, appetite for legal detail, political aspirations. If ever found guilty of anything, go into screeching fit of insanity and never come out.
18. Endless sky. Your movements feel clumsy and ponderous. -2 to all jump and climb checks. In high places, save to avoid hurling yourself from edge and enjoying one last time the sensation of flight.
19. Choir of angels. Sing with ear-scouring beauty. Attract the attention of wealthy patrons. All other music sounds tuneless and harsh to you.
20. Cosmic horror. Human life now means nothing to you. Go permanently insane and become determined to usher in a new age of tentacular darkness. Appear superficially normal.

To be clear, you roll every time you hit 0 hp. Almost-dying a lot makes your poor soul very confused.

MAGBIKEWORLD

The year is FUTURE. The world is a fucking hole. People did nukes everywhere and now the ground is poisonous metal. A combination of Mad Max*, Ork tech from 40k and Mirrodin. Everybody is fucked up completely, having a pretty good time. Face it, everybody ever has a pretty good time if you give them…

*everything is Mad Max these days that movie was really darn pretty

MAGBIKES

Magbikes work by dragging in air, ionizing it, shooting it around a magnetized spiral to build up speed, firing it down and backwards. Magbikes are unstable and scary and fun and beautiful. Everyone has them because if you touch the ground you die. Here is them:

• Contrail
1. Glittering, ionized dustcloud
2. Aurora-borealis-style light stream
3. Shimmering columns of heat
4. Burn marks on the air
5. Apophenic billows of gas
6. Splintered wake of earth
7. Nauseating subsonic howl
8. Horizontal tornado
• Frame
1. Square jet engine with handles
2. Sleek, melted space Harley
3. Poised, back-heavy jungle cat
4. Sealed polyglass bubbles
5. Pod-racer; chariot dragged by engines
6. Explosion of metal, spines, teeth
7. Symmetrical fulgurite
8. Rider(s) suspended in gyroscope
• Controls
1. Theremin
2. Detached floating wheel
3. EEG impulse helmet
4. ‘Superman’ body rig
5. Touch gel
6. N64 controller
7. Put your face in this hole
8. Surfboard
• Quirk
1. Must manually blow into intake to start engine
2. No airbrakes; can only slow down with sweet wheelies
3. Vibrates at natural frequency of human bone
4. All metal surfaces painfully cold to touch
5. Calibrated to use blood as cooling fluid
6. Supersonic engine hum causes manic depression
7. Becomes frictionless at high enough speeds
8. Weighs 20% of what it should
• ‘Splode
1. Gouts of lightning flow from engine
2. Metal pinwheel torn apart by own dipole
3. Ionic fireball devoid of smoke
4. Slow, silent firework
5. Ripples into atomization
6. Shockwave of steam
7. Torn apart as if by invisible giant
8. Consumed by rust in seconds 

Probably use ‘Splode table roll to find the equivalent of each vehicle shooting out smoke when damaged.

Here are some other things: