Ridiculous monster you will never use

William Blackmoor · Post by **William Blackmoor** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:51 pm

I always liked the elven vampire (case example Jundar Sunstar)

Jander is not of the Elven Vampire strain. He is not even an elf turned vampire, he is an elven Nosferatu.

I dislike this scarring buisness of the elven vampires, but i think that Lady Adeline is a pretty cool villianess no the less.

Personally I'm quite grateful for the Spirit Waif. One saved my character once.

Gemathustra · Post by **Gemathustra** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:05 pm

William Blackmoor wrote:
I always liked the elven vampire (case example Jundar Sunstar)
Jander is not of the Elven Vampire strain. He is not even an elf turned vampire, he is an elven Nosferatu.

"Do you have "Nosferatu?"
"Yes, we have "Nosferatu," we got "Nosferatu" this morning!"

Faust · Post by **Faust** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:27 pm

Karkhov is not funky enought to be blacula....

as for jander he is really a nosferatu? I tought he was a normal vmapire...

midnightcat · Post by **midnightcat** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 1:05 am

Jander is an Elven Nosferatu. The stats were in "Children of the Night: Vampires" , and "Championsof Darkness".

Gonzoron of the FoS · Thu Jan 20, 2005 11:24 am

He's Elven, and he's Nosferatu. And Nosferatu is a form of vampire. But he's not an Elven Vampire. That's a specific strain of vampirism that only affects elves and is much different than a nosferatu.

So all Elven Vampires are vampires and elves, but not all Vampires who are Elves are Elven Vampires.

Clear as mist?

Gemathustra · Post by **Gemathustra** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:24 pm

gonzoron wrote: Clear as mist?

Pea soup, even.

Mangrum · Post by **Mangrum** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 2:50 pm

David of the Frat wrote:The Spirt Waif was also 100% useless. It's a freakin' GHOST!

In the initial DoDark draft, it was essentially nothing but scenery, with no way I could discern of interacting with characters. (It was also called something else -- cavern haunt, I think, or something like that.) The Spirit Waif was my resulting quick fix. Even so, it's one of several creatures I thought were just taking up space. Had I been bold enough to remove creatures entirely, I would have turned the whole entry into a one-paragraph Geist subtype (the Kindergeist) in between the Bussengeist and Poltergeist.

Mangrum · Post by **Mangrum** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 2:53 pm

gonzoron wrote:He's Elven, and he's Nosferatu. And Nosferatu is a form of vampire. But he's not an Elven Vampire. That's a specific strain of vampirism that only affects elves and is much different than a nosferatu.

So all Elven Vampires are vampires and elves, but not all Vampires who are Elves are Elven Vampires.

One change we realized we wanted to make in Ravenloft, a little too late to put it in DoDark, was to give the racial vampire strains individual names. Having to refer to an "elf elven vampire" in a stat block is indeed grating.

For the record, in the Vallaki Bookstore, we now call elven vampires albesadows.

BlackBoxGamer · Post by **BlackBoxGamer** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 5:16 pm

Albesadows? I like it. Where did you come up with that name? (Any historical or mythological basis for it?)

BBG

Mortavius · Post by **Mortavius** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 10:24 am

I love the name of this creature, but I hate the creature itself: the Scavyt. Cool name, but it's a bloody cavern-dwelling hyena. Nothing more. That, and the Razorback. What's gothic or terrifying about a boar? Even one with some spikes on it's shoulders?

And for the record, even though I agree, it's a ghost, I did use a Spirit Waif to some success in my games. Again, nothing that a normal Geist or Ghost couldn't fill the role of, but at least it was more gothic than a hyena or boar.

Mangrum · Post by **Mangrum** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 12:55 pm

BlackBoxGamer wrote:Albesadows? I like it. Where did you come up with that name? (Any historical or mythological basis for it?)

I can't remember who came up with it at the moment, unfortunately. One of us, not me -- I didn't name any of the racial strains. The name is intended to be an Elven term that roughly translates as "unloved by shade," as I recall.

So, no, no antecedents.

Mangrum · Post by **Mangrum** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 1:06 pm

Mortavius wrote:I love the name of this creature, but I hate the creature itself: the Scavyt. Cool name, but it's a bloody cavern-dwelling hyena. Nothing more. That, and the Razorback. What's gothic or terrifying about a boar? Even one with some spikes on it's shoulders?

I would have gladly ditched both of those creatures as well. I thought the razorback lent itself to unintentional comedy, though I did eventually come around a little and find a niche for it (in Gaz I). The scavyt just struck me as totally generic.

As a note, it was while I was tearing through DoDark that I came to the (much delayed) personal realization that, in 2E, several kinds of Ravenloft elemental (dread elementals in 3E) were, in terms of game mechanics, absolutely identical to the standard varieties.

Since I've been ragging on the book, I should be fair and say that there were critters I really liked as well. The drownings were inventive, for example, and I thought the new wrinkles in the kizoku gave it a much more distinctive flavor. (I'd credit the authors, but other than the Kargatane authors, I don't have much of a clue as who wrote what.)

Jakob · Post by **Jakob** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 6:30 am

Tentacle rat.
I will say nothing more.

DeepShadow of FoS · Post by **DeepShadow of FoS** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 2:11 pm

In defense of the spirit waif, I like the concept of the ghost of an innocent retaining its goodness in death. I'm planning to use them in my games, but I'd prefer to see this handled without an entire separate stat block.

Faust · Post by **Faust** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 2:41 pm

I do like the scavyt i mean they are nice critters to challenge a lvl 1 party...

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Ridiculous monster you will never use