Spelljammer Converting Spelljammer creatures

Cleon

Legend
That'll work.

Updating the Porton Working Draft.

Tactics: Portons typically ignore other creatures and objects; indeed, they can't sense anything smaller than a large wagon. Portons barely respond to attacks at all, just blasting foes with dark lightning while continuing what they are doing.

I have some flavour text I prepared earlier. What do you think of this:



A disc of shimmering nothingness hangs in the sky. It's size is vast - maybe as wide as you could throw a dart or hammer and as tall as an ogre. There's no visible substance to it, just a twisting distorting in the air like the heat-haze above a furnace. It could just be a weird weather phenomena, but it doesn't seem to be moving with the wind.

Portons are strange entities that exist by drawing energy from negative elemental planes. They are effectively autonomous, self-generating gateways to the various negative elemental planes. It is unclear whether a porton is "alive" in any conventional sense, for they are insubstantial beings without anatomy or organs. Anything that “touches” a porton risks being sucked through its gateway to one of the negative planes it feeds upon, maybe lost forever.

Portons are mindless beings who are unable to sense anything much smaller than itself. They wander the sky at random, virtually insensible to their surroundings. Portons fly continuously, never touching the ground. Indeed, if one should land the ground would likely disappear into a negative plane. Portons always fly in a horizontal orientation, their disc never tilts in any direction.

A porton can focus negative energy into deadly bolts that look like lightning, if lightning were utterly black. They reflexively shoot these blots at anything that obstructs their passage. Portons seem to lack any sense for self-preservation. Even if a powerful foe does potentially deadly injury to a porton, it will carry on doing whatever it was up to before the attack began; its only reaction is to blast the intruder with black lightning, just as it would any other obstacle.

It is unknown how – or if – portons reproduce. Some extremely powerful undead can order portons to follow simple instructions, possibly via a secret spell or feat.

A porton is weightless, approximately 100 feet in diameter, and 8 to 10 feet thick.

Combat
Although a porton can perform the Run action or make double moves, it very rarely does so. They just fly leisurely along, even if in the middle of a frenzied battle, using their black lightning against any object or creature that interferes with their travels. Portons rarely target humanoids with their black lightning because their blindsight is incapable of seeing creatures smaller than an elephant. A porton will only use its touch attack by accident or if compelled to by another creature, such as a powerful lich.

While a porton does not wittingly "fight" it is also incapable of retreat or surrender; it will continue projecting Black Lightning until any irritants in its way have been removed or the porton is destroyed.
 

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freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
Just some typos:

"twisting distorting" to "twisting distortion"
"Portons always fly in a horizontal orientation, their disc never tilts in any direction." to "disc never tilting"
"They reflexively shoot these blots" to "They reflexively shoot these bolts"

But it looks great!
 

Cleon

Legend
Just some typos:

"twisting distorting" to "twisting distortion"
"Portons always fly in a horizontal orientation, their disc never tilts in any direction." to "disc never tilting"
"They reflexively shoot these blots" to "They reflexively shoot these bolts"

But it looks great!

The "tilts" isn't a typo, it seems better than "tilting". Rather than get in a grammatical face-off I'll change it to "their disc is never tilted".

I'll correct the other two typos.

Updating the Porton Working Draft.
 

freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
Well, if you combine either "their disc never tilts ..." or "their disc is never tilted" with the first part using just a comma, then it's a run-on sentence either way. WotC and TSR writers are fond of that mistake, as well. ;) If you stick in an "and," it'll be grammatically correct.

All done after that fix?
 

Cleon

Legend
Well, if you combine either "their disc never tilts ..." or "their disc is never tilted" with the first part using just a comma, then it's a run-on sentence either way. WotC and TSR writers are fond of that mistake, as well. ;) If you stick in an "and," it'll be grammatically correct.

Pfft! That seems more of a style issue than grammar. That it's good enough for WotC means it ought to be good enough for us.

If it really riles you so much having a run-on sentence, I'll just use a semi-colon instead.

Besides, using "and" makes for an ugly sentence: "Portons always fly in a horizontal orientation, and their disc never tilts in any direction."

Using "so" or "thus" would work better.
 



freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
I just noticed that "phenomena" in the last sentence of the description should be "phenomenon," but then it's done. :)
 


freyar

Extradimensional Explorer
Well, I'm having enough trouble keeping up that maybe it's best to let it wait. But I'm game if there's one from one of our "sets" that fits in here.
 

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