Converting monsters from Dragon magazine

freyar said:

Not that there's much difference between the two, but I guess the cachalot is closer to the many-humped due to the latter's bite attack.

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I guess that's enough to get started on a Working Draft.

Sea Serpent, Many-Humped (and Many-Finned)
Gargantuan Animal
Hit Dice: 12d8+84 (138 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: Swim 60 ft.
Armor Class: 16 (-4 size, +1 Dex, +9 natural), touch 7, flat-footed 15
Base Attack/Grapple: +9/+33
Attack: Bite +17 melee (2d6+18)
Full Attack: Bite +17 melee (2d6+18)
Space/Reach: 20 ft./15 ft.
Special Attacks: —
Special Qualities: Hold breath, low-light vision
Saves: Fort +15, Ref +9, Will +6
Abilities: Str 35, Dex 13, Con 24, Int 2, Wis 14, Cha 6
Skills: Listen +10, Spot +9, Swim +20
Feats: Alertness, Endurance, Diehard, Run, Snatch
Environment: Warm aquatic
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 6
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 15–21 HD (Gargantuan); 22–42 HD (Colossal)
Level Adjustment: —

A creature resembling a thick-bodied serpent as long as a galley, with a row of evenly-spaced humps down its back. The beast has dark rubbery skin contrasted by a bright white underbelly. Its head resembles that of a calf or hornless ox, while its tail is like a whale or porpoise's, with twin horizontal flukes.

Despite its resemblance to a snake, a many-humped sea serpent is actually an elongated species of whale. Its skin is rubbery, not scaly, and is usually smooth, although it may show patches of roughness if it has suffered injuries or parasitic infestations. Some specimens have one or two white stripes on the sides of their necks. Many-humpeds prefer to live in warmer water at the boundary where shallow seas descend into the deep ocean.

Many-humped sea serpents average about 80 feet long and 40 tons in weight, but can grow to 120 feet in length.

Combat
These sea-serpents attack by biting. If they feel their lives are threatened they flee their opponents, diving long and deep to avoid pursuit.

Hold Breath (Ex): A sea serpent can hold its breath for a number of rounds equal to 15 × its Constitution score before it risks drowning. For a typical sea serpent, this is 192 rounds, or over 19 minutes.

Skills: A sea serpent has a +8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform a special action or avoid a hazard. It can always choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered. It can use the run action while swimming, provided it swims in a straight line.

Many-Finned
Longer than many ships, this serpentine creature has a body covered in segmented bony armour, with a dozen or so spikes along either side of its body. A serrated ridge runs down its entire spine, from a small cowlike head at the front, to a narrow triple-lobed tail at the back. Its jointed armor and oddly-shaped tail give it a resemblance to a lobster. The creature has a pair of flippers at the base of its short, slim neck.

Many-finned sea serpents are another serpentine whale like the many humped. They favor warmer waters than many-humped sea serpents so are only found in the tropics. A many-finned is leathery brown with patches of dirty yellow, which in some circumstances may combine to give it a greenish-grey appearance.

Many-finned sea serpents average about 70 feet long and 40 tons in weight, but can grow to 100 feet in length.

A many-finned sea serpent uses the same statistics as a many-humped sea serpent apart from the following differences:

Initiative: +0
Speed: Swim 30 ft.
Armor Class: 18 (-4 size, +12 natural), touch 6, flat-footed 18
Attack: Bite +17 melee (2d6+12) or spikes +17 melee (3d6+12)
Full Attack: Bite +17 melee (2d6+12) and spikes +12 melee (3d6+6)
Special Attacks: Spikes
Special Qualities: Fortification, hold breath, low-light vision
Saves: Fort +15, Ref +8, Will +6
Abilities: Str 35, Dex 11, Con 24, Int 2, Wis 14, Cha 6

Combat
These sea serpents seldom pursue fleeing prey but will doughtily defend themselves against attack. They fight by biting and by lashing out with their spikes.

A many-finned that takes a full attack action cannot attack the same opponent with both its bite and spikes attacks.

Fortification (Ex): Whenever a critical hit or sneak attack is scored on a many-finned there is a 25% chance that the special attack is negated and its damage is rolled normally, similar to the effect of armor enchanted with the Light Fortification quality.

Hold Breath (Ex): A sea serpent can hold its breath for a number of rounds equal to 8 × its Constitution score before it risks drowning. For a typical sea serpent, this is 192 rounds, or over 19 minutes.

Spikes: A many-finned sea serpent can inflict 3d6+12 piercing damage with its spikes on a successful grappling attack.

Given that the humps can "serve both as a reserve supply of air for long dives," I'd increase the duration of hold breath to maybe 15x Con, like we did for the merhorse.

Skills: maybe 8 ranks in Listen, 7 in Spot?

Feats: Alertness, Endurance, Diehard (like the whales), maybe Snatch, maybe Iron Will

freyar said:

Given that the humps can "serve both as a reserve supply of air for long dives," I'd increase the duration of hold breath to maybe 15x Con, like we did for the merhorse.

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Sure, might as well.

freyar said:

Skills: maybe 8 ranks in Listen, 7 in Spot?

Feats: Alertness, Endurance, Diehard (like the whales), maybe Snatch, maybe Iron Will

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Would they have much need of Iron Will in their normal activities? I'm thinking maybe Run or Stealthy would make more sense.

Run would be fine.

I'm ok with CR 6.

For the many-finned, are we just reducing the hold breath duration back and improving the NA?

freyar said:

Run would be fine.

I'm ok with CR 6.

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Updating Many-Humped Sea Serpent Working Draft.

freyar said:

For the many-finned, are we just reducing the hold breath duration back and improving the NA?

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It's also a lot slower, so we need to cut the swim speed to 30 ft. or thereabouts.

Also, since it's supposedly heavily armored and covered in spikes, I was thinking we should give it a defensive special ability or two - like damage reduction and hazardous spikes.

e.g.:

Spiny Defense (Ex): Any creature that hits a many-finned in melee with a natural or handheld weapon (but not a reach weapon) must succeed on a DC 11 Reflex save or take X point of piercing damage from its spikes. The save DC is Dexterity-based.

It has about a dozen spikes on each side in a typically 70 ft long body. That's lots of room for a normal critter to get in and hit without taking damage. Some sort of swiping attack that uses the spikes might be fun, though, like a modified slam.

I guess DR would be ok, but I think a really big armor bonus makes a bit more sense the way it's described. I could see some degree of fortification.

freyar said:

It has about a dozen spikes on each side in a typically 70 ft long body. That's lots of room for a normal critter to get in and hit without taking damage. Some sort of swiping attack that uses the spikes might be fun, though, like a modified slam.

I guess DR would be ok, but I think a really big armor bonus makes a bit more sense the way it's described. I could see some degree of fortification.

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So, spikes that allow it to do respectable damage as a grapple attack, like you can do with Armor Spikes?

Actually, spiked armour might be a good model - a Gargantuan set of armour spikes does 3d6 damage. However, the average would work out less than its 2d6 bite because it wouldn't normally get the 1.5 times Str bonus of a single natural attack.

Hmm... we could allow it "spikes" as a secondary attack, e.g.:

Attack: Bite +17 melee (2d6+12)
Full Attack: Bite +17 melee (2d6+12) and spikes +12 melee (3d6+6)

Spikes: A many-finned sea serpent can inflict 3d6+12 piercing damage with its spikes on a successful grappling attack.

freyar said:

I guess DR would be ok, but I think a really big armor bonus makes a bit more sense the way it's described. I could see some degree of fortification.

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I'd be OK with Light Fortification, but It seems a bit too thin and flexible to have a great deal of Fortification - its vitals can't be that far from its skin on any part of its anatomy.

I like the spikes secondary attack and grapple damage. I was thinking of something like that.

Light Fortification would be fine. It just seems a little more fitting than DR, and we need something to make them more interesting.

freyar said:

I like the spikes secondary attack and grapple damage. I was thinking of something like that.

Light Fortification would be fine. It just seems a little more fitting than DR, and we need something to make them more interesting.

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That's fine. It doesn't really need the damage reduction.

Updating Many-Humped Sea Serpent Working Draft.

We still need to decide on the NA of the many-finned. The original's AC 3 is only one better than a standard whale, but that seems a bit miserly.

Also, should we knock of a couple of points of Dexterity? It's heavily armoured and has half the swim speed of the many-humped (two-fifth the speed in the original), so will likely be less acrobatic in the water.