Dark clouds gathered in the sky, lit only by flashes of lightning that were tinged green. The rogue scanned the heavens cautiously, wary eyes probing the storm as the hairs on the back of her neck stood from more than just the electricity in the air. A familiar hand on her shoulder didn’t startle her but did shake her from her reverie, turning to regard the grizzled fighter. She lifted her hand to rest it upon his briefly before they were both interrupted by a shrill shriek almost lost among the thunder. Their contact both and weapons leapt into their hands while their caster companions nearly tumbled over themselves as they tried to stand. Descending from the skies like a bolt of lightning was a drake, covered in emerald scales and wreathed in sparks. The rogue rolled, pitching out of the way as the beast crashed upon the earth, an emissary of the storm seconds before it landed alongside it, sending bolts scattering across the ground. Insectile wings unfurled as a sinuous neck turned so that cruel-eyed head could regard the party who stood ready to face the threat.
I'm back from my vacation to present the astalos from Monster Hunter, a lightning-based beast that I designed as a drake given its body shape and design. Drakes often include their elemental trait in addition to their dragon trait, which led to that inclusion. The astalos is a fearsome fighter that is encouraged to dark above or around the battlefield or launch a frenzy of attacks to trigger its Charge Up. This is meant to resemble the electricity that passes through its body and empowers its attacks and does exactly that for brief moments. An astalos has two full rounds to use these, which means it can spend a round attacking with these enhanced Strikes before unleashing one of the three associated abilities. Reaving Bolt has its name inspired by the variant of the astalos and its effect is based on the blade of lightning that the astalos will form from its horn. This blade isn't as long as the one created by the boltreaver, but extends the range of the astalos and lets it produce more damage. If its wings are charged, it can unleash its Rolling Thunder instead, which encapsulates two different attacks of the astalos. It can rampage across the ground, dealing unlimited use area damage to each creature it passes by with a high DC or it can descend from the sky to land in a wide explosion of electricity. Its Thundering Tail, which requires its tail to be charged, is highly similar but deals between unlimited use and limited use area damage. The use of these damages is based on the fact that the astalos could be recharging these sorts of abilities with a third action - it has to do something to trigger up but these attacks otherwise have no actual cooldown.
The astalos can use Dancing Thunder without getting charged up as it doesn't seem to be associated with any of its limb. This was a hard ability to figure out as it is a series of lightning bolts that drag across the ground and split up. I debated having it be something that the GM had to track and somewhat control but instead I just made it target random creatures, starting with limited use area damage to two, then between damage to three, and finally unlimited use area damage to four. The Monster Mash really helped with this idea, switching the first and last instance of damage inflicted by it as well as better defining its area. This and the other electric abilities of the astalos all trigger its Stunning Shocks, which can leave a creature stunned if they fail a moderate DC Fortitude save. Aside from resembling the effects of thunder in Monster Hunter, it's also nice to include a Fortitude save in the astalos's kit.
I'm back to making gear, this time featuring an arquebus named for one of the astalos's light bowguns and designed after the Burst skill, which ramps up elemental damage by landing consecutive hits. I wasn't sure how to represent this until I hit the idea of it creating a weakness it can trigger and steadily increasing it. This weakness is short-lived and so requires those consecutive hits but adds some nice damage to it.
Pathfinder 2e:
The First Edition version was a little tough to figure out in part because charging up is a bit more dangerous. The astalos doesn't get additional actions to make Strikes with and attacks of opportunity are ubiquitous among creatures, making the movement trigger much more dangerous. For this reason, charge up has a longer duration but a similar effect. I did attempt to simplify its abilities a little bit by wrapping up the charged up horn and tail abilities into voltaic outburst. As part of this, its gore effect gains a much longer range to be worth doing - if it was only 15-feet, there would be no point in doing it over the sting effect. Honestly, many of the changes to the 1e astalos came from simplifying it such as changing rolling thunder to simply be the movement based effect though dancing thunder isn't too different. Now with all the movement that the astalos will want to be doing, it does include Mobility in its feats as well as Flyby Attack to run strikes on enemies.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
Sorry, I'm still recovering from my vacation so no encounter hooks this time but you can of course still check out the videos on YouTube - whether it be the details in the design or the Monster Mash!
If you're interested in joining the discussion on what creatures/builds I'm working on or just discussing your own homebrew works, check out our Discord! If you want to get some teasers or help us get to our yet unlisted milestones for extra content, check out the Twitter.
Have a monstrous Monday!
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