The party huddled around the fire as the wind whipped through the frosty tundra, nearly driving out the flames. Even in the heavy pelts and furs, they pressed together for warmth. Out of them, the ranger alone scanned the flurrying snow for any threats, pausing as she tried to focus on something. With a shout, she threw herself into the rest of the party with all the force she could muster, sending them sprawling into the snow. Before any of them could react, a cyclone of snow and ice rose around where they had been moments before. The wind howled next to them, but the noise was outdone by a rumbling growl before a vast form leapt from the darkness. As it landed, the ground trembled and the towering beast regarded them with icy blue eyes, massive fangs protruding from its upper jaw.
This guy was a major wall for me in Iceborne for a while but he ended up being a very fun monster to build. For the design of the creature, I wanted to capture the mobile combatant feel of barioth with it springing and darting from place to place. The easiest way to accomplish this was by giving it the pounce ability as well as the Mobility feat. I considered Spring Attack but felt that pounce was a close enough stand-in without the barioth needing to spend a feat on it. Instead, I used those feats to pick up Critical Focus, Improved Critical, and Crippling Critical in reference of the high affinity that barioth weapons seem to have. Beyond that, the main abilities to copy were the cyclone it generates and its wide sweeping tail attack. For the latter, I borrowed the tail sweep from true dragons, modifying it slightly to work with the barioth. It took me a bit to figure out how to achieve its cyclone ability, but having worked on a similar ability with the lagiacrus before, it gave me a decent starting point. For the sake of the game, I opted to allow it only to create one frost cyclone at a time and it only goes on cooldown after the cyclone ends.
Pathfinder 1e:
Unlike the 1e version, I was able to test out the 2e barioth and was able to come up with a few adjustments. I initially included an ability to knock people back when it's hit, sort of like it's shoulder tackle, but that ability didn't seem to work as well as I'd hoped. Given the slight focus the 2e version has on knocking creatures prone, between the Knockdown on its tail, its Frost Cyclone, the critical effect of its Tail Sweep, and its ability to take advantage of prone targets with Ravager, I decided to settle on a basic but useful Attack of Opportunity for its reaction. Ravager itself is based on the bear's mauler ability. Likewise, I borrowed its Leaping Charge from the bulette with a slight modification for its attacks while also picking up Pounce for it to better serve as a skirmisher. Also, I was able to include its secondary weakness in 2e, having it hold a weakness to electricity and fire. Given the commonality of these elements, I raised its defensive stats, giving it a higher health pool and AC. Finally, to capture the critical feat line of the 1e version, I granted the deadly d10 trait to its fangs, which seems to be a common replacement for such an effect.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
Sorry, I sometimes struggle coming up with encounter hooks for these more simplistic monsters and got to into running some games yesterday, so I don't have any this week!
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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