A purplish haze filled the air, accompanied by black feathers twirling and dancing upon the wind. The wizard hurriedly drew a handkerchief from her robes, covering her mouth as the fighter began to cough and choke on the toxins. Sharp eyes flickered about, scouring the sky until she found the dark shape circling overhead. She focused her gaze on it as she began to trace arcane symbols in the air while muttering incantations through her cloth. A lump of earth and stone ripped from the ground at her feet, a mass larger than her torso that condensed into a packed ball about the size of her head. As she readied the spell, the flying beast fixed its gaze upon her and it began to dive. With a flick of her fingers, she launched the packed earth at the rapidly descending creature – and caught it square in its violet chest. The earth exploded, releasing a shower of dirt and stone as the creature flapped awkwardly before skirting over her head and crashing into the earth behind her. The fighter and rogue began to close in but as the wizard, one hand upon her hat, the other holding up her handkerchief, turned to look at the beast, she found herself pinned by its piercing stare. The fumebeak, resembling a giant, ragged crow with purple crystals interspersed among its obsidian feathers, began to rise, its glower never leaving her.
Firstly, I would like to apologize for the lack of video today. Sadly, I came down with a bit of a sore throat this past week and was not in a position to record. I did try to tap in my friend and partner in crime, Blue, but he wasn’t quite up for it either. The videos should be back this Friday.
It’s been a while since I’ve built a creature from Wild Hearts and this week sees me continuing the trend of building progressively more powerful kemono – though even the fumebeak (or kuromatoi) is stronger than I expected! I might even be underselling it slightly by building it as a level 9 creature. Bearing less obvious physical alterations to its form than other nature-infused monsters of its home series, I leaned a bit into the bird aspects of the fumebeak. As such, it’s a tiny bit more fragile – it uses moderate Hit Points but is also surprisingly nimble, with a high Armor Class and Reflex. And while it’s body can’t take much damage, it’s a creature that is suffused with toxins, lending to the idea of at least a moderate Fortitude. On the offensive side of things, I initially built the fumebeak with a high bonus for its array of attacks but it is described as specifically targeting weakened prey – which I wanted to represent with Vicious Advantage. This effect in conjunction with the high attack bonuses felt like a bit too much, so I lowered its Strikes to a moderate bonus instead with high damage on its beak, moderate damage on its wings that also have reach and sweep, and then low damage on its talons that have agile. It also can spit poison from afar, dealing below moderate poison damage on initial impact but also inflicting persistent poison damage.
Something I tried to do for the fumebeak, and it is something I try to do for most builds I do, was make sure to vary up its action economy. Some of the fumebeak’s more sweeping wing blows within Wild Hearts scatter about poison, which I wanted to represent with Fling Poison, which has similar activation and use to Flurry of Blows while borrowing a similar effect as the gunslinger’s Sword and Pistol. One of the abilities that really captured my attention during my research on the fumebeak was a dive where it would sometimes crash into the ground. It was too hilarious for me not to try to replicate, leading to the creation of Pinning Divebomb. This comes with a pin effect, which is usually followed by the fumebeak pecking and tearing at a foe with its beak before flinging them away. It can pin a creature in its talons if it hits, but a critical failure does see it crashing into the ground – though my initial design had it happen on a failure.
Sometimes, the fumebeak will unleash splashing waves of poison, which I represented with Scatter Poison as a fairly standard area effect with a high DC and standard damage for a limited use area effect. The weirdest ability to replicate was when the fumebeak starts spinning like a Beyblade as it advances on the hunters. This led to the creation of Whirling Wings, which is based on the Flaming Gallop of the nightmare. The fumebeak already has movement abilities in the form of Pinning Divebomb and this deals a little bit heftier damage while having a wider reach – which can help protect it from reactions such as Reactive Strike while the swirl of poisons and feathers helps defend it by making it concealed. As such, this uses three actions to perform. As mentioned, its Vicious Advantage is based on some of its lore but is otherwise not really represented in its gameplay. Sinister Shroud is a similar idea, being a unique ability as I always love exploring reactions in the game. This gives the fumebeak another chance to defend itself, helping with its lower HP, and also another way to inflict persistent poison so it can use its Vicious Advantage.
It has been a while since I designed an item for a monster, but I really liked the image of using a fumebeak’s skull and beak as a stabbing weapon fitted over the arm. Since I wanted to use the coating weapon rune, I had to design the blightbeak as a level 10 weapon that naturally has an activated ability so it’s something more than just a weapon with runes applied. I liked the idea of it being able to enhance poison to be virulent, but some poisons already are, so I wanted to include other effects. And since my design of the fumebeak included two ways for it to gain concealed within its kit alone, I thought that was a nice space to explore with this effect.
Pathfinder 2e:
For the second edition version of the creature, I avoided using a specific poison for it because poison in Wild Hearts has no effect other than dealing damage. However, that isn't an option in PF1e, leading to the use of a poison that deals Constitution damage. Outside of that, the design of the fumebeak is fairly simple. Its powerful divebomb, which is a slight alteration to powerful charge, in conjunction with Death From Above is meant to represent its pinning divebomb and while it isn't a universal effect like in 2e, there are other creatures that interact with missing by a certain amount, which I sought to use. I attempted to replicate its spinning about with the trample ability also exposing enemies to poison. I granted the fumebeak sneak attack as a stand-in for its Vicious Advantage and then has a poison splash on a low cooldown since all it does is expose enemies to its poison.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue’s D&D 5e:
This perfidious poultry plagues parties with potent poisons, punishing players with powerful pollutants.
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Ravening Raiders: After their latest mission left them with powerful enemies, a price has been placed on the heroes’ heads. This may lead to a cavalcade of killer hunting them, but chief among them is a poison-using assassin that has managed to tame a fumebeak as a mount. The assassin and their cruel corvid will try to take advantage of distance, poisoning enemies before descending into melee for the kill. The assassin’s hold over their ruthless raven may be tenuous and reducing the assassin to a certain health may see the fumebeak turning on their master.
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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