As a cautioning call rang through the brisk, mountainous air, the marching fighter slowed to a stop. He turned, looking back down the mountain from whence he had came and where his party followed in the path he had carved through the knee-deep snow. They moved with less assurance than he did and were some distance behind him now. With a sigh, he leaned against a nearby snow-covered outcropping, taking the moment to stretch out old muscles that weren’t as resilient against the snow as they once were. His groan of relief was interrupted by the outcropping suddenly shifting beneath him but it wasn’t the feeling of rock splitting or sliding. Instincts honed from decades of combat saw the old soldier easily slinging his shield from off his back and draw the battleaxe he had taken up. Tilting his head back to regard the towering shape, he stumbled back as snow began to fall from it. Thick shaggy fur of vibrant hues became apparent and a great head covered in a bony carapace swung to regard him. Fury flickered in orange eyes and a trunk rose to unleash a bellow that shook the mountaintops.
I'm back from my last vacation of the year until October/November and I'm making my return with the last of the Fated Four!
My intent was to design gammoth as a bit of a tank, befitting its role as the champion of the Fated Four, but I refrained from granting it too many Hit Points. It actually has only a moderate pool of Hit Points, but makes up for it with Ice Spray allowing it to gain temporary Hit Points - resembling the way that it can armor its limbs with ice and snow in its home game. The other aspect of Ice Spray is inspired by the snowman status that it can inflict with the mechanics drawing from the kineticist's Glacial Prison impulse. While I usually avoid replicating roars into Pathfinder, Powerful Trumpet felt appropriate given the volume of it while also reflecting the natural capabilities of an elephant. This adds to a lot of the lockdown present in its kit, which is further covered with Slam Into the Ground, an attack based on the gammoth's pin that borrows a little bit from the Smear of the cave giant. I've created abilities like this a few times for my own personal creatures but this is the first time that I've made it for a creature I've put out into the wild. I think the ability is a little goofy, but there's something fun about that.
A little less lockdown-based while still inflicting some crowd control on the enemies is Vacuuming Trunk. I've made abilities like this in the past and had issues with them, but I think I've started figuring them out - I may actually have added a bit too much punch to this one with the off-guard and other effects it can inflict. Outside of its attacks, the gammoth can lay out some area damage with Seismic Stomp, featuring unlimited use area damage, or Trample to incorporate some movement into its damage. Trample is also a good follow-up to it armoring itself up with Ice Spray as it adds cold damage to its foot Strikes, which it uses for its Trample.
The gammoth gear is pretty simple without, hopefully, being boring and is inspired by the Polar Hunter skill that the gammoth armor grants. Visually, its also based on one of Rock's helmets (from Soul Calibur).
Pathfinder 2e:
One of the things that I love about Pathfinder First Edition is that I'm able to somewhat represent the gammoth's pin through feats - in this case, Savage Slam and Overhead Flip. Weirdly, it felt too complicated to make the armor in ice and snow spray be the same ability, mostly due to action economy, so I had to separate them out for this iteration of the creature. Its seismic stomp is still pretty basic, but stuff like Vacuuming Trunk and Powerful Trumpet were left behind due to their interaction with PF1e's action economy. If I make the former something like a standard action, it spends its chance to attack to put enemy's in range. Even if I made it a move action, it is only capable of making a single attack with its standard action and a swift action just feels too powerful for this effect.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
I'm still recovering a little bit from my vacation - woke up super groggy this morning and its been a fight not to fall back asleep - so I unfortunately do not have the brain function to cook up some encounter hooks for the gammoth. It's another beast, so it could really be used anywhere you want, or you could draw on stories from elsewhere, such as a gammoth hunting the heroes after they harvested one of its dead kin that they came across.
If you or people in the hobby you know prefer watching videos over reading my walls of text, check out the video on the gammoth over on YouTube. Even if you don't, consider checking it out to help it out.
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.
It's good to be back! Have a mammoth Monday.
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