A victorious laugh rang through the clearing as the barbarian slammed his axe into one of the small raptor-like creatures and sent it flying. Its corpse thudded against the tree and the ranger bit back a retort on taking such glee in the murder of animals following their instincts, but instead swore violently as one of the beasts sank its fangs into her calf. In a single quick motion, she drew her blade and drove it into the scamp’s skull, silencing its irksome yipping. Behind her, the sorcerer unleashed lightning that leapt between targets, singeing their vibrant feathers. Suddenly, there was the cracking of twigs and snapping of branches as a larger version came soaring through the air. Heavy feet impacted with the witch, dropping him like a stone before the beast landed. It snarled at the party, a long tail as thick as a tree trunk wagging behind it. The other three members shared a glance before the barbarian charged forward. Swiftly, the monster leaned back on its tail, lifting its feet from the ground and launched a kick straight into the warrior’s chest, sending him stumbling backwards. It threw its head back, giving a barking sound somewhere between a mocking laugh and a rallying cry that its lesser kin flocked to.
Drawing from another one of Monster Hunter’s early level critters, the great maccao is a level 5 creature mostly to fill out the various levels. It borrows heavily from the kangaroo with stuff like its Powerful Leaper and its reaction is at least inspired by the kangaroo’s Defensive Shove. Designed as a skirmisher, it actually has a lot of monk in its make-up, which you might see in its Jab – effectively a Flurry of Blows. Fast but fragile, it is hard to land a hit on with a high AC but a low amount of Hit Points. Per its weakness in game, the PF2e great maccao also has a weakness to fire damage. It has a wide range attacks with their bonus ranging from moderate bonus but high damage for its tail to high attack bonus but low damage for its fists, and finally an extreme bonus and moderate damage for its feet. Its feet Strikes are balanced by the fact that it must Balance on Tail to use these Strikes.
Going into the design of this ability, I originally envisioned it as a stance, but the changes it creates felt too extreme and the stance too limiting with how I wanted it to be able to switch between states. This immobilizes the great maccao, limits its attacks, and gives it a vulnerability to Trip, which is based on how crippling it is for the great maccao to get its tail broken or for it to get knocked out of the air. While this state does limit the Strikes that the great maccao can use, it does line it up to make use of two of its abilities. The first is the aforementioned reaction, its Punishing Kick. Inspired by the Defensive Shove as well as some dragon reactions, it gives the great maccao to make a foot Strike at only a high bonus and then push back the creature on a hit.
The other ability based on it Balancing on its Tail is its Leaping Kick, which is just a deviation of the bulette’s Leaping Charge. I didn’t want this ability to be a guaranteed success every time the great maccao used it, which is one of the main reasons I didn’t make its Athletics any higher. With its Athletics bonus to jump, it has a 55% chance of success, which feels fair to its main ability for me.
The great maccao’s armor, even at master rank from what I’ve found, has all of two skills on it: Airborne, which increases the damage of jumping attacks, and KO King, which increases stun damage from blunt attacks. In the interest of continuing to build items with instead of weapons, I made a pair of early level, jump-enhancing botos with an activated effect based off of the two skills of its armor. The extra force damage is based off of Airborne with the potential for stun based off of KO King. Given how the monster takes inspiration from the monk in some of its design, I specifically wanted the activated effect to interact with stuff like Flying Kick and so I made that callout in its effect.
Pathfinder 2e:
The design PF1e great maccao is pretty standard – a nice, easy monster to put together. The only particular thing of note to it is its tail stance, which mainly just switches its attacks out. The average damage the great maccao deals is normally 17, but when it is tail stance, it has an average damage of 20. It makes fewer attacks, but these attacks are both at +10 instead of having two smaller attacks at +10 and one attack at +5. Overall, I think it’s an improvement, but maybe it needs something like Weapon Focus (kick) to make it a juicier option. I don’t think so, but in such instances, GMs can swap Improved Initiative for it. Mobility feels at least somewhat important to the great maccao with its mobility and its options such leap that move it around the field.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue’s D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOK
Kicking it With the Crew: The heroes have been asked by a conclave of druids to stop a band of poachers. In the course of their investigation, they learn that the poachers have been rounding up the animals for nefarious purposes and even trained some of them. Among the creatures they’ve managed to tame is a great maccao. In particular, a bare-fisted brawler among the poachers has taken a liking to the kicking critter and been trying to train it in a similar style. During an attack on their base, the heroes must overcome the bruiser and his beastly buddy. Expanding on this concept, the poachers may be working for a larger group who have more nefarious schemes for the captured animals.
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I've been keeping at making vids for the Ready to Die YouTube channel, and this week was a fun one. The great maccao was a fun creature to talk about and the test for it features our first foray into Foundry VTT! There's also the nayzaga test, which was a good time! Please check them out or share them with others, and then let me know what you think. Still learning how to best make these.
Have a monstrous Monday!
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