Violet flames flickered in the dark, heralding the emergence of an immense, prowling beast. Its body was covered in dark purple plates occasionally interrupted by bony protrusions. Fangs were bared as it growled low in its throat, prowling forth with a feline grace as the fighter readied his shield, watching the beast warily. His party took up position behind him, each readying themselves for the upcoming conflict. A tense moment lingered in the night air before the magnamalo erupted into action, springing towards them. The fighter tensed, turning his shield to intercept the oncoming threat only for a purple flame to spring to life and explode beneath its feet. The blast threw it in a different direction, and its altered its flight pattern with ease, landing heavily behind the backline of the party. A spear-like tail rose up from behind it as it menaced the chocked wizard and cleric.
The magnamalo has been on my list for a while as a fight that while I wouldn’t say I enjoy in Monster Hunter, I do find very cool. Even with its numbers, this is a well-equipped creature. It has a high Armor Class and moderate Hit Points while also wielding four attacks that range from moderate to high attacks bonuses. A major component when designing this creature was replicating its hellfire, which is a title that I couldn’t use given the pre-existence of hellfire in Pathfinder. With a suggestion from DINNERman over on the MM Discord, I settled on Sinfire, based on the sinister epithet applied to its armor sets. This functions as a unique status that afflicts a creature without any initial effect but explodes for unlimited use area damage at a high DC Reflex save. A creature can remove it by moving at least 30 feet, which is based on wiredashing removing its effect in Monster Hunter. Because of this, its sinfire flares only deal low damage where as its other Strike deal increasing damage up to maximum for its jaws.
However, the magnamalo wields a wide range of specialized attacks, such as its Sinfire Rifle, an area attack that deals limited use area damage at a high DC Reflex save based on the blast that the magnamalo launches from its tail. Alternatively, it can surround itself with its hellfire dust to create Hell on Earth, which uses a higher DC, deals greater damage, and then inflicts a penalty on a prone creature but has a higher cooldown to balance that out. This was a case of me combining some abilities together as aside from just being one of the magnamalo’s area attack, it combos with the magnamalo’s Magna Clutch reaction, catching prey that it has thrown into the air in a blast of sinfire. This is based on the Fling ability of the tyrannosaurus though the magnamalo can launch its victims even higher. The last of the magnamalo’s sinfire abilities is its Helldive, an entirely coincidentally named ability, designed around the ability where the magnamalo races around, leaving behind spots of sinfire before launching itself at an enemy in a glorious blaze. This first instance of damage is based on the nightmare, dealing unlimited use area damage but follows it up with limited use area damage at an extreme DC as enemies are unlikely to be prepared for the suddenness of this assault.
Connected to that is its Redirecting Fire ability, which allows the magnamalo to redirect the jumps and leaps it makes, which it can do so with greater speed through its Bounding Leaper ability. This reaction represents the way that the magnamalo will alter its flight path using bursts of hellfire, which leads to this action having the fire trait. This is important because I wanted to represent the magnamalo’s weakness to water without actually having it take increased damage from water effects. This led to the inclusion of Douse Flames, which can get very oppressive for the magnamalo if the players are able to identify and take advantage of it. In this case, there’s two options – the magnamalo can flee, looking for easier prey or it can keep trying to fight. To that end, it has Pounce, which is a fantastic action compressor that lacks the flourish trait for some reason, but is found on many other large cat-type creatures.
Finally, the magnamalo’s gear is the hellfire cloak, inspired by the ability of the same name on the magnamalo’s armor. In addition to enhancing a creature’s Intimidation skill and providing some fire resistance, it’s biggest component is replicating the magnamalo’s Sinfire effect.
Pathfinder 2e:
Honestly, one of the hardest parts about creating the magnamalo was its sinfire flares simply because it's always a hassle to create unique ranged attacks for creatures in Pathfinder 1e. I increased the range that a character has to move to rid themselves of sinfire for the PF1e version since characters have higher movement speed in PF1e. The magnamalo is otherwise a fairly faithful translation of the PF2e version of it though Magna Clutch ended up being a bit too complicated to translate over.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue’s D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
As is the case with many Monster Hunter creatures, the more of them I make, the harder it is to come up with more unique encounters. These beasts are fairly simple creatures - they can't form plots or plans of their own. They are usually the tool of something else, which I've done so many times, I'm worried about repeating myself and I am struggling to come up with something unique for the magnamalo.
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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