The silver-haired fighter staunchly stood guard, feet planted upon millennia old stonework – some of the first boot prints to besmirch them in centuries. From behind him arose the excited chatter of the cleric, rogue, and wizard as they dithered on the discoveries they were unearthing. He spared a quick glance back before focusing forward once more and narrowing his gaze. In the shimmering heat of the desert, he could’ve sworn that he saw the dunes moving. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes before looking out once again and giving a startled shout to his companions. As he drew his sword and pulled his shield from off his back, he grimly faced the wave of sand that rolled across the desert. Behind him, his companions hurriedly readied themselves as the dune drew closer before it erupted in a violent spray. An immense tortoise covered in crimson scales and golden spines emerged, sand draining off of its body like rain. Tremors rippled through the earth as its feet impacted with the ground, pulling the vast monster from the ground. Its yellowed gaze fixed upon the party as it unleashed a thunderous bellow.
I'm back from my hiatus and making my return with a big ol' monster from Monster Hunter - the odibatorasu!
This behemoth is a desert-dwelling creature considered on par with the likes of ukanlos and akantor, which gave me a nice starting level for it. It burrows through the earth, leading to the inclusion of a burrow speed and tremorsense and has several damaging area abilities that it can bring to bear. It can blast a massive stream of sand from its maw, which it normally sweeps around and is reflected by its eroding breath ability. Functionally, it is a line so I kept it with that shape while making it slightly wider than normal to reflect the odibatorasu's sheer immensity. Also, while this isn't a feature of the ability in-game, since it is a just an abrasive stream of sand, I included an ability for it to strip away flesh with the inclusion of bleed damage. This also helps to differentiate the ability from his sand cannon, which is based off of two of the odibatorasu's ability - both the massive compacted sphere of sand as well as the small spheres that it launches around itself to shell the area. The odibatorasu can launch compacted sand spheres that are in-between these attacks that I couldn't quite make work in Pathfinder First Edition. Finally, the odibatorasu's big damage ability is its reverberating eruption, which seemingly has the potential to oneshot hunters. This appears as just a trembling of the earth before it erupts. Giving this higher damage than normal, I assigned the ability a higher cooldown than usual.
The odibatorasu also has a number of debilitating abilities. Roars are a staple ability of Monster Hunter, but I typically refrain from including them unless the monster is somehow tied to it more than usual. For the odibatorasu, its does feel that it is because it seems to specifically roar to stun players before unleashing its reverberating eruption. To that end, I built the menacing roar ability for the creature, which for functionality, leaves creatures staggered instead of full-on stunned. It wants to keep stuck in place so that it can maneuver into position and unleash one of its big area attacks. Another way for it to do so is its sunken earth ability, based off of the power that the odibatorasu exhibits to create pillars of sand that trap people before they collapse and partially bury them in the earth, which I represented by immobilizing the creature until the ground stabilizes and they can pull themselves free. Its final ability of note is its sandstorm, which has it use the sand it has gathered to creature a cloud around itself rather than a launch it as a weapon with its sand cannon.
Given its power as a Monster Hunter creature, I gave it damage reduction to represent weapons of too-low sharpness to bounce off of it while also including its elemental weakness to electricity. From more standard effects, it does have unstoppable to relate it to behemoths from Pathfinder as well as a trample ability to reflect its earth-shaking strides as it moves over people like they aren't even there.
Pathfinder 1e:
For the Pathfinder Second Edition, it follows much of the same ideas as the First Edition version, but has a few abilities and other ideas. Notably, I was able to include the odibatorasu's earth-shaking ability that inflicts tremors on characters in an area with the thunderous stomp power. This was harder to translate into Pathfinder First Edition in a way that I was happy with, but worked out quite easily in 2e. It was easier to put together Sunken Earth as well, having it inflict grabbed on normal failures but restrained on a critical failure to reflect its ability to fight back while trapped in this way.
On the number side of things, the odibatorasu uses a terrible Perception score because I envisioned it as a massive monster so vast in size that it doesn't pay attention to the world around it. It uses a borderline terrible Reflex save since it is simply a massive tortoise, which also lends itself to a higher Fortitude. Its HP is in a higher range while it only uses a moderate AC since it does have this considerable physical resistance. I felt fine using these somewhat higher numbers given its considerable weakness to electricity.
Finally, I have returned with a weapon based off of the odibatorasu! The gunner armor has a few more abilities to it than the blademaster, which led to the decision to make this item a magical firearm rather than a melee weapon. I deviated a little bit from normal effects to have the sandstorm cannon use abilities based off of the odibatorasu rather than mirror its armor's effects.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Unearthed: The emergence of an odibatorasu has resulted in the unburying of an ancient civilization within a sprawling desert. With people unaware of what caused this discovery, they are organizing expeditions to investigate the area. The heroes are some of the first to make the foray, giving them the first crack at the treasures within. However, the area is guarded by the odibatorasu, which may at first be used to drive the characters inside the tombs below and potentially trap them until they can plumb the ruins, build up their power, and face off against the beast before it devours any other explorers. Within the ancient realm, the heroes might discover that they revered the odibatorasu as a god of sorts and may even find some tools to face it.
If you're interested in joining the discussion on what creatures 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. Also, I have one more thing to plug - I have started a YouTube channel and published my first video detailing the design process of the Pathfinder Second Edition odibatorasu! I'd appreciate people checking it out and letting me know what they think as this is the first video I've made since a school project.
Have a monstrous Monday and it's good to be back!
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