A strange trilling sound rang through the forest, its shrill pitch managing to pierce the crashing of trees. At the cacophony surrounding them, the party came together, pressing their backs against each other as they readied for the incoming combat. It came to them as a creature erupted from the trees, a strange beast of metal and mesh that resembled a saurian creature. Its limbs ended in long, gleamingly sharp blades that it lashed out with as it landed. The rogue ducked under the blades while the fighter managed to fend it off with his shield. As its tail swung at them, the silver-haired rogue examined the creature, noticing white casing protecting bundles of cables and blinking lights. Even against such a bizarre creature, she could tell where to strike to cause the most damage and lashed out, earning an echoing shriek from the creature before it turned it flickering, glowing glare upon her.
This week, I’m collaborating with Cameron McLoud, who is a fan of monsters, machines, and dinosaurs. This love all blends perfectly into Horizon Zero Dawn, which Cameron makes creatures for in D&D 5e, with art provided by spooky-activity. Cameron has been talking about bringing the monsters over to Pathfinder for a bit, and we’re teaming to do exactly that. The rakewrist is the first of those and the D&D 5e version of the creature is actually the original and produced by Cameron rather by my regular, and dear friend, Blue.
Being originally designed in 5e, we went backwards a little this time with me attempting to adapt abilities and features from that system into my preferred ones. The rakewrist is designed as a skirmisher in Pathfinder Second Edition, and is a robotic therzinosaurus whose original purpose has been lost to time. It’s a highly aggressive machine that can carve through cover with the likes of Destructive Edge before catching groups of enemies in its Quill Spray. This is a very standard area effect that deals limited use area damage at a high DC. Once it has softened up enemies a little bit with this, it can jump into the fray with Bounding Slash, which is heavily influenced and kind of outright copies the bulette’s Leaping Charge. However, based on the rakewrist’s Astounding Leap, this is a single action with the flourish trait since it does cram three actions into one as long as it succeeds at a fairly easy check. Notably, because this has the flourish trait, it cannot use this in concert with Sickle Stride, a two-action ability with the flourish trait that is based on Trample or effects like the nightmare’s Flaming Gallop but specifically makes Strikes, largely so that it can try to benefit from the rakewrist’s Sharpen Blades. This ability is inspired by the glavenus – one of the inspirations used in the rakewrist’s design, along with the seregios, as per Cam. Sharpen Blades might honestly be a bit weak, especially given the high Strike of its claws, so something else you could look at doing for this is reducing the claw’s fatal trait to d10 or so and then having this increase that trait in addition to its other effects.
Rounding out the design of the rakewrist is its Components, which is an aspect I maybe should’ve designed for MonHun creatures back in the day, but could never really fit in their stat blocks. I’ve decided just to make it a standard ability, sort of like how I did the mechamorphs last week, to save space. These are highly potent effects, ranging from leaving the rakewrist slowed 1 until restored to cutting off its actions and traits. As such, targeting them requires enemies to hit an extreme AC and deal some solid damage to properly disable them.
Pathfinder 2e:
Much like with the PF2e version of the rakewrist, the First Edition version draws from the bulette for the design of its Leap ability but has been upgraded a bit. Developing the design for abilities like Quill Spray was a little rough because area abilities like this are traditionally Constitution-based, and that’s what I stuck with here, which means that the DC is a little low. With the lack of fatal trait in PF1e, the rakewrist has Vicious Edge featuring the effects of its Destructive Edge and giving it a greater crit range, which it can extend even farther with Sharpen Claws, increasing its crit range to 15-20. Complementing this is Critical Focus among its feats, but many of its other feats had to be spend to replicate the effects of its Sickle Stride, which is the purpose behind Spring Attack, Improved Spring Attack, and the prerequisite feats there. I’d would’ve liked to included some critical feats, but I felt like Vital Strike and its follow-up feat were important for it as I specifically wanted to avoid giving it Pounce as I felt like that would overshadow its Leap ability.
Pathfinder 1e:
Cameron McLoud's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
The nature of the rakewrist as a machine can make it a little difficult to find a place for it to fit in, and is highly dependent on the setting being used. At least in a classic Golarion setting, the rakewrist can be found in Numeria or in a nearby place, having come to the planet from a crashed starship. PF1e has a few robots, but they haven’t migrated to PF2e yet, making it even harder to really synergize it with anything. However, I do fully intend to work with Cameron to produce more of these, which will make further use of Components as will any potential MH creatures I might make. Additionally, with Starfinder 2e coming out within the next year, we’re sure to get even more robots that can work alongside them.
This cyber saurian slices and slashes with supreme speed, severing suspects from substance with a swiftness that is certainly sinister.
I apologize for any issues with the video - I was sick while making it and while I endeavored to push through it, I'm still a teensy bit worried that my condition comes through.
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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