The ground shook, each thunderous impact from the footstep of the giant beast. It loomed over the party, an incredible beast of metal, blinking lights, and crawling wires roughly shaped into the form of a Spinosaurus. Light pulsed from its being, a violet fire seeming to leak from its maw and along its spine. As its glowing eyes fell upon the party, its maw opened, lower jaw splitting as it greeted them with a mechanical hiss. The fighter tightened his grip on his sword and shield as he slid his feet back in the sand, taking up his stance as the creature suddenly charged, roaring in challenge.
This is another collaboration with Cameron McLoud, though this hails from the actual game, rather than one of his original creations. The awesomely-named slaughterspine is a robot seemingly designed after a Spinosaurus and is one of the mightiest machines within the series. This is a brutal beast with middling defenses to the offensive onslaught it can unleash and like the other Horizon monster I’ve made, it has Components that heroes can target it to disable it. Whereas the rakewrist used an extreme AC for its Components, the slaughterspine Component AC is a point below extreme as it only has a moderate Armor Class otherwise. Its host of resistances lead to it also using a moderate pool of hit points though it does still have a weakness to cold damage, all of which is based on its resistances and weaknesses within game.
The central factor in the slaughterspine’s design is its Charge Up, which specifically has the flourish trait to prevent the slaughterspine from charging up too fast. This applies a unique condition to the slaughterspine, which means that it is something else for the GM to keep track of, but I don’t think it’s too complicated. The charged condition means that the slaughterspine deals an average of 5 additional damage per charged value on its Strikes, which is why none of them go beyond high damage. This also leads into a number of its abilities but as a quick mention, the slaughterspine uses a lot of plasma. Cam represented this as radiant damage in D&D 5e, and in the SF2e playtest, this is being represented as fire damage with persistent electricity damage on a crit. I still personally kind of like SF1e where it was represented by an even split of electricity and fire damage, which is what I went for in the design here.
Lancer Wave is a pretty standard area effect inspired by the five beams it can launch from its tail, featuring a high DC and damage in between limited and unlimited use area damage. However, each point of charged increased this damage by 2d6 until it gets to limited use area damage. Alternatively, there are some abilities where the slaughterspine needs to be charged before it can even use them, such as Plasma Geyser. This creates a number of areas equal to the slaughterspine’s charged value that each deal unlimited use area damage at a high DC. A point of order with these abilities is that failing to use Charge Up causes the slaughterspine to start losing its stacks, so it has to find a way to make them fit – and makes disabling that component that much more brutal. Rounding out this discussion is Slaughter Sweep, an ability that Cam impressed on me to be a super important inclusion. This is a massive ability with a touch more than limited use area damage and an extreme DC, but the thing is that this takes three rounds to set up and then strips the slaughterspine of its charged value. The lethality of this effect is balanced with the slowness of the effect and I’m pretty happy with its design in particular.
The slaughterspine does have a few abilities that simply make use of its Strikes. Spine Barrage features it launching the spines off of its back, which I represented with plasma blast Strikes for simplicity’s sake. Each of these spines must target a different enemy so it can’t dogpile a single foe – at least, not with this ability. Enemies that try to stay too far away from the slaughterspine may find themselves the target of a Death Charge, which is really just a Powerful Charge but it inflicts persistent bleed rather than extra damage or granting a bonus on the attack roll. Rounding out the arsenal of our awesome automaton is its Call to Slaughter. Inspired by its stunning roar, this was an opportunity to include an ability that used a high Will save rather than a Reflex save, and it can leave enemies seriously debilitated. Given the effect of these debilitations, creatures than get immunity to its effects for 1 minute so that it isn’t too much.
Pathfinder 2e:
Cameron's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
A creature this size isn’t really something that you can throw in as a random encounter. It definitely takes more consideration. With that in mind, the slaughterspine is all but guaranteed to serve as a boss monster of some nature for a campaign. It could be something awoken by a warlord that has started to figure out ancient or alien technology to use for his own benefit. Alternatively, for a more random encounter, it might be awoken as an uncontrolled, rampaging robot that sets about annihilating anything in its way. This could lead to a fight in a settlement that the heroes must simultaneously try to preserve and protect while also bringing an end to the cybernetic saurian.
This towering techno-terror turns intrepid travelers into tatters, taking them to task as it tears and traumatizes with tip-top talent.
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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