With a savage chop, the barbarian cleaved the strange, wooden creature before him in twain. He gave a victorious cry only for the sound to die in his throat as the clean halves he had created stepped away from each other – and each grew into a full creature. Made of wood lit by a crimson glow and supported by root-like tendrils, his adversaries were armed with curving and jagged blades. As he stumbled back, surprised at their regrowth, he watched as a branch poked from one of them that grew into another of the floronic foes, drawing a new pair of blades. Swearing violently, he brought up his axe under a rain of blows from the creatures, grunting as one of the myriad of blades found its way past his defenses and bit into his flesh. Arrows arched over his shoulder, stabbing into one of the trio and causing the creature to stagger back. The barbarian flashed her a quick thumbs-up before steeling himself against the remaining pair.
I wanted to expand my monster sources and so this time, I have built a creature from the game of Remnant: From the Ashes. The coolest faction of enemies from the game are the Root, interdimensional plant creatures who have adapted the weapons and tactics of their foes while also retaining some unusual powers. One of these examples exists in the form of the splitter, a wooden creature that can divide in twain to become an entire army. This gave me an opportunity to make use of the Split ability, a feature usually found on oozes. In these cases, Split usually triggers on flashing and piercing damage but since the splitter is made of wood, I had it only trigger on slashing damage. To balance the effect of Split, this creature has a high Hit Point value since it divides its HP every time it splits. Since it uses a high HP, it is balanced with a low AC.
Many of its other powers are centered around Split including its passive effects of Lost in the Woods and Splintering Assault. The former helps counter some of that low AC, but the splitters need to cluster around each other to make it work, which can make activating the former a bit harder. Splintering Assault effectively functions as Pack Attack seen on a number of creatures, except where that will trigger off of any allies, Splintering Assault specifically looks for other splitters to be near the target.
Several abilities of the splitter are borrowed from its boss version, Riphide. The radius of energy it releases is realized in Overwhelming Force is an ability that uses a high DC but only deals damage as an unlimited use ability. I decided to make this without a cooldown because I felt that it would get confusing keeping track of it with the splitter making more of itself at the same time. Riphide's duplicates are also able to sacrifice themselves to restore health to Riphide's health bar, which led to the inclusion of For the Greater Wood, which is probably the worst pun I've made in a while. I decided to base the amount of healing off of the splitter's health as it felt like doing so encouraged more tactics from the GM. Finally, to ensure that the splitter can make use of its eponymous feature even if there's nobody around with slashing weapon, I gave the splitter the Forced Division ability, allowing it to divide itself.
Numbers-wise, the splitter has a number of immunities from being an elemental and Riphide is also resistant to cold while being weak to fire damage, as a creature made of wood. My original idea was to design them with moderate to-hit and moderate damage. But the best weapon I could find to fit the blades that it throws was a hatchet, which even with a striking rune, was only low damage. To compensate for that, it uses a high attack bonus instead.
Pathfinder 2e:
The big difference in designing the 1e splitter came in its feats where I focused on Two-Weapon Fighting, took Gang Up for something akin to its Splintering Assault, and then grabbed some throwing feats since even with the returning property on it, it can only throw one hatchet per round.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
The Root of the Problem: A village close to a forest has been seemingly wiped out, its inhabitants gone and its buildings overgrown. The heroes are dispatched to investigate and discover signs of a struggle, leading into the woods. If the heroes venture into the woods or stay the night, they are beset by a splitter or a few of them. The splitters are the vanguard of a Root incursion that is using the captured villagers to fuel the growth of new warriors.
Missing the Tree for the Forest: After an attempt to invade the Material Plane failed, the Root retreated to their home plane, leaving behind some of their soldiers. One of these forces was a splitter that, without instructions, has simply rooted itself in the soil and become still. A small copse has growth around it that it tends to and defends - and that it feeds with the blood of those who wander into its domain.
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.
I've been keeping at making vids for the Ready to Die YouTube channel. Keep letting me know why you guys think of the videos over there, including the latest splitter video, and I'll try to keep improving on making them. I have to fess up to a mistake I made over on the Monster Mash video where, for the first few splits, I forgot to halve the splitter's remaining HP. I think it's still worth checking it out, so please do so or share it 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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