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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Edible Corpses, Simplified

I was reminded today that I once wrote rules for edible corpses and the intrinsics you can gain from them. Looking back, the rules are too clunky, with lots of extra math, and based on mechanics I no longer use. Time to simplify!
  • 1 HD of monster = 1 serving;
  • roll two 1d6 checks modified by CON bonus/penalty:
    • first check = 5+: gain minor special ability for 1d6 rounds;
    • 7+ = major special ability, if any listed;
    • second check must = 5+ or character is ill for 1d6 turns.
  • illness (nausea):
    • -1 to all actions;
    • CON check after sudden movement or stunned 1 round (vomiting.)
  • eating additional servings while still under the influence:
    • +1 to ability gain check, -1 to nausea check;
    • multiple servings at once: +1/-1 per HD;
    • 7+ on ability check = duration is turns, not rounds;
    • duration can increase from turns to hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, lifetime;
    • automatically fail nausea check if servings > CON/2.
  • old, rotten flesh (such as undead corpses): -1 to any nausea check;
  • flesh that is poisonous, etc., require standard poison save.
It looks like a lot, but all the odd dice tricks of the previous post have been redefined using my now-standard "5+ on 1d6" mechanic, so it's really just matter of noting the difference between minor and major abilities, knowing that you have to roll for nausea as well, a couple minor modifiers, and the duration increase rules.

Minor abilities that can be gained from eating a corpse are typically natural, physical abilities, like higher speed or agility.Major abilities are the signature supernatural ability of the creature, like regeneration for trolls. By default, only unnatural creatures grant these abilities; eating a cheetah doesn't make you faster. Even if this rule is relaxed, mundane creatures never grant supernatural abilities.

3 comments:

  1. I like it. Would go well with my Church of the Divine Flesh clerics :)

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  2. Replies
    1. Not recently, but yeah, it's Nethack-inspired. And I finally tracked down two other Nethack-inspired posts from long ago, one of which I think deserves an update.

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