Frayed Knights - Pus Golem for D20
And now for this week's update on Frayed Knights, the humorous independent RPG from Rampant Games. Here's one for the dice & paper gamers! Actually, at some point I'd like to turn the entire Temple of Pokmor Xang into a paper module, but for now, here's the Pus Golem!

Pus Golem Small Construct
Hit Dice: 2D10 +10 (21 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 20 ft (4 squares)
Armor Class: 12 (+1 Dex, +1 Size)
Base Attack / Grapple: +3 / +1
Attack: Slam +3 melee (1d3+2 plus Festering Wound) or club +3 melee (1d6+2)
Full Attack: Slam +3 melee (1d3+2 plus Festering Wound) or club +3 melee (1d6+2)
Space / Reach: 5 ft. / 5 ft.
Special Attacks: Festering Wound
Special Qualities: Construct Traits
Saves: Fort +0, Ref +2, Will + 0
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 12, Con -, Int -, Wis 11, Cha 1
Skills: ---
Feats: ---
Environment: Any
Organization: Solitairy or Gang (2-6)
Challenge Rating: 2
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always Neutral
Advancement: 3-4 HD (Small), 5-8 HD (Medium)
Level Adjustment: ---

This disgusting, vaguely humanoid mass stands about four feet tall, possesses the color and oder of a festering, oozing wound, and has skin the consistency of congealed blood and pus. Its jaw hangs loosely from it's distorted skull-shaped head, and vein-like streaks of blood flow slowly in a sparse webwork around its quivering, misshapen body.

While the creation of a golem is more usually in the province of powerful arcane spellcasters, often constructed of hard, inorganic materials – clay, stone, and metals. However, certain sorcerers and priests have learned that shortcuts can be taken. Golems made of weaker, more flexible materials are easier to create, but correspondingly weaker and less useful. Golems made of materials formerly part of – or manufactured by – living bodies require even less magical effort to animate, as the remaining life energy within them can help power the spell. However, few but the most demented or vile spellcasters of society would stoop to such levels. Examples include flesh golems, constructed of several fresh corpses sewn together, and bone golems, constructed of the skeletal remnants of animals or even humans.

Then there are some less common but equally vile varieties of organic-matter golems, such as pus golems, snot golems, and the dreaded dung golem (of which only one has ever been reported in an apocryphal adventure account, but that one occurrence has haunted the nightmares of adventurers for decades).

The pus golems are particularly favored among priests of Pokmor Xang for a number of reasons. For one, few of such priests ever reach levels of divine power where they'd be capable of creating anything else. As servants of the god of boils, blisters, and pimples, they tend to have an ample supply of pus required for the creation of these monstrosities. And third, they are used to the smell.

Combat
Pus golems are more frequently employed as servants rather than combatants, but in combat they are fearful opponents, primarily due to the level of revulsion they cause in their opponents. Veterans of battle against these creatures claim the smell takes days to go away, though this has no in-game effect.

Festering Wound (Ex)
Wounds caused by the pus golem's slam attack become infected with a low-grade cocktail of whetever infections and diseases were the source of its raw material. As a result, all damage caused by the creature's slam attacks take twice as long to heal, or require 2 hit points of healing to cure 1 point of damage. Remove Disease eliminates all Festering Wound effects, though the damage remains and can be healed normally. A Heal spell instantly removes all Festering Wound effects and heals damage normally.


Oh, and while I think I'm violating the D20 license by not including the full license here as part of this post, Pokmor Xang and Frayed Knights are designated Product Identity and property of Rampant Games. Licenses and copyright notices for the D20 License and OGL license can be found here.

Frayed Knights Development Update:
Well, things have gotten really weird. The day job mandated some pretty hard-core hours last week, which cut into dev time a little bit - but then a water line broke yesterday and flooded the building, so I find myself with a couple days off to spend finishing the beta for Frayed Knights. I intend to get the beta out tomorrow (instead of today), and the public release will probably be out next weekend at some point. The game is getting a lot cleaner, but the testers are identifying a bunch of issues - many of them design and interface issues - which have taken up a lot of time to correct.

A lot of time this week was also spent cleaning up Ardin village and making it look nicer. This involved fixing a lot of models that were, for some reason, not reacting well to the fog. But here's how the village looks now:


In addition, some of the NPCs have gotten a facelift - particularly Ol' Hoss (who actually looks older now), and Silas. I'm throwing in new sound effects today, so the chests don't sound like opening doors. Wands are working, and I think I can get some scrolls working before the end of the day. Because I want to treat the beta as if it is a release candidate, I'm going to try and add nothing new to the beta between its release and the public release.

And once again - the final version of Frayed Knights may differ quite a bit from the pilot. This is my chance to get some major feedback on the game.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Roleplaying Games

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