Saturday, May 2, 2020

OSE Encounter Activities - Warp Beast

What is it about those Warp Beasts? Is it their hexapod body-type, their lashing tentacles, or their light-bending hide? Melanistic Panthers have always been one of my favorites of the Great Cats, so they already had that going for them. I have a hard time giving them other more variable pelage, though I do recall some particularly memorable “snow leopard” versions I sprang on some Arctic Adventurers.

I tend to prefer to call them Coeurl, in homage to their actual origins and to accommodate the verboten IP by acknowledging that most good ideas are usually borrowed/stolen, but Warp Beast works for me too. Conveying their signature ability without de-protagonizing players has always been a little tricky (I like to describe them smelling like colors and sounding like smells), but thankfully they’ve gradually become rather well-known over the years. While this ruins some of the surprise it also seems to remove a little of the “you miss” sting. Tactically speaking, I’ve seen Players work together to try and corner or corral them, and I’ll usually reward this kind of side-ways thinking by reducing the penalty they apply to the to “hit” rolls.

Hope you find something useful to off-set one of your encounters with one of these entries!

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