The ocular tyrant is a bulbous ball of floating flesh dominated by a large, central eye which protrudes from its circular bulk. Five smaller eyes extend on thickly-veined eyestalks in a penumbral crown above it, while a dangling array of five psychic tendrils hang in a thick mass below it.

DESIGN NOTES

The first goal of the ocular tyrant is to provide an OGL alternative to a well-known beastie that remains unavailable because it was declared product identity. Their progenitor is fairly self-evident, and the ocular tyrants are happy to become part of that proud family which includes luminaries like the gazers from Ultima. (Or, at least, as happy as these cynical, narcissistic creatures can ever be.) The main innovation here are the psychic tendrils, which initially occurred to me as a lark and are now growing on me quite a bit.

The second goal was to tweak the power list of the progenitor to improve it. Whether you use the original creature or the ocular tyrant, I hope you’ll give some thought to swapping in the power list below. Let me explain why.

Original List of Eyes: charm monster, charm person, disintegrate, fear, finger of death, flesh to stone, inflict moderate wounds, sleep, slow, telekinesis

This list presents three problems.

First, duplicate powers. Does it really need both charm person and charm monster? Similarly, although disintegrate was revised in 3.5 to resolve a little differently, both it and finger of death are basically slightly different ways of saying “save or die”. Speaking of which…

Second, two of its powers are type 4 save-or-die effects (save or you’re dead); four are type 3 (save or you’re out of the encounter); and one is a type 2. I don’t necessarily think all save-or-die effects need to be nerfed out of existence, but the massive lethality of seven save-or-you’re-gone abilities being unleashed every round has certainly made me hesitant about using these guys over the years.

The other problem is that these save-or-die abilities make the ocular tyrant too dangerous. The only way to make the creature at all workable is to nerf its hit points so that the PCs can take it out quickly. But the result turns it into a super-swingy paper tiger: PCs who get the drop on it will often wipe it out before it can even take a shot. PCs who don’t are likely to be completely devastated. There’s no way to have any kind of substantial confrontation with the monster the way that it’s currently designed.

Third, because sleep has been nerfed so many times over the years it’s now effectively useless to the creature: It’s a CR 13 creature, but sleep isn’t effective against any creature with more than 4 HD.

Some of this stuff just has to go.

The Culling: charm monster, —, disintegrate, fear, —, flesh to stone, inflict moderate wounds, greater sleep, slow, telekinesis

This list eliminates the duplicates and bumps sleep up into being an effect that will actually be meaningful in CR-appropriate encounters (see below).

The next thing I’m going to do is take the two severe save-or-die effects (disintegrate, flesh to stone) and modify them: I don’t want to eliminate these effects from the tyrant’s arsenal, but I will soften them up a bit so that I can use ’em with heartless glee as a DM.

Finally, I need to replace the two abilities I removed entirely.

The Replacements: confusion, force missile

Confusion feels like a good replacement for charm person: It’s got a similar role in combat (turning friends on friends), but does it in a unique way that doesn’t duplicate charm monster.

Force missile is an original spell I developed a couple years back. It’s similar to magic missile, but it’s going to give the ocular tyrant the ability to shove people around the battlefield. I think it’ll complement telekinesis and really let this guy throw his weight around.

THE NEW SPELLS

These are the new spells I’m using.

SLEEP, GREATER
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting]
Level: Bard 3, Sorcerer/Wizard 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: Standard Action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Area: Several living creatures within a 15-foot-radius burst
Duration: 1 minute/level
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

As sleep, except that you roll 4d6 to see how many Hit Dice of creatures are affected.

FORCE MISSILE
Evocation [Force]
Level: Sorcerer/Wizard 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Targets: Up to 5 creatures, no two of which can be more than 15 ft. apart
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial (see text)
Spell Resistance: Yes

Force missile is similar to magic missile, but each missile inflicts 1d6+1 points of force damage. In addition, a target struck by a force missile must make a Fortitude save or be forced back 5 feet per 3 caster levels. (So a creature struck by a 6th-level caster would be forced back 10 feet.) Forced movement is in a straight line directly away from the caster.

THE OCULAR TYRANT

OCULAR TYRANT (CR 12+1*): 152 hp (16d8+80), AC 23, ranged touch +21 (eyestalks), Save +15, Ability DC 21, Size Large

Str 10, Dex 14, Con 18, Int 18, Wis 15, Cha 14

All-Around Vision immune to flanking

Darkvision 60 ft.

Fly 20 ft. (perfect)

Antimagic Eye (Su): The ocular tyrant’s main eye emits a continual 160-ft. cone in which magic items, spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities (including the tyrant’s eyestalks and psychic tendrils) have no effect. Spells or effects brought within the area are suppressed, but not dispelled. Summoned creatures and incorporeal undead wink out of existence within the area, but reappear in the same spot when the tyrant’s gaze moves away. (Time spent within the area counts against the suppressed spell’s or summoned creature’s duration.) The ocular tyrant can redirect the gaze of its main eye as an immediate action.

Eyestalks (Sp): As a full action, the ocular tyrant can fire any number or combination of its eyestalks and psychic tendrils. The tyrant’s eyestalks require successful ranged touch attacks (unless otherwise noted below). The maximum range is 160 ft. The effective caster level is 11^th.

Disintegrating Ray: A thin, green ray which inflicts 2d6 points of Constitution damage (or 5d6 hit points on a successful Fortitude save). If this damage kills the target, it is entirely disintegrated. When used against an object, the ray simply distintegrates up to one 10-foot cube of nonliving matter. The ray even affects objects constructed entirely of force energy.

Flesh to Stone: A dull gray ray which inflicts 2d6 points of Dexterity damage (Fortitude save negates). If this damage reduces the target’s Dexterity to 0, the target, along with all its carried gear, is turned into a mindless, inert statue.

Inflict Moderate Wounds: A black ray coruscated with silver, inflicting 2d8+11 points of damage.

Force Missiles: The eye emits five missiles of force energy, which can be directed independently at multiple targets. Each missile unerringly strikes its target and inflicts 1d6+1 points of force damage.  In addition, a target struck by one or more force missiles must make a Fortitude save or be forced back 15 ft. directly away from the ocular tyrant. (This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity.)

Slow: An orange-red ray which drastically slows the target (Will save negates). The victim moves at half speed, can only take a single standard action each turn, and suffers a -1 penalty to attack rolls, AC, and Reflex saves.

Psychic Tendrils (Sp): The ocular tyrant can fire any number or combination of its eyestalks and psychic tendrils as a full action. Each psychic eyestalk affects a single target (unless otherwise noted below). The maximum range is 160 ft. The effective caster level is 11^th.

Charm Monster: The target considers the ocular tyrant to be its trusted friend and ally. The charm effect lasts for 11 days. (Will save negates; +5 bonus on the saving throw if the ocular tyrant is currently attacking the target or its allies.)

Confusion: The target becomes confused for 11 rounds (Will save negates).

Fear: The target must make a Will save or become panicked for 11 rounds. On a successful save, they are shaken for 1 round.

Greater Sleep: This psychic tendril causes 4d6 HD of creatures to fall unconscious for 11 minutes (Will negates). It can affect multiple creatures within range, with those closest to the ocular tyrant succumbing to the effect first. Wounding a sleeping creature awakens them, but normal noise does not. Allies can use a standard action to slap a victim awake.

Telekinesis: Using this tendril, the ocular tyrant can apply a sustained force (moving objects weighing 275 pounds or less up to 20 feet per round; creatures can negate the effect on an object it possesses with a Will save), perform a combat maneuver (bull rush, disarm, grapple, or trip without provoking attacks of opportunity, using a +14 bonus for any required action checks), or make a violent thrust. During a violent thrust, the tyrant can hurl up to 11 objects or creatures (all within 10 feet of each other and weighing no more than a total of 275 pounds) towards any target within 10 feet of the objects. The tyrant makes an attack roll for each object, dealing 1 point of damage per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) or 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects). Hurled creatures and creatures holding hurled objects get a Will save to negate the effect.

* CR adjustment due to multiple attacks each round.

FINAL NOTES

The stat block here is designed for Legends & Labyrinths, but can be used in 3.5 without modification. (That’s the whole point of L&L, after all.) Alternatively you can just grab the eyestalks and psychic tendrils and slap ’em onto the stat block in the MM.

This material is covered under the Open Game License.

Tagline: The classic dungeon crawl designed by the master of dungeon crawls, Gary Gygax.

The Tomb of Horrors module is one of the great classics in our little industry. It would be truly surprising to me if someone who has been playing RPGs for more than a handful of years would not have heard of this module, if not played in it or run it themselves.

The Tomb of Horrors was first released in 1978, as one of the first modules available for the AD&D game, after being used for the Official D&D tournament at the very first Origins convention. Recently it has been re-released as part of The Return to the Tomb of Horrors boxed set and can be obtained there if you can’t track it down through the used section of your local game store.

At the time it was published this was a fairly innovative product. In addition to the “map and key” presentation which was standard at the time, Tomb of Horrors also came with a pamphlet of forty illustrations – each presenting some part of the module which could be shown to the players at the appropriate time. This was cutting edge stuff at the time. Honest.

By all merits this should be an absolutely awful product by current standards – substandard writing, sub-par art, and a linear plot. Okay, I take that last one back: There is no plot, just a bunch of rooms full of traps and monsters.

Despite all this, though, there’s something about the Tomb of Horrors which still tantalizes me. Part of it is the fact it’s a classic. Like Queen of the Demonweb Pits it’s one of those things which “every” gamer has experienced at some point. There’s a sense of history to it, which adds to the experience. The other part of this is that sometimes you just gotta kick up your heels and take a brief detour visit back to your youth. In other words: Hack ‘n slash can be fun if you’re looking for hack ‘n slash.

The Tomb of Horrors was and remains a classic not because it dots all the i’s and crosses all of the t’s of what the current popular consensus of roleplaying is (or even of the type of roleplaying I enjoy most of the time), but because it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do.

So when you’re looking for a quick one-shot relax from your normally roleplay-intensive campaigns, you might want to look back at an old classic once in awhile. It can’t hurt anything. Actually, I’m thinking about adapting it to FUDGE for a quick run sometime real soon. See you there.

Style: 2
Substance: 3

Author: Gary Gygax
Company/Publisher: TSR / Wizards of the Coast
Cost: n/a
Page count: 50
ISBN: 0-935696-12-1
Originally Posted: 1999/02/17

This review is another example of how 3rd Edition and the OSR have rehabilitated first D&D and then old school D&D in the RPG community. There are, of course, still haters out there. (There are always haters.) But even I occasionally have difficulty appreciating just how much “D&D Sucks” was the received wisdom of the online RPG community pre-2000.

I was no exception (nor am I now): AD&D is a terrible game and there are many, many reasons why I stopped playing it. But I did recognize that there was a fun game hiding away inside of AD&D, and this review was basically an attempt on my part to say, “Hey! There’s fun to be had over here!”

Several years later, my own adaptation of Tomb of Horrors to 3rd Edition became one of the earliest additions to the website. Check it out. It’s still a ton of fun.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Take a moment to consider this:

A four-legged pigeon is the size of an apatosaurus, and in combat a display of feathers rises behind the creature’s head. (…) At will, the giant pigeon can shape-shift into a giant yellow spider.

If that sort of thing — along with 7′ tall parrots who are always on fire and 12′ long blue jays without legs — sounds interesting and useful to you, then you’re going to love Isle of the Unknown. If it doesn’t, however, then you’re probably going to be struggling to find much utility between its covers.

Isle of the Unknown presents an interesting contrast to Carcosa (Geoffrey McKinney’s other deluxe hexcrawl product from Lamentations of the Flame Princess). Unlike the bland and boring key entries for Carcosa, Isle of the Unknown — which describes an island roughly 150 miles wide — is generally specific, clever, and creative. Unfortunately, it presents a very different set of problems which, nevertheless, cripple the product for me.

First, there are the monsters. Although occasionally spiced with some interesting abilities, they really are giant pigeons all the way down: Pick a random animal. Make it bigger than normal. Randomly determine the number of limbs it possesses. Now, randomly combine it with another animal; light it on fire; have it ooze pus; or give it a random spell-like ability. Ta-Da! You’ve re-created the vast majority of the monsters in this book.

Second, although in a hex-to-hex comparison Isle of the Unknown is much improved compared to Carcosa, in totality it ends up being just as bland by over-saturating its themes.

Let me explain: I think themes are very important in creating interesting hexcrawl or dungeoncrawl keys. Themes give a location its identity and make it memorable. Without a proper theme, a ‘crawl turns into a random funhouse. But if a theme is too narrow and relied on too heavily, then it becomes repetitive. (For example, enchanted vales which remain perpetually in springtime regardless of the weather outside simply stop being magical when there are something like a dozen of them scattered around the island.)

In the case of Isle of the Unknown, McKinney describes the scope of his key like this:

To aid the Referee, only the weird, fantastical, and magical is described herein. The mundane is left to the discretion of the campaign Referee, to be supplied according to the characteristics of his own conceptions or campaign world. Detailed encounter tables (for example) of French knights, monks, pilgrims, etc. would be of scant use to a Referee whose campaign world is a fantasy version of pre-Colombian America. Similar considerations led to the exclusion of most proper names.

Couple important things to understand about this: First, it’s untrue. The key includes a lot of “mundane” detail (most notably all the major communities on the island). Second, it’s nonsense. You can’t say “if I don’t give this guy a proper name, then it’ll be easy to slot him in as a pre-Colombian American” and then describe him as “a robust and jovial man of middle years with blue eyes and curling reddish hair and beard (…) he loves nothing so much as the hunt, save perhaps his dozen Scottish Deerhounds”.

What McKinney really means is that 95% of his hex key is going to be broken down into three categories: Monsters, Magical Statues, and high-level Magic-Users/Clerics who all live by themselves as bucolic hermits.

And on an individual level, most of this content is at least interesting. But if you attempted to actually run a hexcrawl using this hex key, the result would be incredibly boring due to its repetition: “Magic statue, bucolic hermit, bucolic hermit, giant parrot, magic statue, humanoid bluejay, magic statue, magic statue…”

So, ultimately, I’m forced to conclude that the book is not very useful in its intended function as a hexcrawl. However, it may have some value as an inefficiently organized bestiary and the like… but only if you like giant, flaming parrots.

In closing, it must be noted that, once again, Lamentations of the Flame Princess have created a book which is both beautiful and useful. Although completely different in its aesthetic from Carcosa, Isle of the Unknown is nevertheless gorgeous: Excellent illustrations, rich lay-out, high-quality paper, durable binding. (My only caveat would be that the map of the island, while very pretty, does not clearly identify the terrain type in each hex. From a utility standpoint, that’s a fatal flaw in a hexcrawl product.)

Style: 5
Substance: 3

As I’ve discussed in the Art of Rulings and Rules vs. Rulings?, among other places, I think it’s important that a DM not allow any interaction at the table to become purely mechanical. Partly this is just an aesthetic preference on my part (it keeps things interesting), partly it’s ideological (rules are associated for a reason), and partly it’s because specificity and detail usually leads to creative gameplay.

Traps are a key example of this. If all you can do with a trap is make a skill check to Search for it, make a skill check to Disable it, and/or take damage from it, then the trap will be fairly boring. You can try to spice that up mechanically or (and this is easier) you can spice it up by being relatively specific about how the trap works. (For example, you might end up with players scavenging the tension ropes that reset a spike trap in order to tie up their kobold prisoner. Or draining the alchemist’s fire through the nozzles of a flame trap. When they disable the pit trap do they wedge it open or use spikes to let it support their weight one at a time? The difference will matter if they end up getting chased back down that hall by ogres.)

In following this doctrine, I’ve found that it can occasionally be difficult to imagine what disarming a magical trap really looks like. I mean, if it’s just magical potential hanging in the air waiting for an alarm spell to go off, what is the rogue doing, exactly, when they make their Disable Device check? And what are they actually sensing with their Search checks?

To that end, here are a few techniques I use when thinking about magical traps.

Magical Potential: Permanent and semi-permanent magical effects will leave a very subtle “impression” on the physical world. Careful characters with great sensitivity can detect the presence of a magical field. In some cases this may be the first step in identifying how to bypass or disable the magical trap; in other cases, it may turn out that the trap can’t be disabled without something like dispel magic (but at least the rogue can figure out where it’s safe to walk and where it isn’t).

Ethereal Hooks: Ethereal hooks are attached to spell potential stored on the Ethereal Plane. When the ethereal hooks are “tugged”, they yank the spell potential back from the Ethereal Plane and the energy of the planar transition triggers the spell effect. Ethereal hooks are particularly useful for warding physical objects (i.e., traps which are triggered when you pick up an item). They can also be attached to physical tripwires. In either case, the ethereal hooks require some physical substance and can be safely dislodged if sufficient care is taken.

Spellsparks: Tiny spheres or cylinders made from small amounts of mithril and taurum (true gold). Spellsparks impact areas of spell potential and complete the casting. A typical application would be a spellspark attached to the bottom of a trigger plate: Step on the plate, the spellspark depresses and triggers a fireball. But if you can remove the spellspark, the spell potential is as harmless as a block of C4 without a detonator. (A divine variant of the spellspark is to douse a small prayer wheel in holy or unholy water.)

Smudging Sigils: This is almost always the case for things like a symbol of death, but quite a few other spell effects can also be “stored” as arcane or divine sigils using the proper techniques. You generally can’t just reach out and smear the thing (that’ll usually trigger the effect; spellcasters aren’t stupid). But if you’ve got the proper training, then you can usually identify exactly where you need to smudge the sigil to negate its effects.

Counterchanting: Spell effects with verbal components still resonate with those chants even after the casting is complete. By using proper counterchanting techniques, a character can weaken those resonances and eventually dissipate the spell effect. (This isn’t like counterspelling: The counterchanting is too slow a process to use on a spell as its being cast. It only works here because the spell is being held in a stored state.)

Concealed Material Components: In some cases, spell effects built into traps still require the material components of the spell to be present in order for the spell to be triggered. These are usually concealed in the trap somewhere. (For example, a fireball trap might have a bit of sulfur tucked away.) If you can remove the concealed material component without triggering the trap, then the trap is rendered impotent.

Arcane/Divine Focuses: Other spell-storing techniques require the presence of a physical talisman or focus. In some cases, removing the focus will cause the spell energies to dissipate harmlessly. In other cases, it will just defang the spell — which means that it could be triggered again if the focus were restored.

Bypass Passwords: Some spellcasters will intentionally build bypass passwords into their traps. If the builder was cautious, these can be quite difficult to determine. But many spellcasters will simply draw on a common lore of such phrases. In other cases, casters may not be aware of (or simply choose not to bother changing) standard bypasses built into the most common forms of certain rituals. Like Gandalf standing before the doors of Moria, characters with proper training can often run through their stock of common passwords and discover that they’ve managed to disable the trap without any real danger. (Some caution is required, however: Some trap-makers anticipate this sort of thing and will instead have the trap trigger if certain false passwords are given.)

Telepathic Completion: This is a subtle technique. The spell effect actually reaches out telepathically and sends a completion word; the power of the victim’s own thoughts will trigger the trap. (This means that characters immune to mind-affecting effects and/or telepathic communication can’t trigger the trap. This often means that undead can freely cross through the trap.) Rogues holding a proper counter-command in their thoughts while moving through the triggering zone of the trap can disrupt the delicate telepathic effect for a limited amount of time (say, 1d4 minutes), allowing others to pass through safely.

Clockwork Mechanisms: Spells can be stored inside clockwork mechanisms. Physically disabling the clockworks will disable the magical trap. Nice and simple.

Thoughts? What other techniques could we be using here?

As a final utilitarian note: I’ll only rarely include these specific details into my notes. Instead, this is just a conceptual toolkit that I can use to explain the working of any trap as it comes up during play. Similarly, I usually don’t spend time prepping the exact mechanics of how a particular pit trap works (one door or two? where are the hinges? are there hinges? what are the spikes at the bottom made out of? etc.).

Way back in Dragon #285, James Jacobs presented the Breathdrinker: A creature of evil, elemental air that could silently steal the air from your very body. This is the illustration which accompanied the article–

I was immediately struck by how delightfully creepy they were, and in my first 3E campaign two of them were sent as assassins to ambush the PCs in the night. (This was actually in retaliation for what the PCs had done In the Depths of Khunbaral.) As I wrote in my notes:

• They come in the night.
• Glowing red eyes. Silverish-gray skin, taut against bone. Translucent and insubstantial. Glide with utter silence.
• One attacks the party member farthest from the guard. The other attempts to paralyze the guard one round later.

(If you really want to recreate the experience, I cued the encounter to track 26 on the Final Fantasy IX Plus soundtrack, which you can listen to here.)

A couple years later, the breathdrinker was picked up for inclusion in Monster Manual II. And I was like, “Of course they did. That’s an awesome monster and it gave me an awesome encounter.”

Here’s the illustration which appeared in Monster Manual II:

Maybe this is an admission of shallowness on my part, but I don’t think I end up with my creeptacular encounter of eery, silvery forms if that illustration had been my introduction to breathdrinkers. (Actually, I suspect I would have skipped right over breathdrinkers and never given them a second thought.)