Undying in Cypher System - Alternate Take

 There's another way to do the Undying Vampire, which is more basic to the rules of Cypher System. My table came up with this idea:

1. Take the vampire racial descriptor for Alternate Origins (a supplement for The Strange which works equally well with Cypher System)

2. Use that descriptor, then apply two additional modifiers:

Corrupting Touch - any time the Undying makes flesh to flesh contact with another creature for any reason (including a bite) this initiates an Intellect attack against the target. The target if injured receives -1 Shift against charisma and influence based checks for 24 hours; these can be cumulative, and are addition to any other effects applied as a result of the skin to skin contact.

Inability – Memory Fugue: Most undying appear to have no realization of their nature, even as they commit their acts of destruction and murder. Very ancient Undying may become acutely aware of their condition and embrace it, while young and new undying seem to “black out” when they commit vampiric acts, and go into violent rages if confronted with hard evidence of their actions. This selective memory loss seems to be due to the inability of the fey ancestry to reconcile their necromantic transformation due to the loss of their immaterial afterlife in the feywild. All Undying suffer from this inability to reconcile their natures when it is demonstrated, and suffer -2 shift penalties to intellect defense tests when trying to remain in control or reconcile such evidence when confronted with it. Very ancient Undying may spend 3 XP to reduce this to a -1 penalty, and ancient undying  may spend 10 XP to remove the penalty (but must be at least tier 5).

Additional Equipment: one relic weapon of up to expensive rarity and one relic item from your living years as an elf.

Initial Links to Starting Adventure:

1. you are an ancient undying recently awakened by your fellow PCs from some grave, and now wandering the land with a memory fugue, trying to remember who you are.

2. You were awoken by tomb robbers whom you killed, and you wandered off, met the PCs, and have been traveling with them while recovering your wits.

3. You were slain by orcs or other creatures in battle recently, but have no memory and are oblivious to your condition. Your PC companions assumed you simply had good luck to escape death.

4. You were killed by another undying elf and left as a husk who came back to life. You have one or more PC allies taking care of you who may or may not realize your condition.

By using the Vampire descriptor it covers the blood drinking and vampiric limits. The corrupting touch encapsulates the ability of the Undying to drain charisma, and the inability covers the distinct madness that corrupts the undying. 

This looks like the way we will go. 

Undying Elven Vampire Descriptor for Cypher System

   The Realms of Chirak has a class of elven vampire called the Undying. The key traits of undying are that they are elves who died horribly or suddenly, and for whom their spirits, unable to ascend to an elven afterlife in the feywild, find themselves trapped in the mortal realm and unable to leave. The only reasonable way to put an undying down is decapitation; elves of Chirak practice decapitation of their dead as a matter of course.

   The etymology of the undying goes all the way back to 2nd edition's Ravenloft, which introduced a version of vampires (originally tied to Dragonlance, I think) which drained beauty instead of life. I loved that concept and made it a core conceit of the undying; they not only drain blood, but the literal physical appearance and sense of well being of their victims!

Undying (Descriptor)

    There will come a time when a player character suffers a demise as an elf, and by virtue of bad luck, GM fiat or storyline requirements he will return as an undying. This descriptor can be used to simulate those who return from the dead.

    GMs interested in some old school randomness may require a freshly deceased fey player character to make an “Undying check” at the terminus of their character’s life. For Cypher: a check against the level of the creature or effect that killed the PC; alternatively, this could be due to GM Intrusion. 

    This descriptor works just fine for NPCs as a template; particularly insidious GMs could apply it to satyrs, nymphs and other unusual fey as desired, to really surprise his players!

Requirements: Any fey type; must have been killed in some fashion that did not also lead to dismemberment or immolation.

Attributes: +2 Speed (as elf)

Vision: dark vision (can see in the dark as if it were daylight)

Racial Skills: gain training in thievery and stealth

Undead: Undying are undead. Like most undead, undying do not age and are effectively immortal, until someone slays them. Damage done to a vampire's weakness (damage dealt while exposed to sunlight, fire, immersion in running water or decapitation) cannot be healed normally and requires blood. Decapitation is permanent for Undying. Immersion in running water does 1 point of damage a round regardless of armor until stopped.

Bite: Undying are still vampires and can drain blood with a bite. Their bite must do damage to work. A vampire deals 4 points of damage with a bite, and if damage gets through may gain one recovery or improve the damage track by one.

Wilting Grasp: The Undying can cause a Wilting Grasp with an unarmed melee attack. This damage is dealt directly to Intellect and bypasses normal non-magical armor. If the Undying crits, it can choose to also induce a -1 shift penalty to all charisma related actions on a 19, or -2 shift penalty on a natural 20. These penalties do not lift until the intellect damage is fully healed.

Corrupting Touch: When you touch your bare skin to another willing target in an attempt to heal or aid someone or be healed in turn, inducing healing by any power, any other effect which induces a healing in another, or using the Heal skill, the corrupting touch happens. Must be adjacent to the target in question. You must make an Intellect Defense Check against the target's level (or if a PC they make an Intellect Defense check against your Rank) or the target suffers a -1 shift Intellect penalty to all charisma related checks for one day and takes 2 Intellect of damage; must get a full recovery to restore to normal. This can happen more than once, with cumulative effects. Dealing any damage lets the undying restore on recovery.

Inability - Discomfited by Sunlight: The undying finds sunlight painfully unpleasant, and must shield himself from it if possible. If unable to provide some reasonable cover (such as a thick cloak and hood) while in sunlight, then the undying suffers -1 shift penalties to all Might and Speed actions.

Inability – Memory Fugue: Most undying appear to have no realization of their nature, even as they commit their acts of destruction and murder. Very ancient Undying may become acutely aware of their condition and embrace it, while young and new undying seem to “black out” when they commit vampiric acts, and go into violent rages if confronted with hard evidence of their actions. This selective memory loss seems to be due to the inability of the fey ancestry to reconcile their necromantic transformation due to the loss of their immaterial afterlife in the feywild. All Undying suffer from this inability to reconcile their natures when it is demonstrated, and suffer -2 shift penalties to intellect defense tests when trying to remain in control or reconcile such evidence when confronted with it. Very ancient Undying may spend 3 XP to reduce this to a -1 penalty, and ancient undying  may spend 10 XP to remove the penalty (but must be at least tier 5).

Hunger for the Beauty of the Living: Undying do not heal normally. They must drain the life and beauty from the living in order to sustain themselves. At the beginning of each day in which the undying has not fed on beauty he loses one recovery roll (starting from shortest to longest). If the Undying reaches zero recovery rolls then he may go in to a frenzy at the sight of beauty; each time a creature of sufficient beauty (assessed by the GM) comes within sight of the undying, he must make an Intellect check (at the level of the target plus 1 per week he has not fed) or immediately try and feed! He will not stop trying (by attack or deception) until he has gained at least one surge.

Special Death Requirements: Undying don’t die like regular characters. If an undying reaches 0 recoveries and is then reduced to damage track 3 and is decapitated, he is destroyed. Otherwise, he will return from the grave once again at an unspecified later date. This is usually a minimum of a few months, but can be years or even centuries. Roll 1D20 for the number of months the undying is in torpor. On a 19-20, re-roll and treat it as the number of years; if you roll 19-20 a second time, re-roll for the number of decades, etc. Finally, an undying can always be prevented from returning by means of decapitation.

Additional Equipment: one relic weapon of up to expensive rarity and one relic item from your living years as an elf.

Initial Links to Starting Adventure:

1. you are an ancient undying recently awakened by your fellow PCs from some grave, and now wandering the land with a memory fugue, trying to remember who you are.

2. You were awoken by tomb robbers whom you killed, and you wandered off, met the PCs, and have been traveling with them while recovering your wits.

3. You were slain by orcs or other creatures in battle recently, but have no memory and are oblivious to your condition. Your PC companions assumed you simply had good luck to escape death.

4. You were killed by another undying elf and left as a husk who came back to life. You have one or more PC allies taking care of you who may or may not realize your condition. 

Brainstorming on Presenting the Realms of Chirak in a New Print and PDF Format

As some of you know, I have an ongoing world (Realms of Chirak) which I have tried to produce a working final published document for for a few years now. The timeline for Chirak as a publishable D&D setting has kind of looked like this:

1992-1999: The dark ages, in which I started with a basic 20 or so page document that was my springboard for campaigns in Runequest III and AD&D 2nd edition during the nineties.

2000-2008ish: during this period I did more work solidifying and updating a massive accumulation of notes and bits from prior campaigns into two working documents. The first was a 50 page document that was my GM's gazetteer which rapidly grew to about 150 pages, and the other was a 32 page player's guidebook. I kept a working document for both D&D 3rd edition and whatever version of Runequest was extant at the moment. These saw publication as chapbooks but were only made available to players in my groups.

2008 -2011: One major problem with 3rd edition D&D for me was that it was nigh impossible to do a custom homebrew setting in the system without breaking or mashing some rules. All to often what worked just fine for my own game table would be considered blashphemy in the D&D 3rd edition community, and as a result I never felt comfortable completing a working document for publication. 4th edition D&D changed all of that, with a very codified ruleset which made mechanical implementation pretty easy. I managed to upload a finalized document for sale, and a version on lulu for print in this time period. To date it remains the "print" version that is pubically available, outside of what I have released on the bog.

2011-present: all of my ongoing work, ideas, future and current campaigns and so forth have made their way in some form on to the blog. By not monetizing the blog and keeping it free and "you get what you pay for" this freed me up to offer my take on content without worrying too much about what people would think of it for their own needs.

2013-2019: My Pathfinder 1.0 document is a shambling mess of material and notes but I never came close to a definitive rules doc with Pathfinder like I did with D&D 3rd, probably because Pathfinder didn't really need it. However with D&D 5th edition I found the task of editing the book for 5E mechanics to be fine (but boring; 5e stablocks: "easy but boring")....but the real task is that the sum total of a unified document reflecting the campaign over 27 odd years of weekly gaming totalling what might well be somewhere around what I estimate to be at least 6,000 to 8,000 actual game hours spent in Chirak, with thousands of pages of loose documents and files to draw from, to be a horrifying challenge.

So....here I am now, with a rough draft of a final 5E update that is close to 500 pages in the edit and I'm still far from done. Where to go from here?

Well, recently I decided to start breaking it down in to discreet pieces to see if that let me focus more specifically on sections of the setting without getting too bogged down. So far this has worked well, and after I complete five or six "pieces" I think I'll try releasing them in smaller setting books which then unite over a larger scope. Eventually I will have enough that I can then turn them into print-ready compendiums without much effort....but at least I can get them in to some working format!

The trick now is what systems (if any) to focus on. 5E is easy enough, but I have been adding Cypher System mechanics to literally everything these days (I have a complete working document of the Sabiri Lands statted out in Cypher System, for example) and it's hard not to, given how easy and liberating Cypher System is for GMs. Also, there's this little thing about Pathfinder 2.0 coming out soon....but I suspect that if I were to try including that, I might run into some of my old problems. We'll see.

What I could do is release different versions of each piece for specific systems. A version for 5E and a version for Cypher System are both easy enough. If Pathfinder 2.0 is a forgiving system to write and design for, then I can add it in. Doing these doc piecemeal may indeed make such tasks less onerous.

In the meantime, my current plan is as follows: before close of year, I'd like to release these short books, each ranging from 30-50 pages for Chirak:
Espanea and the Kaldinian Isles
The Sabiri Lands
Mercurios
A Guidebook to the Cults and Religions of Chirak
Xoxtocharit 
Kasdalan

...With more planned. Some regions haven't been developed enough for a 30-50 page treatment (I've never had more than a couple pages on Adenach, for example), so some of these books could incorporate neighboring smaller kingdoms/regions as well.

Another advantage to these focused location books is that they can string into the intended campaign, but could also be used "as is" by GMs looking for a specific location, or could be dropped in to someone's own setting to fill a niche or corner. My plan is to make sure that everything you need to fill out the detail on the local setting is provided in each book.

I also need to think about the art direction. Plenty of decent stock art out there to be found and paid for these days, but many other publishers are also using that stock art. I have a lot more income to mess with now than I did 10 years ago, so a little money spent on good art for a vanity project might be worth it. I could try Kickstarting, but not unless I do it the Sine Nomine way (also known as "The Smart Way") so I'll need to go read over the excellent publishing doc he provides, as it is well worth any small publisher's read through before tackling any project, let alone a Kickstarter.

Stuff to ponder!

Realms of Chirak; The Black Kyanite of Theliad; a Boon and Curse of Immortality

Black Kyanite

   Though it is speculated by some that the immortals of Theliad might be descended from true Inadasir blood,  and others have suggested that they might be avatars of some sort, the reality is a bit stranger. Deep in the bowels of an ancient cavern in the Agardash Mountains there lies a special vein of arcane crystals called the Black Kyanite.  This particular source is almost utterly black unless under strong light, revealing a deep, dark blue quality to the stone. The Black Kyanite appears to have strange properties, not unlike the divine Zodiac Stones, in that those who even touch the stone are gifted with great boons as well as immortality. The ability of one to  make something of such a gift is highly dependent on the recipient of the  gift, and many fail to even survive the initial touch of the stone. Others are wracked with curses and disease worse than the gifts bestowed; the ones who are able to harness the power of the Black Kyanite are most likely those few immortals now known to be like demiurges to the Theliadics.

   Black Kyanite can be found in only a few locations. Some is known to have been stolen away and is kept in an ancient dungeon deep beneath the city of Zheranos by the Canerous King Azeros, who himself has been bestowed with immortality at a terrible price. The lost Cavern of of the Agardash Mountains is the source of the purest and most powerful Black Kyanite, and it is believed that each of the “true” immortals of the land visit this cavern, and possibly took a piece of the powerful stone with them. Other sources of the stone may exist, and one rumor is that the ground beneath the ruin of Afar is riddled with impure versions of the stone.

   If someone comes in to contact with the substance it will grant them a Boon, and also a Curse unless they succeed at a DC 21 Wisdom save, or sometimes a DC 21 Constitution save if the desire of the intended recipient of the boon seeks a great physical enhancement. Failure still grants a boon and immortality (no longer ages), but also a curse. Success, which happens rarely, leads to the boon and agelessness without a major curse, though debilitating side effects of the boon may still be evident.

   The stone can be touched once a year to gain further boons (and curses), though each subsequent effort to do increases new saves by 1. If the save is ever critically failed (natural 1) the subject is killed immediately and transforms into Black Kyanite with all the properties of the stone. On a natural 20 the subject always gains the boon with no curse.

   Characters who undergo this transformation gain the following perks from touching Black Kyanite:

1 Boon (see DMG for samples, or see more below)

Gain immortality (ageless; still can die of unnatural causes)

Gain one minor impairment as a side effect of boon (example: ability to cast burning hands at will also requires PC to sleep on nonflammable material at night or they catch on fire)

On Save Failure Gain Major Curse (see chart below)

Sample Curses from the stone include:

D20                  Curse

1                                            Lose immunity to disease and roll at disadvantage on disease saves

2                                            Lose eyesight

3                                            Lose hearing

4                                            Become hideously deformed (disadvantage on Charisma and Dexterity Saves)

5                                            Grow 1D3 extra eyes

6                                            Must concentrate or turn into a blob like mass

7                                            Animals attack on sight

8                                            Lose all sense of touch (disadvantage on tactile Dexterity checks)

9                                            Develop vulnerability to metal (any contact with metal deals double damage, or causes 1 damage per round for passive contact)

10                                        Lose ability to benefit from a short rest

11                                        Plagued by nightmares; Must make a DC 17 Wisdom save each night to benefit from a long rest

12                                        Lose half hit dice permanently

13                                        Reduce Int and Str to 3 permanently

14                                        Reduce Cha and Dex to 3 permanently

15                                        Gain Disadvantage on all magic saves

16                                        One limb transforms into living Black Kyanite; susceptible to spells like Shatter as if an inanimate object

17                                        Lose ability to eat, can only sustain life with blood

18                                        Develop incurable lycanthropy

19                                        Lose ability to speak (either lose voice, or all dialogue is babble)

20                                        Translucent skin reveals organs; gain disadvantage on Charisma checks but advantage in Intimidation

Examples of Additional Boons Granted by the Black Kyanite:

Flame Control: gain the ability to cast burning hands at will; cannot control while sleeping

Stone Skin: develop skin of pure stone, but unable to “feel” like normal again.

Invisibility: Become permanently invisible, but all clothing and objects remain visible.

Ability Enhancement: Gain +5 points in one ability of choice but lose 5 in another ability (to 20 max).

Flight: gain the ability to fly, but lose the ability to touch the ground (must always hover just above the ground). Falling becomes a non-issue, but sleeping becomes difficult, as does any other act that benefits from being grounded.

   Any boon from the DMG, accompanied by an appropriate minor curse of hindrance, is acceptable as well.

D&D 5E: Cylovite Overlords in Chirak

Cylovite Overlord

CR 9 (5,000 XP)

CE large humanoid (living construct)

Initiative +1

DEFENSE

AC 17 (crystalline armor)

HP 114 (12D10+48)

Resistance: fire, cold, electricity

Vulnerability: triple damage from bludgeoning attacks that deal a critical hit

OFFENSE

Speed 30 feet

Ranged Attack – Telekinetic Slam +9 attack (up to three targets within 60 feet) 8D12+4 bludgeoning damage to each target.

Statistics

STR 16 (+3), DEX 12 (+1), CON 18 (+4), INT 18 (+4), WIS 13 (+1), CHA 20 (+5)

Saves INT +8, WIS +5, CHA +9

Languages: common, cylovite, elvish, and usually 1-2 others

Senses: darkvision 60 feet, Perception +2 (passive 12)

Skills: Deception +9, Persuasion +9

TRAITS

Hybrid Traits: See the hybrid template. Thralls have crystal skin, structural weakness, and telepathy. Escaped thralls who are no longer part of the dominated collective gain the mental resistance trait as well.

Domination: the cylovite overlord can dominate the minds of any creature as if it were using the spell at will. DC 17 Intelligence Save to resist; once resisted, the target cannot be targeted by domination again for 24 hours. The target of this effect may roll a save at the end of each round it is dominated.

Puppeteer: once a target is dominated, the overlord may use its bonus action to dictate what the target does, using its actions as normally, but chosen by the overlord. The target is conscious of being controlled but unable to break free. If an overlord dominates more than one target the others will stand by immobile while the bonus action controls one at a time.

Parasitic Eggs: Overlords can produce 1D12 crystalline eggs per month. A dominated target can be implanted with crystite “eggs” as an action. This deals 2D6 piercing damage. An unwilling target may make a Constitution Save, DC 17, to resist the implanting of eggs. Once implanted an egg will “hatch” and convert the target in to a hybrid within 24 hours. Removal of the egg required difficult surgery (Medicine check DC 18) and deals 4D6 slashing damage in the process.

Levitation: The overlord is perpetually levitating. This ability allows the overlord to move both horizontally and vertically at a constant, silent speed, and makes it immune to trip attacks or knockdowns.

Telekinesis: Overlords move objects of up to 250 lbs. by telekinesis, with a radius of 180 feet. This effect requires an action.

Crystalline Armor Bodies: This armor provides protection across the overlord’s body, and grants resistance to cold, fire and electricity. Overlords are entirely made of crystal, and are subject to damage from spells that target inanimate objects. Bludgeoning weapons that strike an overlord with a critical hit do triple damage.

Induce Fearlessness: When within 120 feet of an overlord, hybrid thralls and commanders are immune to fear effects.

   Overlords look like large, oddly formed crystalline statues that travel by levitation. It is speculated that this is the end stage growth of a hybrid after decades of service, but others think the overlord is a unique entity. They have stubby head-like growths with glowing gems for eyes (usually a dozen or more). They seem to have no other appendages, relying entirely on their telekinesis to manipulate objects around them.

   Overlords like to use their thrall minions and commanders to overwhelm a series of targets. Once restrained, in injects its crystal eggs in to those targets, to implant the seeds of a new thrall in to them. Overlords are driven by an obsessive need to acquire and protect territory and thralls. They rarely get along well with others of their kind, despite an understanding of their need to cooperate, and so the Cylovites have not become a dominant force in the world….yet!

Option: Overlord Spellcasters

Some overlords learn magic, and become quite adept at it. These tend to be level 9 spellcasters of CR 10 (5,900 XP), with the following spells ready:

Cantrips: blade ward, chill touch, mending, minor illusion

Level 1 Spells (4/day): charm person, color spray, sleep, Tasha’s Hideous Laughter

Level 2 Spells (3/day): crown of madness, detect thoughts, mirror image

Level 3 Spells (3/day): fear, lightning bolt, nondetection

Level 4 Spells (2/day): confusion, phantasmal killer

Level 5 Spells (1/day): hold monster

Legendary Actions:

The most powerful overlords gain 3 legendary action points to use during battle and are worth CR 11 (7,200 XP). They may commit to the following actions:

Greater Slam (2): As per the Telekinetic Slam, but targets all foes within 120 feet.

Instant Domination (1): use the domination effect immediately.

Control Second Dominated Target (1): if more than one target is dominated, the overlord may spend this point to gain a second bonus action to control the target.

D&D 5E: Cylovite Hybrid Thralls in Chirak

Next up: the new stat blocks for cylovites. These weird abominations have only featured in a couple campaigns, and occasionally as roaming NPCs, but they are still a distinctly unique monster to the Chirak landscape:

   Cylovite Overlords are a villainous species created out of the Apocalypse. Some appear humanoid but they can be grown in any number of shapes and sizes. Cylovite Overseers are rare, and take a century of gestation to grow to a small sized being, during which they are like curious infants. Another century will pass before they become medium sized, at which time their mature personality and inimical sense of evil reasoning against biological beings arises. Cylovite Overlords can breed but once in a two century period, creating two or three offspring when they do, through an asexual process. They can, however, create up to one hundred parasitic crystals a year to create hybrids. More about hybrids can be found in the New Races section as possible player characters.

Cylovites

   Cylovites come from the Blasted Lands to the west, where rumors abound of an “ancient empire immersed within the mountainous, craggy expanses ruled by these strange crystalline beings, where humans are, the lowest sort of slave fodder imaginable.” On very rare occasions, a cylovites has been encountered outside of these lands, but are immediately destroyed by any and all who encounter it. The myths of the apocalypse tell of the cylovites having a definite relationship to the end of the world, being harbingers who arrived just weeks before the great cataclysm.

   Humans and demihumans who dwell in the regions of the Cylovite-controlled blasted lands may be chosen as player characters. Specific details can be found in the entry on the Crystite Kingdom, but these player characters will also be very rare, and a bit of a challenge to play. Cylovite Thralls are permanently altered by parasitic attachments that make them innately subordinate to the Cylovite Overlords, and as such, player characters of this species must get very far away from the telepathic control of their masters to function normally. It is said that a special concoction created from the mandragora root, when applied to the parasitic attachment, will subdue the entity sufficiently that the host thrall can move freely and think on his own without interference for a time, usually a few hours. It is suspected that some rare escaped thralls have used this method to gain freedom, fleeing to the farthest corners of the world to escape their oppressive masters.   A Cylovite Hybrid is any biological living being implanted with a Parasitic Crystal. The crystal covers the subject over a week long period like a crystalline suit of armor or a mesh of crystal muscles and skin, and bonds with the subject's nervous system. A prospective host must make three saves (one per hour after initial infection) to survive the process and reject the bonding crystal parasite. If the host fails three saves before making three successes, then he or she has become a hybrid.

   All other mental elements of the host remain the same, but the hybrid's original personality will change by one factor toward the implanting overlord's own disposition (i.e. a pacifistic servant of Laddaskar with an overlord master who is a violent and evil being will now either lose his pacifism or become a simpering coward as well.) As such, the base alignment of the hybrid usually shifts one level closer to the overlord's. For example, a chaotic evil overlord would cause a thrall who was lawful good to become lawful evil or chaotic good. Which step happens can be randomized, though the likeliest alignment shift will always be that which makes the thrall most agreeable to the overlord's wishes.

   Willing hybrids are often the source of soldiers and enforcers in the Crystite Kingdom. Unwilling hybrids become fodder, cheap labor, or are (if especially resistant) thrown in to the gladiatorial pits.

   Escaped cylovite thralls are usually humans or other humanoids. This racial entry serves as a template; apply it to another race of your choice (usually human, Halfling, elf, dwarf or tiefling, although shapeshifters and constructs are excluded) to create your escaped thrall.

Cylovite Thrall Template

Cylovites can infect and transform any living creature. To convert an existing creature into a cylovite hybrid, apply the following additional features to an existing creature’s stat block:

Cylovite Language: the newly infected hybrid gains the ability to speak and understand cylovite.

Crystal Skin: Cylovite thralls grow thick, crystalline masses all over their bodies. They gain resistance against fire, cold and electricity. In addition, hybrids become AC 15 unless the base creature has a higher AC thanks to the crystalline growth.

Structural Weakness: Anyone choosing to target the crystalline nodes along the head, neck and back of a hybrid may attempt to do so with an attack at disadvantage; success renders the hybrid vulnerable to the attack, causing double damage as if it were a critical hit. Most creatures are unfamiliar with cylovite hybrids and are unaware of this weakness; a DC 16 nature check may reveal the knowledge, or first-hand or relayed prior experience. 

Telepathy: Hybrids are telepathic, and can communicate with other beings mentally within 1 mile, and up to a distance of 10 miles with a Cylovite overlord. This ability is two way with the Hybrid only, and is a free action that targets one person. It functions for practical purposes like the read thoughts spell.

Mental Resistance: Escaped Hybrids develop a tough defense against mental effects, and gain advantage when saving vs. charm and mind-affecting spells and abilities. Unless special arrangements are made, PC hybrids are all assumed to have escaped captivity and control prior to beginning play.

Cylovite Human Hybrid Thrall

CR 1/2 (100 XP)

CE medium humanoid (human)

Initiative +1

DEFENSE

AC 15 (crystalline armor)

HP 19 (3D8+6)

Resistance: fire, cold, electricity

Vulnerability: structural weakness (see template)

OFFENSE

Speed 30 feet

Multiattack Thralls are able to make any combination of two short spear or fist attacks per round.

Melee Attack – short spear +4 attack (5 foot reach) 1D6+2 piercing damage

Melee Attack – fists +4 attack (5 foot reach) 1D4+2 bludgeoning damage

Statistics

STR 14 (+2), DEX 12 (+1), CON 15 (+2), INT 10 (0), WIS 13 (+1), CHA 11 (0)

Languages: common, cylovite

Senses: Perception +1 (passive 11)

Skills: Athletics +4

TRAITS

Hybrid Traits: See the hybrid template. Thralls have crystal skin, structural weakness, and telepathy. Escaped thralls who are no longer part of the dominated collective gain the mental resistance trait as well.

  Thralls form the parasitically dominated armies of the Cylovites. They commonly use group tactics to overwhelm foes, surrounding and beating them down into submission so that the overlord can implant the new subject with a parasitic crystal.

   Some individual thralls prove to be exceptional warriors and quickly rise in rank, being noticed by their overlords. Those special thralls are elevated in purpose and become hybrid commanders, who usually lead the lesser thralls in to battle.

Cylovite Human Hybrid Commander

CR 3 (700 XP)

CE medium humanoid (human)

Initiative +1

DEFENSE

AC 18 (full plate and crystalline armor)

HP 52 (7D8+21)

Resistance: fire, cold, electricity

Vulnerability: structural weakness (see template)

OFFENSE

Speed 30 feet

Multiattack Commanders may make three attacks per round.

Melee Attack – great sword +7 attack (5 foot reach) 2D6+3 piercing damage

Melee Attack – fists +6 attack (5 foot reach) 1D4+3 bludgeoning damage

Ranged Attack – long bow +4 attack (Range 60/120) 1D8+1 piercing damage

Statistics

STR 16 (+3), DEX 12 (+1), CON 17 (+3), INT 10 (0), WIS 13 (+1), CHA 11 (0)

Languages: common, cylovite

Senses: Perception +2 (passive 12)

Skills: Athletics +6

TRAITS

Hybrid Traits: See the hybrid template. Thralls have crystal skin, structural weakness, and telepathy. Escaped thralls who are no longer part of the dominated collective gain the mental resistance trait as well.

Uncanny Horsemanship:  Thrall commanders who use a war horse in combat are usually linked to the hybrid thrall horse, a parasitic cylovite link, allows him to instantaneously communicate with the horse in such a manner that he and the beast seem to move unnaturally together. Any proficiency checks for mounted combat are at advantage.

   Thrall commanders are usually armed with magical great swords +1, mounted on a war horse, and have a keen sense of tactics in commanding their lesser troops.

Cylovite War Horse Hybrid Thrall

CR 1/2 (100 XP)

CE medium humanoid (human)

Initiative +1

DEFENSE

AC 15 (crystalline armor)

HP 19 (3D10+3)

Resistance: fire, cold, electricity

Vulnerability: structural weakness (see template)

OFFENSE

Speed 60 feet

Melee Attack – hooves +6 attack (5 foot reach) 2D6+4 bludgeoning damage

Statistics

STR 18 (+4), DEX 12 (+1), CON 13 (+1), INT 2 (-4), WIS 12 (+1), CHA 7 (-2)

Languages: none

Senses: Perception +1 (passive 11)

TRAITS

Hybrid Traits: See the hybrid template. Thralls have crystal skin, structural weakness, and telepathy. Escaped thralls who are no longer part of the dominated collective gain the mental resistance trait as well.

Trampling Charge: as per Warhorse, MM.

Mental Link: a hybrid horse can mentally bind with a hybrid rider. This grants advantage on all horsemanship related proficiency checks.

Fearless: hybrid warhorses are immune to fear effects.

Trained warhorses serve cylovite thrall commanders obediently and without fear thanks to their crystalline telepathic bond.