Lucre on Liffe

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Here's yet another Liffen villain I'm fleshing out for my campaign: Lucre the Coin Golem is listed as a Dread Possibility there (Filthy Lucre), five of his coins having been taken there as museum curios.

IMC I've stated before that Lucre is an ally/lieutenant of Malken, which works perfectly here: Lucre is the agent of Malken on the island, extending his master's reach outside of the domain. Of course, I'm entertaining possibilities that Lucre and/or Malken may end up betraying the other, but for now, it's a pretty good alliance. Malken gets an agent who can be many places almost at once, either as spy or assassin, even beyond domain borders. Lucre gets the resources of Malken's crime network, including a considerable number of gold coins that Lucre can hide in different places as insurance policies.

If Lucre can get one of his coins to Graben island, he may be able to solve Malken's little problem there of a troublesome lieutenant in need of personal assassination (Dread Possibility: Cat's in the Cradle). Lucre might have to practice to get Malken's style of assassination down, but his cold ambitions are not so petty as to care about Malken's other underlings knowing that Malken cannot leave Nova Vaasa.

But I'm also wondering about Lucre's specific activities on Liffe. What would happen if he got one of his coins inside Neverwhere Manor for a night? How would he deal with a hundred years by himself? Given the amount of trade going on in Armeikos, would people notice that gold coins were becoming rarer? Which of the barons would he take under his arm and communicate with in secret, forming alliances on Malken's behalf?

As always, feedback is appreciated.

[Solan]

Here's yet another Liffen villain I'm fleshing out for my campaign: Lucre the Coin Golem is listed as a Dread Possibility there (Filthy Lucre), five of his coins having been taken there as museum curios.

IMC I've stated before that Lucre is an ally/lieutenant of Malken, which works perfectly here: Lucre is the agent of Malken on the island, extending his master's reach outside of the domain. Of course, I'm entertaining possibilities that Lucre and/or Malken may end up betraying the other, but for now, it's a pretty good alliance. Malken gets an agent who can be many places almost at once, either as spy or assassin, even beyond domain borders. Lucre gets the resources of Malken's crime network, including a considerable number of gold coins that Lucre can hide in different places as insurance policies.

If Lucre can get one of his coins to Graben island, he may be able to solve Malken's little problem there of a troublesome lieutenant in need of personal assassination (Dread Possibility: Cat's in the Cradle). Lucre might have to practice to get Malken's style of assassination down, but his cold ambitions are not so petty as to care about Malken's other underlings knowing that Malken cannot leave Nova Vaasa.

But I'm also wondering about Lucre's specific activities on Liffe. What would happen if he got one of his coins inside Neverwhere Manor for a night? How would he deal with a hundred years by himself? Given the amount of trade going on in Armeikos, would people notice that gold coins were becoming rarer? Which of the barons would he take under his arm and communicate with in secret, forming alliances on Malken's behalf?

As always, feedback is appreciated.

Interesting idea. Regarding Lucre, though, I honestly believe they made a mistake in assigning his damage: 4d10 is far, far too much for a sword made of coins to do, especially given the level of the party they set for Lucre's adventure and the fact that they said Lucre's "blade" was equivalent to a +3 sword. I think the 4d10 was accidentally copied from the Automatic Man, when it should actually be 1d8+3 for his damage.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Interesting idea. Regarding Lucre, though, I honestly believe they made a mistake in assigning his damage: 4d10 is far, far too much for a sword made of coins to do, especially given the level of the party they set for Lucre's adventure and the fact that they said Lucre's "blade" was equivalent to a +3 sword. I think the 4d10 was accidentally copied from the Automatic Man, when it should actually be 1d8+3 for his damage.

Duly noted.

[The Lesser Evil]

If one of the coins got into Neverwhere Manor, you've got an identity crisis on your hands, as some of the coins are experiencing time much more quickly than others. I would suggest a personality split, with the coins that escape the Manor claiming to be the "older and wiser" future version of Lucre. Lucre being Lucre, his "younger" self won't appreciate being mocked. You could very well have a coin war on your hands. And if you wanted a reason for Lucre to backstab Malken, you could have either one turn against him whereas the other one stays loyal.

Edit: Maybe one side aligns itself with a traitorous Valric, whom does not know about the other Lucre. And Malken may not have any idea of the existence of a duplicate Lucre betraying him. So everything becomes a deliciously ironic clusterfudge. And perhaps in the end, the other two Lucres decide they want to merge back into one when they learn about the Alchemist of Liffe?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

If one of the coins got into Neverwhere Manor, you've got an identity crisis on your hands, as some of the coins are experiencing time much more quickly than others. I would suggest a personality split, with the coins that escape the Manor claiming to be the "older and wiser" future version of Lucre. Lucre being Lucre, his "younger" self won't appreciate being mocked. You could very well have a coin war on your hands. And if you wanted a reason for Lucre to backstab Malken, you could have either one turn against him whereas the other one stays loyal.

I like the cut of your jib, sir....

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I like the cut of your jib, sir....

So do I, except I'm not sure that's how Lucre works. He moves from coin to coin, so if there's a coin in the manor at night, and he is animating it when the time shift begins, there would be no other Lucre-life moving to any of the other coins. He would be unable to jump to any other coins until the time shift ended. He would spend 100 years cut off from his other coin-bodies, which might be scary, but I don't see how this would give him the ability to animate two versions of himself, when he was never able to before.

[The Lesser Evil]

I guess it would just depend on how you might think Lucre's coin switching deal would interact with Evensong's stasis gig. If it's some type of temporal warp (as it seems to be), then it's possible that when Lucre switched his essences across the temporal divide, there could be a temporal anomaly, as he would for but the briefest of moments be in two places- "Schrodinger's Coin". And the temporal anomaly causes him to grab a future or past self. Basically, they would technically be the same Lucre, just at different points in Lucre's "life", or perhaps from parallel timelines/quantum universes? Or he even might go into a nonlinear time frame like the Zarovans?

The writeup of Nevermore Manor in the Nocturnal Sea Gaz stipulates that there might be a powerful portal that could potentially be opened by powerful planar magic, so it's feasible Lucre could make the jump from one of his coins to another.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Hmmm...maybe I'll have to look at Neverwhere Manor again, see how that works. I was under the impression that once Lucre was in, he could not jump out.

However, another question more solidly related to Lucre himself, is there an updated version of his stats somewhere? He appears to be a swarm-shifter with the preferred form of a knight in armor, but the advantages and limitations of his different form are mostly up to the DM. What is the largest amount he can animate? Does he get any advantages or disadvantages to certain shapes?

If anyone knows where Lucre's crunchy bits have been updated or expanded on--or would be willing to help me do so--I'd be much obliged.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

If anyone knows where Lucre's crunchy bits have been updated or expanded on--or would be willing to help me do so--I'd be much obliged.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has done so.

[The Lesser Evil]

For starters, I might give him the Compression special quality and ooze traits. I might handle his growing or shrinking with the modifiers from the Size modifier table. So if he has just two coins to form stubby little legs with, he'd be Fine Size.

Lucre has 18 hit dice, so presuming 3.5 rules (is that what you're using?) he has 99 hit points if going with average (which will be further modified by size bonus to hit points) He can inhabit 4,000 coins, so if we be easy on ourselves and say he has 100 hp max (plus bonus construct for size modifier, but let's leave that out of the equation for simplicity's sake), you've got 1 hit point per 40 coins (as opposed to 1 hit point per 50 coins in 2e.)

If for some weird reason he decides to change into another form- like a dragon, you can derive damage from average values of monsters on the creature size table.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I'm using Pathfinder rules, and I'll probably scale back his hit dice. For a creature that can keep making more and more and more bodies of himself as long as you don't destroy the coin, 18 hit dice per body is a little much.

[The Lesser Evil]

Another thing to consider is what will happen to the constituent gold pieces once his body has broken apart. If the mundane gold pieces are destroyed and/or flung across the area to where his coin can't reach them upon the "destruction" of his body, then Lucre will less dangerous than if they simply fall to the floor and he can reanimate them again.

[The Lesser Evil]

More thoughts on Lucre's activities: he is a guardian by profession and a killer by passion. In his original adventure, he was impersonating a human whom would hire thieves to break in so he could have the joys of killing them. I would think he would have a similar modus operandi here- perhaps he "guards" the take Malken gets from Valric. But the thing he protects is a flow of money, not merely a definite, concrete hoard. So on Liffe, he might act like a legbreaker to make sure Valric and Malken's (or Valric's) other agents don't skim too much money off the top or otherwise fail to meet Malken's expectations. Of course, since Lucre is bloodthirsty, he may insist on increasing payments from Malken to intentionally get some people to fail paying their share. And the murders he commits are always brutal and demonstrative to Valric or his peers of what happens when somebody doesn't make their quotas.