Wanted: Sea Monster Sighting Reports!

[The Giamarga]

Human male mountain loup-garou ranger 15 is, then.

EDIT: Sorry, ranger 14. A dire wolf has 6 HD.
By the way... Where do the fast healing and spell resistance of the loup garou come from?

EDIT2: Did you notice? No lycanthrope hunters, in 3.5.

What? Why make him loose even more levels? As he is an afflicted lycanthrope i think you should not really count the animal hit dice. So Ranger 20 would still not be epic. Though Ranger 17 is the new canon.

Also what do you mean by Lycanthrope hunter? RLPHB has the Monster Hunter and Beasthunter, which encompasses hunting shapechanger iirc. I still think Moon Bane is made for him. There's also the Foe Hunter PrC in Complete Warrior that GreenGiant used in his conversion of Dragonov here.

[Jakob]

Being a loup-garou, he has 6 racial DH. As ranger 17 would have 23 HD. Epic.
EDIT: Anyway, a 3.5 14th level Dragonov would bake and eat the Dragonov of CotM.

In 3.5, by following the rules, you cannot have lycanthropes as favored enemy, since shapchanger is a broad subtype. I'm thinking about giving him favored enemy lycanthropes as loose group.

Since Dragonov is STILL a lycanthrope, he cannot be a moon bane (CoD, page 37), and I think his fight against monsters would benefit more form ranger levels than from monster/beast hunter levels...

[The Giamarga]

Being a loup-garou, he has 6 racial DH. As ranger 17 would have 23 HD. Epic.
EDIT: Anyway, a 3.5 14th level Dragonov would bake and eat the Dragonov of CotM.

Apples and oranges. A properly converted 2E Dragonov would beat the shit out of a Rgr14 one. Also they are animal hit dice, some of the weakest ones available. I see no sense at all in tuning down NPCs just because they would supposedly hit epic level. What's the problem with that anyways? Just don't give him any epic feats. Bam, problem solved.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Again, let's stick with ranger 17. The animal HD don't count in his human form, and a lot of his ranger abilities will be useless if he's in hybrid form, so overall he should clock in at CR 20, give or take a few hp.


Love the idea of jolly roger as a template, BTW!

[Jakob]

Again, let's stick with ranger 17. The animal HD don't count in his human form, and a lot of his ranger abilities will be useless if he's in hybrid form, so overall he should clock in at CR 20, give or take a few hp.

Uhhh... Animal HD count. They give him hit points, saves, skill points and feats, skill bonuses, bonus to Wisdom, low-light vision, scent...

Dragonov has no hybrid form. He's an afflicted lycanthrope.

Apples and oranges.

Hey! I LIKE apples and oranges!
I know it's not the same thing. It's just that I created "my" Dragonov yesterday (using my ranger and HR such as Notice instead of Listen-Spot), and I was in awe of... Well, his might. Oh, and he has great equipment.

BTW, I gave him a moon silver ring (CoD), at least in my campaign. It's reasonable he'd at least heard of it, and in his long life would have had at least one occasion to acquire one. Hey, he's CR 20+!

EDIT: Hey, if someone else want to stat a rule/canon Dragonov instead of me, it's not a problem. I'm not really good in sticking with canon.

[The Giamarga]

Dragonov has no hybrid form. He's an afflicted lycanthrope.

In the short story he has.

[Jakob]

Dragonov has no hybrid form. He's an afflicted lycanthrope.

In the short story he has.

Not in 3.5 rules. Afflicted only have animal form.

As soon as I return home, I'll read the short story again.

[cure]

If he has it in the short story, then he has it, in the absence of overwelming good reason as to why he does not, rules are not such a reason.

[The Giamarga]

My thoughts. This issue will crop up often as in 2E the the difference between afflicted and natural was not so defined as now. Iirc as an afflicted lycanthrope you could have only the hybrid form or only the animal form. But he has been cursed by the DPs so it is easy to just give him the hybrid form as part of that. Or he could have 5 levels of the Moonchild PrC(from the Verbrek Gaz) but i think that doesn't quite fit.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

VRGtWere says that the majority of afflicted lycanthropes have only their animal forms, but a certain percentage have only hybrid forms instead. Barring necessary conversions, VRGs should always trump the core rules when it comes to monster descriptions. (This makes great sense in metagame terms, BTW, as it means that players can't take it for granted that a lycanthrope is "natural", merely because it has a hybrid form. ) Dragonov is one of the rare ones.

My bad about the animal HD. Still, let's go with ranger 17: if any monster-hunter in Ravenloft does merit epic status, Dragonov is it, and a single-class build suits his straightforward personality.

[Sylaire]

My bad about the animal HD. Still, let's go with ranger 17: if any monster-hunter in Ravenloft does merit epic status, Dragonov is it, and a single-class build suits his straightforward personality.

And he did manage to fight Adam to a draw (okay, yes, he was losing before the game was called on account of the ice shattering, but still), and that was quite a few levels ago, even presuming that he only manages to pick up a new level every decade or so...

[DocBeard]

My bad about the animal HD. Still, let's go with ranger 17: if any monster-hunter in Ravenloft does merit epic status, Dragonov is it, and a single-class build suits his straightforward personality.

Well, him and Van Richten.

I mean, yeah, he's usually depected as mid-level, with what he knows being his greatist power, but the guy's also the person the things that go bump in the night are afraid of, y'know? And I think that's crucial in a setting like Ravenloft; it reminds the players that even the terrible evils they have to face have a reason to leave a candle on when they go to bed.

...actually, that might be a neat adventure hook. Develop "the legend of Van Richten" as a boogeyman that hunts monsters instead of children; maybe have the PCs owe an old enemy a favor and then get a great reaction from their old rival Lichy McMastermind desperately needing them to get the angry spirit to leave him alone.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Van Richten never hit level 20, but only because he went up against so many energy-draining monsters. His experience levels bounced up and down like a yoyo, his entire career. Plus, it's the fact he knew what he was doing that made him so formidable, not being high level; making him "uber" would only detract from his image, IMO.

Dragonov seems more the kind to go up against fleshly, tangible critters like lycanthropes or aberrations, not level-drainers, so he kept his levels that he earned. But we're getting pretty far off-topic here, folks: further talk about Dragonov, boogeymen, etc should probably take place on a different thread. (Unless they're sea boogeymen, of course. )

[DocBeard]

But we're getting pretty far off-topic here, folks: further talk about Dragonov, boogeymen, etc should probably take place on a different thread. (Unless they're sea boogeymen, of course. )

Sorry about that!

Though, in an attempt to bridge the gap between where we went and the topic; any thoughts to adding a few bits from the proposed Van Richten's Guide to sea monsters, ilithids, unknowable aquatic horrors and the like?

More specificly, I'm thinking of a few mentions of heroic types, correspondenants with the Weathermay girls or otherwise, is always a good thing to throw into a Gazetter. Ravenloft can be seen from the outside as a very "You're screwed no matter what." setting, which is why I think the presence of heroic NPCs was so crucial in 3E-it shows Joe Player that, while /hard/, making a positive difference in Ravenloft is certainly possible.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Sure, we can have a nautical hero-type or two in the DM Appendix! The dopp-book has two good-guy NPCs in it, both designed to be particularly useful against doppelgangers; there's room for one or two more heroes here, particularly if they're suited to take on terrors from the deep. It's a convenient way to build upon what's known about the Van Richten Society, as well as giving DMs more NPCs to use in conjunction with these critters.

Of course, given the grab-bag nature of the netbook's "files", we won't be able to stat every in-character contributor who'd given information to the W-F twins. Less prominent narrators can given capsule statistics in a sidebar, however (e.g. "male human NG expert 3 / Ftr 3").

No illithids or related illithi-whastis critters, though. Again, we'd be better off saving them for their own netbook (companion to a Bluetspur Survey, perhaps?), especially since illithids aren't OGL material and we won't see any psionics rules for 4th edition for at least a year, if not two.