Café de Nuit

how do you build the figurines that are in denizess of darkness?

All Denizens of Darkness really says about their creation is the line on page 58, '..must be crafted by artisans, then granted 'life' through magic or dark desire." Much more detail on the creation of the figurines is found in the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendix III: Creatures of Darkness from 1994. All of page 38 decribes general information on the mini-constructs, including background, common characteristics, creating & controlling them, and gives a few clues at the existance of various Manuals of Figurines and their current locations. The next 5 pages are devoted to describing each figurine type.

I would treat them as a form of Dread Construct/Golem. They would have to be normal items to begin with but of mastercraft level of workmanship.

thanks,but how are they built using 3.5 dnd terms?

My suggestion would be digging up the spell lists from Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium III and using that as a basis (Mods-- I have MCIII, but am not sure if I can just post the spell lists here-- please let me know if I can!), and then extrapolating to figure out things like minimum creator level. Also, I'd assume the Craft Wondrous Item feat is needed.

If the figure is going to be a case of 'dark desire' than you don't have to bother, as it's usually just a spontaneous animation.

ETA: Also look at the spell list for the standard figurines of wondrous power in the DMG/SRD, which should also help.

You are considering not just posting 2e stuff, but extrapolating it in 3e, with your own thoughts. Looks fine to me.

Sure!

Joël

Hmmm - when I originally wrote up the figurines for Denizens of Darkness, I included information on how to construct each of them. It didn't make the cut in the published book, though. Let me see if I'm allowed to post the draft information. It probably needs updated for 3.5, so I may not get to it immediately.

Ah, that would be best of all! But, looking at my copy of 2e and the powers of the creatures in Denizens, this is what I would probably use for the spells. Note: I'm not going to try and calculate maker costs 'cause I'm not too sure how that works.

Ceramic figurine:
Moderate transmutation; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, animate objects

Crystal figurine:
Moderate transmutation; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, animate objects, color spray, hypnotic pattern

Ivory figurine:
Moderate transmutation; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, animate objects, enlarge, shout

Obsidian figurine:
Moderate transmutation; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, animate objects

Porcelain figurine:
Moderate transmutation; CL 11th; Craft Wondrous Item, animate objects, enlarge, enervation

Powers checks may apply depending on the spells (probably just on the enervation for the porcelain figurine)

It looks figurines are now limited to clerics, as both my PHB 3.0 and SRD 3.5 list animate objects as a clerical spell. The 2e versions also allowed for the use of polymorph any object as (presumably) the basic animation spell, but that's an 8th level spell which bucks the CL up to 15th.

Notably, the porcelain and crystal figurines had some 2e enchantments that were removed as of 3.x, such as chromatic orb and rainbow pattern for the crystal and glassteel (to harden it) for the porcelain. The porcelain figure also had see invisibility, which has been removed as of 3.x but could be put back in.