#pathfinder 1e

Image © Paizo Publishing

[This is something of an experiment in a number of different ways. Firstly, this is the first true dragon I'm converting of my own initiative, instead of being sponsored to do it. Secondly, I am trying to encourage more people to subscribe to the Patreon at the $1 tier. I have almost twice as many free subscribers as I have paid ones, and while I want to keep the bulk of my monsters paywall free, perhaps having multiple dragon stat blocks will entice some folks to upgrade. So this is only the adult stat block, and the example stat blocks for the young and ancient dragons will be at the $1 tier for now. I do intend on eventually releasing paid monsters on the blog for free, but it will be at a delay.

As for the monster itself... with Pathfinder 2e Remastered shaking off the last scraps of the SRD, that meant that it lost the classic D&D chromatic and metallic dragons. Which on the one hand is a shame, because they're so iconic, but on the other hand, Pathfinder had been using its own original dragons more and more, and this shift encouraged them to create more original dragons. And I do mean "original". The conspirator dragon is a take on the "dragons are manipulating humanoid society" trope that D&D loves, only going in a weird body horror adjacent direction. PF2e Remastered lacks explicit alignments, but due to the conspirator dragon's super manipulative nature, I went with NE. I figure that these Remastered dragons are all less tied to their alignments than the classic ten, so feel even more free than usual to shift the conspirator dragon's alignment to the needs of your game. I'm using poison for the breath weapon because that's the way it is in the original. If you dislike poison dealing hp damage, change it to acid.

If you'd like to see stat blocks for young and ancient conspirator dragons, as well as other exclusive content, please visit the Creature Codex Patreon here]

Dragon, Conspirator NE Dragon (CR varies) This dragon is lean and wrinkled, as if its skin is designed to expand and contract. It has slim forelimbs with delicate clawed hands and walks upright. Its wings are more like enlarged hands, with claws protruding from the membrane. Its tail is long and worm-like, and fleshy tendrils emerge from its back. Strangest and most disturbing is the outline of a humanoid face on the upper surface of its head.

Conspirator dragons are sinister creatures with occult powers and a compulsion to manipulate the affairs of civilizations. They insinuate themselves into society in one or more humanoid guises and bending the will of the people around their own. Sometimes this is for the purpose of gaining wealth and power, but other times it is merely for the dragon’s entertainment. Most conspirator dragons become nobles, courtiers and others with access to privilege, but some pose instead as powerful warlords and allow humanoids to believe they’re in control rather than the other way around. Conspirator dragons are patient and subtle, but when their schemes are threatened, move quickly to crush their opposition and remove any evidence of their draconic nature.

From birth, a conspirator dragon can weave a flesh suit, conjured from ectoplasm and wrapping around itself in an impossibly perfect simulacrum of humanity. As wyrmlings, conspirator dragons disguise themselves as humanoid infants, taking on larger forms and more proactive roles as they age. Elder conspirator dragons sometimes masquerade as giants, especially if they seek physical conquest, but more often they maintain disguises of Medium size even as they grow much larger. A conspirator dragon’s musculature is designed to fold and deflate, with biological straps and latches that help hold their forms tight. The strain of condensing into a flesh suit is released as dangerous force if the suit is destroyed through violence or if the dragon chooses to.

The breath of a conspirator dragon is a cone of toxic smoke—the toxin denatures quickly, leaving swathes of necrotic tissue in its wake, but the smoke lingers and provides useful concealment for a quick escape or hit and run attacks. Even an infant conspirator dragon can generate deadly psychic vibrations at a distance, which they can use whether in their natural or disguised forms. As they age, conspirator dragons gain access to potent mind-influencing magic, and by adulthood a conspirator dragon often surrounds itself with charmed minions to do most of the fighting for it. Elder conspirator dragons become a mental blank spot, automatically passing from the memories of most creatures who encounter them in their natural form.

Conspirator dragons see themselves as above mere mortals, and speak in condescending tones when not in character. They are typically quite charming and persuasive, but rarely if ever afford themselves actual fondness towards any of their pawns. Their treasure hoards include as many secrets and extortion materials as they do physical treasures, such as copies of letters and evidence of crimes. Conspirator dragons usually live in cities, but may keep a lair in the wilderness nearby in order to stretch out into their draconic forms and relax.

Instructions for how to build a conspirator dragon, as well as the statistics for an adult conspirator dragon, are below the cut.

"Purifying Power" by Edgar Sánchez Hidalgo, © Blizzard Entertainment Inc. Accessed at the artist's ArtStation here

[Sponsored by @thetygre, who wanted a modern meme unicorn as a counterpoint to the exalted unicorn. The instructions were to make them player facing, which inspired me to give them some flexibility in how they could be used in a party. Some of the sources I drew inspiration from include Uni from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, the Gravity Falls episode "The Last Mablecorn", and Donkey from Shrek.

If you'd like to be the unicorn investor who funds my great work, or just chip in a few bucks to help out, please visit the Creature Codex Patreon here]

Chromacorn CR 2 N Magical Beast This undersized equine has a proportionately large head and short legs. Its mane and tail are luxurious and rainbow-hued, and a gleaming metallic horn grows from its head.

Chromacorns are small, magically gifted kin to unicorns, embodying joy and whimsy. They like bright colors, sweet flavors, sparkles and rainbows, and can generate them through illusions if none are to be found in their immediate environment. Chromacorns vary in alignment as people do, but no matter their alignment have child-like personalities. Chromacorns universally consider adventuring to be fun and fascinating. Unlike ordinary unicorns, which are reclusive and distant towards mortals, chromacorns often seek people out, trying to find a kindred spirit to befriend and join on their adventures. Unfortunately, chromacorns lack the ability to detect alignment or to take no for an answer, leading them sometimes to bad ends and sometimes to deeply irritate those they hope to impress.

Most chromacorns do not seek out combat, although evil ones will occasionally pick fights they think they can win, especially if they are accompanied by a party of adventurers. Their horns are magic and can deal considerable damage on a charge. Chromacorns use their spell-like abilities to defend themselves, distracting enemies with illusions or stunning them with a color spray. A chromacorn can teleport, leaving a dazzling rainbow in the path between its starting point and its destination, but whether that is used to dive headlong into combat or to escape it depends on the chromacorn’s personality.

A chromacorn can be taken as a familiar by a character with the Improved Familiar feat. The character must be at least 7th level and have an alignment within one step of the chromacorn’s alignment. They may also join adventuring parties as a cohort (counting as a 6th level character for that purpose). Chromacorn cohorts often take levels in bard, sorcerer or oracle, or may take the giant template once instead of a level, willing themselves to become big enough to ride.

Image by Tony DiTerlizzi, © Wizards of the Coast. Accessed at the Great Library of Greyhawk here

[The needleman is one of those monsters that's never the same twice. The original was a White Dwarf creation, the result of a botched raise dead spell incorporating the pine needles a corpse was laid on and fusing them into the resultant creature. Which makes you wonder why this happens so often that you could get encounter groups of up to 50 of them. It lost this origin in the 1e Fiend Folio, but retained its zombie-like appearance. 2e gave them an attempt at a realistic ecology, although it made them explicitly deciduous; they change color and go dormant in the winter, because the author I think didn't make the connection between needles and pine trees. 3e kept that flavor, but Tony DiTerlizzi provided the best illustration yet; its stick insect-like appearance foreshadows the look of the sprites in the Spiderwick books. And in 5e, they got updated as the "needle blight", becoming evil for the first time but losing their enmity with elves.

This version is picking and choosing bits I like best from all of the previous versions, but putting a new spin on why they don't really have a society, just hanging out in the forest despite being intelligent. Making them workers for a single tree also turns them into something of a spin on the orcwort, a monster that appears a couple pages later in the 3.0 Monster Manual 2. That's a giant carnivorous tree that grows vegetable orcs, "wortlings", to gather food for it. The orcwort doesn't really work well, because the orcwort is a CR 20 and its wortlings are CR 3, and D&D 3.x is the worst edition to do a "powerful boss with lots of weak minions" battle in. I avoid that problem by keeping the needlefolk's tree out of combat. It's just a tree.

If you don't mind me needling you a bit, check out the Creature Codex Patreon.]

Needlefolk CR 2 N Plant This bipedal creature resembles a humanoid insect made of plant material. Its head is small, featuring mandibles and eyestalks, and its long neck and shoulders are covered in sharp pine needles. Its limbs are spindly, ending in thorny claws.

Needlefolk are sapient carnivorous plants native to coniferous forests. They can perform photosynthesis, but cannot root in soil, and so occasionally feed on small animals to gain nitrogen and other minerals. They hunt birds, squirrels and other game by firing clusters of needles from their shoulders, which also serve to protect them from large herbivores that don’t mind their meals moving around. Needlefolk quite literally grow on trees; some magical confiers can grow needlefolk instead of the usual cones under periods of stress. The needlefolk protect the tree from loggers, beavers and other existential threats, tend to it to remove diseased wood or parasitic fungi, and carry its reproductive cones and plant them in environments where they’re likely to grow well. They do not especially care if other trees in the area are disturbed. If two needlefolk trees grow close to each other, their needlefolk will go to war, the winners eventually killing the losing tree to remove the competition.

Needlefolk are typically peaceful towards humanoids who leave their trees alone, but become violently agitated in the presence of elves. Needlefolk can sense the presence of elves at a remarkable distance, and when they do, recruit their fellows into armies to wage war. The incensed needlefolk will not hesitate to attack the companions of elves, but once all elves in the party are slain, retreat. The specificity of this ire raises questions as to its cause. The leading hypothesis is that some fey power granted trees the ability to grow needlefolk as a way to create a weapon against elves, but who holds this grudge and why is still a mystery.

Replaces: Finesse Training, Evasion, 4th-level Rogue Talent, Master Strike

Summary: Inglorious and destructive in their approach, ruffians rely on their physical prowess to overwhelm their opponents through sheer might.

Preferring brute force to speed and subtly, the ruffian is an opportunist that knows that success relies on muscle and spatial ingenuity, as much as deception and wit. Often employed in criminal gangs and thieves' guilds as enforcers and toughs, ruffians specialize in clobbering opponents with everything they can throw at them before they ever have a chance to retaliate. Viewed with disdain by disciplined warriors, and frequently on the wrong side of the law, the few that end up in respectable professions after a life of crime find it difficult to adopt new techniques while the ones they were using still seem to work. Even if the things they are beating up seem to have gotten bigger than your average street thug.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A ruffian is proficient with light armor, medium armor and martial weapons. A ruffian can still benefit from evasion while wearing light or medium armor, but not with other types of armor or shields.

This replaces the rogue’s weapon proficiencies, and alters evasion.

Craven Tactics (Ex): At 1st level, the ruffian can utilize the environment to gain an upper-hand over their opponents. They gain Improved Catch Off-Guard and Throw Anything as bonus feats. The ruffian may use their rogue levels in place of his base attack bonuses to qualify for any feat which has Catch Off-Guard or Throw Anything as a prerequisite.

This replaces finesse training.

Tough as Nails (Ex): Once per day at 3rd level, the ruffian can shrug off pain temporarily. If they would take damage from any source, they can choose to defer all incoming damage until the end of their next turn. Once their turn ends, they suffer the effects of that damage, which could potentially kill them. Nothing can mitigate this damage in any way, but the ruffian still benefits from any effects that would have reduced the effect of the damage at the time of receiving it, such as damage reduction.

This ability cannot be utilized against effects that slay or destroy a creature that reaches 0 or less hit points (such as disintegrate) or from death effects, but can prevent death from massive damage.

If the ruffian also has the resiliency rogue talent, she can activate it as part of the same immediate action or in response to the damage received at the end of her next turn.

Think Fast! (Ex): At 4th level, if a creature is attacked by an improvised weapon wielded by the ruffian, and it has not been attacked by that particular improvised weapon before, it is treated as flat-footed for that attack.

Additionally, when the ruffian makes a full attack or an attack as a standard action, they can forgo their first attack (or attack with a wielded weapon in the case of a standard action attack) to instead make an improvised weapon attack with any unattended object within reach. The ruffian does not need to have a free hand in order to use this object as part of this attack. This replaces the rogue talent gained at 4th level.

Improved Craven Tactics (Ex): At 11th level, the ruffian treats any creature hit by an improvised weapon they have wielded as flat-footed until the end of their next turn.

Spit in Death's Eye (Ex): At 19th level, if the ruffian deferred damage with their tough as nails ability, and would suffer an amount of damage that would bring them below 0 hit points or even kill them at the end of their next turn, the ruffian treats all successful hits as a critical threat. Choosing to benefit from this effect prevents the ruffian from utilizing the resiliency rogue talent.

If they bring a creature to below 0 hit points or into unconsciousness from damage, and that creature has a CR value equal to half the ruffian's rogue level or greater, the ruffian does not suffer from the deferred damage. Crushing Strike (Ex): The ruffian can use their Strength modifier instead of their Dexterity modifier when determining the DC of their master strike class feature.

This alters master strike.

Image © Paizo Publishing

[As I have said before, I like how Paizo replaced generic elementals with individual creatures with their own abilities. I do not like how little flavor text each of these gets, typically one or two sentences. So like with a number of these retro-conversions, I had to expand on a single sentence in order to give this a full niche for encounter building and personality.

If you'd like to support me as I approach my monster 2100, please join the Creature Codex Patreon here]

Granite Glyptodont CR 8 N Outsider (elemental) This bulky creature looks something like a rhinoceros-sized armadillo made of stone. It has a blunt, squared off muzzle, a high back, and a long tail ending in a slab of jagged rock.

Granite glyptodonts are a lineage of earth elemental that embodies the patience and stability of stone. Effectively immortal unless slain through violence, granite glyptodonts dwell near rock formations and mineral deposits of great beauty and watch them slowly build and erode naturally. They tolerate the presence of other creatures if they have come to observe respectfully, but any attempt to damage, destroy or alter the glyptodont’s chosen geological formation is met with violence. Although a granite glyptodont’s tail can crush flesh and shatter bone, it also petrifies them. A granite glyptodont takes moral satisfaction in demonstrating the patience of stone to mortal creatures first-hand, and those who free themselves from their stony state are allowed to leave peacefully if they show evidence of contrition. Those that cannot free themselves become part of the glyptodont’s statue garden, where their slow erosion can also be contemplated.

Another Super Mario species, actually: