Shadow of the Colossus style monsters.

[Agrippa]

There was a video game released a few years ago call Shadow of the Colossus. In it you hunt down and slay gigantic creatures known simply as colossi. These sacred beasts are massive and difficult to kill, requiring the PC climb the landscape and scale these monsters. While an attack anywhere can damage these behemoths its best to locate and attack the creature's weakpoint(s), as shown in this video. As you either can tell or should know this is the inspiration behind my behemoth rules. How do I further refine this idea for D&D?

[drewbergstrom]

I really, REALLY, hate to invoke the name of 4e, but you might want to implement 4e style vulnerabilities.

I remember one critter we fought in an RPGA adventure which had vulnerability: Criticals, meaning that your double damage on a crit was once again doubled.

I guess you could also battlemat the creature (assuming you use minis--otherwise your players will think its odd) and know which spots have which ACs and the secondary FX of attacks.

[Agrippa]

This is from my thread at Dragonsfoot on the same topic. I've been given some helpful advice mostly through their questions about how I'd work it out.

Called shots? Hit the right spot, deal more damage. Don't and deal less or none?

Or, like the AD&D beholder, different AC for different locations?

Called shots mostly. You have climb, fly or somehow reach the right spot on the giant and hit it to deal normal damage. Other wise you end up dealing 1/10 the damage you normally would unless using siege weapons or magic. In the case of most magic you'll only deal half damage to the behemoth unless you can make a called shot against it.

Love SoTC (and Ico)

You'd need theif-skills to climb up and successful, repeated backstabs to hit it in the right place.

Alternatively dex tests to move and maneuver around.

Either thief skills or Dexterity checks would fit.

The biggest problem I have with mega monsters is their attacks. I'm not sure how to best represent their slow plodding but absolutely lethal attacks. As D&D monsters gain hit points, they gain hit dice which allows them to pretty much auto-hit whatever they attacks.

Simple, port over D&D Next's (seriously, what idiot came up with that name) advatages and disadvantages make the behemoths disadvantaged or even doubly disadvantage when attacking human-sized or smaller creatures. Against equally sized foes behemoths attack as normal, but against significantly smaller foes roll 2d20 or 3d20 and take the lowest to-hit roll.

To hit roll by size

• Four sizes smaller than target - 3d20 take the highest +4
• Three sizes smaller than target - 3d20 take the highest
• Two sizes smaller than target - 2d20 take the higher
• One size smaller than target - +1
• Same size as target - normal
• One size larger than target - -1
• Two sizes larger than target - 2d20 take the lower
• Three sizes larger than target - 3d20 take the lowest
• Four sizes larger than target - 3d20 take the lowest -4

I'll add this all to my behemoth project in a little while.

[Agrippa]

It's been two years but I'm going to post my revised behemoth rules in my second blog post, hopefully tomorrow. I'm even considering poaching Pathfinder Cthulhu's cleaving claws for broad sweeping attacks, reserving the slower, less accurate bone crushing attacks for single targets. How does that sound?