Continuing on with the Numenera Bestiary. A lot of these have one or two parts of the monster that are to my taste and the rest I want to whittle off, like a caramel nugget wrapped in wood.
Calyptor: I don’t like this picture. Where are all those folds going? What’s that under its chin? And as usual the nugget of monster doesn’t interact with the players or their surroundings in a way that’s new or strange. “Cause Fear . . . Sleep . . . “ zzzz. “Intensely loud, focused bleat.” Okay, they’re singing goats. Their songs sound like Satanic choirs. They bleat and a rip appears in your flesh or your face falls off or your eardrums pop or your heart stops. Their song-specific powers require certain numbers of goats: 1 goat: Bleat as bastard sword at range 3 goats: Destroy eardrums, deaf until healed 9 goats: Enslave (new save each day) 27 goats: Stop Heart, no save (affects 5d12 hit points of creatures). As third level thieves, can climb slick walls and open doors and jump as thieves.
Cave qui: These are pacifist bats. “Cave qui culture puts the colony first, valuing the well-being of every member.” God damn. Some of them are zombies. The curse can “strike without apparent warning or cause.” Geez. There aren't natural caves anywhere in my games, ever.
So all the living cave quis are dead and there are isolated island nations where flocks of zombie bats blacken the skies. They're just normal sized bats and they're not rotting necessarily, just cursed, and a single bite can turn a person into a zombie, and they flee bright light. Assassins smuggle the cursed bats in hats or jars. Vampires throw them at enemies. HP 2 AC 16 Bite +3 1 damage and DC 18 Charisma check to avoid the curse which kills you in 1d10 days and also immediately causes: 1. Halve hit-points 2. Disadvantage on all psychic ability checks 3. 1d6 damage to a psychic ability score every day 4. Unaffected by healing - that sort of thing. When you die from the curse you return as a zombie with the same curse.
Chance moth: I imagine a chaos knight covered in glowing moths of an unknown color. Call it a chaos moth if you want, even that would be better than a "chance moth." I don't like the stings on the wings anyway - who ever heard of a moth stinging somebody? So now it's a small jale colored radioactive moth that touches you and you get a random effect, just like it says. Either roll on the chart provided or roll on the 1d1000 mutation table. There's a chunk of the random table in the book that says "Nothing happens." That's boring. Here's what happens instead:
41-45 Become proficient in random weapon (doubling if already) for 1 hour 46-50 Same for a day 51-55 Learn a random spell levels 1-4 56-60 Learn a random spell levels 5-7 61-65 Repel undead 15’ for 1 day 66-70 Glow brightly random color for 1 day 71-75 Moth turns into random monster 76-80 Moth dies 81-86 Weapons or armor enchanted at +3 for 1 day 87-91 Fall upward 10xd20 feet 92-97 Moth explodes for 8d6 radiation damage in 10 foot radius 98-99 Moth explodes for 8d6 radiation damage and everyone in explosion makes DC 15 CON check or gain a 1d1000 mutation. 00 Con save DC 13 or melt into a random ooze
Chronal feeder: That’s a pretty good picture but I'd prefer if it were more of a giant maggot. Let’s say they have a slow aura 30’ and a time stop aura 5’. They can still burrow into their Nth dimensional home outside of time as an action and teleport - this leaves a tesseract for 1d20 rounds that connects the two places. I’d want it to be more of a giant maggot - HD 8 AC 11 Bite +6 2d8+4 and eats time based magic (Intelligence DC 14). I don't know how someone would kill a teleporting maggot that stops all time in its vicinity but I'll leave that to the players.
Coccitan: Cockroach people. There’s no problem with this. They’re probably well-regarded, immune to radiation, intelligent, and disgusting. “Are not as intelligent as humands” of course they are. “Where they gorge on garbage, sewage, and other scrap” No they’re a dilapidated upper class clad in rich fabrics and jewelry and they feast on roasted fowl and good wine and are served by blue women and boys.
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