Sunday, September 27, 2009

Monster: Spectrum

Spectrum
Armour Class: 7
Hit Dice: 7 hp
Move: fly 210' (70')
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1-4 (see below)
No. Appearing: 2-7
Save As: F1
Morale: 10
Treasure Type: Special
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: 7

A spectrum is a strange little creature of prismatic light; seven small softly-glowing orbs that orbit around each other or float about in an orderly string of bobbing lights. An uninjured spectrum displays all seven colours of the rainbow, one to each orb, and as damage is taken the glowing spheres wink out one by one in sequential order.

Ordinarily a spectrum will attack with bursts of focused light, inflicting 1-4 hit points of damage. However, each hit point of damage taken destroys an orb -- and as the spectrum loses orbs, its offensive abilities change as follows:

Red orb: light burst, 1-4 damage
Orange orb: fire damage, 1-6 damage
Yellow orb: acid damage, 1-4 damage for two rounds
Green orb: lightning damage, 1-8 damage to two targets
Blue orb: cold damage, 1-8 damage in a 10' radius
Violet orb: spirit burn, 2-12 damage, requires twice the magical healing to remedy
Indigo orb: spirit crush, save vs. spell or die

On rare occasions, the destruction of a spectrum's orbs causes one or more glimmering pearl-like jewels to be left behind, as richly-coloured as the orb it was condensed from.

There are rumours of enchanted weaponry which can emulate one or more of the spectrum's cascading offensive powers; one frequently mentioned is a blade sometimes spoken of as Death of Regeneration.

5 comments:

Pete King said...

Perhaps it the Spectrum is a rogue colour spray, with permanence cast upon it that became sentient and has been evolving ever since ;-)

Jayson said...

Oooh, that suggests the possibility of even more rogue sentient spells! This dovetails nicely with Rients' idea of spells almost being a "demon you put in your head."

Thanks for the thinky-thoughts!

Jayson said...

Also to mention, I love the idea of "intangible" elementals like the Spectrum; a la the "incarnates" of Planescape--congealed, aware concepts? Neato.

Chris said...

Another entry in Taichara's irregular feature Living Spells Done Right.

I really like these guys. About a dozen ideas pop up just from reading the description (including: Spectrum mating season invades Glassmaker's Quarter).

taichara said...

Though the spectrum is intended-as-written as a minor light-elemental critter (yay for a six-element system in my campaign), the idea of it being another type of living spell is a nice one :3

Also, the glassmaker's quarter notion is hysterical *grins*