Thursday 11 August 2011

[Dog Variants] The Azümchefe Climbing Dog

In the steaming jungles of Azümchefe live many human tribes. These peoples breed a strange type of dog that seems almost as much a simian as a canine; it is unlike any type of dog found in any other human society.

Climbing Dogs have thick, dark green fur and long prehensile tails, but their strangest feature are their forepaws, which are hooked like the feet of a sloth. This unique adaptation allows them to climb trees and even leap from branch to branch in the high jungle canopy with great speed and agility. The tribesmen use them to hunt monkeys in much the same way that other cultures use dogs to flush birds or deer; once a group of monkeys is on the run from a pack of Climbing Dogs it is a simple task for the hunters to trap or slay them. But Climbing Dogs are equally capable on the forest floor, as their hind legs are still doggish and built for running.

Very rarely, Climbing Dogs can be found for sale in some locations surrounding Azümchefe. They are valued by the wealthy for their novelty, and by wilderness explorers for their versatility in forest surroundings.

Climbing Hound of Azümchefe

Armour Class: 5
Hit Dice: 2
Move: 150' (50')
Climb: 120' (40')
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 1d6
No. App: N/A
Save As: F2
Morale: 8
Treasure Type: N/A
Intelligence: 2
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 20

7 comments:

  1. Is the Azumchefe (fear the umlaut!) a solution to the inevitable problem of dungeon dogs not being able to climb ladders and ropes? Or would such an arboreal creature lose its shit in the dark below...

    Also... I'm really looking forward the upcoming monster manual pdf... is there an ETA on that?

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  2. No, they'd probably be scared of being underground and would rather hang about in trees.

    The monster manual pdf will probably be done by the weekend. I'm literally just going through the painstaking process of trying to make sure it's all evenly spaced and there are no new post titles right at the bottom of pages and stuff like that. It's quite hard because it's such a huge file that most word processors don't load it properly and weird unexplained gaps keep appearing. (It's about 2200 pages long, so not for the faintheared.)

    I'd also like to bookmark all the monsters and write a proper introduction, which might take a while.

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  3. fixing stuff up for publication takes about a billion times longer than writing it.

    or it feels like it does.

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  4. I went ahead and went crazy with it:

    http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/08/nature-is-red-in-tooth-and-claw.html

    Let me know if you think of any quality I should've added to all that quantity.

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  5. On a whim, I searched for "green dog" on Google Images. Mostly pics of dogs dyed for St. Patrick's Day, but there was one that looked something like how you describe the Azumchefe Climbing Dog. I've posted it here:
    Green Dog

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  6. Zak: Nice! I might stat up some of those.

    fireinthejungle: Quite a nice piece, that. I imagine it looking less classically "dog-like", but I like the picture.

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  7. Ivan and Zak: I was just coming to the end of bookmarking the PDF and discovered a formatting error. Now I have to start bookmarking all over again. Aaargh.

    MUST DESTROY MANKIND.

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