The Beholder bandwagon has born compelling fruit. Very compelling fruit. I have enjoyed thinking about what a Beholder-type thing is; why it's such a compelling monster, what its role in a bestiary is, etc. etc.
In this mode:
Modron Calculator
Modrons are strange creatures with unclear motivations. They are infamous for their practice of price-gouging desperate adventurers in the deepest underground, although no one has even seen them spending the vast sums of money that they acquire this way. You also never see them come or go - they're just there suddenly, in the corner of a previously empty dungeon room, holding whatever it is that you so desperately need in the moment. Trying to fight them is famously unwise, although desperate adventurers do try it occasionally. A Modron is pretty easy to overpower: HD2 commoner with steel skin (armour as plate) and steel fists (as warhammers), and they carry extremely valuable loot. If threatened they will, in order: run, and vanish if you lose sight of them; beg for their lives; offer you money (but never their wares) to leave them be; fight to the death, spitting curses upon all living things.
Calculators are the reason why it is a really bad idea to try to kill a Modron, and why vanishingly few adventurers live to do so twice.
Like other Modrons, a Calculator will simply appear inside a dungeon room you thought was empty. You will only ever see one if you have tried to kill or rob a Modron. Calculators are large and square, a bit like a reactor control console from the 60s, and they walk around on four stumpy iron legs. Think one of the goofier star wars droids, scaled up, and made from cast iron. They click and whir as they move, but the don't speak. When you enter the room, a Calculator will approach the guilty adventurer of adventurers and present them with a Contract of Indefinite Servitude - this slides out of a little slot in the front of the boxy body, as though from a printer. A Calculator can also talk by printing off text from this slot - they write like Daleks speak, and often demands things like COMPLIANCE!
If all guilty parties sign this contract, the Calculator will let you be. The Modrons will send you demands now and then (usually they ask for large sums of money, but they also occasionally want specific items left in specific places, or people killed in various ways, or specific children stolen and delivered to them), and your life will go on as before. If you ever fail to come through or otherwise reneg on the deal, more Calculators will come, and begin systematically pruning the world of everything and everyone that you love. It is a bad thing to be in debt to the Modrons.
If you don't sign the contract, the Calculator will instead try to kill you there and then in the dungeon, and there will be no additional fallout - the powers that be will consider the affair honourably settled. The next time you fight a Calculator there will be two of them. The third time there will be four, etc. etc.
At the front of the Calculator, next to the slot that the contracts come out of, is a large circular aperture, usually covered by an iron iris. When the Calculator decides to kill you, this iris opens, and the weird boxy body begins to emit a high pitched whine. Tissue begins to smoke, blacken, and die beneath the invisible rays emitted.
Calculator
HD 6, heavy stomp (-2 to hit, d12 bludgeoning), Wounder Zone, armour: as plate but see also Iron Body, speed: half human (but can chase you by simply appearing in empty rooms, like a slasher villain), disposition: actively murderous, but bound by procedure.
Matrix: roll 4 d4. These numbers are the Calculator's matrix. Once per turn, the Calculator may choose to 'spend' numbers in their matrix to modify their attack or damage rolls. If they spend a single dice this way, the number on the dice is subtracted from the roll. If they spend doubles, the number is instead added. If they spend triples, the number is multiplied. Any dice spent this way are immediately rerolled and re-added to the matrix.
Procedural Reinforcement: Every time the Calculator kills someone, the Matrix increases in size (by a single die), and the dice themselves are upgraded one 'size' (from d4 to d6, and so on). This resets each combat.
Wounder Zone: The Calculator's main form of attack. The Wounder Zone is a 50ft cone that emits from the front of the Calculator. You may choose your facing and reposition this zone each turn. Those that fall beneath it are subjected to mathematics damage, with a CHAR save for half, which can be added to or multiplied by the Matrix as usual. To set the amount of damage, the Calculator must 'load' one of the dice from its Matrix, which can no longer be used for any other purpose. The Calculator may swap this dice out with another from the matrix at the start of its turn.
Iron Body: Calculators take a maximum of 1 damage per physical attack (full damage from energy sources like fire or electricity). If you pour an waterskin's worth of liquid into them, they take d6 damage and their Wounder Zone is disabled for a single turn. A Calculator can never be moved against its will.
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| Like this but big and scary and with the temperament of a Big Daddy from Bioshock. |
Extremely honoured friends of the Modrons will rarely be given a Crown of the Calculator. This black iron box fits neatly over the head like a big square helmet, and once attached it cannot be removed without also removing the head. It includes a little hatch that can be slid open for feeding. At its front is an aperture and iris as described above. You can no longer see if the aperture is closed. The Friend so honoured can still talk as normal, but it sounds like they are speaking from inside an iron pot.
The wearer of the crown gains a Wounder Zone and Matrix (with Procedural Reinforcement that resets each combat) exactly as described above, except that the Matrix starts with 2 d2 in it. The Wounder Zone is always active if the aperture is open, but you can choose not to 'load' it with any dice so that it doesn't do any damage. It will still fry insects and small plants like a bug-zapper or a microwave.
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