A monster out of the 1E Deities book (the one with the Melnibonean and Cthulhu mythos) is my sleeper for what the MiTD is. I’ve tried to find my old copy and I can’t. They’ve covered just about every other candidate in the gigantic series of threads over at the GITP forums. I did bring up the possibility that it was in that book, they said they’d take a look at it, and nothing else happened. You’d need to convert the stats over to 3.5e, but that doesn’t seem terribly difficult. I like the speculation that he’ll run into another of his kind in the dungeon surrounding Kraagor’s Gate, the one that Serini packed with all sorts of “the nastiest monsters in the world.”
You’ve got me as to what Malack is. Burlew doesn’t have permission (I don’t think) to use the Yuan-Ti. I still think the snake-like child in the first generation from the Draketooth Human/Black Dragon pairing is a key, even if Malack isn’t actually a relative of the Draketooth clan.
Thanks you guys for your comments on my posts, Miller and Balance. They’ve really broadened my understanding of what’s going on in this comic and given me some things to think about.
Dorukan already collected all the monsters never updated to 3rd edition in his dungeon. And part of that joke was that the AD&D monsters didn’t even have a Will save, so they hadn’t been updated. It would be extremely unlike Rich to revisit that.
As for not using yuan-ti because they’re Product Identity, Rich has used mind flayers which are also not in the SRD, so that may not be a hindrance to his using yuan-ti.
Can’t be. Deities are immune to mind-controlling effects. The MiTD is not, having been given a long-term mental compulsion in one of the prequel books.
My reply: You don’t know cats all that well, do you? Those little critters are cunning and ee-ville. You ever see them play with their (still living) food?
I don’t know…Burlew doesn’t usually go off the reservation unless he has to. I kind of feel that “obscure” means that it’s something from one of the 3.5 side books, like “Book of Vile Darkness” or something. I haven’t been able to pinpoint it from spell list mini-descriptions, though.
You can’t have it both ways, though. If your reference to yuan-ti society being “highly advanced” is correct*, and Malack’s tribe were barbarians like he said, then either they weren’t yuan-ti, or the local yuan-ti are different.
*I don’t recall this from the MM entry, but I might have overlooked it. I remember it mentioning their temples, but also that they like to inhabit old ruins. The latter doesn’t sound terribly advanced to me.
I honestly don’t remember the source book I’m working off of here, and in fairness, I may be conflating it with Pathfinder’s serpentfolk (who are just yuan-ti in dark glasses) but the whole point of the different types of yuan-ti is to have it both ways. The pure bloods are there for your urban reptile infiltrator tropes, the half bloods for your monstrously inbred savage tropes, and the abominations for your Lovecraftian ancient and terrible civilization tropes.
Anyway, that aside, Malack is still way too small to be an abomination.
I wonder if Malack is a half-dragon boa constrictor? Half-dragon is LA +3, Vampire +8, call it 1 racial HD, for a total of +12, 11-13 Cleric levels, and Malack therefore is ECL 23-25. The Half Dragon template would account for the arms, head, and intelligence. Just because Malack hasn’t used a breath weapon yet doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. It would be a cliché for him to be an albino red half-dragon so he might be an albino white half-dragon, or for satire, an albino black half-dragon.
Something else: when Malack reached ECL 21 could he start taking Epic feats? Such as Improved Spell Capacity. If he were a 13th level cleric and ECL 27, could he have taken 2x ISC and Epic Spellcasting? Assume he was vamped before ECL 20.
Nope. The prerequisite for Improved Spell Capacity is “Ability to cast spells of the normal maximum spell level in at least one spellcasting class,” which for cleric means 9th level spells. Malack would have to be at least 17th level for that. Plus, the prerequisite for Epic Spellcasting includes 24 ranks in a couple of different skills. Skill ranks are capped at total character level and/or hit dice, plus three. If Malack is, say, a lizardman (two racial HD), he’d still need to be a nineteenth level cleric in order to put enough skill points into Spellcraft and Knowledge: Religion.