Wheel of Monsters

Image © @bowelfly

[April Fools! Like previous April Fools' monsters I've done, this is intended to be fully usable at table, just... weird. Most of my previous April Fools monsters have been pop culture references, and this one is, just a little slantwise. The expression "wheel of monsters" has been rattling around my head for years, inspired by game shows and game show parodies like Wheel of the Worst. The monsters its summons pulls from by default are mostly ones on the Codex, but I've included guidelines on how to customize it if you don't want to look up a whole bunch of bespoke stat blocks (assuming, of course, anyone actually uses this abomination at table).]

Wheel of Monsters CR 15 CE Aberration This thing is a quadruped with a long tail and clawed limbs, but its semblance to sane life ends there. Instead of a head, it has a vertically oriented dial with twelve facets, each with a different combination of eyes, teeth and strange glyphs. A single eye sits in the center of the wheel atop the axle. Spikes protrude forward from the edge of the wheel, plucked by a stinger at the end of a long tail. Said tail also has a strange flap on it that has the appearance of a sign, or possibly scoreboard.

The wheel of monsters is a strange tool in the service of the Dominion of the Black. They were invented by the daelkyr Harsanash, whose interests lie in the role that chance events play in increasing entropy and the downfall of complex systems. The wheels of monsters exploit chance by generating random spells and summoning random monsters, drawn from distant worlds under Dominion control or the depths of the Dimension of Dream. These far-flung summons have already had disastrous effects, as now both the quori and beholders know about Golarion and its corner of space, and gaze upon it with envious eyes.

Despite their grotesque appearances, wheels of monsters are quite intelligent—geniuses by the standards of humanoids. They tend to have something of a split personality; obsequious and loyal to higher ranking Dominion creatures, even less powerful ones, but snide and condescending to most other lifeforms. Most wheels of monsters have a fondness for cracking jokes and giving color commentary during combat. All of its many mouths are capable of speech, and it can alter the pattern and coloration on its tail flap with incredible precision in order to spell out words in any language it knows. A common behavior is to speak primarily through one mouth, with an unctuous tone, while making sounds like crowd noises and cheers with its other maws.

A wheel of monsters is usually on the move in combat, stalking from place to place in order to better make use of their spells. They are excellent climbers and have at least the possibility of flight through their random spellcasting, and so prefer to have a birds-eye view of the action in order to better place monsters or effects. A wheel of monsters keeps its tactics flexible, but almost always summons a monstrous minion as soon as it can to engage foes. In melee, they can sting with their plectrum tails, inducing confusion in foes, and grab with their claws. They prefer to split those attacks up, stinging enemies to disrupt their tactics and then focusing the bulk of their violence on a single target. If a wheel of monsters has a foe grabbed, it lowers its spiked face on top of their victim and spin it, tearing with all of its spikes and teeth simultaneously. When fighting on their own terms, wheels of monsters will gladly flee a losing fight, but gladly sacrifice their lives in order to promote the objectives of their superiors.

Appropriately enough for a creature of weaponized chance, different wheels of monsters may be able to call forth different spells or summons by spinning their wheels. In order to adjust the wheel of monsters’ spellcasting spin, replace some or all of the spells with spells of the appropriate level. A wheel of monsters can call upon two spells of each level from 1st to 6th. In order to adjust the wheel of monsters’ summoning spin, replace some or all of the monsters with monsters of the appropriate challenge rating. A wheel of monsters can summon two monsters of each CR between 8 and 13.

I’m watching Splash (1984) which is a romcom about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid, and when she chooses a human name she chooses Madison and guy says “that’s not a real name, but alright” which seems to imply that Madison was not a name until at least the 80’s and all girls named Madison are actually named after the mermaid. thought you should know

I think...you might be right

What?!!

Getting a thermal sticker printer so I'm making some stickers! Feel free to use though credit is appreciated, all photos are my own.

tumblr is also like this

Oh my god where’s that one beach boys photo that looks like a hardcore show

FUCKINGGGGGG

aquarium advertisments say stuiff like discover the longtooth grouper this friday

I see that, and raise you my local aquarium's advertising.

Vancouver Aquarium has similar ads!

They also have some SERIOUSLY inventive ones:

(High and Low Tide ^)

the only type of advertising that should exist: "ooooohhhh you want to come look at the animal"

You guys have seen NEAQ's tentacles adverts, right?

You have got to be FUCKING kidding me!! Holyshit bro... these motherfuckers are too comfortable with price increases...

ppl are like "the price of games makes sense if you consider how much time and work goes in to them" and i am here to tell you that just like animation, tv, comics, music, every other kind of media, the price tag does not reflect the artist's paycheck. the only wallets getting fatter are at the top, and they are fatter now than they've ever been. support indie and learn to steal or go without

Also we used to have multiple video stores in every town where you simply rented any brand new game you wanted for $5-10.

The one I grew up with had a late fee of $1 a day so my mom would just let me keep a game until I was finished with it, because that never ever exceeded the cost of buying it new. This is what we all did.

It's shocking how easily something that useful was so completely murdered by streaming services. Nobody wanted to keep cheaply renting games??

You used to be able to rent the consoles too but now consoles demand you make a user account. Yker save data used to only be on a memory card but now that's only accessible with the user account.

You know what? I just spent 3 hours writing up a pair of youtube comments about the misinformation on display here (ZERO games are listed as being $90 USD for a physical copy. Zero. None. Some jackass saw one listed as 90 Euros and went "Oh so $90 USD?" and now it's everywhere. The known prices for physical copies of games on the Switch 2 range from $40 USD for Bravely Default [which uses the shitty key cart system] to $80 for Mario Kart World, with Donkey Kong Bananza being listed at $70 physical and NOT using the key kart system)

If you see ANYWHERE selling it for $90 retail, that is the retailer jacking up the price themselves. This took me two seconds to look up. $80 for a game is still a price increase for sure, but there's a huge difference between a price increase from $70 to $80 and a price increase from $70 to $90, let alone stating that physical games will be more expensive or that "Physical switch 2 games cost $90." You're welcome to be upset about a game costing $80, but stop claiming or even implying that all games by a publisher will now cost $90, it's provably untrue and extremely reductive. Rentals no longer being a thing fucking sucks and I agree with that, but for the rest of these points..... Misinformation and "Unfair" points always piss me off royally, likely due to my autism. We are in a cost of living crisis, people are justified in being unhappy, even UPSET about price increases, people should support indie games more, devs are not paid enough. But the price increases deserve to be looked at in closer detail WITHOUT misinformation and hyperbole, especially because the price of games hasn't been adjusted for inflation since the days of the NES despite production costs for large scale games increasing exponentially, combined with the fact that major publishers seem dead set on most of their game releases being the exact same price regardless of whether the development costs or amount of content are comparable which has caused, well, "Video game prices and their effects on development" are a pretty complex issue that goes past the points of "Support indie devs" and "So far all claims that Switch 2 games cost $90 are (AT PRESENT) provably bullshit and you do everybody a disservice when you spread information that's provably bullshit" But let's talk about the increase in price for the console (copy and pasted from my comment on Youtube, which also features discussions of the false rumors of switch games costing $90, goes over the ACTUAL known prices of switch games including the fact that Street Fighter 6 is $60 CHEAPER on the switch 2 than it is on Steam, the situation with "key carts", and my views on the console's tech demo costing $6 instead of being included for free):

"GRANNY"

Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ (Gammick - DS - 2008)

My train was late. AGAIN.

400,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) were estimated to have been prevented by these rats, whose sense of smell would make a bloodhound take notice. As the number-one killer among infectious diseases worldwide, many of those 400,000 can be translated into lives saved.

“Not only are we saving people’s lives, but we’re also changing these perspectives and raising awareness and appreciation for something as lowly as a rat,” said Cindy Fast, a behavioral neuroscientist who coaches the rodents for the nonprofit APOPO.

“Because our rats are our colleagues, and we really do see them as heroes.”

APOPO uses giant pouched rates to sniff out traces of TB in the saliva of patients. In parts of Tanzania, a saliva smear test under a microscope by a human may only be 20-40% effective at detecting TB.

By contrast, a giant pouched rat like Ms. Carolina, a now-retired service rat who worked for APOPO for 7 years, raised the rates of detection on TB samples by 40% in the clinic where she worked.

It would take 4 days for scientists to analyze the number of samples that Carolina could screen in 20 minutes. For that reason, when Carolina retired last November, a party was thrown at the clinic in her honor, and she was given a cake.

TB is sometimes thought of as a thing of the past—a disease for which doctors used to prescribe “dry air,” leading modern humors to muse at the antiquated, pre-antibiotic medical advice.

But it remains the number-one cause of death globally from a single infectious pathogen, and Tefera Agizew, a physician and APOPO’s head of tuberculosis, told National Geographic that once people see what the nonprofit’s rodents can do to slow the spread, they “fall in love with them.”

3,000 times in her career did Carolina detect one of the six volatile compounds that can be used to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and she got a hero’s send off to a special compound to live out the rest of her days with her closet friend and sniffer colleague Gilbert, in a shaded enclosure dubbed “Rat Florida.”

“We’ve made special little rat-friendly carrot cakes with little peanuts and things on it that the rat would enjoy,” Fast said. “Then we all stand around and we clap, and we give three cheers, hip hip hooray for the hero, and celebrate together. It’s really a touching moment.”

Evangelion Sahaquiel Rug