New Monster: The Loathed Ones

Loathed One
The aboleth from D&D 4th Edition done up for Burning Wheel Gold.

Concept
Otherworldly horrors hailing from distant and mad realms, Loathed Ones are abominations utterly foreign to Creation. Most sane creatures fear and hate Loathed Ones; even orcs slay Loathed Ones when found. Unfortunately, most Loathed Ones are not detected until far too late. They can break the mind of a lesser creature, making the victim a slave to their incomprehensible will. In this way, whole cities have fallen to these beasts as mind after mind is ruined and the inhabitants turn upon one another in a frenzy of bloodletting and murder.

Stats
Will B6
Perception B6
Agility B4
Speed B4
Power B6
Forte G8

Attributes
Health B9
Mortal Wound B13
Reflexes B4
Steel B6
Hesitation 4
Stride 1
Circles B3
Resources B3
Physical Tolerances Su B5, Li B7, Mi B9, Se B11, Tr B12, Mo B13

Skills
Intimidation B5, Sorcery B4, Savage Attack B4, Forgotten Places-wise B3, Unfathomable Understanding of All Things-wise B3, Non-Euclidean Geometry-wise B3

Monstrous Traits
Alien, Naked Muscle, Slug Form, Slippery Slime, Radula, Decomposer, Hermaphrodite, Tentacles, Extra Tentacles, Hideous!, Otherworldly Speech, Night Eyed, Massive, Reeking Flesh, Domination

Otherworldly Speech
Loathed Ones can speak audibly, but only their kin understand the seemingly meaningless sounds. However, they can make themselves understood by speaking into the thoughts of any creature they can see.

Domination
The most terrible power of the Loathed Ones is their ability to break the will of lesser creatures. This trait function as the Force of Will sorcerous spell except test the Loathed One’s Will against the victim’s Will+Ob 3.

Aboleth are really big, no? This seems underpowered. A crossbow or longbow would really mess it up, and even in melee it’s going to get its ass kicked with Speed B4 and Stride 1. (Everyone’s going to have +2D against it.)

Force of Will takes a freaking long time to use - I think you basically have to get your victim tied up. Against a random mook, Domination is going to be 6D vs. Ob 7. Iit’s going to succeed basically… never.

Let’s see some beliefs and instincts!

I dunno about 4E, but we fought an aboleth in 3.5E that was freaking tough. It had some crazy illusion magic. Nearly wiped us out. I think this BW aboleth would pale in comparison to that.

Yeah, I was thinking about doing 2 things:

  1. Giving it a Gray power. These things are pretty strong.
  2. Dropping the Domination ability to just Will v Will.

The MW is factored wrong - should be B14. 6+(6+8+2)/2 = 6+8 = 14. The extra 2 is from having grey forte.
The PTGS should be like this:
Su: B5 Li: B9 Mi: B11 Se: B12 Tr: B13 MW: B14

So a crossbow will get a midi on a 5-6 or a superficial on 1-4 on the DoF. A power B4 dude with a longsword or light axe will get a superficial on a mark hit and a light on a superb hit. Power B5 will get superficial on a mark hit (but a great strike can push it to a light) and serious on a superb hit.

Greying the power would make the PTGS look like this:
Su: B8 Li: B16 Mi: G9 Se: G11 Tr: G12 MW: G13

Suffice to say that would make it VERY hard to kill. It would be very difficult or impossible for most people to do better than a superficial, so it would be a slow process of chipping away unless you had some specialized tools (gray weapons or powerful sorcery)