S E A CS P A

EC SAE CPS
T H E S A C R I F I C E by Thriftomancer
Anyone can become a sacrifice. Everyday townsfolk, adventurer, or noble, it
doesn’t matter who you were before. All that matters is that you’ve been chosen
by a group of people who are completely, zealously committed to performing a
human sacrifice.

E S C
They chose you, believing that you possess some quality that makes you
worthy of being a sacrifice. A suitable gift and ambassador to the gods to

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intercede on their behalf. Whether or not you are, whether or not their gods

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even exist, is irrelevant. Their collective belief in you and your perceived

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abilities gives you power. Real, tangible power that begins to manifest itself
before, or perhaps during, the sacrificial ceremony.
W H Y you were chosen

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You should probably use it to

SCAPE

E C SE A C
W H Y is the sacrifice needed?
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1 For fertility and a good harvest
2 To appease a force of nature
3 To appease a specific spirit or god
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1 Your age
2 You’re (allegedly) married to a god
3 You’re a stranger
4 You arrived at a significant time
5 You have distinct eyes
6 You have a distinct birthmark
7 You’re thought to have blood ties
to someone or something
8
Because of an omen

EC SAE CPS
4 To ward off a specific spirit or god
9 Roll again x2
5 To delay the apocalypse
10 Roll again x3
6 For advantage in war
7 To sanctify an event (games, feast, coronation, building dedication)
8 To redeem others
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9 As thanks for divine favor and protection.

10To fulfill a prophecy

T H E ceremony
1 Heart cut out and buried at the foot of an oak

S E A CS P A
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2 Burned and ashes spread in a mandala

3 Staked out to be devoured by sacred animals
4 Driven into the wild to die of exposure
5 Forced to fight in single combat until slain
6 Fed toxic hallucinogens, last ravings recorded by priests
7 Thrown from a precipice, bones collected after a year for oracles
8 Drowned in a sacred body of water
9 Buried alive in the foundations of a monument
10 Strangled, body preserved and turned into a relic

All power has a cost. The cult that chose you and who you draw
your power from is hunting you. They still intend to sacrifice you.
To them, it is utterly necessary to complete the ceremony.
AC E PA EP
A P
S EAC AP E
POWERS
Communion with plants. You’ve become akin to a minor harvest de-
1 ity. Plants flourish or wither at your command, the forest conspires to
protect you, you can restore life to objects made from wood and plant
products, soil grows rich and flowers bloom where you walk.
Communion with animals. You are beloved by all creatures. They will flock
2 to you, heeding calls for aid and obeying your commands. No animal would
ever hurt you, or allow anyone or anything to cause you harm.
Purification and healing. Decay and illness have no power over

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3

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you. With a thought you can heal the sick, restore sight to the
blind, make the lamed walk again, and even raise the dead.

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True prophecy. You receive true visions of the future. You know what is coming
4 and also what could be, if you wished to change fate. Unlike other mortals, you
can change your destiny and the destinies of others with your actions.

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Lay blessings and curses. Your words now carry weight, an authority that

CS PAC E P
5 causes reality to warp so it can obey. A well-phrased benediction from you
is better protection than the finest armor, a considered curse more effective
than a dozen assassins, and a thoughtless remark a path to utter ruin.
Raising wards. Your mere presence is enough to consecrate ground. With
a minor effort of will you can create shields and zones of sanctuary; barring
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entry to whatever you choose, be it living or dead, physical object or an
intangible force like fire. Nothing can enter your wards unless you allow it.
Transmutation. You embody the tiniest spark of the raw pow-
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ers of creation. It’s simple for you to transform one substance

A P E
into another, or to create something from nothingness.
Command of elements. Your connection to the world is intense. You
8 need only call and the four elements will move to do your bidding. Only

S EC A
one of fire, earth, air, or water will answer, but it will do whatever you ask.
Command of weather. You have the power to bring gentle
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9 rains or howling calamity, turn day to night, and make the wa-
ters rise or recede. The forces of nature are your playthings.
Command of gravity. The bonds that tie others to the earth no longer hold
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sway over you. You can levitate or fly at will, change where the locations of

AC E PA E
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“up” and “down” are, and extend the effects to other people and objects.
In the short time you’ve had your powers you’ve found that you can use them safely
about five times a day before it becomes too exhausting. It’s possible to push and
use them more frequently, but they tend to run out of control.
You’ve also learned that using your powers overtly draws attention and starts
rumors of miracles that will betray you to your pursuers. Although, if you’re
clever, you may be able to use your “miraculous powers” to gather a following
of your own. Loyal people willing to hide and protect you.
For now though, you better
B A G S O F H I T P O I N T bySBatts
In Final Fantasy X, there’s a moment early on when you’re sailing and are
confronted with Sin, the terrifying Colossus and villain of the game. And you
fight him. Except all that’s poking out of the water is his fin. He’s a creature of
such an immense size that the game categorizes his *fin* as a separate enemy.
Sometimes that’s what you need. No weakpoints. No tricks. Just big, meaty,
bags of hit points. This idea can be done in OSR-adjacent games, as well as
5e, and it comes down to ideas already talked about: reskinning things already

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present in the game and reusing them in this colossal shape.
For this example we’re going to use a human-shaped Colossus to demonstrate

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everything, and later on we’ll go with more interesting shapes. So the first step
is to cut the beast into its individual parts. 2 legs, 2 arms, a torso, and a head.
That’s 6 opponents which gives us a lot to work with. 6 initiatives, at least 6
attacks, 6 armor classes, and possibly a lot of hit points. But we want to simplify
as much as possible.
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Let’s take Legendary Actions from 5e and use that as our base. Call them
Colossal Actions and give it 2 per turn. Combine that with allowing this beast
to make 3 attacks on its turn and we have a fierce opponent. Plus there will be
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6 different attacks, which allows us to change it up in little ways each turn with
how we attack.
We’ll also continue with our example party from the last article. 4 adventurers,
only they’re level 2 now that they’ve tackled the previous Colossus. Using Ko-
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bold Fight Club again, we’ll make a hard encounter with 6 opponents and use
them to build out the rest of the Colossus: 5 goblins, and 1 hobgoblin. Perfect.

With that we can do two things to make this fight more interesting. Let’s add
a rule to the stat block that says “depleting the HP from a limb renders it use-
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less, but depleting the HP from the torso or the head kills the creature”. Now
we can divvy up the goblins HP to the limbs and the head, giving them 12hp
each, while we give the hobgoblins to the torso, giving it 18hp. And we’ll give
the arms, legs, and torso the goblin’s AC of 15, while giving the head the AC
of the hobgoblin (18).

So now the torso is easier to hit but has more HP, and the head is harder to hit
with less HP. This creates a choice the players have to make. Quickly take out
the head? Or slowly grind out the torso?

We still have the 6 attacks, which we want to keep. This is made simple with
the repeating limbs. There’s a fist attack, stomp attack, torso attack (body slam),
and a head attack (bite). We’ll base them all off the goblin except for the bite.
Goblins do d6 + 2 damage. So the fist and stomps will each do that much, each
with a roll to hit +4, so there’s a chance to miss. Body slam we can make one of
the Colossal actions, and let’s say it costs 2 so we can make this special. Take
the hobgoblin’s damage (d10 + 2), make it a DC13 dex save to take half for all
in a 30ft square (enough to hit a group) and we have a body slam.
For the head we chould just make it a bite for 1d8 and call it a day. But the
hobgoblin has this ability that allows for an extra 2d6 damage to be dealt. And
I want to make this Colossus something to be feared. So, when a fist attack hits,
the Colossus can choose to instead restrain the target. And for the bite, we put
that the Colossus can choose a restrained target to bite. In 5e being restrained

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means creatures have advantage to hit you and you have disadvantage to attack.
And the bite will do 3d6 damage. A brutal strike.
When the Colossus picks up a character and bites them for the first time, the

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rest of the players are going to rush to attack that arm to aid in the player’s
escape. Now there’s a reason to attack both arms before killing it. Now there
are more choices.
All this for a hard level 2 encounter.

T E R M I N U S the grizzled ancient

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S T R 14 (+2) A C 15 (head has AC 18)
D E X 12 (+1) H P each arm & leg: 12, head: 12, torso: 12
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CON 12 (+1)
I N I T +2
W I S 10 (+0) S P D 40ft.
I N T 10 (+0)
C H A 9 (-1)
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Health - depleting the HP from a limb renders it useless, but depleting

the HP from the torso or the head kills the creature
Colossal Saves 2/day - if a Colossus fails a saving throw, it can choose to
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succeed it instead.

The Colossus can make three attacks on its turn:

Fist - +4 to hit, 1d6 + 2 damage
- can choose to ignore damage and restrain the target instead
- an arm that restrains a target cannot be used to attack
Stomp - +4 to hit, 1d6 + 2 damage

Terminus can take 2 colossal actions a round and only at the end of
another creature’s turn:
Body Slam - 30ft. square, DC 13 dexterity save for 1/2 damage, 1d10 +2
Chew - Terminus lifts a restrained target to his mouth and chews.
+4 to hit, 3d6 damage
P U Z Z L E S A N D R U I N by Batts
Not everything in Colossus is about climbing and stabbing the weakpoints of
massive creatures. Colossi are forged by their ignorance of the gaming status
quo. Fumito Ueda, the creator the game, made the choices he did in order to
change how people perceived the idea of boss battles. So it goes that we do the
same for the typical dungeons and dragon’s encounter.
Celosia is one of the smallest Colossi in the game and impenetrable to damage. In
order to beat them, you first must find a way to remove their armor. In the game

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you do this with fire, which the beast fears, forcing them back off a cliff so that the
fall breaks their armor. This creates two variables that can be used to make Colossi
unique and challenging in a new way: the idea of physical armor, and the idea of

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metaphorical armor.
How do you beat a Colossus that can only be damaged after it falls 100’? How
do you beat a Colossus that can only be harmed by magma? What if only
one weapon can destroy a creature and no living being can wield it? Turning
a tough opponent into a tough challenge for the Players to think through as
opposed to their Characters just swinging away.
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But also the idea of the literal armor. Shielding that a Colossus has that can
only be removed through massive damage. No amount of sword slices, arrow
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punches, or shield bashes will bust through the stone plating of a Colossus.
Do you waste powerful spells to destroy the armor? Do you use dynamite and
wedge it into cracks in the armor? Or do you simply...push it off a cliff and
hope the fall damage is enough?
For Celosia we can use the literal armor. They are the 11th Colossus, so they’ll
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be a challenge for 4 level 10 adventurers, and we’ll use two Triceratops stat
blocks to do this. The Triceratops already has most of what we need: the size,
the look, the stats, and the attacks. We lay one on top of the other as armor
and we’re golden!
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To make the armor interesting we add it as an ability to the stat block called
Colossal Armor. Stating, before a weakpoint can be targeted, the armor must be
destroyed. Colossal armor reduces all incoming damage by X, and has resistance
to piercing and slashing. X is a variable so that you can adjust this idea and add
it to bigger or smaller Colossi. For Celosia we’ll use a damage reduction of 15 to
really push the players to finding bigger sources of damage.
To even things out and lean the challenge on finding a way through the ar-
mor, we can give both the armor and the weakpoint the minimum possible hit
points for a Triceratops. 42. 84 total damage that needs to be dealt, with 42 of
it being reduced and cut in half for most martial types of damage. This pushes
teamwork too, as the sword-wielding barbarian can’t do much until the armor
is off, but when that moment comes, it’s up to them to climb on and finish the
beast off.
C E LO S I A THE LION
a fifth edition D&D Colossus for 10th level

STR 22 (+6) AC 13 (natural armor)

DEX 9 (-1) HP 42 (armor). 42 (weakpoint)
CON 17 (+3) INIT +0 (gets two initiatives)
WIS 2 (-4) SPD 50ft
INT 11 (+0)

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CHA 5 (-3)

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Colossal Armor - Before a weakpoint can be targeted the armor
must be reduced to 0hp. Armor has resistance to piercing and
slashing, and reduces all incoming damage by 15.
Weakpoints - AC and HP are for targeting the weakpoints which
glow on the Colossus. This Colossus has two, and when both are
reduced, the Colossus collapses.
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Invulnerable - all damage not done to armor or weakpoint.
Resistance - Magic, all ranged attack targeting a weakpoint.
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Vulnerability - a Colossus takes 2x damage from slashing when
targeting a weakpoint in melee combat.

Trampling charge: if Celosia moves at least 20ft. towards a creature

they must make a DC13 Strength Saving throw or be knocked prone.
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If knocked prone, Celosia can make a Stomp attack as a bonus action.

The Colossus can makes one stomp on each of its initiatives (two
hooves):
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Stomp - The Colossus steps forward sending a 30ft radius shock-

wave, dealing 1d6+2, DC13 dex save for half damage.
Characters climbing the Colossus must make DC5
Athletics or Acrobatics checks to continue moving.
Natural 1’s mean you fall.

Celosia can take 2 colossal actions a round and only at the end of another
creature’s turn:
Trample - Celosia can take another movement.
Stomp - melee weapon attack: +9 to hit, 5ft. reach, one prone creature
for 3d10 + 6 damage.
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FOR WHEN
40ft

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YO U A R E K N O C K E D
4d6 (14dmg)
OFF A Colossus
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90ft
9d6 (32dmg)
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110ft
11d6 (39dmg)
120ft
12d6 (44dmg)
130ft
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13d6 (47dmg)
150ft
15d6 (54dmg)
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170ft
17d6 (61dmg)
180ft
18d6 (65dmg)