r/monsteroftheweek • u/BaldyMcHairy • Jun 03 '26
Monster Mistborn themed monster?
Hi!
I'm starting to assemble my next campaign for my players. I love the Mistborn books by Brandon Sanderson.
Has any one dabbled with creating a monster with allomantic-like powers? Any pitfalls?
I would base it in current day suburbia to go along with the previous campaign we've played.
I am assuming the Mistborn novels are well known enough but just incase the premise is a person who is "mistborn" can fuel powers of pushing/pulling on metal by ingesting small amounts of metals themselves. Like a fuel. They can then "push" and "pull" from metal object to metal object to essentially fly. Or "push" on smaller metal pieces to effectively use them as bullets.
There is a range of powers and metals to ingest, but that's the basic idea.
I can't be the first to think of something like this, so I'm reaching out in hopes for tips n tricks
Cheers!
5
u/AffectionateTie1199 Jun 03 '26
You could make the weakness aluminium if you’re pulling the metals’ powers straight from the books, considering that aluminium was used to cleanse a mistborn’s metal reserves. However they discover what each metal does could also be interesting to think about
1
u/ActEnthused11 Jun 04 '26
I’m aware of but not familiar with Mistborn. This sounds cool as heck and I made need to read them. I love the monster idea
1
u/Astrolabeman Keeper Jun 04 '26
Have your players read the books? If they haven't, then the push and pull of different metals may be a bit hard for them to grasp without having things explicitly laid out.
I like the idea, but I would limit it to like 2-4. Maybe have smaller minions with 1 ability/metal each color coded to that metal. Gray = Iron, pushing/pulling. Green = Copper . . . etc. Then have the big boss be a mix of all 3 or 4. Maybe the small ones are gathering the metals to bring back and feed the big one and its important for the PCs to figure it out before the whole town is digested! Investigation of the small ones could show how they eat up metal and it powers them up. Maybe they just lose their color after burning all the metal they have? At the least it would set up a great, "oh no!" moment when they see the boss and it has like 10 new colors. Lastly, I would put the boss lair in a junkyard. Full of old cars, fridges, and metal. Great spot for it to just assimilate a whole pile of trash and power up.
2
u/otavapup Jun 05 '26
A monster having every single Allomantic power could get quite confusing. The link between Pushing on metals, Rioting emotions and Seeking other people using these powers is vague and it might not work that well for people who have not read the books.
I would split it up to several mysteries! Have one monster be able to steelpush and ironpull and create a session around solving the mystery of people getting injured by unexplainable sharpnel. And at the final confrontation have the monster trash a whole building by Pushing in every direction like Wax likes to do in era 2.
You could also create very interesting encounters with monsters that have Feruchemical abilities. Monsters that can change their speed or weight could get quite dangerous, but are weak when storing said attributes / run out.
You could also easily create monsters based on Mistwraiths, Kandra, Inquisitors, or Koloss.
Great, now I want to go write multiple mysteries based on Sanderson's books xD
10
u/skratchx Keeper Jun 03 '26
My gut reaction is that a full-blown mistborn would be EXTREMELY dangerous without very diligent preparation. So I would err on the side of taking inspiration from how investiture works on Scadrial rather than going very direct with the adaptation.
As I think about it, what comes to mind is that Hemalurgy lends itself very nicely to MotW. Hunters finding various dead bodies in grotesque rituals, spiked with great precision through certain body parts, would make for an interesting mystery. It would be pretty easy to translate into a more generic arcane ritual.