Unique creatures
A unique is an ordinary creature that came out of its spawn carrying a package of permanent bonuses. It is the same creature, with the same name and the same loot tables, and it is considerably harder to kill and worth more when it dies.
Everything a unique carries is supernatural and permanent. None of it can be dispelled, none of it wears off, and a unique that is tamed or dominated keeps the whole package for as long as it serves you.
Recognising one
- A coloured glow which colour depends on the pair of buff spells it rolled.
- It is bigger. Between 5% and 66% larger than its kind, by challenge rating, plus a small random spread on top. It grows into the size rather than snapping to it.
- Its corpse is lit and lasts twice as long as an ordinary one before it fades.
Where one comes from
The roll happens at the spawn, and only for creatures that came out of an encounter - or that were marked as candidates on the blueprint. Two in a hundred come up unique. A Happy Hour puts that at ten in a hundred for as long as it runs.
Three things put a creature out of the running entirely: one that drops no corpse, one whose blueprint forbids it, and anything inside an instance that is running an event.
Inside an instance, the unique status is remembered. The first time a given creature is rolled at a given spawn, the result is written down: one that came up unique comes back unique after a reset, and one that did not is never rolled for again.
Two other things make a unique:
- Summons can be powered up into one. Those run at half magnitude - the odds of each bonus are unchanged, only the sizes are halved.
- A donor rod hands the whole package to a creature on the spot. It has a sixteen-hour cooldown and a limited number of uses, it refuses a creature that is already unique, and a creature made unique this way returns to its spawn point when the area resets.
What it gains
Challenge rating decides everything. A unique at the top of a raid is a different animal from one in the fields, because the same curve is read at a different point. An ordinary creature is evaluated at CR 40 at most, however high its own rating goes; only a boss reaches past that, each of its four grades counting as five more challenge rating, up to 60.
Every unique gets all four of these. Hit points climb again with boss grade, on top of the rating.
| CR 1 | CR 40 | CR 60 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum hit points | +10 | +598 | +2,700 |
| Attack bonus | +2 | +3 | +4 |
| Armour class | +1 | +2 | +3 |
| Regeneration | 1 | 4 | 6 |
The rest are rolled one at a time, and both the odds and the size move with the rating.
| Chance at CR 1 | at CR 40 | at CR 60 | What it gives | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haste | 5% | 47% | 70% | |
| Damage reduction | 10% | 43% | 60% | 3/+1 at CR 1, 10/+5 at CR 40, 15/+8 at CR 60 |
| Spell resistance | 10% | 43% | 60% | 10, 36, 50 |
| Elemental damage | 10% | 36% | 50% | +1, +5, +8 of one element, rolled per creature |
| Concealment | 5% | 31% | 45% | 50% |
| See invisibility | 4% | 27% | 40% | |
| Knockdown immunity | 2% | 23% | 35% | |
| Death magic immunity | 1% | 20% | 30% | |
| Critical hit immunity | 1% | 13% | 20% | |
| An extra attack each round | 1% | 13% | 20% | |
| Spell absorption | 1% | 10% | 15% | 1, 2 or 4 levels |
| True seeing | 1% | 6% | 10% |
A unique also gets 10% more of the saving throws and skill ranks its rating allows it.
Its buff spells
From challenge rating 3 upwards a unique casts two spells on itself as it spawns, drawn as a pair from a set chosen by its rating, at a caster level of three quarters of its hit dice. They are cast permanently and cannot be dispelled either.
| Rating | The pairs it draws from |
|---|---|
| Under 10 | Bull's Strength and Shield; Endurance and Mage Armor; Cat's Grace and Barkskin |
| 10 to 24 | Ghostly Visage and Bull's Strength; Stoneskin and Keen Edge; Elemental Shield and Death Armor |
| 25 to 39 | Greater Stoneskin and Death Armor; Premonition and Mestil's Acid Sheath; Shadow Shield and Wounding Whispers |
| 40 and up | Premonition and Elemental Shield; Shadow Shield and Death Armor; Greater Stoneskin and Mestil's Acid Sheath |
A powered-up summon casts only the first of its pair.
Everything a unique is carrying, the bonus hit points included, is listed on the character sheet when you examine it.
What killing one is worth
- Experience. Between 25% and 100% more, rolled on the kill. A boss adds its own 20% on top.
- Gold, always. A unique never fails the gold roll, and the amount is three to twelve times what the same creature would otherwise carry.
- Better loot tables. A unique is rolled against its own set of chances and its own number of draws, and its table is upgraded to the next one up where there is one.
- A roll on the gem table, which an ordinary creature does not get. How good that roll is follows the dungeon level, or the creature's own rating outside one.
- Double the chance of vengeful gear on anything it drops.
- A better hide. A unique counts as one grade higher when it is skinned for crafting.