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D&D 4th ed: The Aliens

D&D has a lot of monsters. They are often borrowed from mythology and folklore, so this week, I'm delving into modern mythos and creating something that just about anyone will recognize. Aliens and Predators for Dungeons and Dragons.

Yes, just imagine the look on the player's faces when they realize that the strange egg pod with the critter that leaps out at their character's face is actually one of Ridley Scott's Alien face huggers.

And what an exciting time it is for the Alien media franchise eh? With much talk of a new movie that will explore the origins of the Space Jockey and the Alien's home world? Also nice that Ripley will most likely feature in it, though kind of ironic when you consider that Scott originally planned to have the alien bite off Ripley's head at the end of the first film, with the alien making the final log entry in her voice... that would have been incredibly creepy, but I'm glad he didn't in the end.

The Aliens, in D&D terms, are mostly humanoid creatures with several different physical forms and concentrated acid for blood. The alien's life cycle consists of a hibernation pod, which houses the immobilizing and egg inserting facehugger, the juvenile alien parasite, and the various adult forms, including drones, warriors and the intelligent queen.

At first I thought the Aliens fit into the Aberration category, but the more I considered their parasitic life cycle, sightless senses and very low requirement for food, they fit very smoothly into the Shadow origin, as creatures native to the Shadowfell.

The Aliens form hive-like nests inside of existing structures such as buildings or caves, using excreted resin to form sculpted environments that closely match their own physical appearance, so as to better conceal themselves and confuse their prey. The Aliens prefer to ambush prey and take them back to the hive to be implanted with new offspring, but when faced with a desperate situation, any lone alien adult is capable of reproduction, though only the queen is capable of producing a great number of the special facehugger pods.