Wizards of the Coast
First Post
This week Mike tackles monster design and walks you through the conversion of a hook horror.
Read Monster Design in D&D Next on D&D Insider here!
Read Monster Design in D&D Next on D&D Insider here!
It's a curate's egg. I like that they're keeping the 4e approach to the XP budget. But the monster itself? Urgh. No. It's slightly less flavoursome than the 4e version of the same monster, printed effectively as filler in the worst monster manual ever produced for 4e (the MM1). And this is what they use as a Showcase?
If you want to make a monster interesting you start with its psychology. How it moves - not just its movement modes. How it hunts. Those are what make a monster. Not having mechanics that are identical to an oversized crab that scuttles up to people, grabs them in its claws, and squeezes. Oh wait - it does impaling rather than crushing damage. There's literally your only mechanical difference from a giant crab with a carapace.
If you want to make your hook horror actually interesting, give it a "No one looks up" ability giving it advantage when attempting to hide on the ceiling, and a "Death from Above" attack; the Hook Horror can drop safely from a ceiling that is 30ft or lower and land on its feet as a free acttion. If it does so it retains any advantage it had for being hidden from its foe for the attacks it makes this turn.
Now. Instead of a crab that climbs instead of swims you have something really scary. A monster that hides on the ceiling, drops into the middle of the enemy, and then rends them into pieces.
www.dotd.com said:Hook horrors are natural climbers, as their hooks give them excellent purchase on rock surfaces. They can move at normal speed up vertical surfaces that are not sheer. Their great weight means that they cannot hang from the ceiling like other insects.
The design sounds pretty straight-forward; for the purposes of designing a monster for a combat encounter, should work fine.
It's interesting to note monsters, at this time, aren't given skills. As broad as skills are going to be, I think that's a shame. I'd like to see kobolds with skill at trapmaking, bugbears with stealth, gnolls with tracking, sphinxes with skills in riddles, etc., to at least suggest uses beyond straight-up combat.