D&D 5E Mythic Odysseys of Theros

[DEFCON 1]

Rather than straight up "monsters" to fight and kill indiscriminently, I suspect we need to go more in the direction of "enemy combatants". As Theros is based off of Ancient Greece... the theme of warfare between city-states stands tall. So I think fighting against other poleis and their military should probably have a much more prominent position in terms of the combat pillar. Which means fighting other humans, centaur, minotaur, tritons, satyr, harpies, Returned, and medusae would all be your typical opposition should combat arise.

And why would combat arise? Because of the duties PCs have towards their gods and their poleis. Combat will more often than not probably be political action, not for treasure-seeking. Theros has "heroes", not "adventurers"... they shouldn't just be going out into the wilderness to hunt monsters, raid tombs, and look for gold. That's the format of your standard D&D campaigns, not the standards by which I think Theros was meant to be played. Therosian heroes should be fighting for causes, fighting for their piety and their gods, or battling for reknown. Thus needing "low-level monsters" shouldn't actually be necessary-- Therosian heroes aren't going out to raid goblin camps, they are going out with their phalanxes to defend their walls from the triton warshoal trying to enter the polis to acquire weapons and the like.

 

[teitan]

That’s precisely why I am going to use something like the Vestiges of Divergence to emulate the weapons heroes often wielded or questing after great items rather than murder hoboing.

 

[EscherEnigma]

For the Theirs Theros campaign I'm planning (probably won't run, but it's fun to plan) most enemies would be drawn from the NPC appendices rather then the monster section.

 

[AliasBot]

An emphasis on beasts (and beast-like monstrosities) at the lower levels makes sense: "this strange, powerful beast is terrorizing the area, we need a hero to slay it" is a pretty common Greek myth set-up, and the precursor to that, fit for lower-level heroes, is "this beast is causing problems in the area, and we'll pay someone to do something about it."

"Idk, bandits, I guess" is still a reasonable fallback: I don't recall many instances of bandits in Greek myths, but I do remember Procrustes, so it's not like they can't fit the setting.

Alternatively, the nyxborn are a good source of low-level enemies: creations of the gods that are causing problems, whether on a god's orders due to petty divine conflicts, or just because, on their own initiative. Low-level elementals (Mephits, Magmins) work as statblocks for the more elementally-aligned eidolons and nymphs; a Shadow would probably work as a Black-aligned eidolon; Dryads are a thing on Theros, so they're an option; low-level constructs might work as living statues or creations of Purphoros or something; and, when all else fails, you can just take a generic humanoid or beast statblock (or the monster statblock of a triton, satyr, centaur, etc.) and say it's a nyxborn version of that humanoid - maybe say it registers as a celestial instead of/in addition to its normal type, maybe give it access to a low-level spell or two that would fit a creation of the gods, but just "normal humanoid that happens to be made of stars" fills a lot of gaps without any homebrewing.

 

[cbwjm]

Looking at those old Jason and the Argonauts or Sinbad movies should give a few ideas of what to throw at the PCs in a Theros campaign. Otherwise, I'd jump on the MtG gatherer site to look at the creature cards of the theros sets, should be plenty of inspiration there.

 

[Weiley31]

The Returned seems like the kind of invading force that would be plaguing the lands.

 

[Wishbone]

That's a very good idea, but I wouldn't use it right of the bat. You have to establish the tone of the campaign first. If you put goblins in Theros right away, it becomes just another vanilla setting.

You can also use cynocephaly as inspiration to include gnolls in Theros.

Cynocephaly - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I was thinking about renaming the D&D classes in Theros (for flavor). How's this for a first attempt:

Artificer - Artificer
Barbarian - Barbarian
Bard - Aoidos
Cleric - Priest
Druid - Semnothei
Fighter - Fighter
Monk – Ascetic
Paladin - Champion
Ranger - Hunter
Rogue - Rogue
Sorcerer - Moirai
Warlock - Goes
Wizard - Thaumaturge

 

[ChaosOS]

Some behind the scenes content from one of the writers