Volo’s added a couple of new Hags, rounding out the triummulieriate of Sea, Green and Night with the Annis and Bheur. Today we are looking at the
Annis Hag.
The art in the book gives the impression that the Annis Hag is fairly small, simply because the image is smaller than that of the Guard Drake opposite. In fact, the Annis is Large, and only the human skulls give a clue of that. I think that this image is actually really interesting, but it is just so small that it is hard to make out the details and really appreciate it. The bundle of twigs and the random collection of stuff contained it is is a really fun element, giving a mad collector vibe.
At the moment, I’m listening to audiobooks a lot while painting some Warhammer models, and I’ve gotten onto
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, so this creature is very appropriate to my mood. The Hag is by far the largest of their kind, and has a lot of distinctly physical attacks, in comparison to the more magical focus of the others. This is part of an overall theme which emphasises physicality, with the Hag getting
Crushing Hug as an ability, and flavour text that mentions them as a matriarch for Ogres and Trolls.
Thanks to chapter one, all of the Hags are exceptionally high in the ‘plot options’ stakes, and it is safe to say that there is a lot of ways to use them. The Annis Hag gets even more options here, with the ‘Iron Tokens’ that they can give out, especially to children, and use to communicate. The basic plot that we see suggested here is as follows. There is a village, which is full of fear thanks to grisly trophies left by the Annis around the edges of the forest. A child is playing merry hell, doing evil acts, in a distinct change of character. When the players investigate, they find the token, and then try to track down the Hag. When they do so, they find her surrounded by Trolls and whatnot, for a much more brutal fight than they might have expected from a Hag. That is all good, and I like that it is laid out for the DM like this, without being overbearing.
The Annis is quite an odd duck in combat. It is big, tough, well defended, and has lots of resistances. It gets a couple of spells, but they are really not bread & butter combat ones. Instead, she focuses on melee attacks, doing either a very potent but simple multi-attack routine, or a rather terrifying
Crushing Hug that will let the Hag turn someone into jam on her subsequent turns. The Hug is only a single dice roll to activate, and not that hard to escape, but notably doesn’t require the Hag to roll any dice to keep it going, so I can see it being very potent. However, the Hag has no answer to ranged attacks, really, other than rushing towards them, and I think that some kind of ‘Throw Iron Token’ ability might have been fun.
I suspect that the Annis is designed explicitly as the ‘simple Hag’, there to let the DM use a ‘witch’ without navigating a great big spell list. She is close to being boring, thanks to this simplicity, but I think that the roleplaying side of such an adventure will keep the interest levels high; the use of Trolls and Ogres I think is part of this, since they are also simple monsters, but pretty cool despite that. Definitely a victory of theme over rules. I think that in Baldur’s Gate 2, when claiming the castle, you had to fight your way into a giant bramble patch which was home to a tribe of Trolls; I’m thinking that recycling that idea with an Annis Hag at the centre would be really swell.
