5E: Monstrous Arthropods for Fifth Edition

[Cleon]

Griffons Saddlebag has exactly these (tiny giant mosquito + swarm stats) in dndbeyond - will screenshot

That's a lot bigger than the ones in Dungeon #41.

Those had a six to eight inch wingspan, so are about the same size as a robin.

They're comparable to a normal Bat, Scorpion or Spider in Fifth Edition SRD terms.

 

[Cleon]

Anyhow, getting back to the Female Dire Mosquito Working Draft.

Your current rough draft is.

That looks too close to the Giant Horsefly we used as a base.

I'd lower the DEX to say the 14 of a Giant Wasp and I think its INT ought to be 1 not 2.

The listed Hit Points of 60 (8d10 + 24) is screwy. 8d10 + 24 is 68 and requires a CON modifier of +3, while its CON 15 gives +2.

Most likely you meant 60 (8d10 + 16).

The DEX saving throw, darkvision and Evasive Flight seem surplus to requirements. Mosquitoes are not agile evasive fliers like flies are, after all. They do have a keen sense of smell though, which they use to track their victims, so I'd change the Keen Vision to Keen Smell.

The Blood Drain is mechanically sound but I'm not sure about the damage. We can tweak it later.

Finally, I'd add a Diseased Dire Mosquito variant based on the Diseased Giant Rat:

​

VARIANT: DISEASED GIANT RATS​

Some giant rats carry vile diseases that they spread with their bites. A diseased giant rat has a challenge rating of 1/8 (25 XP) and the following action instead of its normal bite attack.​

 Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or contract a disease. Until the disease is cured, the target can't regain hit points except by magical means, and the target's hit point maximum decreases by 3 (1d6) every 24 hours. If the target's hit point maximum drops to 0 as a result of this disease, the target dies.​

​

Now the question is, do we aim to make the diseased version CR 3 or the basic non-diseased version CR 3? In either case, the disease-carrier will presumably be a Challenge Rating higher than the regular one, so we should make the disease nasty enough to be worth +1 CR.

I'm thinking the Voice of Pazuzu would create disease-carrying giant mosquitoes rather than simple bloodsucking ones.

 

[Casimir Liber]

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Now the question is, do we aim to make the diseased version CR 3 or the basic non-diseased version CR 3? In either case, the disease-carrier will presumably be a Challenge Rating higher than the regular one, so we should make the disease nasty enough to be worth +1 CR.

I'm thinking the Voice of Pazuzu would create disease-carrying giant mosquitoes rather than simple bloodsucking ones.

Agreed - let's do CR 3 disease-carriers.

 

[Cleon]

Agreed - let's do CR 3 disease-carriers.

Okay.

Before we get to into that, I'm thinking we shouldn't use the Stirge's Blood Drain description as-is. The dire mosquito is the size of a horse. It's not a tiny thing that "attaches to the target" but will probably be bigger than the thing it's feeding from, so I'd treat is as a grapple with an escape DC rather than have "A creature, including the target, can use its action to detach the mosquito."

So like this:

Blood Drain Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: # (#d# + 3) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 13). Until this grapple ends, the female dire mosquito doesn't attack. Instead, at the start of each of the mosquito's turns, the target loses # (#d# + 3) hit points due to blood loss.
 The mosquito can end the grapple by spending 5 feet of its movement. It does so after it drains ## hit points of blood from the target or the target dies.
​

While the diseased version could be something like:

VARIANT: DISEASED DIRE MOSQUITOES​

Some female dire mosquitoes carry vile diseases that they spread when they drain blood. A diseased dire mosquito has a challenge rating of 3 (700 XP) and the following action instead of its normal blood drain attack.
 Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +# to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: # (#d# + 3) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 13). Until this grapple ends, the female dire mosquito doesn't attack. Instead, at the start of each of the mosquito's turns, the target loses # (#d# + 3) hit points due to blood loss and must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or contract a disease. Until the disease is cured, the target is poisoned and can't regain hit points except by magical means, plus the target's hit point maximum decreases by # (#d#) every 24 hours. If the target's hit point maximum drops to 0 as a result of this disease, the target dies.
 The mosquito can end the grapple by spending 5 feet of its movement. It does so after it drains ## hit points of blood from the target or the target dies.
​

The above uses the Diseased Giant Rats disease, but I'm thinking we might change (i.e. worsen) the disease or blood draining effects.

I also toyed with the idea of renaming it to Stylets or Blood Sucking since it's not the same action as a Stirge's blood drain.

 

[Casimir Liber]

sounds good

 

[Cleon]

I'm thinking about removing the "from the target" from "after it drains ## hit points of blood from the target" since the dire mosquito could drink her fill from multiple targets.

Maybe make it:

 The mosquito can end the grapple by spending 5 feet of its movement. It does so after the target dies or the mosquito drains a total of ## hit points of blood from its victims.
​

Also, since this is a female dire mosquito shouldn't I be using "her" instead of "it" in the descriptions?

 

[Cleon]

I'm also thinking of increasing the Hit Dice a tad since the original monster had 7 HD (Culex) or 8 HD (Anopheles, which is more than an AD&D Giant Scorpion.

In 2E AD&D 8 Hit Dice averages 36 hit points while 5+5 HD averages 27.5 hp. A 5E Giant Scorpion has 52 (7d10 + 14) so if the mosquito has the same ratio it'd have around 68 hp.

We can get close to that with Hit Points 67 (9d10 + 18), so I'll pencil that in.

Also, I'd set the blood sucking damage to be the same as the initial piercing damage just to ease the calculation a bit.

I checked the CR Calculator and that still comes to Challenge 2.

That just leaves how much blood sucking will satiate the mosquito. The original was satiated after it drained either 7 or 8 points of Strength, which took the same number of rounds. Your current rough draft has it satiated at 30 hit points, which seems far too low. It'd only take a mosquito two rounds to do that and it's only half the mosquito's hit points.

By contrast, a 5E Stirge has 2 hit points and is sated after draining 10 hit points, which is five times its own HP.

Hmm… how about we just make the satiated point be around the mosquito's HP? Like so:

 The female dire mosquito can end the grapple by spending 5 feet of its movement. She does so after the target dies or the mosquito drains a total of 60 hit points of blood from her targets.
​

For the disease-carrying CR 3 version, I am thinking:

VARIANT: DISEASED DIRE MOSQUITOES​

Some female dire mosquitoes carry vile diseases that they spread when they drain blood. A diseased dire mosquito has a challenge rating of 3 (700 XP) and the following action instead of its normal stylets attack.
 Stylets. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (4d6 + 3) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 13). Until this grapple ends, the female dire mosquito doesn't attack. Instead, at the start of each of the mosquito's turns, the target loses 17 (4d6 + 3) hit points due to blood loss and must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or contract a disease. Until the disease is cured, the target is poisoned and can't regain hit points except by magical means, plus the target's hit point maximum decreases by 13 (2d12) every 24 hours. If the target's hit point maximum drops to 0 as a result of this disease, the target dies.
 The female dire mosquito can end the grapple by spending 5 feet of its movement. She does so after the target dies or the mosquito drains a total of 60 hit points of blood from her targets.
​

I've added the poisoned condition and increased the hit point maximum reduction rate to hopefully justify the higher CR.

 

[Cleon]

Oh, and the original monster was slower in the air than a Giant Horsefly so I'd make it Speed 15 ft., fly 50 ft.

Putting that together and updating the Female Dire Mosquito Working Draft.

 

[Casimir Liber]

all these sound appropriate/prudent

 

[Cleon]

all these sound appropriate/prudent

Updating the Female Dire Mosquito Working Draft.

So it's just the Description to do and we can start on the males.