D&D 5E Forge of Fury creature question.

[futrtrubl]

In the Forge of Fury there is a gargantuan Rug of Smothering. Other than saying it's a different size it doesn't say how that affects it.
I found in the Monster Manual that size affects the type of hit dice of the creature so should I increase its HP appropriately? Should it affect the max size of creature it can grapple? Any other effects?

Edward

 

[KahlessNestor]

I would think you could smother multiple people with a rug that size. Or big creatures, per the grapple rules. And increased HD makes sense.

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[futrtrubl]

It specifically overrides the grapple rules saying that it only grapples medium creatures or smaller (it being large) so I upped it to grappling huge creatures, keeping it able to grapple creatures one size smaller than itself. Not sure about allowing it to grapple more than one at a time balance wise.
I'm just surprised that this being an official campaign book they left it so ambiguous. RAW it could be taken to mean it is just gargantuan and that is the only change, or that it also gets larger hit die.

 

[CapnZapp]

In the Forge of Fury there is a gargantuan Rug of Smothering. Other than saying it's a different size it doesn't say how that affects it.
I found in the Monster Manual that size affects the type of hit dice of the creature so should I increase its HP appropriately? Should it affect the max size of creature it can grapple? Any other effects?

Edward

The boring answer is that since it doesn't specify any changes, none are intended. It is simply a Rug of Smothering that is an adjective. Could be "frayed" or "stained", but in this case "gargantuan".

Official adventures do contain "modified" creatures. I don't know Yawning Pit that well, but examples from Out of the Abyss include the Duergar King (page 82), the Drow Matron (page 204) and even something as simple as Jorlan Duskryn (page 10).

 

[futrtrubl]

The boring answer is that since it doesn't specify any changes, none are intended. It is simply a Rug of Smothering that is an adjective. Could be "frayed" or "stained", but in this case "gargantuan".

Official adventures do contain "modified" creatures. I don't know Yawning Pit that well, but examples from Out of the Abyss include the Duergar King (page 82), the Drow Matron (page 204) and even something as simple as Jorlan Duskryn (page 10).

That was probably the intention and I know in 5E they tried to get away from jargon, but the problem is that they used an adjective that comes with a specific mechanic (gargantuan monsters use d20 hit dice) and it doesn't specifically negate that general rule. Had they said something like invisible or petrified Rug of Smothering you would apply those mechanics.

 

[CapnZapp]

No, implying that the word gargantuan requires the DM to rebuild the monster is the wrong conclusion. There's none of that in this edition.

As I said, the writer probably indents you to do as much homework as if he'd use the description "moth-eaten". That is, none.

Sure, the designer might have forgotten "gargantuan" is an official size category. But it's quite possible it's not a mistake - in 5e you can easily have a monster that's very weak and fragile for its size. It's just not a big deal in 5e.

Thinking there's a class of terms that instruct DMs to rebuild monsters on the fly is a 3e:ism. As I showed, expect any modifications to monsters to be spelled out.

And even that's kind of unusual. The non-lazy approach, of course, would be to include the finished stat block as a unique monster, complete with all changes.

In my opinion (and slight SPOILERS for an old module) the only reason OotA gets away with it is because in two cases, the monster isn't really meant to be fought in combat, while the third is really a simple modification.

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