D&D 5E Let’s Read Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.

[Leatherhead]

Derro (OotA, MToF)​

Derro are distant cousins of the Dwarves, and significantly less famous than the Duergar that also live in the Underdark. Like the Gith, the Derro were heavily experimented on by mind flayers for a very long time. Unlike the Gith, the Derro were transformed into Aberrations for their troubles.

Despite being Aberrations, Derro use weapons, and they use them quite badly honestly. Their Light Crossbow attack is decidedly more deadly of the two, but their melee weapon is far more interesting, and thus the thing that a DM is going to be drawn too. This Hooked spear is a weapon that can either be used for melee damage, or to knock a creature prone when they connect (no save). The sad fact of this weapon is that a Derro would be better served with a simple dagger. Not only would the Derro hit more often for more damage, but knocking their target prone makes their ranged backup worse at killing the target!

The hooked spear is also implied to be a mundane object instead of a metaphysical extension of their being (like the weapons found on demons or devils) meaning you have to figure out what to tell your players when they inevitably loot and try to use them for themselves. OotA had a paragraph describing the weapon for this eventuality, but that entry was left out and rendered outmoded by the changes to the monster stat block. My recommendation? Make it a martial weapon that has the special tag, allowing it to deal damage or knock a creature prone on hit. Making it count as a spear-type weapon for the purposes of feats can be intimidating given how good Polearm Master is. But honestly, if a martial-melee player falls in love with the idea of being the master of a strange weapon, try to work with them.

The Derro were changed into Aberrations instead of Humanoids for this reprinting. Which isn't too much of a mechanical change, but might be something people are going to argue about for a long time do to the possible implications.

Derro Savant

The Derro Savant is the sorcerer variant of the Derro, supposedly they are highly inclined to become sorcerers due to all those mindflayer experiments, and often the Savants end up as their leaders.

Before combat, the Savant can use Invisibility and Message to scout out the enemy and coordinate their allies for an ambush.

In combat, the Savant is a low CR artillery unit that will blast enemies with their Chromatic Beam, up to the point where someone looks like they are significantly damaged, then they will “finish” off that character with a sleep spell.

In addition to being changed into an Aberration, the Savant lost access to their Blink spell, their damaging spells, and a few other cantrips. In return, they can fire off powerful Chromatic Beams at will, which is essentially a slightly weaker Lightning Bolt, making them significantly more deadly.

 

[Leatherhead]

Devourer (VGtM)​

The Devourer is an undead siege engine created by Orcus. Wherever one is sent, they start killing en masse, creating an entire undead army in little time. Any wounded humanoid caught within its ribcage suffers a swift and gruesome fate. Not only does the Devourer absorb their life force to heal itself, but the creature is ejected as another member of their undead army. It’s like playing Heroes of Might and Magic 2 with a Necromancer army, total easy mode.

The most interesting thing about this creature is the fact it was once a Demon. Lesser demons vie for Orcus’s attention, and particularly “lucky” ones are changed into this undead. This is, as far as I am aware, otherwise unprecedented in D&D metaphysics. Demons don’t leave corpses, nor do they have souls, and when they die they either warp back to the Abyss, or become nothing if they are already there. I’m sure there was some obscure 3.5 template that could accomplish this, but otherwise it seems like Orcus has actually done something previously thought impossible, and the possibilities for this kind of spirit manipulation are nearly as endless as the demon hordes themselves.

In a stark contrast to their lore implications, the Devourer is a simple monster in combat. It will start off by blasting the area with a Soul Rend, to inflict massive AoE damage and send any low HD humanoids into 0 hp with death saving throws.

Oh wait, I suppose I should interrupt this combat analysis to tell you that the Devourer is designed around the fact that NPCs can, in fact, use death saving throws at 0 hp, and you should be using that rule for this encounter.

Anyway, once some juicy humanoids have been rendered unconscious, the Devourer is going to teleport them directly into its ribcage, where it will proceed to kill them. Technically speaking they could just let the humanoid stay there for a few rounds, but practically speaking there is absolutely nothing stopping the Devourer from stabbing the poor soul with a claw and instantly ending them. Which is really handy should the Devourer need some quick HPs and an ally. Adding injury to the insult of killing someone, the Devourer instantly recharges its Soul Rend, allowing it to start the combo all over again. As a warning, Soul Rend will damage any creature caught in the blast, which could destroy any recently created undead.

It's important to note that the Devourer lacks a long ranged attack and is relatively slow. As a CR 13 creature, these problems can be something that makes the encounter almost trivial. They will need some help to cover such deficiencies: Plopping one down in the middle of a town makes the PCs scramble to protect the people rather than themselves. A less cruel DM will note that Cultists can cover much of this weakness, and serve as fodder for Imprison Soul once they are defeated, serving as a one-two punch. And don’t overlook the Wights spawned by the Devourer, they come equipped with longbows as a standard option, which can be used at extreme range.

In the changeover the Devourer was turned undead instead of a fiend. I already touched upon the lore implications. But mechanically speaking, this makes them a little less useful for a mixed unit, as a fiend they would have been able to breach or resist any anti-undead magics that were employed against a group. Additionally, their Soul Rend was changed to hurt any kind of target instead of just humanoids, and had its bonus damage removed. Does this make them deadlier? Their max damage was capped to make them more regular, so that’s nice. But the overall answer is, ironically, yes. It kind of makes them too deadly, to their own allies. Before they could have fired off that blast in the middle of their undead army and not faced any consequence for it. Personally, I would have changed it to only target living creatures at least. They also gained a bit more HP for their troubles.

 

[JEB]

The most interesting thing about this creature is the fact it was once a Demon. Lesser demons vie for Orcus’s attention, and particularly “lucky” ones are changed into this undead. This is, as far as I am aware, otherwise unprecedented in D&D metaphysics. Demons don’t leave corpses, nor do they have souls, and when they die they either warp back to the Abyss, or become nothing if they are already there. I’m sure there was some obscure 3.5 template that could accomplish this, but otherwise it seems like Orcus has actually done something previously thought impossible, and the possibilities for this kind of spirit manipulation are nearly as endless as the demon hordes themselves.

It is unusual, and unnatural even by demonic and undead standards... but not unprecedented in older lore. Orcus himself was revived from the dead in 2E as an undead demon called Tenebrous (he got better), and created undead demon servitors called visages. (Which this is likely a nod to.)

4E also had pyroliths, which were created from multiple demons that came back in the Abyss, but wrong. (Might be some other undead demons in 4E as well.)

 

[Remathilis]

The Derro were changed into Aberrations instead of Humanoids for this reprinting. Which isn't too much of a mechanical change, but might be something people are going to argue about for a long time do to the possible implications.

I think the way that WotC gets around the "humanoids have free will and no cultural or alignment tendencies" mandate is to classify a large swath of formerly humanoid monsters as not. Especially the ones that aren't designed to be PCs.

 

[Faolyn]

What I always find funny is how much the Planescape description of the devourer went into saying that despite appearances, devourers were not undead.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

Don't forget the most important part: He now does FORCE DAMAGE! So, so sucks to be a Raging Barbarian.

Yah, I've been watching this thread since I'm not sure I want to shell out money for monster stats I already have a version of, and while some of the changes I think actually sound pretty good, the force damage thing seems utterly pointless except as a nerf to Barbarians, except the already clear frontrunner subclass. It's honestly perplexing.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I for one don't quite understand the difference between force damage and bludgeoning damage, aside from the former being magic vs the latter mundane (to use an outdated term for "non-magic"), but yet there's magical bludgeoning damage too!)

Why would something that resists bludgeoning damage not resist force damage, other than "because it's a game and the rules say so"?

(I assume we all just decide that force must have some kind of extra "oomph" to it that bludgeoning lacks.)

 

[Weiley31]

Yah, I've been watching this thread since I'm not sure I want to shell out money for monster stats I already have a version of, and while some of the changes I think actually sound pretty good, the force damage thing seems utterly pointless except as a nerf to Barbarians, except the already clear frontrunner subclass. It's honestly perplexing.

Yeah, I think it sucks that Demon Lords/Demons/Devils got a buff like that. The only "good" thing about it is that it kinda puts them in a late game/end game type situation where they would be the kind of end of campaign monsters/things to fight against.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yeah, I think it sucks that Demon Lords/Demons/Devils got a buff like that. The only "good" thing about it is that it kinda puts them in a late game/end game type situation where they would be the kind of end of campaign monsters/things to fight against.

Out of curiosity, why does it suck? Seems like somewhere between no-big-deal and a-good-thing to me.

 

[Leatherhead]

Dhergoloth (MToF)​

The Dhergoloth is a Yugoloth that does its best to impersonate the Tasmanian Devil from Loony Toons. With 5 arms and 3 legs on a double segmented body, it can spin clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time, while its head stays looking in one direction. At high speeds it becomes a fiendish blender, and it loves nothing more than making the people in its path into purées. Unfortunately for anyone that dares to summon them, the Dhergoloth isn’t the brainiest of fiends, and will often forget or ignore complex orders. A lower level party just might be able to trick them instead of fighting one directly.

In combat the Dhergoloth is a melee skirmisher. A base 30 movement speed, and lack of ranged attacks can make it a bit of a pincushion to long range snipers. But it can teleport at will, and use its Flailing Claws attack to get extra movement, while turning itself into an engine of slaughter by attacking everyone along a 30’ line. While it can't move without drawing opportunity attacks, consider that a feature. With a CR 7, you can expect to get some use out of its multitude of resistances, and use it as the spearhead of a charging maneuver. Whenever the Dhregoloth isn’t spinning to win, it can use the Fear spell for some control. It can also cast Darkness, but they don’t have anything like Devil's Sight or even a stealth score to properly utilize the spell.

In the Changeover, the Dhergoloth upgraded their damage type to Force from Slashing, and it lost access to the Sleep spell.