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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 8591856" data-attributes="member: 53176"><h3>Derro (OotA, MToF)</h3>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 SavantThe 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.</blockquote>

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