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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 8654694" data-attributes="member: 53176"><h3>Meazel (MToF)</h3>Meazels (not to be confused with Measles) are an example of a D&D staple trope: People that do a ritual and become monsters.In this case, an evil hermit gets absolutely fed up with life, and moves into the Shadowfell. Where the negative emotions fester within them, causing a transformation into the Monstrosity known as a Meazel. And really, the only significantly difficult part of that “ritual” is finding a portal into the Shadowfell, as evidenced by the Meazel’s CR of 1. Yeah, in this case the transformation doesn’t come with that much of a power boost, but it is implied that they become immortal, and miserable, for the rest of eternity.Meazels have a unique weapon in their stat block, a garrote. Which they use to garrote a target, which grapples and automatically deals damage while the target is stuck in the grapple. Someone should make a list of all such unique monster weapons, mostly to see if they can be reverse-engineered into weapons for PCs. I know several Rogues who would love to get their hands on a garrote. Despite their weaponry, Meazels are not exceptionally deadly in combat, instead relying on their bonus action stealth checks and ability to teleport between shadows to ambush a single target, and spirit them up to 500’ away from their party where they can more easily deal with them without interference. It is worth pointing out that being caught in such a teleport curses the target, automatically giving out their location to any undead or Shadowfell Native for an hour, and preventing the target from hiding. So a Meazel might use the teleport to dump their victim into the lair of another creature, hide, let the two take eachother out, and swoop in to collect the spoils. As an alternative to direct confrontation. Either way, the curse is going to make life hard for the PCs after the threat of the Meazel is dealt with.The Meazel was changed into a Monstrosity instead of a Humanoid for this new printing. They also added a line about Remove Curse or Greater Restoration being able to break the curse, but that’s more of a clarification than a rules change.</blockquote>

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