D&D 5E Let's Read: Volo's Monsters

[Chaosmancer]

One thing I'd love to do with the Firenewt/Giant Strider combo, is to have the rider use their AOEs while mounted, healing their mount in the process. It can also hit itself with its psuedo-fireball.

The imagery of a cavalry unit that constantly set off explosions on top of themselves, and gets advantages for doing so it super amazing.

 

[Bitbrain]

One thing I'd love to do with the Firenewt/Giant Strider combo, is to have the rider use their AOEs while mounted, healing their mount in the process. It can also hit itself with its psuedo-fireball.

The imagery of a cavalry unit that constantly set off explosions on top of themselves, and gets advantages for doing so it super amazing.

If I were ever to DM, this is something that I would absolutely have happen.

 

[Leatherhead]

Let me start out by saying that Fire-eating (the ability to absorb elemental damage and get stronger) is one of my favorite mechanics, and it needs to be more used, especially in elemental creatures.

A minor quibble is that Warlocks of Imix don't get Create Bonfire or Control Flames (I don't care if that's not a Warlock spell, it works better than Light!) I suppose that is a casualty of not printing spells in the statblocks, and the "One splat per character" rule for the Adventurers League. For those of you who need the rules for them, the Elemental Evil Player's Guide (free PDF) has both. Kind of makes me wish there was a Volo's Player's Guide so I didn't have to share this book with my players. Another quibble is that they don't have a "Firelance" statblock for one of the elite firenewt warriors that are supposed to be riding the Striders. I suppose you could start by slapping a breastplate on one and arming them with a lance, or maybe a trident, but that's hardly enough to justify calling something "elite". At any rate, these creatures demand to be disassembled and rebuilt in interesting ways.

Now, what sets Firenewts apart from nearly every other fire-themed minion you will use is the fact they are amphibians. Having a fire-themed creature for your water based campaigns and encounters is a spectacular blindside against most PC groups. The alchemic nature of their Spit Fire even gives justification for using the ability underwater. Combined with their innate fire immunity makes for some great set-pieces. These guys can pop up anywhere: Underwater Volcanos, Above-ground Volcanos, Geysers, Hot Springs, Desert Oases, the Neverwinter River, the steam pipes in a sewer system. Basically anywhere there is water and/or fire laying around in mass quantities.

 

[Charles Rampant]

I'm a little late today, whoops!


There are some creatures in the game that don't seem suited to combat encounters at all, but instead are designed for roleplaying encounters, such as the Sphinx, or for scenes that evoke wonder. The Flail Snail is, I think, one of the latter.

The above image depicts one of the mounts in the Neverwinter MMO. It isn't the worst one in that game - a title which surely goes to the Giant Crab, atop which the rider just sort of awkwardly stands, like a colossal fool. The picture in Volo's is really nice, with beautiful colours and a real sense of stickiness about the whole thing. It makes for an image that both attracts and repels simultaneously, which I think is pretty interesting.

These critters are large elementals, presumably meaning that they are native to the Plane of Earth, but the appendix indicates that you can find them in Swamps, Forests and Underground, so they presumably wander through portals and then sort of spread out. A day in the life of a Flail Snail apparently consists of oozing along, eating everything on the ground that it passes over, with a preference for gem and crystal deposits. As they do so, they leave behind a trail that can be turned into glass windows and objects, which is pretty fun to incorporate as a world-building element. It's as dumb as, well, a giant snail, and it cannot speak, so we're not to imagine some grand culture here.

The Flail Snail's shell can be harvested (upon death, I think it is safe to say), and it is useful for creating Spellguard Shields, shields that in general have anti-magic properties, and Robes of Scintillating Colours. So I guess that they must be hunted down a lot, given that the going price for the shell is 5,000gp; I imagine that you'd get conflict between such hunters, and whoever is harvesting the glass trail, which is one potential use for these guys as a plot hook.

The statblock for this guy is really impressively huge, being more complex than any of the NPC ones in the back, and longer than the CR 10 Froghemoth opposite. It is CR 3, and its defences seem pretty standard for that, although it is truly slow at 10ft. It has five flails, and can attack with them of them on an attack action, reaching out to ten feet for 6 damage per hit. Somewhat complex is the rules for taking damage, wherein the Snail loses a Flail whenever 10 points or more of damage is taken on a turn. This, combined with the Antimagic Shell, means that you'll be more pushed to read this on the players' turns, rather than on your own. This latter property is fun, and can reflect spells back at casters, or make big bangs, as well as generally giving disadvantage to cast the spells in general. The Flail Snail finishes this heady array of powers with Scintillating Shell, allowing it to start a private disco that can Stun attackers, and will give them disadvantage to attack.

Now, I think that having one of these just sitting in a cave, waiting for your players to kill it, is going to be tragically misusing them. I think that far more benefit can come to your campaign if the players find themselves driven to defend the Flail Snails. Part of the reason for me saying that is their death throes, in which they retract into the shell and begin wailing for several minutes, being heard out to 600ft; they can be healed by the Regenerate spell to stop the process. This honestly sounds like a way to either make your players feel bad, for killing something that then cries piteously as it dies, or as a way to draw them in to find poachers killing off some of these magnificent critters. Picture the scene: as they wander through the swamp, they can hear one of these dying in the distance, and maybe even arrive in time to heal it and drive off whatever attacked it. That leads into a whole segment - who is killing the Flail Snails? How do the party feel about that concept? Do the hunters have useful information that the party can use, and will they overlook this activity in order to get it? Does hunting Flail Snails differ from hunting Cows?

Rangers and Druids can be tough to give personalised stories to - 'protect nature' seems more of a downtime goal than an adventuring one - but this might be the perfect way to let them do just that in game, while also generating a way for players to explore how their characters feel about nature and their place in it.

These things are still mad as balls, though.

 

[Leatherhead]

So that's where Iarno got his staff from. I can see many wizards sending their apprentices out on quests to find these beasts and deliver their bounties back to the tower. In fact, glass can make a decent enough weapon or tool when metal isn't in abundance. In a setting like Dark Sun, these creatures would be among the most valuable alive.

However, it occurs to me that this snail could form a symbiotic relationship with a much faster or bigger creature. Take the Dragon Turtle, for instance. The Snail could spend some time cleaning off the Dragon's shell, and then when the PC's attack the turtle, they get some nasty feedback as some of their spells start misfiring due to having the Snail in the path.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, this is definitely one of those creatures your party is supposed to feel like heels for killing.

Unfortunately, a party may have little trouble with their spell reflecting shield. The snail only does odd things to spells when it succeeds the saving throw. Even with advantage with a -3 to Dex the only thing saving it from a fireball is it's immunity to fire, Lightning bolts would still probably roast it.

But yeah, best thing about this creature is that it is more valuable to one group alive rather than dead, and I'd love to make this a dwarf or gnome domesticated creature. Put a snail in some abandoned tunnels, let them eat and harvest the glass to sell to outsiders.

It's interesting to see how many domesticated and semi-domesticated creatures are in this guide.

 

[Leatherhead]

Enough about living Flail Snails: Dead ones add all kinds of nasty to other encounters too.

Firstly, the shields from a freshly dead snail will make any paladin-esque or cleric NPC brutal. For those of you who are running an Elemental Evil campaign, add them to members of the Black Earth cult. Or just add them to bodyguards of any important target your party will be fighting for some spice.

Secondly, consider adding a Flail Snail zombie. At first blush an elemental zombie seems absurd, but we have beholder zombies, which were a partial inspiration. The Snombie can basically just sit around in a corner being all rotted and hiding in it's shell, acting as a lighting rod of sorts, dispersing AoE attacks aimed at your undead minions. And using it's Scintillating Shell to blind the PC's while other undead eat their brains.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The next beastie was one of the previewed pages, so everybody reading along at home can take a direct look at what we’re dealing with here. The Froghemoth is one of the weird monsters that came out of early D&D experiments with Sci-Fi, and the flavour text highlights that.

There was a lot of discussion about the art for the Froghemoth when it was first previewed, and it is fairly typical for the art in Volo’s: nicely done, well textured and coloured, but not very exciting. The creature is just so dang weird that it is hard to imagine how you could have done them much better, at least without using a whole action scene as the backdrop, and I think that the art gives you a nice sense of how these guys look.

The flavour text for these fellows is actually pretty short, all things considered: they live in Swamps, Bullywugs worship them, they are really crappy parents, and they are rumoured to come from strange metal cylinders. The best part of this for adventure writing is probably the Bullywug connection, as the stuff about cylinders is very vague, presumably a reference to the original D&D module. I guess that you could spin the cylinders idea out into a wider plot, but you’d really be on your own for that process.

The Bullywugs are an oddly prominent element in 5th edition, as I think that they get used a lot by people wanting a low-level swamp adventure, especially good for hex-crawls. In addition, there is a bunch of them that turn up in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The Froghemoth gives you an excellent boss monster for a swamp adventure, but is perhaps a bit too tough for the natural level range of an adventure that focuses on Bullywugs themselves, at CR 10.

Let’s move onto the stats. The Froghemoth, like most really big things in the edition, are easy to hit but fairly tough. It has a really odd nerf built in, whereby if it takes lightning damage then it is really reduced in ability for a round; this is likely to cause some angst for DMs who dislike players metagaming. On the other hand, it does give you the ability to put one up against a low-level group, if you also place a lighting rod or something similar in the combat arena.

When the Froghemoth swings in anger, it does so in fairly impressive fashion: it has a multi-attack routine consisting of two tentacles (reach 20ft, so getting around kiting concerns a little), then either a tongue or a bite. The tongue can trigger the bite if it works, while the bite is basically a do-damage-and-swallow effort that only has 5ft range. So, adding that together, the Froghemoth slams twice, then tries to bite someone, dragging them closer first if it has to. The swallow is more explicit than these usually are, stipulating that the victim is restrained and blinded (big hit for spellcasters, still a pain for weapon users) and the beastie will potentially vomit up swallow victims if they do enough damage on a single turn to it. It is my impression that being swallowed in 5e is not actually that scary, and that whenever it happens the person involved usually keeps contributing as normal to the combat, which is probably a lot easier and less frustrating than other options.

Overall, I think that the Froghemoth is a fine and interesting combatant, and will be a really fun boss monster for a level 4 party who need to strike while it is being electrocuted.

 

[Leatherhead]

The ability to keep up to 6 targets restrained, preferably underwater, can cause more than a bit of panic in the PC's.

The thing about Froghemoths, is that they are at the Challenge Rating where they shouldn't be used alone. The unfortunate thing about Froghemoths is that their "natural" allies are the Bullywugs, which are mechanically simple, and too dumb to make effective spellcasters (though I suppose you could cheat and dissect the Grung for their statblocks). Consider, instead, making them the beloved pet of a Sea Hag Coven or a young Black Dragon. The Froghemoth then becomes a waterborne meat-shield for the more mechanically interesting creatures, which is really the best it can hope to be. Just swap out the Lighting Bolt Coven spell for Fireball or the like.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Yeah, the Froghemoth and the Bullywugs are just too distant in CR to work perfectly together; but adding in a couple Bullywug Swamp Sorcerers or whatever shouldn't be too hard, if we can just use some of the NPC statblocks in the back of the book.

I'm probably going to add one of these to Castle Naeryatar in Hoard of the Dragon Queen since they look fun; might need to give the Lizardfolk there something huge as well, so that if the players do go for the civil war strategy then I can have a Godzilla clash going on in the background.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app