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

[werecorpse]

If I understand Revivify correctly: it either wont work on the corpse (due to missing brains) or it will work, and then the player will immediately die again, due to sill being infected by worms.

Agreed - although the worm damage isn't taken until the end of the infected persons next turn so if they got some more healing they could survive, then hopefully get the worm killed.

Note to rise as a spawn you don't have to be killed by the worm - just drop to O hp, die, wait 10 minutes.

In fact a live troll could be infected by one of these worms just regenerating the damage - then when it's killed by fire it rises 10 minutes later as a spawn.

Also any creature immune to necrotic damage (like say a wight) could theoretically be a host for one of these - then when it dies it rises again as a spawn? Does that seem right?

 

[Charles Rampant]

Back on page five or so we had someone pop into the threat to offer some random complaints about the book; I remember that the Tlincalli was one of the things that they were unhappy with. I’d never even heard of these guys before, so I don’t know what they used to be, but to be honest I’m liking what I see.



The Tlincalli art is quite fun. I’m a big fan of warm metallic colours, and these guys positively gleam. The artist also did a good job of making the odd anatomy work - the proportions all seem good, and I can imagine how this creature could move around and manipulate tools. But then you see the head, which is, shall we say, irregular, and you realise that this is indeed a monstrosity, and the whole image resumes a sense of menace. Subtle but effective.

The Tlincalli are wandering desert hunters, nomads who travel in family groups and only stop for a time when the hunting in a particular area is good, or they are waiting for their eggs to hatch. Their culture is ‘austere’ and uncivilised, so I think that they just wander around and don’t trouble themselves with writing, carving art, or building structures; when they need to hide from either the night’s cold or the day’s heat, they burrow into loose sand. They can do basic metallurgy, but otherwise are at a hunter-gatherer level of technology. Their eggs receive a surprising focus here; not only are the shells poisonous, meaning that many would-be predators are paralysed by the attempt to break them, but the Tlincalli like to capture people and then leave them tied up next to the eggs, to be eaten alive upon hatching. Fun fun fun!

The other interesting thing that we learn is that the Tlincalli take their role as hunters quite seriously. If they meet a more potent hunter - a Blue Dragon is mentioned - then the tribe’s elder will need to decide whether to serve, slay, or flee the threat. All three can lead to some interesting opportunities for you, and can help to add a sense of the living ecology of the desert to your campaign. In addition, if the players fight some Tlincalli, and then learn that they were fleeing from something more powerful, that might put the fear into them! Meanwhile, simply having some of these as guards for a Blue Dragon’s lair is something that I think will be very useful for many games. I also quite like the idea of wandering tribes of these being known to live in the desert interior in a campaign; the players are forever being told to avoid ‘the deep sands’ for fear of the Tlincalli hunters. Then, naturally, the players have to cross the deep sands for Plot Reasons; as intelligent creatures with their own language, you will have lots of opportunity to create interesting scenes as the players try to avoid, negotiate or fight their way across.

Let’s talk combat. The Tlincalli gets two attacks a turn: a Sting, and then the choice of either Longsword or Spiked Chain. Since the two weapons do almost identical damage, while the Chain has a grapple effect and greater reach, I think that this is best viewed as a way to be nice or nasty to your players, giving you the option to turn down the heat by using the sword attack. The Sting is about what you’d expect - lots of poison and piercing damage, then a saving throw or be Poisoned and Paralysed. Though the saving throw is an easy one for front-line combatants, remember that Clerics do not get proficiency in Con saves, and that everyone can roll low once in a while. For that reason, if your group starts failing those checks en masse, they might find themselves in very real danger. The Longsword is just the standard option - d8 or d10. The Spiked Chain, meanwhile, does d6 and on a hit makes a target both Grappled and Restrained. That’s just nasty, especially if you do the Spiked Chain first and then follow up with the Sting. Otherwise you’ve got a monster with decent AC, good HP, and average saves; it also moves 40ft a round (but cannot burrow). All in all, these guys are a bit of a terror, and especially in groups are going to play merry hell with your players’ ability to move around the battlefield and take actions.

In essence, these guys combine the plot interest of Bedouin or Fremen, with the combat abilities of a CR 5 monster, and the visual appeal of scorpion people. I’m very happy with this statblock, and especially once you add on a couple simple variations - say, the Chieftain (an extra 50 HP and the leadership ability of the Blade of Ilneval) and the Shaman (with the spellcasting of the War Priest) - they’ll make an excellent addition to any desert area of the campaign.


Sent from my iPad using EN World mobile app

 

[Leatherhead]

Back on page five or so we had someone pop into the threat to offer some random complaints about the book; I remember that the Tlincalli was one of the things that they were unhappy with. I’d never even heard of these guys before, so I don’t know what they used to be, but to be honest I’m liking what I see.

The Nimmurian Manscorpion, a similar creature in the Savage Coast of the Mystara setting, have a long and complicated backstory about how they took over another different culture of flying Minotaurs. They have a translucent body that makes them use extensive makeup in order to travel in the sun without being burned, and suffer from the Red Curse that the rest of the setting lives under.

In the Forgotten Realms, they were yet another race of arachnid-themed slave takers who live undergound. Only this time they they are half-scorpions, have a royal class, live under the sands in inverted pyramid-cave-cities in the northern desert (presumably Anauroch), and worship some gods from the Maztica subsetting. However there is very little information about them, in fact, I couldn't find any information about them beyond what was in that first sentence.

There are also some Manscorpion Drown in Eberron, which are slaves to giants.

The first is an interesting creature. The second is a footnote in a splatbook referencing a different splatbook about a subsetting. The third is mostly about trying to make drow without a spider fetish.

Anyway, about this rendition of the Tlincalli:

Firstly, they have poison. A very powerful poison that can potentially be harvested, and is very valuable. How valuable? Well that's for DM's to make up. It's nearly as strong as Wyvern poison (dealing less damage, a slightly weaker DC, but having a powerful rider), so I would estimate about 750g for a vial. Considering the potential for multiple vials of the stuff to be harvested, that should be more than enough to make a t1 or t2 party of dubious scruples go after them.

Secondly, they have Spiked Chains. The horror. While less potent than their 3.x progenitors, they serve as a superior variation of a net (by superior, I mean people would actually use them). I wonder if there is a list of 5e NPC weapons anywhere, I know the Kuo-Toa has a Mancatcher.

Also, I have to say the full chitin body is a nice art upgrade.

 

[dave2008]

In fact a live troll could be infected by one of these worms just regenerating the damage - then when it's killed by fire it rises 10 minutes later as a spawn.

That is an awesome idea. You cold have a whole warren of trolls infected with these worms and just when your PCs think they have finished them off they start popping back up.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

In Babylonian mythology, these guys (possibly with a different name) were children of Tiamat who eventually run into Gilgamesh (I don't think he fights them, but that might be old DM memory speaking), and of course, the Rock says "If you smell-ell-ell-ell what the Scorpion King is cooking" (not really but he should have). My only complaint is "no pincer attack?"

 

[Charles Rampant]

A pincer attack would have been fun, but I guess that there is a limit to how many attacks they can give a creature, and probably they were determined to get the sword & chain in. I don't see that combination in other artwork on Google though, so I suppose that the real question here is why they wanted to make that connection so strongly.

 

[Charles Rampant]

​
The Trapper is a type of mimic, and your opinions on mimics are probably far more important to how you’ll view this monster than anything I can say here.

The art for the Trapper is actually quite fun. It’s got a soft painted look, which I like, and some clever use of darkness and shadow to show the trapper about to envelop some poor guy. The human in the picture is also an interesting-looking middle eastern swashbuckler type himself, so I can see this picture being used as the basis of an NPC or PC quite easily: “You meet this guy, just as the wall falls on him. What do you do?”

So, the trapper is a bit of sentient wall that waits for a player to wander by, and then drops on them and tries to smother them. I’m not really all that thrilled by this idea, to be honest; it feels cheap in computer games, and will likely feel even more so in a D&D session. I’m most inclined to use the Trapper when the party tries to rest for the night, as a way of giving them a frustratingly amusing combat; they’ll hate it for interrupting rest, but also think it pretty funny when they wake up to find the party Cleric choking to death because the floor ate him. Otherwise, I’m not really a traps kind of guy, and this statblock is a trap with hitpoints.

The Trapper has a very… obvious statblock. It gets Spider Climb and Fake Appearance to do its job, a pile of hit points, almost no movement, and a single smother attack. It can only use the attack on one person at a time, and it does decent but not exactly world-ending damage, so a lot will be riding on whether your chosen target can make a DC 14 Dexterity check. I guess that, on average, a group will have one character take a couple turns of damage and be pretty hurt.

It’s a mimic. Meh.

 

[Leatherhead]

From a design standpoint, a trap that you can bash your way out of is vastly more fair and interesting than the standard set up of "Roll a Spot check, Roll a thievery check, roll a saving throw for half damage." But talking about trap design is for a different thread really.

As for this creature and other "mimics", the best use of them I have heard about is making an entire building out of them, which effectively creates a scenario where the party now has to fight their way out of the belly of the beast. A very good set up for a horror game, as the "house" can shift it's rooms around while it slowly digests the players, who would probably have to do something appropriately thematic like kill the heart or brain to enable their escape.

Along similar lines, there is even a fey spirit creature called a Zeitgiest who can basically posses a city block, which it then forms a body out of. An impressive image to be sure, but not quite as as fun as the above scenario.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Another Planescape monster, the Vargouille is a fun addition to a demon summoning storyline, or an entertainingly gonzo creature to use in swarms.

The Vargouille gets a picture that emphasises both their swarm nature and essentially daft physiology. I like that it shows them with radically different faces, since that’s an important element.

So the Vargouille, like many Demons, is not exactly the height of sophistication, and is not exactly going to be a scintillating conversationalist. However, we do get a couple fun options here for using them. They can ‘tag along’ with another Demon that is being summoned, and are more likely to pass unnoticed and escape than the summonee itself; in this way, they can begin an infestation of the Prime Material, and if so are likely to serve as your players’ first warning of a demon sumoner, or even worse a demonic incursion. They can use their Kiss ability to turn a humanoid into another Vargouille, and the little post-it note from Elminster suggests having that happen to a king, which is an intriguing idea. It also suggests the use of these as weird pseudo-zombies, infesting the ruins of a mining expedition or something similar; the zombie quality comes from them still possessing the head of their victims. If your players venture to the Abyss - like mine are in a week or so - then using absolutely huge swarms of these blighters also seems appropriate, and they are weak enough that the party cleric or wizard can get satisfaction from AoE efforts.

You can have an NPC that the party likes be infested by one of these, doomed to turn into one if they cannot prevent it. It requires so many conditions, though - no remove curse spell available, no sunlight to prevent the transformation - that I think you’d really only manage to make it tense if the party had that quest at a very low level, or were already totally out of resources when they met the victim, and it was already night time. I think that this will work if you really want it to, but don’t be surprised if the party can instantly stop the transformation and thus remove any tension from the Vargouille’s presence.

The Vargouille possesses both a fairly interesting statblock, and also a name that is really annoying to spell. They’re easy as pie to kill, with 12 AC and 13 HP, which is impressively weak even for CR 1, and with numbers like that no amount of resistances is going to help. They get three actions: a bite which is just a standard though high damage melee attack; a stunning shriek which is one of those effects which passing the save makes you immune to, and which makes you stunned and frightened; and a kiss which curses an incapacitated target to become a Vargouille themselves. The latter is reasonably easy to get around, but might still catch a resource-low party by surprise, if for example they’re trapped in the Abyss. The Stunning Shriek is pretty easy to resist, and once you pass once it is not a concern for the rest of the day, so it is unlikely to play a huge part in the combat. So I think that you’ll mainly be using these guys as flying annoyances that fly 40ft into melee and use bite attacks to annoy and harass the players, effectively very stupid but incredibly ugly midges.

A fun but simple entry, the Vargouille isn’t going to win many fights on its own I think, but also do a much better job than the Dretch and Mane as ‘random combat chaff’, the sort of thing that you can toss six of into every fight in an Abyssal adventure, to add numbers and give AoE experts something to do, without necessarily adding a lot of complexity.


Sent from my iPad using EN World mobile app

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I really like the idea that you can get (uncontrolled) hitchhikers when summoning/conjuring critters, particularly fiends and fey. It fits my desired DM goal of PC's creating problems for PC's to solve later.

If I have one complaint about the vargouille, (much like the dretch, mane, and lemure) it would really be nice if they made a swarm of vargouilles version to go with the singleton to challenge higher level groups with. I could just run 20 at a time, but that is a lot of tracking to do.