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

[Leatherhead]

Animals are animals. And well, there isn't much that can be said about them, which is kind of ending on a low note.

The selection of cattle here can be useful for an artificer (the new UA class) to pick as a template for there mechanical servant. While not the most impressive for combat, they do sport several unique abilities.

Stench kows, in particular, could be used as part of a plot. Perhaps an unscrupulous farmer made a deal with an imp or other low ranking fiend, asking for a way to sabotage competing farms. Instead of simply making the cows sick or killing them, the imp gave the farmer a potion which mutated the heard, and now the town has to deal with the kows. Bonus points if they have mad kow disease.

Dolphins aren't too good for most things to ride, but they can make for a decent animal companion if you are in a sea based campaign.

One notable thing about Rot grubs, they are weaponized by the kobolds, which means anyone could potential use such a tactic. And presumably they are a bit more manageable than the Kyuss worms, because they don't zombify their hosts in order to infect more people.

 

[dave2008]

So long, and thanks for all the crits.

Great work and thank you starting and continuing with this thread. There was a lot of interesting discussion that I think will be useful to most people looking to use the monsters in VGtM.

 

[Chaosmancer]

With that, we reach THE END. I’m not going to cover the NPC statblocks - both because they seem self-evident, and also because, to be honest, I don’t want to. Thank you for reading this far, and I hope that the discussion here between myself and others - with thanks to [MENTION=53176]Leatherhead[/MENTION] [MENTION=6777078]RotGrub[/MENTION] [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION] [MENTION=6801226]MechaTarrasque[/MENTION] [MENTION=5435]fuindordm[/MENTION] [MENTION=83242]dave2008[/MENTION] [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] [MENTION=6863864]Bitbrain[/MENTION] [MENTION=6867728]ArchfiendBobbie[/MENTION] and anyone else I’ve forgotten - helps you to use this fine book to improve your campaign. The first post now has hyperlinks to all the monsters covered in the series, so hopefully this can serve as a useful resource in the future, unless the forum falls over and explodes again or something.

So long, and thanks for all the crits.

Thank you for your hard work and dedication. Posting a new entry every day for a couple of months had to have been taxing. I've enjoyed our conversations and ideas and I hope to steal from this thread prodigiously in the future

 

[Nebulous]

The last of the Kobold entries, the Kobold Scale Sorcerer is another interesting entry, despite my slight apathy towards the race as a whole.

The Scale Sorceror gets a really odd image. At first glance, you’d think that it was a type of Winged Kobold, but upon a closer look the wings are made of canvas and wood; there is no mention of them in its statblock, which rather raises the question of why the image has them. I mean, it certainly makes sense for a Kobold Sorcerer to get wings, but it doesn’t actually have wings, and showing this image to your players will immediately raise questions about them. Combine this with a rather odd pose - it is standing facing to the left, but looking at the viewer - and I’m sadly not a fan of this artwork.

The Scale Sorcerers are kind of the spiritual leaders of their race. Since Kobolds have so few clerics - their god being imprisoned by the trolling of the Gnomish one - they have to rely on the Sorcerers to fill the role. In addition, if the tribe is associated with a Dragon, then this fellow will be the intermediary between the two, giving it the rather difficult job of relaying information to the Dragon - both good and bad… In both of these roles, the Sorcerer could easily function as a roleplaying encounter for the PCs, someone that they meet and talk to, perhaps before fighting breaks out, or perhaps instead of fighting. It might be very interesting to have the players need information from a tribe of Kobolds, and so be inclined to seek them out and communicate with the Scale Sorcerer leading them, which would let you use this race in a very different manner than normally seen.

The Scale Sorcerer is rather low level for the concept - a magically empowered leader of the tribe - and this is probably the biggest problem with their statblock. We get another perfectly good spellcaster statblock, this time at CR 1, with some potent spells such as Chromatic Orb, Charm Person and Scorching Ray, and we even get a Sorcery Points ability that sounds at first like it would be very interesting. However, since they are so low level, the Scale Sorcerer doesn’t actually get any interesting command abilities, nor do the sorcery points seem to add up to much of anything. It gets three points, and can spend one to drop the verbal and somatic components of a spell, or all three to give one person disadvantage against one spell. The latter effect is interesting, until you consider that only two of its spells even have saving throws, and neither one is particularly important. Meanwhile, the only usage of the former ability that I can think of at the moment is to use it with Charm Person to infiltrate a human settlement, which is fun enough I guess, but not really something that needs to be included in the profile for a primarily combat opponent.

Overall, I’d say that the Scale Sorcerer is disappointing, and that my disappointment stems from them just being too weak to be that interesting. My uncharitable side thinks of them as a spellcaster leader that cannot lead, and only barely cast. However, thinking about it a bit more, the Scale Sorcerer is probably designed specifically as an entry that serves as the boss of a party’s very first dungeon, like the Bugbear at the start of Lost Mine of Phandelver, and so my above complaints really won’t matter since he’ll be appropriately scary for a party of level one characters.

Good points. I personally use some winged kobold minis for the scale sorcerer, so mine DO fly. What would be a good spell to swap out so that the disadvantage from the spell points would be most devastating? They are weak, yes, but I think that was the point. Used creatively they can still be intimidating.