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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 6978304" data-attributes="member: 32659">The next beastie was one of the <a href="http://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/Volo_Froghemoth145.pdf" target="_blank">previewed pages</a>, 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.<img src="http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/pathfinder/images/8/8f/Froghemoth_attack.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100920001527" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />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.</blockquote>

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