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Let's Read: Volo's Monsters
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<blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 7005349" data-attributes="member: 32659"><p></p><p>Goblins are one of my favourite low-level monsters. I'm just a big fan of the mixture of madcap humour and desperate savagery that they provide. I also play Orks in Warhammer 40,000, so I've got a secret desire for the greenskins to beat my players! Well, we're about to hit a rich seam of Orcish goodness, but first we have the <strong>Nilbog</strong> to cover, a fairly famous and daft creature.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/09/D%26DGoblin.JPG/200px-D%26DGoblin.JPG" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Mad, prancing, and carrying perhaps the greatest looking staff in the whole game, the art in Volo's is easy to like. It raises some interesting questions - like where the hell did the Goblins find pink wool? - and is so intensely characterful that it cheers me up just looking at it. I think that your players will be extremely taken with this guy upon being shown this picture, right up until the moment at which you explain their rules...</p><p></p><p>The Nilbog is very interesting to me for one reason in particular: the way that it helps illuminate the race relations between the Goblins, Bugbears, and Hobgoblins. We can imagine such things as Iron Shadows performing low-level eugenics on the leaders of the Goblin tribes, or Bugbear rebellions, but the Nilbog gives us a concrete description of how the Hobgoblins maintain their control over their smaller cousins. The Hobgoblins - whose God shattered the unnamed Trickster God of the Goblins into pieces, causing the spirit of Nilbogism to enter Goblins - have learned to deal with the Nilbog by granting one Goblin in the warhost the position of Jester. I wonder how they ensure that the Nilbog becomes the Jester - presumably just watching for spellcasting and chaos in the ranks - but it is a sweet gig for any Goblin who gets it, Nilbog or not. Between this and the Iron Shadow stuff, we can almost imagine the interior of the command tent for the host, and it is an interestingly varied place.</p><p></p><p>Becoming a Nilbog would seem like nightmare fuel - your mind and body become a plaything for a mad trickster spirit that will happily get you killed for a laugh - but apparently the Goblins love it. As well they might, for it strikes fear into the hearts of their Bugbear and Hobgoblin cousins, and causing chaos is presumably always welcomed by the Goblins. It could be an interesting story hook for a Goblinoid player group: being deputised by the Host’s Warlord to follow the Nilbog around and do whatever it wants, just so long as it doesn’t interfere with the siege of a Dwarven city that the Host is currently engaged in. Cue lots of strange and “hilarious” adventures. Man, that sounds like a lot of fun, actually!</p><p></p><p>I have heard that Nilbogs are totally terrifying for a party of level 1 characters to face, and I can believe it. They do limited damage - Vicious Mockery or a 1d6+2 club is about as good as it gets - but they do have the benefit of being amazingly hard to hurt, with a <em>Reversal of Fortune</em> ability that lets them heal when taking damage. I believe that Nilbogs used to require you to use healing spells to kill them, but the game has dropped that idea (just like the Positive/Negative thing on Cure/Harm spells for the Cleric and Undead), so instead they can only do Reversal of Fortune once a turn, and cannot gain health any other way. In other words, these guys will be an unholy terror for a group that can only land one solid blow a turn, and with most characters having +4 or +5 to hit AC of 13, at level one or so that might be a very tall order. But with 7 hit points, a group that gets two solid hits - or has a spare <em>Magic Missile</em> - is going to find this guy relatively easy to kill. Or, at least, its host; for then it can try to possess another Goblin, with a sidebar explaining how to handle that. One amusing way to boost the difficulty of a Goblin Cave dungeon is to have a Nilbog encounter the players at the start, and then spend the rest of the dungeon harassing them in various forms, mocking and cackling the whole time. Usefully, the sidebar also explains which traits the new host gets, so you can sling this onto a Goblin Chieftain for a more formidable version. That would probably be the most powerful Goblin that your players will encounter, unless you make use of the suggested alterations to the <strong>Mage</strong> statblock to create the Booyagh Booyagh Booyagh from Chapter one.</p><p></p><p>I like Goblins. They’re great. The Nilbog is also great, and likely to be entirely enraging for your players, good for adding a recurring annoyance to any Goblinoid dungeon. In addition, it gives us a welcome comic relief element for a Goblinoid storyline, either for evil PCs or whenever your party meets and negotiates with a Host. Overall, this guy gets a solid thumbs up from me.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charles Rampant, post: 7005349, member: 32659"] Goblins are one of my favourite low-level monsters. I'm just a big fan of the mixture of madcap humour and desperate savagery that they provide. I also play Orks in Warhammer 40,000, so I've got a secret desire for the greenskins to beat my players! Well, we're about to hit a rich seam of Orcish goodness, but first we have the [b]Nilbog[/b] to cover, a fairly famous and daft creature. [img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/09/D%26DGoblin.JPG/200px-D%26DGoblin.JPG[/img] Mad, prancing, and carrying perhaps the greatest looking staff in the whole game, the art in Volo's is easy to like. It raises some interesting questions - like where the hell did the Goblins find pink wool? - and is so intensely characterful that it cheers me up just looking at it. I think that your players will be extremely taken with this guy upon being shown this picture, right up until the moment at which you explain their rules... The Nilbog is very interesting to me for one reason in particular: the way that it helps illuminate the race relations between the Goblins, Bugbears, and Hobgoblins. We can imagine such things as Iron Shadows performing low-level eugenics on the leaders of the Goblin tribes, or Bugbear rebellions, but the Nilbog gives us a concrete description of how the Hobgoblins maintain their control over their smaller cousins. The Hobgoblins - whose God shattered the unnamed Trickster God of the Goblins into pieces, causing the spirit of Nilbogism to enter Goblins - have learned to deal with the Nilbog by granting one Goblin in the warhost the position of Jester. I wonder how they ensure that the Nilbog becomes the Jester - presumably just watching for spellcasting and chaos in the ranks - but it is a sweet gig for any Goblin who gets it, Nilbog or not. Between this and the Iron Shadow stuff, we can almost imagine the interior of the command tent for the host, and it is an interestingly varied place. Becoming a Nilbog would seem like nightmare fuel - your mind and body become a plaything for a mad trickster spirit that will happily get you killed for a laugh - but apparently the Goblins love it. As well they might, for it strikes fear into the hearts of their Bugbear and Hobgoblin cousins, and causing chaos is presumably always welcomed by the Goblins. It could be an interesting story hook for a Goblinoid player group: being deputised by the Host’s Warlord to follow the Nilbog around and do whatever it wants, just so long as it doesn’t interfere with the siege of a Dwarven city that the Host is currently engaged in. Cue lots of strange and “hilarious” adventures. Man, that sounds like a lot of fun, actually! I have heard that Nilbogs are totally terrifying for a party of level 1 characters to face, and I can believe it. They do limited damage - Vicious Mockery or a 1d6+2 club is about as good as it gets - but they do have the benefit of being amazingly hard to hurt, with a [i]Reversal of Fortune[/i] ability that lets them heal when taking damage. I believe that Nilbogs used to require you to use healing spells to kill them, but the game has dropped that idea (just like the Positive/Negative thing on Cure/Harm spells for the Cleric and Undead), so instead they can only do Reversal of Fortune once a turn, and cannot gain health any other way. In other words, these guys will be an unholy terror for a group that can only land one solid blow a turn, and with most characters having +4 or +5 to hit AC of 13, at level one or so that might be a very tall order. But with 7 hit points, a group that gets two solid hits - or has a spare [i]Magic Missile[/i] - is going to find this guy relatively easy to kill. Or, at least, its host; for then it can try to possess another Goblin, with a sidebar explaining how to handle that. One amusing way to boost the difficulty of a Goblin Cave dungeon is to have a Nilbog encounter the players at the start, and then spend the rest of the dungeon harassing them in various forms, mocking and cackling the whole time. Usefully, the sidebar also explains which traits the new host gets, so you can sling this onto a Goblin Chieftain for a more formidable version. That would probably be the most powerful Goblin that your players will encounter, unless you make use of the suggested alterations to the [b]Mage[/b] statblock to create the Booyagh Booyagh Booyagh from Chapter one. I like Goblins. They’re great. The Nilbog is also great, and likely to be entirely enraging for your players, good for adding a recurring annoyance to any Goblinoid dungeon. In addition, it gives us a welcome comic relief element for a Goblinoid storyline, either for evil PCs or whenever your party meets and negotiates with a Host. Overall, this guy gets a solid thumbs up from me. [/QUOTE]
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