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Let's Read: Volo's Monsters
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<blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 7014220" data-attributes="member: 32659"><p>The <strong>Sea Spawn</strong> is another from the ‘humanoid monsters from the sea’ theme, and seems designed to function as your low-level threat in a coastal story. </p><p></p><p><img src="https://wrathofzombie.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/wizard-corruption-to-deep-one.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>The image in the book is another fairly standard ‘monster standing still’ effort. It looks almost comically unhappy, thanks to the way that its lips are depicted, and overall is a decent but not very exciting piece of artwork.</p><p></p><p>The Sea Spawn are effectively an NPC statblock, fulfilling the role of nameless mooks for any deep sea critter - Morkoth, Kraken, Sea Hags, even Storm Giants - that you want to give minions to. They are created through mortals being transformed at the will of the above creatures, this being done through various mostly unnamed methods; the fluff text here makes it clear that the details don’t matter. In other words, the Sea Spawn are not an interesting creature in and of themselves, but acquire interest through being the pawn of a bigger threat. They are considerably weaker than the Deep Scion, making these more of a swarm threat. </p><p></p><p>We get two sidebars here; one from Elminster, which has a rather poignant note that the transformation into a Deep Spawn not only gives them various aquatic features, but also makes them <em>love</em> their slavery. Probably the only one of these that I’d bother reading out to my players. The second sidebar discusses the Purple Rocks, which is mentioned in <em>Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide</em> and also makes an appearance in <em>Storm King’s Thunder</em>; there the entire adult population transform into Sea Spawn when they grow old, and there are Kraken Priests tending to that particular flock. It’s a good summary of how you can use these things as a self-contained storyline, and also adds value to those other products. </p><p></p><p>So let’s talk stats. The Sea Spawn are, well, CR 1 NPCs. They get two attacks, with one depending on their <em>Piscine Anatomy</em>, and overall do pretty low damage. A couple of the Piscine features do interesting things - saving throw against poison, grappling - but nothing particularly unusual. I did a quick comparison to the Bugbear, probably the king of CR 1 monsters, and these guys are indeed rather underwhelming in comparison, but I think that they do serve different roles; the Sea Spawn is the mooks for a bigger threat, the Bugbear is there to collect the tears of your players. (It’s a real shame that we didn’t get a Bugbear variant in this book!) The Sea Spawn is really not a social encounter - it cannot speak, and have no skills - and they combine shambling land movement with low AC to ensure that your players get to feel in control of the combat, as they will outpace and easily hit the Sea Spawn. </p><p></p><p>Not much else to say, really. Use these critters to flesh out your Kraken adventure, or to give your Morkoth island an easy entrance fight.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charles Rampant, post: 7014220, member: 32659"] The [b]Sea Spawn[/b] is another from the ‘humanoid monsters from the sea’ theme, and seems designed to function as your low-level threat in a coastal story. [img]https://wrathofzombie.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/wizard-corruption-to-deep-one.jpg[/img] The image in the book is another fairly standard ‘monster standing still’ effort. It looks almost comically unhappy, thanks to the way that its lips are depicted, and overall is a decent but not very exciting piece of artwork. The Sea Spawn are effectively an NPC statblock, fulfilling the role of nameless mooks for any deep sea critter - Morkoth, Kraken, Sea Hags, even Storm Giants - that you want to give minions to. They are created through mortals being transformed at the will of the above creatures, this being done through various mostly unnamed methods; the fluff text here makes it clear that the details don’t matter. In other words, the Sea Spawn are not an interesting creature in and of themselves, but acquire interest through being the pawn of a bigger threat. They are considerably weaker than the Deep Scion, making these more of a swarm threat. We get two sidebars here; one from Elminster, which has a rather poignant note that the transformation into a Deep Spawn not only gives them various aquatic features, but also makes them [i]love[/i] their slavery. Probably the only one of these that I’d bother reading out to my players. The second sidebar discusses the Purple Rocks, which is mentioned in [i]Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide[/i] and also makes an appearance in [i]Storm King’s Thunder[/i]; there the entire adult population transform into Sea Spawn when they grow old, and there are Kraken Priests tending to that particular flock. It’s a good summary of how you can use these things as a self-contained storyline, and also adds value to those other products. So let’s talk stats. The Sea Spawn are, well, CR 1 NPCs. They get two attacks, with one depending on their [i]Piscine Anatomy[/i], and overall do pretty low damage. A couple of the Piscine features do interesting things - saving throw against poison, grappling - but nothing particularly unusual. I did a quick comparison to the Bugbear, probably the king of CR 1 monsters, and these guys are indeed rather underwhelming in comparison, but I think that they do serve different roles; the Sea Spawn is the mooks for a bigger threat, the Bugbear is there to collect the tears of your players. (It’s a real shame that we didn’t get a Bugbear variant in this book!) The Sea Spawn is really not a social encounter - it cannot speak, and have no skills - and they combine shambling land movement with low AC to ensure that your players get to feel in control of the combat, as they will outpace and easily hit the Sea Spawn. Not much else to say, really. Use these critters to flesh out your Kraken adventure, or to give your Morkoth island an easy entrance fight. [/QUOTE]
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