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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 3009806" data-attributes="member: 3586">Spawn of TiamatA significant portion of the book, 36 of 224 pages, is given over to these new monsters. With 2006 being promoted the Year of the Dragon, it is not surprising to see a selection of dragon-themed monsters in Monster Manual IV. So, how are they?The conceptual nature of the Spawn of Tiamat is that the Queen of the Evil Dragons is attempting to impose her power on the material plane by creating new creatures - the spawn - primarily from the offspring of chromatic dragons that she warps to her own purposes.Dungeons & Dragons covered the idea of draconic-like creatures as footmen of evil in the Dragonlance saga with the draconians, but that version has peculiar problems in portability. That they are created from corrupted good dragon eggs certainly presents a major obstacle, and their design is also very much a legacy of 1st edition methodologies.Integrating the Spawn of Tiamat into a campaign with dragons should not prove troublesome. So, what are they? Each colour of chromatic dragon (black, blue, green, red and white) has a number of spawn that can be created from its eggs, from the Blackspawn Raider, a vicious monstrous humanoid hunter, to the Redspawn Firebelcher, a stupid mount for more intelligent spawn that can attack with a ranged fire attack.As with other monsters in MMIV, each spawn has one very strong theme or attack trick. The spawn are designed to be used together, so that you might have two or three (or even more) different types of spawn in the same encounter. Indeed, many spawn have an ability named "Tiamat's Blessing", which gives adjacent spawn a measure of energy resistance or immunity. So, a redspawn and a greenspawn together are more fearsome than a redspawn alone.The elegance of this design is that it is very easy to use many of the spawn together; they're not difficult to run due to their low number of special abilities, but, as they act quite differently in combat, encounters with spawn of tiamat allow a great deal of variety depending on what spawn are used. As with the other monsters in the book, the ecology and culture of the Spawn are explored, and there are many suggested encounters and groupings for them.The Spawn of Tiamat are as follows:* Blackspawn Raider (CR 4) - a vicious hunter* Blackspawn Exterminator (CR 10) - advanced Raider with ninja levels, often found as the leader of raiding parties* Blackspawn Stalker (CR 9) - dragon/spider cross; web and acidic spittle.* Bluespawn Ambusher (CR 4) - quadruped beast* Bluespawn Burrower (CR 9) - desert scout* Bluespawn Godslayer (CR 10) - bipedal melee combatants with particular skill against good dragons and outsiders* Bluespawn Stormlizard (CR 6) - large mount with electrical attacks* Greenspawn Leaper (CR 2) - mount, hunter and guardian* Greenspawn Razorfiend (CR 7) - voracious predators of woodlands and swamps* Greenspawn Sneak (CR 2) - small bipedal scout* Greenspawn Sneak Raid Leader (CR 7) - advanced sneak with ranger/scout levels* Redspawn Arcaniss (CR 6) - fiery spellcaster* Redspawn Firebelcher (CR 6) - large mount with fiery attacks* Whitespawn Hordeling (CR 1) - bipedal meleeist* Whitespawn Hunter (CR 4) - stalker of the frozen realms* Whitespawn Berserker (CR 6) - advanced hunter with barbarian levels* Whitespawn Iceskidder (CR 6) - large mount for cold environments with icy breath</blockquote>

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