D&D 5E the nightmare baby swarm

jasper

Rotten DM
Had a nightmare last night. I was swarmed by 7+ babies. The crawling types. They knocked me prone, grappled me, and then drooled all over me. I woken to a warm sweat.
How would you create this monster?
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Figure out the concept - like the creature type. Where these actual (possessed?) babies? Or a baby-looking aberration?
When - CR, hp, AC, damage, attack bonus, special abilities - the usual stuff.
The problem, I think, will be how to make them dangerous due to their extremely low speed.
 

If I was designing that as a horror monster, I'd design it as a swarm (like in the MM pgs 337-339) instead of each baby as an individual creature. This would keep the swarm both manageable and a credible threat when even the wizard's familiar cat can kill a baby. Plus it allows me to leave baby corpses all over from every attack to really drive home the horror.
 

Build it as a Swarm. If there is some sort of leader-type in the crowd of babies (thinking Nickelodeon's Rugrats here) it could be an individual monster. The swarm can share a space with the leader.

You can also look through old MMs and re-skin anything close mechanically to what you want.
 

Had a nightmare last night. I was swarmed by 7+ babies. The crawling types. They knocked me prone, grappled me, and then drooled all over me. I woken to a warm sweat.
How would you create this monster?
Possible by eating a pepperoni and garlic pizza just before going to bed while watching a pampers commercial?

Oh, maybe that's how I could create that dream.
 

As others have said, I'd probably do it as a swarm.

The mechanics of the swarm may depend somewhat on the tone you are going for. Crying could do psychic damage in an area, smelly diapers cause nausea a'la troglodytes, people could be at disadvantage to hit if they fail a wisdom (charm) save.

When I design monsters like this I don't worry too much about the mechanics of the template (although I do try to adhere to the overall CR guides) so if it makes sense that they have a spit-up attack as a breath weapon then they do even if other swarms don't normally have breath weapons.

Another option is to make them individual monsters, they have advantage on athletics/knock prone if they have another monster baby within 5 feet of their target. Or go the System Shock 2 route and have hybrid demon babies.

This could be either a really creepy monster or a really funny one depending on how it's done. I may have to steal the idea. :D
 



Remove ads

Top