Where I Read the 4e Monster Manual: Abominations
This article is part of a series! Go here to see the other entries.
Here’s our first multi-entry, and it’s epic. Abominations as a category were introduced in the Epic Level Handbook for 3.0, where they were described as the abandoned creations of the gods. This is still true here, with the added bit that some of them were created as living weapons for the battle between gods and primordials.
Unlike the previous entry on Aboleths, this one is more of a grab-bag, with several epic monsters that don’t have much in common with each other beyond “is a horror from the dawn of time”. None of them are in the Monster Vault. Let’s take then one by one.
Astral Stalker
The illustration is of a big muscular humanoid with jet-black scaly skin, a skull-like face, and huge claws. It wears a loincloth made out of skulls, so you know he’s Metal. I think they’re originally from some Forgotten Realms book, but I’m not sure.
Here, Astral Stalkers were living weapons created by the gods to fight the primordials. Given they’re Evil, covered in scales and have lots of assassin-themed abilities, I’m placing the blame squarely on Zehir’s shoulders. Abandoned after the war, enough of them survived to form a stable population. They live in small communities in the Astral Sea.
Stalker culture centers on hunting. A village is led by the stalker who has the most impressive hunting trophies, and they love testing themselves against worthy foes. They like to hunt alone but will join up in pairs or larger groups to go after particularly impressive quarries, and might sell their services to other beings.
The Stalker is a Medium immortal humanoid, and a Level 22 Elite Lurker. It can become invisible at will and has a Stealth of +24, meaning that even the designated party radar probably has a less than even chance of detecting it before it strikes. Its opening attack will likely be a bone dart ejected from its throat, which does somewhat anemic damage but will progressively numb the victim: Slowed, moving on to Immobilized and Stunned with failed saves. It will follow this up with claw attacks (two on a slowed or immobilized target, one otherwise) that might each get a sneak attack bonus, and that mark the target as the stalker’s quarry. The Stalker can have one quarry at a time, and always knows exactly where its quarry is even across planes. The only way to stop being a stalker’s quarry is if the stalker kills you or chooses someone else to hunt.
Skill-wise, they’re trained in both Stealth and Perception (Perception doesn’t appear in the skill list, but the +5 training bonus is at the top of their stat block). This makes them good at tracking even before they mark someone as their quarry.
The quarry-related abilities are interesting, and make the Astral Stalker one of the only monsters with powers that span more than a single fight. I can picture a Stalker or two ambushing the party, fighting for a few rounds, marking one or two PCs as quarries and then running away. Then they comes back to harass them all throught the adventure, forcing the PCs to figure out a way to stop them from running.
A good twist on the default stalker story might be to have the party enter a tense alliance with an Astral Stalker to hunt a villain down across the planes. Once the deal is done, the creature might acknowledge the badassitude of the PCs by choosing them as its next target…
The suggested encounter is level 22, and features a stalker that has joined up with a party of epic-level devils. If your party has pissed Hell off in past adventures, this fight would be a good “welcome to epic tier!” event.
As statted, the stalker’s attacks don’t seem to do all that much damage for an epic creature, so it could use some updated math. However, those darts are at-will and Stunned is Serious Business! A Stunned character can do nothing except hope for a successful save. I think D&D 4 players hate this even more than death itself. As an Elite monster the Stalker is also in need of a way to perform two attacks per turn, so my recommendation here would be to make the darts a minor action.
Atropal
Back when I first read the Epic Level Handbook, the description of the Atropal was the first thing that made me go “whoa!”. Their origin here remains exactly the same as it was back then: they’re stillborn gods, scorned by life but still posessing enough power to raise as undead.
The MM uses “unfinished” instead of “stillborn”, and the illustration looks a lot less like a baby than the one in the ELH, which I suppose is understandable. It’s still quite horrific, though. Being Large marks it as the corpse of something not human.
3.x Atropals were quite complex, with lots of spell-like abilities. Here they are Level 28 Elite Brutes who are completely immune to necrotic and poison damage, but Vulnerable 10 to radiant. So it’s not the wizard they must fear, but the cleric. They have 638 HP, and their weak defense is Reflex.
Atropals project a wide-ranging aura that heals undead and damages living creatures caught in it every turn. Getting hit with radiant damage cancels it, but they can start it up again with a minor action. Their basic melee attack is a touch that targets Reflex, with a rider that eliminates the target’s necrotic resistance and gives them a -2 penalty to attacks. Its other attack is the Atropos Burst, which does a bunch of necrotic damage to anyone inside the aura, eats a healing surge, and gives the atropal 1 action point if it hits anyone. Its use it limited, but it recharges every time someone is reduced to 0hp in the aura. For extra Fun(TM), have it fight the PCs in an area containing innocent bystanders or cute woodland creatures that can double as burst fuel.
Oh, and these things move with a fly speed of 9, so they can happily go over your defenders to hit the squishies from above. One can depopulate a city in no time at all just by zooming around and spamming Atropos Burst to kill anything their aura doesn’t.
You’ll rarely fight a lone atropal, of course. They attract other high-level undead. The sample encounter has them being followed by a party of sorrowsworn, which doesn’t really work because sorrowsworn aren’t undead and so will take damage from its aura. I recommend adding one or two epic liches and assorted minions instead.
Blood Fiend
It appears that in previous editions blood fiends where what you got when you turned a demon into a vampire. That origin appears to be mostly gone, as they’re not undead here.
Blood Fiends are Medium elemental humanoids and thus native to the Elemental Chaos, but contrary to their name are not demons either. You wouldn’t be able to tell just from looking, though. They’re Chaotic Evil, feed on blood and love hunting for food and sport. They hunt in packs and sometimes associate with other powerful elemental creatures (but not with demons!).
It’s not spelled out, but I would guess that in Fourth Edition these guys were created by the primordials to fight the gods, placing them in direct conflict with the Astral Stalkers. I wonder if they keep hunting each other to this day. It would also make sense to say that, as uncorrupted primordial creations, they dislike demons.
Blood Fiends are Level 23 Soldiers and look like four-armed, hairless gorillas with sharp teeth and claws. They attack with their claws and with an immobilizing gaze attack. If they have combat advantage, they can instead attack with a blood-draining bite that counts as a grab and causes ongoing damage and heals the fiend until the target can escape.
I find them to be kinda bland, except for the fact that they have an Int of 22. This is at odds with pretty much anything else in their stat block, and gives you an opening to play them like sophisticated murder sages. Their only trained skill is Intimidate, which doesn’t mean they can’t do anything else, just that intimidation is their “thing”.
The suggested encounter has three of them working as hired muscle for a pair of efreeti.
Phane
I also remember seeing these guys from the Epic Level Handbook, which said they came from either the distant past of the distant future, and were so far from their time of origin that they don’t know how to return any more. While there’s no mention of this background here, it kinda makes sense as the reason why they were included under Abominations - they’re horrors from the edge of time, but which edge is something not even the phanes know.
Phanes are Large immortal magical beasts who live in the Astral Sea but prowl the entire cosmos on the hunt for prey, “walking between moments”. They’re described as liking to spread chaos for its own sake, but are Unaligned and have Int 28, so I guess it should be possible to have peaceful interactions with one. At least until it decides its best shot at returning home is to start a chain of events that leads to a specific future and starts with the death of the PCs.
They’re level 26 Elite Controllers who fight like skirmishers and are all about manipulating time. Their claw attacks target Reflex and both slow the target and allow the phane to shift 4 squares either before or after the attack, so they can play keep-away. Their ranged attack is a Wizening Ray, which targets fortitude and both slows and weakens, with the weakening effect lasting longer. This is explained as artificially aging the target, who looks old and decrepit until they manage to save against all the effects. Phanes also have a Wizening Storm that’s a close burst 1 and seems to age the targets even more (Stunned, with an aftereffect of Dazed and Weakened). They can also automatically cancel a negative effect placed on them per round, through timey-wimey shenanigans.
Phanes are insubstantial, so they take half damage from pretty much anything even before they weaken the PCs. They run and fly very fast, too. Their preferred tactics are playing keep-away and shooting Wizening Rays at the party, so I guess the Wizening Storm is kept in reserve as a nasty surprise in case the PCs manage to get close to them. Man, fighitng these guys must be so annyoing.
The proposed encounter joins a phane with a pair of sorrowsworn and two dread wraiths, the other insubstantial monster that can weaken. I think that’s a tad excessive.
While the provided stat block doesn’t give them any ability to move between planes at will, that’s totally something they should be able to do outside of combat. The same goes for Astral Stalkers, I think.
Tarrasque
This beastie needs no introduction! Present since the days of AD&D, it’s always been presented as kind of the ultimate test of player badassitude, even though it was kinda underwhelming in D&D 3.x.
In 4e the Tarrasque was created by the primordials to destroy the works of the gods, and it’s inexorably bound to the world. I picture its creation being something much like a planetary-scale version of Exalted’s Great Curse, uttered by the defeated Primordials just before they were imprisoned.
The Tarrasque sleeps at the planet’s core and wakes up every once in a while to feed and wreck shit. It’s a Gargantuan Elemental Magical Beast, and a Level 30 Solo Brute, suitable for either the final battle in a campaign or the one just before it (with the final battle being against a primordial or equivalent).
Defensively, it’s immune to charm and fear and has resist 10 to all damage, which is quite rare. It also has an Earthbinding Aura that extends out to maximum longbow range in all directions, and limits flight to an altitude that places it within the beast’s reach. It’s speed is 8 (so, pretty fast), and it also has similar climb and burrow speeds. Yes, it can swim in the ground like it was water to take cover from an all-ranged party and come up from underneath them.
Offensively, its attacks ignore all resistances. Its basic attack is a bite that also causes 15 ongoing damage. While unbloodied, it can use Fury of the Tarrasque, which allows it to make a bite attack and either rend for triple bite damage plus a 1-turn -5 penalty to AC, or to perform a tail slap that throws targets far away and knocks them prone. If bloodied, this is replaced by a frenzy that gives it a bite attack against anyone in a close burst 3. Finally, it can use a standard action to move its speed and trample anyone in its way. As a Solo, it has two action points.
Reducing the Tarrasque to 0 HP (from its initial total of 1412) will simply make it quit the fight and burrow back to the center of the planet to sleep it off. Killing the beast for good involves somehow removing it from the world before fighting it.
This Tarrasque seems to have covered the weakness of its 3.x predecessor pretty well, but it suffers quite a bit from the early Monster Manual math bugs. The damage from its attacks is less than half of what it should be, so be sure to apply the math fixes before throwing it at your party.
Final Impressions
My feelings towards this entry are as much of a mixed bag as the entries themselves. Since I’m not aware of the Astral Stalker’s past incarnations, I have no particular emotional attachment to it, but it seems reasonably cool.
I know of the Atropal and the Phane from the Epic Level Handbook, and from that I see these incarnations of them keep the general flavor of the originals while being effective threats. They could have used a little more lore elaboration, which I guess is true of most monsters in the MM.
The Phane might be a bit too effective, though. Insubstantial plus at-will Weakening attacks is a recipe for a long and drawn-out fight, since it essentially quarters the party’s damage output. Having it team up with wraiths compounds the problem since, as we’ll eventually see, they follow the same formula.
The Blood Fiend failed to wow me. Even with its unexpectedly high Int score it’s still kinda bland, and so easy to confuse with a demon I might as well use a demon instead of it. The “demonic vampire” angle is a little better, so if I had to them I’d probably bring that back.
I’ve always found the Tarrasque cool, and the new “ḱaiju sleeping in the center of the world” bit is awesome. It stats really showcase the problem with too-low monster damage of these early 4e monster books, though, so it becomes a lot less threatening than it’s supposed to be unless you fix it.