Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast

This is another entry in my Let’s Read of the Monster Manual and Monster Vault for D&D Fourth Edition. You can see the rest of them here.

A Banshrae is a Medium fey humanoid that looks like the love child of an elf and a praying mantis. Tall and rail-thin, they have alabaster skin, long clawed fingers and triangular mouthless faces with insectile eyes. They’re originally from Third Edition’s Monster Manual V, and here they’re only on the Monster Manual.

The Lore

Banshraes are Unaligned, and the ones we see in this entry have an Int of 14 and a Charisma of 20. Nevertheless, the text repeatedly describes them as cold, sinister and egotistical, with a tendency to view other sapients as sources of amusement or loot rather than as people. The nicest among them are pranking tricksters, and the bad apples are sadistic serial killers. I guess you don’t need to officially swear allegiance to the cosmic principle of Evil to be an asshole.

Having no mouth, banshraes communicate via telepathy. I guess they either don’t need food at all or feed on someting like ambient magic. One interesting factoid is that banshraes love singing and the sound of wind instruments, despite having no way to sing or play themselves. Stories speak of people who managed to avoid being pranked/murdered by a banshrae by singing or playing tunes to it.

The Numbers

Banshraes have speed 8 and low-light vision. Their other signature trait is actually a piece of signature gear: a blowgun and darts, which they can use despite having no mouth. I picture them doing a fancy palm strike on one end of the blowgun to fire a dart out of the other.

The Banshrae Dartswarmer is level 11 artillery with 89 HP, who fights unarmed in melee but whose specialty is firing poisoned blowgun darts that do damage, daze and inflict a penalty to attacks. Every so often (recharge 3-6) then can go “full auto” and fire a dart flurry with the same effect at anyone in a close blast 5. That basically hits the entire PC party unless they’re very spread out.

The Banshrae Warrior is a level 12 skirmisher with 121 HP who can also use a blowgun but who focuses on its praying mantis kung-fu. It can shift 1 square as a minor action after hitting with a melee attack, and it has two of those: a basic slam, and the Staggering Palm. Staggering Palm does damage and stuns the target for a turn, but only recharges after the banshrae uses Mantid Dance.

Mantid Dance is a move action, and lasts a turn. While in effect, it gives the banshrae warrior +2 to all defenses (okay) and makes all ranged attacks automatically miss it (jeepers creepers!). Oh, and they do increased damage if they move far enough during their turn. Having good defenders and solid melee strikers is a must when fighting these fey.

The suggested encounter is level 12: 2 dartswarmers, 1 warrior, 1 ettin spirit-talker and 1 iron gorgon (of the bull-looking kind). I’m guessing these aren’t the “nice” banshraes.

Final Impressions

I don’t think I’m entirely sold on the “heartless serial killer” presentation, but the mechanics inspire me to do a Five Venoms kung-fu storyline with a banshrae dojo as the villains. You could also tone the serial killer thing down and present them as more cruel pranksters who aren’t necessarily out for blood.