Copyright 2009 Wizards of the Coast

This post is part of a series! Go here to see the other entries.

I think I remember seeing mention of Wood Woads in AD&D somewhere, but I couldn’t find them in my books. This is their 4e debut.

The Lore

Wood Woads are fey creatures distantly related to dryads. Like dryads, they devoutly protect the natural environment of their home region. Unlike dryads, they all look male and have absolutely zero chill.

Not only do wood woads attack would-be despoilers of nature with murderous intent, they tend to blame each new intruder for the crimes of all the previous ones. So even if you’re careful with the environment and try to approach them peacefully, they’ll still try to kill you because some fool cut a tree down years ago and managed to run away.

Wood woads tend to ally with other sworn protectors of nature, like dryads, centaurs and some elves or other fey. So I guess you could still deal with them peacefully if you manage to approach those allies first and get them to vouch for you, or have them act as intermediaries.

The Numbers

We get a single Wood Woad stat block. It’s a Medium Fey Humanoid with the Plant keyword, and a Level 8 Soldier with 92 HP. It has trained Perception, and a ground speed of 5.

Wood Woads wield wooden shields and clubs. Their basic attack is the club, which does average damage and has no special effects. They can channel magic through it to inflict Nature’s Judgment (recharge 6+, Reliable) on a target. This is an attack that does more damage than the basic club, immobilizes, and inflicts ongoing physical damage on the target. When the target takes this ongoing damage, the closest fey or plant ally of the wood woad heals the same amount of HP.

The Reliable keyword means this power isn’t used up if the attack misses. The wood woad can keep trying to use it until it hits someone, and only them will it need to make recharge rolls. This attack becomes more useful if all of the wood woad’s allies are either plants or fey.

Once per encounter it can also curse someone with Nature’s Mystery as a minor action. This inflicts a -2 penalty on all of the target’s attacks, defenses, and saves. The save to end this effect has an additional -5 penalty unless the target can succeed at a DC 20 Nature check before rolling it. Guess this spell has a loophole somewhere.

This is different from the sphinx ability we saw earlier in this Let’s Read, because no one else can make the Nature test in the target’s place. This makes Nature’s Mystery an excellent ability to use on most defenders, since they tend to have low-to-middling Wisdom and no training in Nature. Wardens are the big exception to this.

Targets affected by this Nature’s Mystery are also prime targets for Nature’s Judgment. Make sure to surround them with plant and fey monsters after they get hit.

Sample Encounters and Final Impressions

We get two sample encounters:

  • Level 8: Two dryads, two vine horror spellfiends, 2 wood woads. Did the vine horror manage to convince the fey it’s part of the local natural environment?

  • Level 9: 1 Gnome Entropist, 1 Satyr Piper, 1 Shambling Mound, 3 Wood Woads. I guess the gnome is a actually a druid using the entropist stat block.

I like the feel of the mechanics on this one, but the lore is once again a bit uninspiring. It’s another humanoid fey plant that’s fanatical about protecting nature, just like dryads and treants. I guess they can round out the cast when you want to focus a game on a faction of such beings, but we already have a lot of other possible creatures that belong there as well (satyrs, centaurs, elven druids, and so on).

If you want to use the wood woad stat block but don’t want to say they’re a completely separate species, just say they’re small treants instead.