Posts
-
Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Boneclaw
Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast Here’s another monster I never heard of, though I’m almost sure they come from a previous edition. They’re on the Monster Manual only.
Like Bodaks, Boneclaws are constructed undead that don’t occur naturally. Lots of necromantically inclined villains (liches, Orcus priests and the like) use them as guards and assassins. Creating one involves building a body from corpse parts and binding an evil soul into it through magic. The result is a Large Shadow Animate (undead), with variable-length talons that can reach 10 feet in length at maximum extension.
The ritual for creating a boneclaw is one of those “secrets” that keeps being stolen and traded away all the time. Some people say it was first developed by Vecna himself, though the true authors are a coven of hags led by the night hag Grigwartha. Her version of it used the corpse of an ogre and the soul of an oni, but others have adapted it for different “raw materials”. Grigwartha frequently traded the ritual for favors from other necromancers, so if you want your current villain to have access to boneclaws you don’t need any special explanation for it.
This entry has only a single variety, appropriately named Boneclaw. It’s a Level 14 Soldier with 136 HP and the usual undead traits of immunity to disease and poison plus Resist 20 necrotic and Vulnerable 5 Radiant. It’s far from mindless, with Int 10 and an Evil disposition. It speaks Common, and runs at you with Speed 8.
The boneclaw attacks with its claws (duh), which have Reach 3 and Threatening Reach. If a boneclaw hits someone with an opportunity attack, it can make another opportunity attack against the same target in the same turn. A nasty surprise to people who think they’re safe after the first one.
When bloodied, it lets out a Necrotic Pulse in a Close Burst 10, healing undead allies by 10 points and damaging living enemies by the same amount.
A relatively simple yet flavorful monster, whose flavor is further enhanced by whomever you partner it with. The sample encounter is level 14, a lich and its complement of bodyguards: two boneclaws and a shield guardian.
If you want to build a custom boneclaw, an assassin version that’s a Lurker or Skirmisher instead of a Soldier might be appropriate. Other than the undead resistances, the signature trait here seems to be the long Reach on the claws and doing something necrotic when it’s bloodied.
-
Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Bodak
Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast A D&D original, the bodak first appeared in AD&D if I’m not mistaken. They were one of the many high-level undead that resulted when someone really evil died, with the specific type of evil generating different monsters. They’ve always looked like Grey aliens with oblong heads and narrow, empty eyes.
Here, they keep the look, but have a different origin: when a Nightwalker kills someone, it can ritually transform the slain creature’s corpse and spirit into a bodak servant. Therefore, bodaks can be found either hanging around nightwalkers, or running missions for their masters along with other undead.
Bodaks are Evil and not very smart, so the occasional free bodak is more likely to find itself a lair where it can ocasionally kill passers-by than to hatch complicated evil schemes of its own.
This Monster Manual entry gives us two different bodaks: the Skulk and the Reaver. There are no bodaks in the Monster Vault.
Bodak Skulk
From the looks of it, this is the classic model. A level 16 Lurker, with Int 6 and 124 HP, the skulk has darkvision and an Agonizing Gaze aura: anyone in its radius (5 squares) who makes a ranged or melee attack against the bodak takes 5 necrotic damage before the attack, and a -2 penalty to the roll. This is both a gaze and a fear effect, and doesn’t affect people doing close or area attacks, so wizards take note!
As expected, this is a Medium Shadow Humanoid (undead). This is not the first undead monster we see in this Let’s Read, but I haven’t explained the keyword before. It’s pretty much like you’d expect: undead don’t breathe or sleep, aren’t affected by anything that specifically targets living creatures and are affected by anything that targets undead.
The Skulk moves at speed 6. It’s immune to disease and poison, and has Resist 15 necrotic. It’s also Vulnerable 5 to radiant damage, and if it takes radiant damage it can’t weaken anyone with its basic attack for a turn.
The Bodak Skulk attacks with a slam that does a mix of physical and necrotic damage, and also weakens the target for a turn. Once per encounter it can focus its gaze on a single target, attacking their Fortitude: if this hits a weakened PC, the PC is immediately reduced to 0 HP. This is pretty serious, but it’s not quite instant death like in previous editions. If the target is not weakened, they take necrotic damage and lose a healing surge (this edition’s equivalent of negative levels).
Finally, as an at-will standard action, the creature can turn invisible, insubstantial and gain phasing. In this state it can do nothing but move, and can return to physicality as a free action.
This thing is going to follow the party invisibly while waiting for a chance to attack, then will reveal itself right next to a vulnerable character, weaken then with the slam and fix its gaze on them on its next turn. It will likely do all of this as the party is hit by a group of less subtle undead.
The skulk’s big Lurker Attack is the death gaze - once that’s expended, it becomes a somewhat more fragile skirmisher. Early edition damage issues make it quite weak in direct combat, and fixing those would go a long way to make as threatening as its level indicates.
Bodak Reaver
The Bodak Reaver is the Skulk’s smarter, braver cousin. Another Medium Shadow Humanoid (undead), the reaver is a Level 18 Soldier with Int 10 and 175 HP, wearing plate and wielding a greataxe.
It has pretty much the same resistances and vulnerabilities as the Bodak Skulk, except its necrotic resistance is a little higher at 20. Its basic greataxe attack does a mix of physical and necrotic damage, and both dazes and weakens on a hit. Since the text of the vulnerability is the same, I’m going to assume this still dazes even when it can’t weaken, and that this is the main way in which it fulfills its soldierly function.
The Reaver’s Agonizing and Death Gazes are the same as the skulk’s. Bodaks gonna bodak.
Finally, the reaver is a Death Drinker: if any living creature is reduced to 0 hit points within 5 squares of it, the reaver gains +1 to attacks for a turn, and 15 temporary HP. That’s not just PCs! If the reaver has living allies, their deaths will also make it stronger.
Like the skulk, the Bodak Reaver is in major need of a damage update. Other than that I don’t see anything wrong with it.
Encounters and Final Impressions
The suggested encounter here is level 18, a bodak reaver and two slaugher wights commanded by a cambion hellfire magus.
Overall, it seems 4e Bodaks aren’t going to fill a party with dread in the same way an old-school bodak would, since each of them can only mostly kill someone with a gaze once per fight. Of course, an all-bodak monster squad can still potentially kill the whole party with their gazes if they coordinate well, something which is already perfectly possible at Int 10.
Making custom bodaks is doable: aside from being undead, their signature abilities are the Agonizing and Death gazes, and a melee attack that weakens. A memorable villain the party has faced in the past could be raised as a bodak and employed as a lieutenant by a necromancy-themed Big Bad.
-
Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Boar
Dire boar (left) and Thunderfury Boar (right). Boars are real animals, so you probably know what they look like already. Boar-hunting was a very prestigious and difficult endeavor in medieval times, since real-world wild boars are deadly opposition for someone armed with a spear.
Still, the Monster Manual seems to think your typical PC party would have little trouble handling real-world boars, much like Asterix and Obelix. So it provides us with more extreme versions.
These exist only on the Monster Manual - while the Monster Vault has an appendix on animals, it doesn’t contain boars.
Dire Boar
Like a real-world boar, but bigger, meaner, and spikier. It’s a Large Natural Beast (mount). Creatures with the “mount” keyword confer special abilities to their riders. Not all beasts that can serve as mounts have the keyword - only those who grant these abilities to their riders. Early rules for mounted combat stated that PCs had to have the Mounted Combat feat to benefit from these mount powers, and mount stat blocks usually stated that the rider also had to have a minimum level. All of this had been done away with by the time the MV came out.
Indeed, dire boars can be domesticated as mounts, though even then they’re ill-tempered and tough to handle. They’re also the preferred mount for dwarven cavalry units. So yeah, dwarves have dire boar cavalry! It makes perfect sense when you think about it: the riders have a temper to match that of their mounts, and the mounts menace with spikes of bone.
Rules-wise, dire boars are Level 6 Brutes, have 85 HP, and move with Speed 8. They attack by goring with their tusks, which does extra damage against a prone target. When the boar is reduced to 0 HP, it gores one last time as a free action.
They’re also good at charging! A gore attack done as part of a charge does extra damage, pushes the target 2 squares and knocks them prone. So their preferred tactic is to charge someone and them gore them repeatedly while they’re down.
If used as a mount, the boar gets to make a gore attack in addition to the rider’s attack when the duo charges. The way I understand it, this gore attack also gets the charge benefit I described above.
Thunderfury Boar
The platonic ideal of a badass boar, native to the Feywild. It’s even bigger, even meaner, and even spikier than a dire boar. This boar is a Large fey beast, no mount keyword. You can’t truly domesticate these beasts, but clever fey sometimes keep them captive and release them in the general direction of people they want dead. They have Int 5 but no languages. Whether this means they’re super-cunning animals or actually sapient is left as an exercise for the GM.
The thunderfury boar is a Level 15 Brute with 182 HP and ground speed 8. It fights in much the same way as its cousing above, with goring charges followed by more goring, but it has a few differences aside from the increased damage. Its basic gore attack deals increased damage when the boar is bloodied, and its charges deal an extra 10 thunder damage on top of that. It also has an attack named Thunderfury, rechaging on 5-6, which from what I understand it is a big stomp that sends a shockwave around the boar. It’s a close burst 2 that targets Fort, does thunder damage and knocks prone. On a miss, it still deals half damage.
Encounters and Final Impressions
The suggested encounter is level 5, a dire boar and a party of 5 orc regulars (1 shaman, 4 berserkers). Having one of the berserkers ride the boar will give you the most bang for the buck when it comes to charging attacks.
The most awesome thing for me here was the bit about dwarven boar cavalry. I’m really tempted to stat up a unit of level 6 dwarven knights riding dire boars. Beware the charge of the 15th Thundertusks!
-
Let's Read Hell's Rebels Adventure 2: Lucky Bones
This article is part of a series! Click here to see the rest.
Time to finally end Turn of the Torrent! When we last left off, we had just finished exploring level 1 of the complex under the Lucky Bones casino. Now it’s time to descend to level 2.
Lucky Bones: Lower Basement
This is a literal dungeon! It’s here that the Spiders kept their captives while waiting to ransom them or sell them into slavery.
The most important thing about the Lower Basement is that it’s almost completely flooded, and will remain so until the PCs clear it. The ring of swimming from Adventure 1 and cloak of the manta ray from level 1 of this same dungeon will surely be useful, though in the end the whole party needs a way to breathe underwater if they want to venture here.
Potions and scrolls of water breathing are available in the open market in Kintargo, and if Octavio is in friendly terms with the PCs he might ask the seers back at the Shrine of Saint Senex for their wands of wather breathing. Once that’s taken care of, the party still needs to mind the many combat penalties they’ll get against this level’s aquatic denizens.
Things get a bit more expensive in Dungeon Fantasy, since its water breathing spell has a duration in the scale of minutes instead of hours. A wizard who happens to have learned it at skill 20 could keep it on indefinitely on themselves. They’d need skill 25 to cover the whole party.
Item-wise, there’s an alchemical amulet of water breathing in DFRPG Magic Items that costs $23.400 and works for as long as it’s worn. If your party isn’t rich enough to buy one for each PC, you could introduce a more reasonably-priced alternative that only lasts for about as long as the Pathfinder potion.
Opposition in this level is a band of skum spies sent here by an aboleth necromancer to spy on Kintargo. The aboleth doesn’t have any designs on the city, it’s just sending spies on general principle. The skum “foot soldiers” are led by the wizard Ungol-Pagh, and either brought or befriended a bunch of other sea monsters to act as guards down here. They’ve also captured a group of sea elf rangers who came in here to search for their missing ally, the opera singer Shensen (who vanished in the initial Thrune purges before Adventure 1 started).
Here’s our condensed room key:
D1. Flooded Warehouse: Completely submerged in cold and still but mostly clear water. Large square stone pillars, a pile of algae-caked rubble. Five skum lounge here and will likely see the PCs as soon as they come in. They attack on sight and fight to the death1. Secret passage in a hollow pillar leads to D2 and requires a very hard Perception check to find. Obvious exit to D8 and up the well back to C16. If the party leaves, any surviving skum relocate to D8.
D2. Hidden Passageway: Accessible from secret door in D1. Corridor with stairs that rise out of the water and lead to D3.
D3. Vault Door: Accessible from D2. This area is above the water level. Large iron door with a fiendish (pun intended) combination lock that requires three hard lockpicking tests to open. Failure triggers a large blade trap embedded in the door that attacks the intruder for a boatload of cutting damage. The skeletal corpse of Guildmaster Baccus lies at the foot of the door (he fumbled the combination).
Baccus wears several magic items, which we’ll look at in detail later. He also clutches three keys to the chests inside the vault, and carries a fragment of a devil-summoning book2 containing a word that can cause great pain to the drowning devil on this level of the dungeon.
D4. Gray Vault: Accessible from D3. Three heavy iron chests; skeleton of a human woman with eight spidery legs protuding from her back. The locks on the chests are even harder to open than the ones on the vault door, but Baccus’ corpse has the keys.
The skeleton belongs to the vault’s former guardian, a jorogumo from Tian Xia3. It’s inert and harmless, but serves as foreshadowing for the next adventure. The chests contain quite a bit of money and loot, as well as a couple of cursed surprises. We’ll look at them in detail below, but bear in mind that some of the cursed items may alert the surviving Gray Spider leader that her old lair has been breached.
D5. Shells and Pillories. Accessible from D1. Low ceiling, completely flooded. Whiping posts, rusty empty cages, well leading to D11, doorway leading to D6, secret door leading to D7. Two piles of shells in this room are actually a pair of Shell Sentinels, amorphous seashell golems who animate and attack any intruders (meaning any non-skum).
D6. Acisazi Prisoners. Accessible from D5. Completely flooded. Several cells, currently containing a five person squad of sea elf rangers from the Acisazi tribe. If freed and given equipment, they will gladly help the PCs clear this level. They’re weaker than the PCs, but work well underwater and are valuable as support. The party gains XP for each elf who survives to the end of the adventure.
The elves came here looking for Shensen’s help against an aboleth wizard threatening their village - the same wizard who sent the skum here. Helping the village is an excellent way to gain outside support for the Silver Ravens, and is covered in the next adventure.
The PCs have about two weeks from the moment they enter the level to rescue the elves. It’s unlikely they’ll take that long, but at the end of this time the prisoners are taken away to be turned into more slaves for the aboleth.
D7. Pump Room. Accessible through secret door in D5. The skum know about this door. Completely flooded. Contains a huge, broken magical pump. Repairing the pump will take three days, some money and the services of a skilled enchanter (like Hetamon Haace). It also requires recovering a missing part from room D10.
Once repaired, the pump will drain areas D1-D9 and D12. Fixing it gives the party a large XP award and is one of the main goals in the adventure, after clearing this level.
D8. Smuggler’s Cave. Accessible from D1. Completely flooded. A cave with a submerged dock. Four skum lounge here with two trained reefclaws. Any survivors from D1 will retreat here as well. An alarm spell will go off as soon as the PCs enter from D1, alerting the skum leader in D12.
Reefclaws look like lobsters with eel backsides. They attack with grabby poisonous claws and constriction.
Also here are two watertight barrels containing still-functional bottles of air.
D9. Sewer Access. Accessible from D8. Small submerged cave, tunnel leads off the map and into a Kintargo sewer. Guarded by a devilfish in league with the skum. A devilfish is a sapient (but stupid) seven-armed octopus the size of a horse that attacks with tentacles, a bite, and a cloud of poisonous blood.
D10. Pump Valves. Accessible from D8. Completely submerged. Several pipes with magical valves connect to the pump in D7. One of the pipes is missing a valve, pried out by the skum and currently in possession of their leader in D12.
D11. Disposal Cave. Accessible from D10 or from well in D5. Completely submerged cave, walls encrusted with filth and sludge, huge pile of refuse in the center beneath the well. The refuse pile is the nest of an advanced globster whom the skum have been feeding. It investigates any noises and attacks if not immediately fed, fighting to the death.
A globster is a huge, blubbery underwater ooze. This one is particularly huge and blubbery.
D12. Observation Post. Accessible from D8 or from secret passage in D13. Underwater cave, walls partly covered with glowing lichen. The leader of the skum, a skum wizard named Ungol-Pagh, carves notes about his spying on the walls for future reference and attacks the PCs as soon as he becomes aware of them.
Ungol-Pagh is a level 7 wizard, meaning he’s slightly stronger than a PC wizard would be at this point. He has lots of charm and paralysis spells, plus a wand of lightning bolt with 12 charges, which is surely the thing you want to have when fighting underwater.
D13. River Access. Accessible from D8. Underwater cave links to a river outside Kintargo, and is guarded by a drowning devil originally summoned by Guildmaster Baccus. The devil summoning text found on Baccus’ corpse in D3 contains a word that causes this devil great pain. The devil is currently aligned with the skum, whose leader promised to find a way to free it from its binding.
Drowning devils have this name because they like to drown others. They’re Large, look like four-armed eels, are fully amphibious, and have all sorts of waterbending powers that make them oodles of Fun (TM) to fight underwater.
The Loot
The magic items on Baccus are a +2 mithral chain shirt, a handy haversack full of money, a +1 lawful outsider bane mithral dagger, and a ring of protection +2. I guess this is officially the point where the PCs are supposed to upgrade to +2-tier gear. And that dagger is a handy weapon against devils!
The first chest in the vault contains a whole lot of money. The second a whole bunch of potions and poisons, including a vial of oil of life distilled from the Philosopher’s Stone4. And the third has a bunch of magic items: cloak of elvenkind, folding boat, wand of alter self with 23 charges. The cursed objects mentioned earlier are also in this chest: a set of prisoner’s dungeon rings, and a robe of powerlesslness disguised as a robe of bones.
When someone puts one of those rings on, the wearer of the jailer’s dungeon ring that completes the set will instanly become aware of their location and status. That wearer is Hei Fen, the last surviving Gray Spider, who will deduce from this that her old hideout has been breached. I don’t know what a robe of bones is supposed to do, but it doesn’t really matter because what this robe actually does is act as a wearable No Mana/No Sanctity zone. Once worn, both the rings and the robe can only be removed by magic like Remove Curse.
The skum wizard has the already mentioned wand of lightning bolts, plus a headband of intellect +2, amulet of natural armor +1, and a lesser extend metamagic rod.
Delving the Dungeon
Stealth is almost impossible here, just as it was in the cultist hideout on level 1. There’s a bunch of skum right by the entrance, and it looks like any sounds of combat would carry well enough under water to attract the attention of anyone nearby.
The “brutal raid” approach is the only viable one, at least as I see it. The most logical response for the skum when they first see the party is for the level’s whole contingent to converge on the intruders! Here is how things will likely play out:
-
PCs arrive on D1, the five skum there start a fight.
-
The four skum on D8 notice the fight almost immediately, as there’s no barrier between the two rooms. Three of them plus their two pet reefclaws join the fight immediately, one runs to warn Ungol-Pagh. Depending on how you judge things, this could be accomplished by manually triggering the alarm spell, which reduces the wizard’s response time a bit.
-
Ungol-Pagh runs towards the fight as soon as he’s finished buffing himself, arriving in a few rounds.
The skum are all fanatics who fight to the death, so there’s no reason for them to retreat and turtle up, save perhaps to lure the party to one of the other monsters.
I don’t think any of the other monsters on the level would leave their territories to fight in room D1, but that still leaves the PCs facing down nine skum soldiers, two reefclaws, and Ungol-Pagh. If they’re really efficient they might turn this into a fight against three distinct waves of enemies, but this is likely to become one big subaquatic furball.
Well-prepared PCs could still take all the enemies here in one go, particularly if they’re Dungeon Fantasy delvers, but now I see why some of the text expects the PCs to retreat and take multiple tries to clear this level.
Clearing the skum and their allied monsters out of level 2 makes it possible for the PCs to fix the pump and make the place habitable to air-breathers again. Unless the party takes a serious beating from the defenses in this level, they should also clear it in time to rescue the aquatic elf rangers, which gives them a direct lead to the next adventure in the path.
That’s it for the final dungeon in Turn of the Torrent! The next post is going to look at what the PCs likely accomplished in the adventure as a whole, and the consequences of it.
-
-
Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Berbalang
Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast Berbalangs are ghouls from filipino myth, and were first made into D&D monsters in an old issue of White Dwarf back in the OD&D days. Here, they’re only on the Monster Manual.
The Lore
Despite the impy look of the picture, Berbalangs are Medium! They’re Immortal Humanoids and Evil, but are not devils. The book doesn’t say much about their in-setting origin, but what little description is there implies berbalangs live in the world and not on the Astral Sea. They’re definitely sapient with Int 14, and speak Supernal.
They feed on the flesh and bones of dead humanoids, but that’s just a carrier for their real source of nourishment: the memories of the deceased. The creature relives those memories when it sleeps, and derives sustenance from them. It doesn’t matter whether the corpse is fresh or centuries old, the memories encoded in its physical form will still serve as food just fine.
Some berbalangs take up residence in remote villages, where they make a deal with the local leadership: instead of burying their dead, they offer them up to the monster, presumably in exchange for protection against other threats. If no one has died of natural causes recently, the berbalang instead demands a sacrifice.
Berbalangs are solitary, but will occasionally share their lairs with other monsters that like dwelling in tombs and crypts.
The Numbers
Berbalangs are Level 10 Solo Skirmishers with 408 HP. Their AC and Reflex are strong for their level, and their Will is slightly weak. They have a ground speed of 6 and a flight speed of 8.
The only reason I don’t consider them the most gimmicky monster I saw so far is because I just reviewed beholders. You see, the berbalang’s main ability is Summon Duplicate, an at-will minor action. While not bloodied, the creature can create up to four psychic duplicates of itself. Creating a duplicate costs the berbalang one quarter of its current hit points, which become that duplicate’s HP. So a healthy berbalang can create three duplicates with 104, 76 and 57 HP respectively, leaving itself with 171.
The duplicates have all the same statistics of the original, and the damage of their attacks is psychic. They act as fully independent combatants and can be targeted by PCs normally. A berbalang can use a standard action to either absorb a duplicate and regain 50 HP, or detonate it. The resulting explosion affects every enemy adjacent to the sacrificed duplicate with an attack that does psychic damage, and which dazes even if it misses. This also causes 25 damage to the original berbalang.
Once per round the creature can also deflect all damage and all negative effects from an attack that hit it to one of its duplicates.
Its basic melee attack is downright prosaic next to all this: a claw attack that suffers from the usual math problems. In a given turn, every duplicate will get one of these, and they get sneak attacks against enemies flanked by two of them.
The suggested encounter is level 12: a berbalang, a gibbering mouther, and a skeletal tomb guardian walk into a bar.
A lone berbalang might make an interesting boss battle against a level 7-8 party, at the end of an investigative adventure where they find out it’s enslaving a village.
subscribe via RSS