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• May 10, 2019

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Beetle

  

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

  Monstrous beetles are some of the most traditional opposition for low-level adventurers, so it’s no surprise they show up here. I was sure they’d have an entry in the Monster Vault, but it turns out they’re MM-only. We get three monstrous beetles in this entry, all of them Unaligned and possessed of Int 1, the minimum possible value.

  Fire Beetles are the most traditional beetles of all. In my experience their name often made people think they had some sort of fire attack in previous editions, but it actually referred to the fact that they glow. Well, here they finally get their fire attack!

  4e Fire Beetles are Small Natural Beasts and Level 1 Brutes with 32 HP. They bite and can use a Fire Spray (recharge 5-6) that does fire damage in a Close Blast 3. Defensively, they have Resist 10 Fire. And yes, you can still extract the glowing glands from a dead fire beetle and use them as torches.

  Tangler Beetles are one of the many beasts often tamed by humanoids and used as guard animals. They’re Large Natural Beasts and Level 5 Controllers with 62 HP. They have a bite basic attack, and a ranged Entangling Spittle attack that does no damage but immobilizes the target.

  Rot Scarab Swarms are the first swarm monster we’ve run into in this book, and are a good showcase of the swarm rules. Individually, they’re normal-beetle-sized and native to areas tainted by the Shadowfell (making them shadow beasts).

  The scarab swarm counts as a single Medium creature, a Level 8 Soldier. It has a Swarm Attack aura 1 that allows it to make free basic attacks against anyone who begins their turn caught in it. That basic attack is a necrotic “Swarm of Bites” that also does ongoing necrotic damage, and they get to attack normally in their action as well. They take half damage from melee and ranged attacks, and 10 extra damage from close (burst/blast) and area attacks.

  The sample encounter is level 1, a trio of kobolds and their two pet fire beetles.

  Final Impressions

  I like that Fire Beetles finally get a fire attack. I seem to remember them having one in Neverwinter Nights, but I’m not sure if they had one in actual 3.x D&D. I’m fairly sure they didn’t have it earlier than that.

  Rot Scarabs are a nicely creepy addition to a crypt-themed dungeon. They’re undead-adjacent but not undead themselves, so I guess encountering them can be somewhat surprising for PCs. Including them in a fight against undead is a good way to make sure the cleric can’t shut the whole opposing force down with a single turning attempt.

• Apr 17, 2019

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Bear

  

  We have bears in the real world, so they don’t require much in the way of introduction. D&D has always included a variety of bears in its bestiaries, their various real-world species lending themselves well to the “pallette swap” approach preferred by its older editions.

  After going through a few Monster Manual-only entries, we finally arrive at one that exists in both books. The Monster Vault has an appendix with stats for mundane animals, likely a response to complaints from traditionalist players that the original Monster Manuals didn’t include any.

  But wait! If the Monster Manual doesn’t have anything on mundane animals, what does it say about bears? Let’s find out.

  The Lore

  They’re bears. Large, omnivorous, inhabit temperate or colder areas. I wasn’t aware of it until recently, but it appears the “Bear Lore” entry in the Monster Manual is kind of a running joke among 4e players. It’s structured just like the lore entries for weirder monsters, so it ends up telling us a PC needs to succeed at a DC 20 Nature check to know that bears attack with their claws.

  IIRC, while real-life bears can be dangerous, they usually don’t go out of their way to attack humans, so most bear encounters will be peaceful. Of course, this being D&D, you can encounter some bears that don’t exist in real life and that are far more ornery.

  The Numbers

  Combining the two books gives us three different bears: a mundane Bear (MV), a Cave Bear (MM), and the ever spiky Dire Bear (both). All are Unaligned natural beasts and have Int 2.

  The Bear likely represents a brown bear. It’s Large, and a Level 5 Brute with 80 HP. It attacks with its claws, and can use a Bear Grab about twice per fight (it recharges when the bear is bloodied). This allows it to make two claw attacks against the same target, and if either one hits the target drops prone and the bear grabs it if it has fewer than two creatures grabbed. This ain’t no normal bear hug. At the start of the bear’s turn, it deals automatic damage against any creatures it has grabbed.

  The Cave Bear is meant to represent a species that’s extinct in our world. It’s a Level 6 Elite Brute with 170 HP, but for some reason it’s only Medium. It’s more of a striker than a grappler: aside from its claws, it has a Cave Bear Frenzy that does claw damage in a Close Burst 1 and recharges on a 5-6. That’s a bit less multi-strike ability than I’d expect from an elite monster, but not too much less.

  The Dire Bear follows the “bigger and spikier” theme set for dire animals in Third Edition. The Monster Vault version is merely an update of the Monster Manual, so I recommend using that one in all cases. It’s a Large Natural Beast and a Level 11 Elite Brute. Its basic attack are its claws, but it will rarely use that. The Dire Bear’s real go-to ability is Maul, which is at-will and allows it to make two claw attacks. If both hit the same target, the bear grabs the target if it has fewer than two creatures grabbed. This grab requires a secondary attack in the MM version, but not in the MV one. The bear can also use a standard action to deal lots of automatic damage to a grabbed creature (that’s where you use its action point).

  Suggested encounters in the MM are: Level 6, two cave bears and one bugbear strangler (“us bears gotta stick together!”); and level 11, 1 dire bear, 1 ettin spirit-talker, and 3 ogre minions.

  Final Impressions.

  Well, they’re bears. While there’s nothing terribly exciting about them lore-wise, they do their job mechanically (particularly the Monster Vault variants).

  One thing that might be fun is to have an evil druid as a villain, using charmed bears to do his bidding. Have the party be on the receiving end of the Aggressively Hegemonizing Ursine Swarm for once.

• Apr 10, 2019

  I Learned Something About Fighter Planes

  I’ve been playing a lot of Ace Combat 5 and 7 lately, so I have fighter jets in the brain. And today I learned something I’d never have thought was possible from looking at the way those games or RPGs like GURPS model them.

  Apparently, modern fighter planes are so fast they can shoot themselves down by outrunning their own cannon fire! Implausible, you say? Well, if you read this bit of news you’ll see that it actually happened in January of this year with an F-16, and that there are records of at least one other incident from back in 1956 with a Grumman F-11.

  The gist of it is that shells are fired from the aircraft’s cannon at a speed equal to that of the aircraft plus their muzzle velocity, as you’d expect. However, they’re quickly slowed down by drag, so it’s possible for a plane flying at high speeds to accelerate past the bullets it just fired and maneuver itself into a position to be hit by them.

  GURPS and most RPGs just tend to treat projectiles as having infinite speed. A character shoots, and the bullet flies out to its maximum range before the end of that character’s turn. This is a pretty decent approximation for the type of combat that usually happens in these games, which is between people on foot and at relatively short ranges. GURPS Tactical Shooting does have some additional rules for projectile flight time, but those are optional and mostly meant for snipers¹. None of the existing rule sets contemplates the speed and ranges involved in jet age air combat.

  Do we need specific rules for this hazard? I would say not. It’s even more of a niche situation than long-range sniping, and the bookkeeping required to track it would not be all that fun even in a realistic game about air combat. No, what we have here is an excellent result to use if someone rolls a critical failure on a Gunnery or Pilot test. Even if you go on to become the Ace of Aces, your squadron-mates will forever embarass you with stories of that one time you shot yourself down.

  1. Who are famous for not moving at supersonic speeds. ↩

• Mar 29, 2019

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Battlebriar

  

  Today’s monster is the Battlebriar, a plant creature that’s entirely new to me. It exists only on the Monster Manual.

  The Lore

  Battlebriars are weaponized biotech! These plant monsters were created to serve as living siege engines. A direct quote from the book: “They can destroy massed formations of lesser troops, storm defended embankments, or bring down fortifications.”

  Being plants, these living engines of destruction are surprisingly low-maintenance. As long as a battlebriar has access to water, fertile soil and sunlight, it can live forever. This makes them good guardians in addition to being siege weapons. Fey creatures like to use them to guard their strongholds. Other battlebriar users include Hill Giants, which I found quite interesting. Sometimes they also escape their masters and go live in the wild.

  Battlebriars are Unaligned and have Int 3, so PCs are most likely to fight them when going against their masters. A wild battlebriar will likely leave the PCs alone if they don’t provoke it, though of course they might have no alternative if it’s blocking their goal.

  The Numbers

  We’re given two stat blocks for these things.

  The Warthorn Battlebriar is a Large natural animate (plant), and a Level 14 Controller with 141 HP and a ground speed of 6. It has an aura of Grasping Thorns, with a 2-square radius, that makes its area difficult terrain for enemies and deals 5 damage to any that start their turns there. This thing has dozens of branches constantly flailing around!

  Aside from a reach 2 claw as a basic attack, it can also fire thorns from those branches in a close burst 2. This targets Reflex, dealing damage an slowing targets for a turn. Furthermore, its claw attacks pull victims towards the monster. Getting away from this thing is quite hard: you’re slowed, in difficult terrain, and when you manage to get away it pulls you back. It also has threatening Reach, and so can make opportunity out to its full reach of 2 squares.

  Its big brother is the Earthrager Battlebriar, a Huge elemental animate (plant). It’s a Level 28 Elite Brute with 634 HP, a ground speed of 8 and a burrow speed of 6. It’s made out of vines rather than thorny brambles, so its 3-square aura pulls enemies towards it. It’s the Reach 3 claws that do the slowing. It also has threatening reach, and it can trample - that last bit is how it attacks several characters at once.

  It resembles the Tarrasque in its tactics when on the offensive. When used as a guardian, it burrows and uses tremorsense to detect intruders, erupting below them to fight.

  The suggested encounter is level 14, a Warthorn being used as a weapon by a party of 2 cyclopes and 3 hill giants.

  Final Impressions

  Living siege engines are always cool, and these are nicely thematic for fey or elemental Earth-themed opposition. I liked them. Like every other MM monster, they need the damage fix, but other than that I see no fault with them. I like that their abilities match their in-world roles. The warthorn is your infantry killer, and the Earthrager with its burrowing and trampling ability makes short work of castles and walls.

  The Earthrager is the sort of weapon a mortal or fey army would round up to fight the Tarrasque… or, since it’s elemental, it might itself be a prototype or herald for the Big T.

• Mar 27, 2019

  Let's Read Hell's Rebels: Part 2, Part 3, Part 2

  

  Welcome back to Let’s Read Hell’s Rebels! On our last installment, the PCs explored the underground base under the ruins of the Lucky Bones casino and cleared out a nest of diabolic cultists, but all of that only covered half of the first level of the dungeon. Here we’ll go through the other half.

  Lucky Bones: Haunted Opium Den

  The Haunted Opium Den occupies the northern half of the level 1 map. It shares the same basic traits: 8-foot tall walls, pervading moisture, swollen and stuck doors. The main difference is all the doors here are closed, there’s no illumination, the temperature is just above freezing, and the mournful moans of lost souls echo through the hallways. In other words, it’s obviously haunted.

  The party can access this sub-level through the door on C7, which as mentioned before is protected by a complex lock and an arcane ward. PCs with the right spells and skills just might be able to get through it on their own. Otherwise Octavio can hook them up with an NPC spellcaster to break the seal once the cultists are cleared. “Lucky” PCs might also find a secret passage in the hideout that leads to the bottom of a pit in this region, right into a faceful of yellow mold.

  Our opposition here consists entirely of undead haunting the places where they died or guardian creatures bound by sorcery. Since no one leaves their assigned rooms, there’s much less pressure to finish this area in one go than there is for the hideout. Two of the encounters (Lorelu and the wretchghosts) can even be avoided if all the party wants is to make a beeline to level 2, but all the undead in this area must be dealt with eventually before the complex becomes usable as a base.

  Here’s the room key:

  C10. Private Rooms: Accessible from C7. Fancy furniture rotted by time and moisture. Each contains a valuable hookah still in good condition.

  C11. High-Stakes Hall: Accessible from C7. Large card table with several seats. The corpse and ghost of Guildmaster Lorelu are here. The ghost will invite the PCs for a few “friendly” games of Odds and Evens. See below for details on this.

  C12. Opium Den: Accessible from C7. Squat columns, claustrophobic curtained alcoves. Three wretchghosts (see below) haunt this room and attack the living on sight. Their corpses lie here and are loaded with fancy jewelry.

  C13. Infested Pit: Accessible from C7. An obvious, 20-foot deep pit. Rotten rope-and-pulley device across it will crumble if anyone tries to use it to cross. Narrow ledge on south side allows passage with an easy Acrobatics check (DX in GURPS). Northern ledge looks similar but hinges down like the ones in C4 to drop people into the pit. The bottom of the pit contains the skeleton of a giant snake and a whole lot of yellow mold. It also has a secret passage leading to C4. PCs coming in from the other side of this passage for the first time will also be exposed to the mold.

  C14. The Watcher In The Walls: Accessible from C13. Floor tiled in odd patterns of red, green, blue and yellow tiles. A bound advanced xorn waits in the walls and will attack anyone who tries to cross the room without stepping on tiles of only one color (Lorelu can reveal this information). Yellow tiles contain secret compartments (single Perception/Observation test to notice them all) full of stolen money and jewelry. The corpses of two opium den clients killed by the xorn contain yet more jewelry.

  C15: Master’s Office: Accessible from C14. Large conference table, filing cabinets lining the walls, moldy portraits of all three guildmasters. A bunch of coins and a dagger of venom are on the table. The files contain a lot of obsolete ledgers, a bunch of deeds for property in Vyre that will be useful in the next adventure, and a poem with a circled passage that will be useful in C16.

  C16. Smuggler’s Well: Accessible from C14. Heavy battle damage on walls, old skeletons belonging to Grey Spiders and Torrent Knights. Six ghasts lie amid the inert skeletons. There’s a big well in the center, capped by a heavy stone slab decorated with a xenopterid statue with gemstone eyes (looks like a man in a trenchcoat from a distance). Pressing the eyes in the sequence circled in the poem found on C15 causes the stone to slide and open the way to level 2. The wrong sequence or any attempt to destroy the capstone summon a fiendish xenopterid that attacks the party. Only one such beast can be summoned at at time, but this keeps happening until the party gets the sequence right or manages to fully destroy the stone. Treasure includes scattered coins, jewelry worn by the ghasts, a +1 mithral short sword and a vest of escape amid the bones.

  Opposition Notes

  Lorelu

  If the PCs win a round against the halfling ghost, she answers a question from them. If she wins, the gets to drain a bit of the opponent’s life. The rules for Odds and Evens are at the start of the adventure book, initially presented as a harmless game you can play back at the Tooth and Nail. I think I glossed over it when describing that tavern, but it’s a nifty bit of foreshadowing when you know what it’s for.

  Lorelu remembers little of her life but has fairly good knowledge of the dungeon’s layout, traps, and current events - even stuff from the second level. Her answers are true but somewhat cryptic, and if she doesn’t know the answer to a question “I have no idea” is valid as far as the game is concerned. The life drain she employs on a loser causes damage to a random ability score.

  The list of things that will make the halfling flip out and attack the party is quite long: disturbing her remains, displaying symbols of the Order of the Torrent, winning more than eight games, getting caught cheating, and of course picking a fight.

  Lorelu is a classic D&D ghost, meaning she’s insubstantial, has a monstrously damaging spectral touch, can drain life as described above, and layers all of that on top of the abilities she had in life as a level 6 rogue. Yes, the spectral touch can be used for sneak attacks. Fortunately for the party, she will not pursue them beyond the door and “resets” to a friendly attitude when they go back in. The one way to destroy her for good is to expose her bones to sunlight. If the PCs think to ask her about that, she will let them take her remains to the surface and will no longer attack.

  Wretchghosts

  Wretchghosts are a new monster described in this book. As you might expect, they’re the ghosts of people who died from withdrawal. They’re associated with a specific drug (opium in this case), and their touch can get people addicted to it. They have bonuses against people addicted to the same drug as themselves, but these people can also bypass their insubstantiality and resistances.

  On the one hand, these former customers of the opium den were nobles and rich merchants, so their corpses have plenty of jewelry. On the other, a few of the PCs are likely addicted to opium after the fight ends.

  No mention whatsoever is made of special ways to get rid of this condition, so I guess it has to be cured the old-fashioned way. The ghosts can also use some spell-like abilities conceptually associated with opium, and go berserk when in the presence of the drug. You can have wretchghosts associated with other substances too, by switching their spell-like abilities.

  The “you’re now addicted” bit could really suck in GURPS, since Addiction there is a significant disadvantage and getting rid of it involves spending quite a few earned character points. Kinder GMs might wish to make it follow standard Affliction rules and have it only last for a few minutes of cold-turkey agony, or make it “permanent” but curable by Remove Curse.

  Other Opposition

  Ghouls have official stats on Pyramid #3/108. Increase their attributes a bit if you want to be strict about them being ghasts. They’re the last of the trapped customers to die here, having reached the battle site and resorted to cannibalizing the corpses before they finally starved.

  Xenopterids are Pathfinder’s version of the Moth Man legend. Man-sized bugs who look like people in trenchcoats from a distance, with sharp claws and a natural talent for grappling. They claw, they bite, they have venom, they drain blood, they have tough shells.

  Final Thoughts

  Pathfinder doesn’t always manage to straddle the line between atmospheric and tasteless, but I think it managed it here.

  The Lorelu encounter is practically combat-free for a perceptive party. That’s a lot more than I expected from the game that uses “attacks on sight and fights to the death” unironically. As for the other monsters, I particularly liked the wretchghosts. It’s fun to come up with new varieties of them for all the weird fantasy drugs in your world.

  Hitting the Haunted Opium Den early might not be a good idea even for parties who can get through the door on their own - they’ll need to conserve their resources for the boss fight at the Cultist Hideout.

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