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• Jan 21, 2019

  Where I Read the 4e Monster Manual: Angels

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

  In a substantial change from monsters bearing the same name the past, Fourth Edition angels have winged humanoid upper bodies (with “feminine or masculine features”), and their lower bodies trail off into flowing energy. Many believe they were created by the gods, but the truth is they arose from the stuff of the Astral Sea when that plane first came into existence. If this process was started by the gods, it was entirely unconscious.

  When the gods went to war against the Primordials, the angels pledged their service to the deities that most closely matched their individual beliefs. You see, Angels are a rather diverse lot, with a listed alignment of “Any”. So yeah, Tiamat and Gruumsh have evil angels on their payroll. You can even find angels working as mercenaries, serving people whose causes they find agreeable and who can meet their price.

  Angels are the first MM monster to also show up on the Monster Vault, where the lore was changed to make then mostly mercenaries who only ocasionally join up with specific gods in a more definitive manner. Here they’re Unaligned and make being as generic as possible in looks and personality a point of pride. Personally, I prefer the Monster Manual version with additional embelishments you can see in Final Impressions, below.

  Angels are usually paragon-tier, and are more involved in the world (and more likely to meet PCs) than deities or exarchs. They have quite a few signature abilities:

  • Flight (obviously!)
  • Immunity to fear
  • Resist 10 Radiant
  • Angelic Presence: all attacks against the angel take a -2 penalty while it’s not bloodied.

  Below are the four angels we get in the Monster Manual, all of which reappear in the Monster Vault.

  Angel of Battle

  

  Angels of Battle are military leaders. They most commonly lead angels of valor (below) into battle, but sometimes also lead mortal forces. When gods send angels of battle to deal with a situation, they’re not interested in dialogue. It looks like it’s made of flowing silver, with metallic wings.

  The Angel of Battle is a Level 15 Skirmisher Leader. It has 148 HP, with a slighly weaker Reflex and a slighter stronger Will than what is average for their level. It’s pretty fast, with a ground speed of 8 and a flight speed of 12.

  Its basic attack is with a falchion. It’ll mostly use that through Mobile Melee Attack, which allows it to move half its speed (so, up to 6 squares) and attack at any point in the movement without provoking attacks of opportunity for moving away. Hitting with an attack allows it to mark the target as a Chosen Foe, which means it will grant combat advantage to everyone until the end of the angel’s next turn. In an emergency, the angel can forcefully eject the metal feathers of its wings in a Storm of Blades, which does high damage in a Close Burst 3 and cuts its fly speed down to 2 until the end of the fight.

  The Monster Vault version is almost identical, with the only difference aside from the fixed damage being that the effect of Chosen Foe was rolled up into the description of the falchion attack.

  So here you have an opponent who keeps flying around just outside of melee reach and swooping down to harass the PCs and mark priority targets for its buddies to attack. It pairs well with enemies that exploit from Combat Advantage.

  The sample encounter is level 15, an all-angel party with an Angel of Battle leading two Angels of Protection and 8 Angel of Valor minions. I guess they could be part of the guard contingent for an evil god’s temple, or maybe a hit squad sent by an evil god against a level 12 or 13 party the god sees as an obstacle to their plans.

  Angel of Protection

  

  These are basically Angelic Knights Templar, serving as bodyguards for important faithful and protecting temples. It has fluffy feathered wings and wears golden plate.

  They’re level 14 Soldiers, with 141 HP. Their Reflex and Will are a couple of points below average, and it’s a bit slower than the Angel of Battle with “speed 6, fly 8”. In addition to the standard Angelic Presence, it has the Angelic Shield aura, which makes the 5 squares around it difficult terrain for enemies if the angel’s ward is also inside the aura and Angelic Presence is active.

  What’s this about the angel’s ward? Yeah, an Angel of Protection can designate another creature as its ward as a standard action. Wards that remain within 5 squares of the angel get a +2 to AC and take only half damage from all attacks, with the angel taking the other half. The angel itself fights with a greatsword that does added radiant damage.

  A given creature can only be the ward of one angel at a time, so encounter groups with more than one of these angels should probably either contain multiple “principals”, or you could set up a sort of “bodyguard chain”, with one angel protecting the principal, the second one protecting the first, and so on. They’d want spread out a bit in this case, to cover more of the battlefield in difficult terrain.

  The Monster Vault version is almost identical aside from the fixed math. The damage from its attack is also entirely radiant now.

  The sample encounter is level 14 and has two Angels of Protection, an Eidolon and 3 dragonborn raiders. Clearly these people are serving Tiamat.

  Angel of Valor

  

  The rank and file of Throne the Astral Sea. Individually they’re the weakest of all the angels, but there are “vast armies” of them. When a powerful cleric needs numbers to get the job done, they summon a bunch of these. One might also be sent to reward the follower of a god for meritorious deeds, either by delivering a magic item or with 10 days of service. Angels of valor are made of fire!

  We get several stat blocks for them. The first one is for a Level 8 Soldier, who is likely to be the first angelic opposition the party finds in the campaign. It has 88 HP, and Resist 10 Fire in addition to the usual radiant resistance. They have a flight speed of 9.

  It dual-wields a longsword and a dagger, and can attack with both on the same turn. While bloodied, it can light its weapons on fire for a turn, during which they deal fire damage instead of physical and target Reflex instead of AC. This makes me think the angel is dipping its blades in its own blood, which is a lot more Metal than I expected to see in this entry. It can also call lightning from the heavens on its own position once per encounter, hitting everything on a Close Burst 1 with mild lightning damage and dazing them for a turn (the angel itself suffers no damage, of course).

  The other stat blocks are Minions of varying levels: 11, 16 and 21, wielding greatswords. Nothing too terribly exciting about them on their own, but it does tell me that angels of valor have a role to play all through an angel-heavy campaign. The Monster Vault has only 16 Minion Soldier version, which I think is a bit of a loss.

  There are two suggested encounters here. The first is level 8, with two regular angels of valor in the company of a doppelganger assassin and a pair of shadar-kai. Servants of the Raven Queen, perhaps?

  The other is level 11, with 4 angel minions, two basilisks and a bunch of snake cultists. Zehir worshippers, clearly.

  Another interesting use for them with late Heroic tier groups would be to flip the script and have a PC’s deity reward them with the temporary services of an Angel of Valor.

  Angel of Vengeance

  

  Here’s an interesting factoid about paladins and clerics in Fourth Edition: they no longer lose their powers if they abandon their deity’s service. The gods need a different way to punish these prodigal sons, and that’s where Angels of Vengeance come in. In addition to punishing those who have angered the gods they serve, they’re sometimes sent to test those servants who are in danger of falling (and to immediately punish them when they do).

  Towering creatures of cold fire (they’re Large), Angels of Vengeance are Level 19 Elite Brutes. They have 446 HP and Resist 15 Fire, Cold and Radiant. With a speed of “8, fly 12”, you will likely not be able to outrun them. It trades away the usual Angelic Presence for a Cloak of Vengeance, which in addition to the attack penalty causes 1d8 fire and 1d8 cold damage to anyone who attacks the angel. Not a lot at these levels, but it’s automatic and can add up over time.

  These angels wield paired longswords that do almost as much damage as they should under the new math, which is remarkable. This damage is a mix of physical, fire and cold. Being an elite, the angel can make two longsword attacks per turn.

  The most interesting power here is certainly Sign of Vengenace, a minor action encounter power with a range of “sight”. Once the angel has placed the Sign on a target, it can teleport right next to it as a move action until the end of the encounter. So the first sign you’ve angered an Angel of Vengeance is when it teleports into your back line from atop a mountain several kilometers away. A mobile striker’s worst nightmare.

  When the angel is bloodied, it turns into a pillar of cold fire for a turn. The resulting explosion causes fire and cold damage in a Close Burst 2, and makes the angel immune to damage while it lasts.

  The Monster Vault version is pretty much identical aside from the fixed damage notation. All of its attack damage is now “cold and fire”, and the Cloak of vengeance causes a flat 10 cold and fire damage instead of 1d8 each. If you

  The suggested encounter is level 19 and consistes of two of these bad boys teleporting into your back line while a squad of Angels of Valor rushes forward to engage. That’s how Vecna tells you how he really feels about your party.

  Final Impressions

  Fourth Edition angels are very different from their Third Edition counterparts, and sparked early skirmishes in the edition wars when they were released as preview material. Them not being universally Good was a major break from tradition, and the new “humanoid silhouette” look was not a hit.

  While I’m a fan of the new cosmology myself, I confess 4e angels never sounded very exciting to me until I began this Let’s Read. When I first read these books, “Angels == Good” was still a firmly entrenched notion in my mind due to the traditional Christian depiction of them, so I was hesitant to use them as enemies.

  My opinion has been completely turned around these days thanks to reading the marvelous Kill Six Billion Demons webcomic. Its badass kung fu angels give me an excellent frame of reference for the ones in the Monster manual, particularly because they have all sorts of different moral outlooks while still remaining badass kung fu angels. The Angel of Vengeance here is reminds me very strongly of them, since it also has that “barely contained nuclear explosion inside a physical shell” vibe.

  So if you want 4e angels to feel less generic, K6BD can be an excellent source of inspiration. Perhaps the servants of each deity organize themselves in knightly orders, each following a different code. Membership in such an order alters the angel’s physical shell in specific ways: maybe an angel of Pelor looks like the luminous silhouettes here, but one serving Bane or Tiamat looks more like a K6BD Thorn Knight. Then you have those unaligned mercenaries, and I can easily imagine “Reach Heaven Through Violence” being one of their central tenets.

• Jan 12, 2019

  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.

• Jan 8, 2019

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

  

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

  If you’re following this series mostly through Octopus Carnival, you might not know I’m posting it on the RPG.net forums as well. The Aboleth entry sparked some discussion over there, and someone told me there were a few more aboleths detailed in Dungeon Magazine 170. Since I have that issue with me, I took a small detour to talk about those aboleths before moving on to the next Monster Manual entry.

  City of Aboleths was published in Dungeon 170, which came out in September 2009. Despite the grandiose name, it’s not actually a adventure, just a pair of combat encounters and a skill challenge. Written by Bruce R. Cordell, it’s a tie-in for a Forgotten Realms novel, also by Cordell.

  The Lore

  Yes, there’s more aboleth lore here. There’s the classic bit about each aboleth containing the racial memory of its whole lineage, which is always welcome. They don’t die of old age and never stop growing, which is nifty.

  Then there’s a bit about how they’re all p-zombies without a sense of self, and another about there being a city called Xxiphu which is the oldest aboleth settlement filled with all sorts of special “superior” aboleth and ruled by the oldest aboleth ever. Both of these I’m willing to discard as being novel tie-in dross.

  The Numbers

  The new monsters from this adventure are all those special “superior” aboleths from the novel. All except the hatchlings have a fly speed of 8 in addition to their land and swim speeds, and instead of the plain old Mucus Haze each gets a specialized “haze” aura. The increased damage their tentacles do to dazed targets has been separated into an ability called Mind Bore, which deals psychic damage when the aboleth hits a dazed or dominated target with a tentacle. These are the new monsters:

  First we have the Aboleth Hatchling, a Small level 16 Minion Skirmisher. It appears aboleths are born with Int 15 and an evil alignment, due to the weight of all those memories. Their tentacle attack does increased damage to dazed targets, as usual, and their haze is an Aura 1 that causes a cumulative -2 penalty to saves against daze or domination. Yes, if you’re surrounded by 4 hatchlings you get a -8 penalty to your saves.

  The Aboleth Suffocator is a level 16 lurker with 124 HP. Its tentacles daze, and it has a recharge 3-6 psychic blast called a Brain Lash that also does ongoing 5 psychic damage. When damaged, it turns into a pillar of slime which can’t attack, counts as insubstantial and can shift its full speed. The suffocator can end this as a free action, so it’s useful for repositioning. Its mucus aura gives enemies caught in it a -2 penalty to defenses and saving throws. Fight a suffocator and a bunch of hatchlings and you’re going to dang well stay dazed.

  The Aboleth Perceptor is a level 17 soldier with 168 HP. Its mucus aura allows it to ignore all concealment and partial cover when attacking anyone in the aura. The tactics text says the aura also works for its allies, but the stat block disagrees with that. The perceptor’s tentacles pull the target 3 squares and mark it, and it also has an Eye of Madness ranged psychic attack (recharge 5-6) that dazes and marks. Anyone who flouts the mark gets punished by a psychic blast that also makes them vulnerable to further psychic damage. Lastly, the perceptor can shift 5 squares to chase marked targets, as a move action (recharge 5-6).

  The Aboleth Behemoth is a Huge level 19 Elite Controller with 362 HP. Its mucus haze works as usual and gives enemies in it a further -2 penalty to saves against daze and domination while the behemoth is bloodied. It makes 2 or 3 tentacles attack per turn, each of which grabs and dazes on a hit. Twice per fight it can whip its tentacles around to hit everyone on a close burst 3 and slide them 3 squares. Its Mind Bore deals ongoing 10 psychic damage instead of just increasing the damage of a single attack by that amount. It also has threatening reach, allowing it to make opportunity attacks against people up to 3 squares away. It fights much like its less special cousin, the Lasher, only it takes up more space.

  And lastly, we have the Aboleth Master, which doesn’t appear in the provided encounters and is probably meant to be the “Eldest” aboleth everyone in the novel is so intent on killing. It’s a level 22 Elite Controller with 418 HP. Its haze makes enemies take a -2 penalty to Will against charm and psychic attacks, and pretty much all of its attacks are psychic. It has the Overseer’s Dominate, and Enslave, and can command dominated targets to use any power against their friends, not just at-will ones like usual. Its Mind Bore does ongoing damage, and it has a couple of neat tricks it can use as minor actions. Body Puppet is a ranged attack that does psychic damage and slides the target 5 squares, but ironically it targets Fortitude and so doesn’t benefit from the master’s own aura. Mind Snap does target will, and also dazes.

  Fun fact: all new aboleth here have a lower Int than the ones from the Monster Manual. Even the epic Master has an Int of 22, smaller than the 23 of its supposedly “inferior” brethren. The Behemoth has a 5.

  Final Impressions

  These monsters bring increased variety to an all-aboleth dungeon, but there’s an air of “these are from my novel so they’re extra-special” that bothers me a little. Giving all aboleths a fly speed would be worth it just to see the look on the player’s faces, though. The complementary haze auras thing could also work well.

  Still, there are a few weird things here, mostly the stuff that penalizes saves. I’ve yet to see that anywhere else. There’s also the perceptor’s aura doing one thing in the stat block and another in the description, and the master’s aura not helping one of its own powers.

  The two provided encounters are level 18, and take place in an “egg cyst”, a cave lined with aboleth eggs and their hibernating guardians. The article recommends adding it as a “side chamber” in a larger Underdark-themed adventure.

  The first encounter happens as the party enters the cyst and consists of the classic combo of 2 Aboleth Lashers and 1 Aboleth Slime Mage, only this time they have an entourage of 15 Aboleth Hatchlngs. The second one happens after they cross a stream in the middle of the egg cyst, which wakes up 2 Suffocators, one Behemoth and one Overseer from hibernation. If the PCs wade in the stream while fighitng the first group, it will trigger the second, making them fight against two encounters at once. I’ve had that happen with other monsters in my own adventures, and it was always loads of fun… for me!

• Jan 4, 2019

  Where I Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Aboleth

  

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

  Our first monster is the Aboleth, everyone’s favorite fishy masterminds. Background information on them here is a bit sparse if compared to previous editions, though this was remedied later in 4e’s lifetime. They’re only on the Monster Manual.

  The Lore

  The book says Aboleths are hulking amphibious creatures that originally hail from the Far Realm, but now live in the Underdark, swimming its lightless depths and creeping through its tunnels while leaving a slimy trail. Sometimes they make their lairs closer to the surface, though. Aboleths are telepathic and may live together as broods, attended by willing Kuo-Toa servants or by slimy servitors created through a ritual from humanoid victims.

  Peeking at the stats we can see all aboleths are Evil and highly intelligent (Int 23), so they retain their story roles as fishy masterminds. The two new things here, as far as I know, are making them amphibious and explicitly linking them to the Far Realm. The amphibious thing is really welcome in actual play, since it gives the GM lots more options for evil plans they can enact, and for how the PCs can confront them.

  The Far Realm thing is interesting because it provides us with a link between aboleths and the other pseudo-Lovecraftian monsters in this edition. Basically, anyone with the aberrant origin in 4e has some tie to the Far Realm.

  Future books for 4e would elaborate on the Aboleths a bit more - they’re actually survivors from a previous universe, escaping its destruction by hiding in the Far Realm and then migrating to the current world after it was created. I like that a lot! If you combine that with the “ancestral memory” thing they had in previous editions, this means they have access to staggeringly ancient and eldritch secrets. “Why yes, I just sold a copy of Summon Azatoth to this dapper gentleman that came in here just before you. Why am I packing my bags? No reason, really.”

  The Numbers

  We get three aboleth stat blocks here. While they’re pretty different from each other, they all share a few signature traits.

  First, all of them have a swim speed of 10 and a land speed of 5. That means they’re as fast on land as a dwarf or an armored man! They attacks work just as well in and out of the water, of course.

  Second, they all have an ability called Mucus Haze, an Aura 5 which makes enemies treat the affected area as difficult terrain. Aboleths aren’t just slimy, their slime is this almost sentient thing that pollutes the air and clings to any who dare oppose them, slowing them down.

  And third, their basic melee attacks (tentacles!) all cause increased damage against Dazed targets. We’ll see how each aboleth variant exploits this.

  Our first monster in this entry is the Aboleth Lasher, a level 17 Brute. Defensively it has 200hp and average AC for its level and role (29), but his other defenses are lower than I would expect (27/25/25). Its tentacle attack does Brute-level damage and Dazes, and it gets to make two against targets that grant it combat advantage. A simple and direct creature with a simple and direct strategy: charge someone and keep tentacling them until they die. Bonus points if that someone is the wizard or another equivalent squishy. “Simple and direct” doesn’t mean “dumb”, though. The Lasher has Int 23, so even he is qualified to be a sinister mastermind and to fight smart. And as a Regular monster, he won’t be alone.

  The Aboleth Slime Mage is the Level 17 Artillery variant. It has better defenses (AC 31, others 28/28/29), but only 128 HP to its name. This one is going to open up with a Slime Burst that selectively targets enemies in an Area Burst 4, which pretty much means “all the PCs”. It does okay damage and immobilizes with a Slow after-effect. Then it’s going to use an at-will Dominate on the PC with the lowest Will defense, and proceed to chuck Slime Orbs (that damage and Slow) at the squishies (or anyone who managed to dodge the opening salvo). It can only dominate one PC at once, but there’s a good chance someone will be dominated at any one time. Anyone who attempts to engage the slime mage in melee has to get through the Mucus Haze while slowed, so good luck with that. If they do manage it, they will only have to contend with the mage’s lackluster tentacles, and will be able to make opportunity attacks if it tries to use any of its other powers.

  Finally we have the Aboleth Overseer, a Level 18 Elite Controller (Leader). Its defenses are the expected for its level, with Reflex being a little weaker. Its Psychic Slime attack will likely catch the whole party in its area of effect and Daze everyone it hits so the Lasher (above) can start doing increased damage from the start. Fortunately, it can be used at most twice per fight. It has the same Dominate attack as the Slime Mage, but it can follow that up with Enslave, dealing obscene psychic damage to a dominated creature and making the domination permanent if it reduces the victim to 0 HP. It can also make itself and one ally temporarily invisible once per encounter, so it pairs well with a lurker. Its tentacle attack does okay damage and Dazes as well.

  Now, Enslave is a bit confusing. Does the victim get some HP back when its enslaved, or do they just drop as normal? I’m inclined to go with the first option, giving them a healing surge’s worth so they can keep being a nuisance in the fight. In any case, the “permanent” domination ends if the rest of the party manages to kill the Overseer. Should the Overseer manage to escape along with the enslaved victim, it can use a special ritual convert them into an Aboleth Servitor, which is actually for-reals permanent.

  Aboleth Servitors are humanoids whose skin has been turned into transparent slime. They have a swim speed and breathe underwater, but suffer greatly if they get too far away from their aboleth master. The average servitor is a Level 16 Minion, but I imagine the GM could custom-build a “named” Regular or Elite minion for those times when the aboleths manage to make off with an enslaved PC. You can also make any other appropriate monster into a servitor by giving it a swim speed and the Aboleth Devotion trait from the minion (and possibly increasing its level to somewhere around 16 if it’s lower).

  Suggested encounters are a level 17 composed of 1 Slime Mage and 2 Lashers alongside a troop of Kuo-Toa minion guards, or a level 18 composed of 1 overseer with 8 minion servitors plus a Nabassu Gargoyle and a Savage Minotaur, which I guess would be those custom-built servitors I conjectured about.

  These are “Final Battle” material for a level 13 or 14 party, or the sort of patrol a level 17-19 party might expect when raiding the fortress of a large aboleth brood.

  Final Impressions

  I never gave aboleths much thought before, but these are quite nifty! I think it helps a lot that they can go on land now. Your players might not find then as nifty as I do, though, since they’re quite liberal with distributing the Dazed condition. 4e players hate Dazed and Stunned, since they sharply limit their actions during combat and can be actually harder to get rid of than being at 0hp or less. Domination is a bit worse, because you’re both Dazed and playing for the other team.

  Aside from being highly intelligent, all the aboleths presented here are trained in Arcana, Dungeoneering and Insight, so you can still have a scenario where the party needs to negotiate for an aboleth’s services as a sage. Dungeoneering in 4e also includes knowledge about aberrant creatures, so it’s also a good proxy for knowledge about the Far Realm.

• Jan 3, 2019

  Let's Read: The 4e Monster Manual and Monster Vault At the Same Time!

  Lately it seems “Let’s Read” threads of various D&D books are becoming quite popular over on RPG.net, so I though I would get in on the action, starting with the first Monster Manual for Fourth Edition. And after thinking about it for a while longer, I became convinced that you can’t discuss the first Monster Manual anymore without also looking at the Monster Vault.

  Fourth Edition is one of my favorite editions of D&D¹, even though it doesn’t get much love from the general public these days. So I’m going to write these posts assuming that the reader doesn’t have a lot of familiarity with that edition. This means we’ll start with a basic explanation of Fourth Edition’s philosophy on monsters.

  One of 4e’s design goals, particularly in its early days, was a focus on gameable content. That means that every monster in the Monster Manual has to be something you can potentially fight. As a result, there are no harmless “fantasy wildlife” entries here, and almost no “always Good” monsters. In fact, some creatures that used to be “Always Good” in previous editions have been made more morally flexible, to increase the chance that Good-aligned adventurers might come into conflict with one. Harmless or always-Good creatures still exist, of course, but the thinking here is that if it’s not something you’re going to fight, it doesn’t need a full stat block. This is one of the things that got edition warriors in a tizzy, but I kinda liked it.

  The space saved from this is used to present you with several different stat blocks for each entry. There is no “generic kobold”, for example, but rather a mix of them built for different purposes so that you can design all-kobold encounters with interesting tactical situations. They’ll still all feel like kobolds, though, because all of them are going to have a few “signature” traits that are common to all kobolds.

  This brings up another major “philosophical” difference between this edition and others, in that you’re pretty much never expected to fight any given monster by itself. The CR system from Third and Fifth kinda leads you to think that way², but here it’s a little easier to keep in mind that an “encounter” is a group of monsters with complementary abilities. Combat is a team sport!

  Having said all that, I should point out a few bugs in the system that will be particularly relevant for this Let’s Read. Fourth Edition’s monster design system³ was a little miscalibrated up until the release of the Monster Manual 3. The main issue is that monster damage was too low, particularly for high-level monsters. Elites and Solos also had defenses that were a bit too high, which could extend combats past the point where they stopped being fun. Since we’re reading the very first Monster Manual, every single monster is going to have this problem, so I’m not going to mention it in each individual entry.

  That’s where the Monster Vault comes in. It was released a couple of years after the first MM, as part of the D&D Essentials line⁴, and it basically updated all the most popular monsters from the early books to the new math. Presentation-wise, it featured improved stat-blocks that were easier to read at a glance along with larger and better-organized lore entries for each monster. The idea here was that if you were starting out with the Essentials books, you could get the Vault and skip the older monster books, and if you already had those you could buy the Vault as an update.

  I’m going to read both of them in parallel! Whenever a monster features in both books, I’ll compare them and talk about the differences. Otherwise, I’m just going to discuss the monster as presented, but will kinda assume you’re going to apply the necessary fixes if you use any MM-only monster.

  By the way, this is a list of quick fixes you can make to bring early monsters more or less in line with the “new monster math”:

  • Add +1/2 level to all of their rolled damage (so a level 10 or 11 monster would get +5 damage to all of its attacks).

  • Add +2 to all attacks for Brutes.

  • Reduce all defenses for Elite and Solo monsters by 2.

  The first fix is courtesy of this Blog of Holding post, which also presents another, unofficial fix proposed by players who still think the resulting combats are too long: reduce base monster HP by 3 times the monster’s level. So a level 10 regular would have 30 fewer HP, an elite 60 fewer, and a solo 120 fewer.

  And that’s all for the introduction. Tune in next time for our first baddie, the venerable Aboleth!

  1. My favorite edition of D&D, as I’ve written before, is GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. ↩

  2. Though obviously it allows you to design encounters against larger groups. It’s just less intuitive about it. ↩

  3. I feel it’s the best monster building system out of all editions of D&D. I would be glad to elaborate on this on a separate post. ↩

  4. Essentials was almost, but not entirely unlike a “D&D 4.5”. All of its books are still compatible with the originals, but follow some different design principles. ↩

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