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[Let's Read] 4E Monsters and Manuals
mightyspacepope
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Let's Read: D&D 4E Monster Manual
Concept:
In this thread, we'll go through the Monster Manual from Aboleth to Zombie, discussing our thoughts and opinions for each monster. My goal is to prompt discussion to generate ideas that DMs can use in their campaigns and use our collective wisdom to make our games even more badass. Also, let's face it, the best book is the one that shows you the beasties you get to fight.
Possible points of discussion:
-What do you like or dislike about the monster?
-How would you use the monster in your campaign?
-What other monsters would you use to complement them in an encounter?
-If you've used the monster as a DM or fought against it as a player, how did it go?
-Can you think of an interesting way to make a BBEG or boss fight using the monster?
-Can you find any other artwork online that could inspire its use?
Every other day or so, I'll toss up a new monster and we can discuss it.
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The saddest looking fish I've ever seen.
We begin our odyssey with the Aboleth, a weird giant fish from the Far Realms. Aboleths spend their days in the Underdark, floating in lakes and crawling through tunnels. Occasionally, they bend lesser beings to their will. They speak Deep Speech using telepathy.
There are three varieties presented: Lasher (16, Brute), Slime Mage (17, Artillery/Leader), and Overseer (18, Elite Controller/Leader). In addition, stats are given for their Servitors (16, Minion), humanoid creatures that have been dominated.
Initial thoughts:
-I envision the party stumbling upon a lake far below the surface, meeting face to face with an aboleth and the overall experience being something like:
-I like the idea of an aboleth crime lord ala Jabba the Hutt. He's got this underground palace type thing in a lake deep underground, complete with mermaid dancing girls, kuo-toa and grimlock guards, and a mindflayer lieutenant.
-Their Mucus Haze (aura 5, difficult terrain for enemies) makes close combat a dicey proposition for non-defender types. It also allows the aboleth's servants to swarm to their master's protection quickly if it's in danger.
-The Slime Mage and the Overseer have the Dominate power, which is always a lot of fun. The Overseer also has Enslave, which essentially dominates a PC until the Overseer is killed.
Overall, I dig the Aboleth and would most certainly use him if I ever run a paragon-tier game.
As far as mechanics go, I am 100% on Aegeri's side in that they go one way or another, though the only way I've ever seen them go is to a painful death very fast. If I ever use aboleths, I'll design my own as Solos in paragon tier and elites at low epic, to regular at high epic. Perhaps for a final confrontation with a palette-swapped Dagon, who lives with them in their undersea aboleth-city.
OH! And Aboleths used to have really awesome magic based on Elder Signs (Basically giga rune magic).
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I think that's a pretty cool idea--you could go the Alien route with it (the party is just walking around this creepy place for hours, and then all of a sudden they stumble on the Aboleth Egg Chamber or something), or the Bioshock route (years of domination by alien minds has driven the population insane, and the PCs have to slog through them to escape/get the MacGuffin while the aboleths taunt them telepathically).
I would probably have them harvest the brain and put it in into a magitech jar with metallic leads attached and such to draw the information out by force. And then there's always the potential of the thing breaking out later, after the PCs are done with it, and them needing to subdue it again as a Brain in a Jar.
I can't believe they didn't include this detail in the 4E Monster Manual! Here's my personal idea for utilizing the aboleth's ancestral memory:
- A cult of Vecna is taking advantage of an imprisoned berbalang (which learns the memories of the sentient creatures it eats) by making it eat the cult's victims. Someone in the cult gets the bright idea to track down and slay an aboleth to feed to the berbalang, thus creating a cooperative being with knowledge of all time. Unfortunately, the berbalang gained the aboleth's mind control powers and took over the cult. The maddened creature has dubbed himself "The Ancestor" and is hunting down more aboleths to gain all of creation's knowledge and overtake Vecna as the god of secrets. The PCs find themselves forced to ally with the aboleths against the Ancestor.
EDIT: Oh, this month's Dungeon is going to include a "City of the Aboleths". Hopefully it makes them out to be more threatening than my campaign idea did!
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
This is just Bruce R. Cordell having no idea what to do with real classic Faerunian aboleths. Which I will post about as soon as I can finally find my copy of DDGttU again.
Drizzt Do'urden's Guide to the Underdark?
edit: holy God I was kidding and it is a real thing
This made me laugh way too hard.
It's nowhere near as bad as it sounds. Trust me. It's an Eric Boyd-written late-2e slab of lore about the Underdark under western Faerun. Its uncertain narrator is Drizzt writing to Alustriel as precursor to Luruar, which makes a lot of sense and set up some really good (Silver Marches) and bad (the first two books of the War of the Spider Queen) stuff. Its' usual entry is "let's explain how a Greyhawk city ended up on the master list in Drow of the Underdark" as opposed to "ooo swords!"
I'm still waiting for "Obould's Guide to [strike]Mithril Hall[/strike] MY HOUSE!!"
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Yeah, yeah, it sounds tired and overused 10 years on and taken totally out of context. Yay!
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Aboleths don't die when out of water, they succumb to "The Long Dreaming" as their body basically completely dehydrates itself. They can come back to life in floods and such thousands or hundreds of thousands of years later when the seas shift back to where they are or such craziness. (When this happens, the aboleth goes unconscious, but its natural armor bonus increases to +6 and it gains damage reduction 5/Adamantine!)
Abolethic racial memories go back before many races' worldly creation myths. The fact that the Aboleths are quiet and don't flaunt the memories in the faces of others is most likely a sign that the Aboleths' memories are true. Given enough time to wade through the sea of information, two aboleths can figure out exactly how they're related.
There are amphibious aboleths, they are faster on land and slower in water than other aboleths, and can survive much longer out of water before succumbing to the long dreaming.
Flying Aboleths are called Uobilyths and diverged from aboleth culture a long time ago, they rarely take slaves and commonly live almost three miles in the air in magically maintained clouds.
Stygian Aboleths are Aboleths that transported their city to Stygia, one of the nine hells, thousands of years ago. They're exceptionally large for Aboleths and like to take devils as slaves, or cooperate with them, or do other weird devil-fish stuff.
Aboleth Relations: This stuff is mostly applicable to monsters that don't exist anymore, but Aboleths like to enslave Kuo-Toa. The entry on Illithids is much more interesting. Illithids are one of the only monsters that Aboleths will ally with instead of try to enslave, because nowhere in the Aboleths' racial memories is the genesis of the Illithids recorded. I'll talk about that more if and when we get to Illithids.
I'm digging the mix of fluff and crunch discussion that we have going on.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
We continue our sojourn with Abominations, weapons created during the war between the gods and the primordials. The MM presents five varieties, four of which we'll discuss and save the fifth for our next installment.
Good lord, I don't want to fight something that has skulls for testicles.
The Astral Stalker is a Level 22 Elite Stalker. After the war, enclaves of astral stalkers survive in small tribes in the Astral Sea, led by the hunter with the most impressive hunting trophies. They can either by hired out to hunt down targets, or they might decide to do so simply for the challenge.
Initial thoughts:
-The picture itself is pretty badass. I dig the combination of lean/heavily muscled, along with the EXTREME claws. Also, you know a monster is tough when it's wearing a bearclaw trap mere inches from its groin.
-Mechanics-wise, you're encouraged to stay hidden, toss out some poison darts, attack with combat advantage, then turn invisible when the PCs get their wits about them again.
-These guys are Predators.
-It's Stalker's Quarry ability means that it always knows the exact location of its target, even if it's another plane. This could be really cool to use plot-wise, as the PCs are never safe if they're being hunted by these guys.
Excuse me, your epidermis is showing. What's left of it, at least.
Atropals are unfinished experimental weapons that had just enough divine spark to not stay dead. They now sow destruction and despair everywhere they go. Some of them are buried or hidden away, but others wander around like old people at a mall before the stores open in the morning. They gather lesser undead around them and are valued as allies by more powerful undead creatures. They're Level 28 Elite Brutes.
Initial thoughts:
-That is one creepy looking motherfucker. I could see it hovering toward a PC, its head lolling all about, mumbling incoherently and licking its lips.
-Its Shroud of Death aura is a bitch. +20 HP to any undead allies and -10 HP to any living creatures is just plain nasty. The PCs will want a weapon or ability that does radiant damage in order to shut it off as much as possible.
-Its ability to generate action points for itself is also a bit nasty.
Holy crap, that's a pinky demon with an extra set of arms.
Blood Fiends are Level 22 soldiers. They hunt for enjoyment and like to feed on the blood of living things. They're so scary looking that they can make enemies freeze up in terror. We're not really given much else besides the fact that they run in packs and occasionally work with elementals or death-related creatures. Oddly enough, they're described as "feral killers" but have an INT of 22.
Initial thoughts:
-Their Blood Thirsty bite is kinda cool. Deals initial damage, causes ongoing damage, and provides some healing. Gives off a bulldog sort of feel.
-Overall, kinda meh. Their Terror Gaze makes them less vanilla, but not by much.
Shadow puma smoke centaur from hell!
Phanes are Level 26 Elite Controllers. Their bag is that they like to time-hop around and act like dicks, causing chaos to lesser beings. They're willing to work with anyone, as long as it lets them continue being a douche.
Initial thoughts:
-The Phane has some pretty cool time-related powers. Some of their attacks can slow opponents down, while others daze, weaken, and make their enemies look like old geezers until they shake it off. In addition, they can rewind or fast forward themselves in order to remove status effects that are placed on them. Also, they're insubstantial and can move really goddamn fast.
-I like the idea of a Phane as a Loki-like agent of chaos, mindfucking with the party by changing their perception of time. Maybe they get stuck in slow-motion or fast-forward time, needing to do some sort of skill challenge to counter its effects. After that, they're able to fight the Phane.
Overall, Abominations seem to make good hireable agents that could be sent after the PCs in order to harass them. That, or random creatures that decide to dick around with them for the hell of it.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
*Yes I am aware there are atropals in the 3.x Epic Level Handbook.
But even the factions idea has a lot of variance as to how the PCs are introduced to it; they might be sent to find on, to prevent someone else from getting one, to actively capture one from another faction, or to protect a city or nation that gets caught in the crossfire when two competing powers use these things on each other.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I actually see the Abominations as being the hirelings and the henchmen. The only ones I could see being any sort of mastermind would be the atropal and the phane.
Even then, the atropal doesn't really seem to overly intelligent. I'm surprised at why the blood fiend was given so high of an intelligence score.
Also: I really enjoy this thread.
PSN: ChemENGR
You could run the Blood Fiend/Astral Stalker as level ~17/19 solos if you really wanted them in paragon though.
Finally, after many adventures, they have the chops to fight it once and for all.
Anyway, liking this thread :^:
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
So, the Nemesis?
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The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227