The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Ready-to-Use Tactics for D&D 5E

Month: January 2017

Orcs Revisited

January 23, 2017

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Humanoids

Volo’s Guide to Monsters gives us fantastic resources to use when designing lairs for kobolds and planning out how they’ll behave in a combat encounter. When it comes to orcs, though, Volo’s cops out on these topics, instead giving us an anthropological (orcological?) overview of the highly theocentric structure of orc society. This offers some guidance on encounter building, but nothing here offers any new insight on how orcs might behave during a fight, save one detail: war wagons.

We can surmise that a group of orcs escorting a war wagon will be less likely to charge Aggressively if doing so means leaving the war wagon unattended. Also, as reluctant as orcs are to retreat to begin with, they’ll be even more reluctant if doing so means abandoning a war wagon. To allow a well-laden war wagon to fall into the hands of an enemy by fleeing would be unforgivably disgraceful. Orcs are so hung up on pride and valor, they won’t even use the war wagon for cover if they’re seriously wounded. If they have 1 hp left, they’ll place that 1 hp between the enemy and the war wagon.

What Volo’s does offer are five (!) new varieties of orc, two of which are spellcasters, all of which build on the orcish pantheon of the Forgotten Realms setting. (more…)
Kobolds Revisited

January 17, 2017

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Humanoids

Reading the section on kobolds in Volo’s Guide to Monsters gives me a much greater appreciation for kobolds. My own original assessment of kobolds was that they rely on ambush, will never fight an enemy hand-to-hand alone, and will retreat and regroup—or just retreat—if injured or isolated. Volo’s concurs, but it goes so much further. My hat is off to Volo’s.

“Because they are physically weak individually, kobolds know they have to use superior numbers and cunning to take down powerful foes,” it says. “Cunning” may be giving too much credit to a species with an average Intelligence of 8 and Wisdom of 7, but what I like about the section of Volo’s on kobold tactics (something it doesn’t offer for goblinoids) is that it takes the evolutionary perspective one step further than I did and presents kobolds as having evolved a highly cooperative society. Unlike goblins, forever squabbling and looking out for themselves, kobolds instinctively work together, even without having to discuss what they’re doing. (more…)
Hobgoblin Tactics: Devastator and Iron Shadow

January 10, 2017

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Humanoids

As I mentioned in my last post, Volo’s Guide to Monsters introduces two new varieties of hobgoblin: the hobgoblin Devastator, a battle wizard, and the hobgoblin Iron Shadow, a rogue-monk-mage. Based on the flavor text descriptions of these hobgoblin variants, I’m going to analyze them from the assumption that hobgoblin Devastators will most often be encountered on the battlefield amid other hobgoblins, whereas a hobgoblin Iron Shadow will typically be encountered alone.

Like ordinary hobgoblins, Devastators are strong across all their physical attributes, with none standing dramatically apart from the others, although Constitution is the highest of them. What sets Devastators apart is their very high Intelligence and above-average Wisdom. These scores indicate that a Devastator can accurately assess enemies’ weaknesses and select targets accordingly, as well as recognize when it’s outmatched.

Army Arcana is a handy feature akin to an evocation wizard’s Sculpt Spells or a sorcerer’s Careful Spell, letting the hobgoblin Devastator lob area-effect spells without regard to whether it has allies in the area of effect. Arcane Advantage, meanwhile, gives the Devastator an extra 2d6 damage on ranged spell attacks against front-line enemies (note that this does not apply to spells that require saving throws, only to those that require attack rolls). (more…)
Goblinoids Revisited

January 6, 2017

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Humanoids

Since I started this blog with a look at goblins, I’ll start my examination of Volo’s Guide to Monsters with another look at goblinoids. But first, one observation: In my original analysis of goblin tactics, I stated that they’d Disengage when an opponent closed to within melee range. This was based on their Nimble Escape feature, which allows them to Disengage as a bonus action. However, while composing my later post, “Dodge, Dash or Disengage?” I learned that orderly retreats are risky moves that require discipline, a trait that goblins aren’t known for. So how do they possess this ability as a feature? I conclude that they’re innately slippery enough that they can scamper out of an opponent’s reach too quickly for the opponent to react. It’s not a disengagement in the true, military sense, just an ability of theirs that happens to have the same effect, from a game-mechanics perspective.

As it turns out, my analysis of goblins hit pretty close to the mark. Volo’s goes into more depth about goblin behavior and social structure, but the basic ambush principle holds. There’s a greater emphasis on traps, suggesting that encounters between player characters and goblins not led by more formidable goblinoids should often begin with the PCs walking into one of the goblins’ traps (or avoiding them in the nick of time). The “Goblin Lairs” section provides a nice scaffold for building a series of goblin encounters on if the PCs decide to go hunting goblins themselves, rather than vice versa. (more…)
Myconid Tactics

January 3, 2017

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Aberrations, Monstrosities, Plants

Before I get into material from Volo’s Guide to Monsters, I promised I’d look at myconids: vaguely humanoid fungus creatures, categorized by the Monster Manual as “plants” in defiance of our current understanding of fungi as less closely related to plants than to animals. Granted, we shouldn’t be surprised when anything in Dungeons and Dragons defies science—but if, as a dungeon master, you feel like honoring science and being perversely difficult toward your players, you might choose to reclassify them as beasts, monstrosities or even aberrations. The last category might fit best, as they’re intelligent, but they’re certainly not a humanoid intelligence, or even an animal intelligence.

As subterranean creatures, all myconids share 120 feet of darkvision, plus the features Sun Sickness, Distress Spores and Rapport Spores. Sun Sickness penalizes myconids for venturing aboveground during the day: it gives them disadvantage on all ability checks, attack rolls and saving throws while in sunlight, and if they spend more than an hour out in it, it kills them. (They dry up or something, I guess.) Distress Spores gives them a form of telepathic communication with other myconids, informing them when they’re injured. Rapport Spores are interesting: they give all living creatures exposed to them the ability to share thoughts over a limited distance. Which is useful, because otherwise, myconids have no form of verbal communication.

Myconids are lawful neutral, not evil. Although not automatically friendly, they’re not automatically hostile, either; their default disposition is indifferent. But they are lawful, which means that being a troublemaker in their vicinity may provoke a hostile response from them. The more chaos-muppety your player characters are, the less likely myconids are to appreciate their presence. (more…)

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The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Month: January 2017

Orcs Revisited

Kobolds Revisited

Hobgoblin Tactics: Devastator and Iron Shadow

Goblinoids Revisited

Myconid Tactics

Support the Author

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