The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

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

Month: January 2020

Cranium Rat Tactics

January 28, 2020

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Beasts

Cranium rats are minions of mind flayers, created “by bombarding normal rats with psionic energy” (and also, it seems from the illustration, delicately removing the top layers of their scalp and skull). Mind flayer colonies use them as forward observers; although the range of their telepathy is short (only 30 feet), the 120-foot telepathic range of a mind flayer extends their link to a more practical distance, and the 5-mile range of an elder brain increases their effectiveness by several orders of magnitude.

A lone cranium rat can’t do much. It’s extremely weak, with only 2 hp and 30 feet of darkvision. Its Bite attack is inconsequential. It can cause its brain to glow, emitting eerie dim light to a range of 5 feet, but that’s not very useful. If its range were 30 feet, it could combine this illumination with its darkvision to eliminate its Perception penalty within that radius. Since its passive Perception is only 10, that would be fairly useful. At only 5 feet, though, all a single cranium rat can do with this glow is give itself away.

However, a cranium rat that’s actively spying for a mind flayer colony might be ordered to use Illumination because a mind flayer or elder brain wanted to get a good, clear look at someone or something that the cranium rat had approached in the dark. In this scenario, the cranium rat is effectively doomed to die, providing a brief moment of extreme creepiness before it succumbs to an opportunity attack. If that attack should somehow miss, the cranium rat snuffs its light and Dashes away, hopefully to safety. (more…)
Leucrotta Tactics

January 21, 2020

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Monstrosities

Given a choice between looking at a completely new monster and one from the good ol’ days, I have a strong tendency to gravitate toward the latter, and when I wrote up a list of creatures from Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes that I haven’t examined yet, one name jumped out at me: the leucrotta, which appeared in the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual along with a much handsomer illustration than it’s given in Volo’s—but not nearly as hilarious a description. (Volo’s: “A leucrotta is what you would get if you took the head of a giant badger, the brain of a person who likes to torture and eat people, the legs of a deer, and the body of a large hyena, put them together, and reanimated them with demon ichor without bothering to cover up the stink of death.”)

I don’t recall leucrottas’ being associated closely with gnolls in the earliest days of the game, but in fifth-edition D&D, the connection is explicit: they’re another creation of the demon lord Yeenoghu. They’re smarter than the average gnoll and even smarter than gnoll pack lords, though not quite up to the level of a gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu. But they’re also less social, associating with gnolls mainly out of convenience and treating them as pawns when they do.

Leucrottas are large, fast, strong and tough—brutes, but unusually swift ones. They’re predators, but they lack proficiency in Stealth, which necessitates some creativity in their hunting pattern. How does a predator capture prey when it’s not good at hiding? (more…)
NPC Tactics: Scouts and Spies

January 12, 2020

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NPCs

OK, here’s a quickie post in response to a reader who pointed out that I haven’t yet taken a look at two non-player characters from the Monster Manual: the scout and the spy.

Scouts are spotters and lookouts. With proficiency in Perception and Stealth, they could be effective ambush attackers, but that’s not their job. Their job is to gather information and return with it; combat is an undesirable complication. Consequently, if they attack at all, they prefer strongly to do so at range.

Eighty percent of the humanoids they encounter will have a speed of 30 feet. Of the remainder, most will have a speed of either 25 or 35 feet. Therefore, they don’t position themselves any closer than 75 feet to their targets unless they absolutely have to, and if they have a good view, they’re content to stay as far as 150 feet away. They can attack at these distances without disadvantage, but they’re not assassins. They attack only in self-defense.

Whether they do even this much depends on the speed of any foe who sees and pursues them. If the subjects of their reconnaissance have a speed of 30 feet or slower, they take potshots (Multiattack, Longbow × 2) at pursuers who are still more than 75 feet away at the start of the scouts’ turn. If the pursuers are closer or faster, scouts Dash away. If more than one opponent manages to get within melee reach, or if they can’t afford to take even a single hit, they Disengage—they have the training to do so.

Scouts only drop their bows and draw their swords when they’re surrounded, with no avenue of escape. If they have no reason to think they’ll be killed if they’re captured, they may choose to surrender rather than fight. (more…)
Astral Dreadnought Tactics

January 10, 2020

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Monstrosities

Now that the holiday madness is over, it’s time to get back down to business, and the business of the day is the astral dreadnought, whose name tells you most of what you need to know: This fearless titan drifts through the astral plane, obliterating everyone and everything it comes across.

While its Strength and Constitution are epic, its Dexterity is dismal—a gargantuan beast like this doesn’t turn on a dime. Nor does it possess Intelligence beyond animal level. Its Wisdom is high, however, and its Charisma is exceptional—perhaps reflective of its ability to command awe. Despite its extremes, this is a straightforward brute ability contour, indicating a creature whose approach is to close in and maul.

Its resistances and immunities aren’t all that relevant, because (contra the flavor text in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes) its Intelligence is so low, it’s not going to bother to distinguish between one target and another. However, its relatively high Wisdom indicates a prudent, instinctual self-preservation impulse. The astral dreadnought is a creature so unaccustomed to resistance that any prey that can inflict a moderate wound against it (reduce it to 207 hp or fewer—yeah, that number’s not a typo) will give it pause. (more…)

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The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

Month: January 2020

Cranium Rat Tactics

Leucrotta Tactics

NPC Tactics: Scouts and Spies

Astral Dreadnought Tactics

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