The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

The four elder elementals in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes have a lot in common. To me, the most striking commonality is that they’re exceptional, if not extraordinary, in every single ability score but one: Intelligence. Each of them has Intelligence 2, indicating bare-minimum sentience.

Once again, we see the combination of low Intelligence and high Wisdom, only this time it’s dialed up to an extreme. What does it mean to have Intelligence 2 and Wisdom 18 or 21? It means intuition without thinking, awareness without adaptability, judgment without reason. It means a creature that acts according to its nature and can’t be compelled to do otherwise. It means a creature that senses the degree of threat that a party of player characters poses but can’t really distinguish any one of those PCs from any other.

These are the other traits shared by all elder elementals:

• At least two physical ability scores that are higher than all their mental ability scores.
• Proficiency in Wisdom and Charisma saving throws, making them extremely difficult to manipulate or to banish.
• Resistance to physical damage from nonmagical attacks.
• Immunity to poison damage, exhaustion, paralysis, petrifaction, and being poisoned or stunned.
• Darkvision out to a radius of 60 feet, which in this case I interpret to indicate not a preference for fighting in dim light or darkness but an indifference to lighting conditions in general.
• A lack of language. Elder elementals aren’t here to chat.
• Legendary Resistance, which they’ll use primarily to avoid debilitating conditions and only secondarily to avoid damage.
• The Siege Monster feature, which means they’ll destroy your cover before they destroy you.
• A Multiattack comprising two different attack actions, one attack with each.
• A selection of legendary actions that includes one turn’s worth of additional movement.
• Neutral alignment. The default attitude of an elder elemental toward other creatures is indifference. It’s not going to attack—intentionally—unless it’s provoked. But who knows who or what might provoke it?

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Salamanders are the fiery analogue to water weirds, galeb duhrs and invisible stalkers, but they’re significantly more independent-minded, serving only efreets (and those only reluctantly and resentfully). They have a society of their own, on the Elemental Plane of Fire, and if they’re hanging out on the material plane, they’re probably doing so against their will.

As fighters, salamanders are shock troops. Their exceptional Strength is coupled with high Dexterity and Constitution (their Con is higher than their Dex, though not significantly so): they can engage in either toe-to-toe slugfests or hit-and-run attacks, but in general they’ll favor melee over ranged attacks, because they can do much more damage at close range.

Salamanders are immune to fire attacks, vulnerable to cold attacks and resistant to physical damage from nonmagical weapons. Thus, they’re more cautious around foes who wield magic weapons, as well as spellcasters who sling frost spells. Because of their choleric temperament, however, this caution is as likely to result in focused fire (pun intended) as in avoidance. (more…)

Mea culpa. In my last post, I said I’d be looking next at “minor elementals.” However, of the three elemental creatures I’m looking at today—the water weird, the galeb duhr and the invisible stalker—the latter two are actually more powerful than pure elementals are, and none of them can be called with the conjure minor elementals spell.

You’ll note that one of the four classical elements, fire, is missing from this group. For some reason, the fifth-edition Monster Manual doesn’t offer a true igneous equivalent to these three creatures, all of which are specifically described as beings that can be summoned from their home elemental planes. The nearest equivalent—which technically can be summoned with conjure elemental, though this fact is mentioned nowhere in its flavor text—is the salamander. However, salamanders are neutral evil and, by their description, very much independent agents. Water weirds, galeb duhrs and invisible stalkers are neutral and (usually) compliant. (more…)

Today I wrap up my look at genies with the dao, which I include only for completeness’ sake, because—let’s be frank—it’s not all that interesting a monster, unless you’re running a thematic campaign on the Elemental Plane of Earth. Like the marid, it seems to exist only because someone thought the existence in myth of air and fire genies meant there had to be water and earth genies too. It doesn’t even appear to have a source in Arabic folklore. And its afterthought nature shows in its abilities.

Dao are straight-up brutes, lacking the cleverness of their cousins, although they still have above-average Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma by humanoid standards. They do have proficiency in Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma saving throws, and their Constitution is extraordinarily high, but they’re susceptible to spells that require Dexterity saves, which spellcasters can exploit.

Dao can attack unarmed or with a maul; the latter does greater damage and allows them to knock targets prone, so it’s clearly the preferred option. They have no special attack related to their element, only the Sure-Footed feature, which gives them advantage on saving throws against being knocked prone themselves. (more…)