Hello, hello! I’m back from PAX Unplugged, the new book is moving, and I’m back to the blog with monsters from Van Richten’s Ezmerelda’s Guide to Ravenloft (she did the research, racist uncle took the credit—that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it). Before I jump into individual monsters, however, I strongly encourage you, if you own this book, to read the introductory sections of chapter 5, “Monsters of Ravenloft.” The advice these sections give on creating new monsters and customizing existing ones is outstanding. I won’t recapitulate them here, because honestly, this instance is one of few about which I can say the content speaks for itself, and I can’t improve on it by paraphrasing. Just read it.
With that out of the way, I’ll note that, as you might expect, the emphasis in Ravenloft is heavily on undead. Out of the 32 enemies included in the book, undead account for 12 of them. Monstrosities number six, and humanoids (including non-player characters) five. That’s nearly three-fourths of the creatures in Ravenloft right there. The leftovers comprise two aberrations, two fiends, two plants, a beast and its corresponding swarm, and a construct. My original plan was to follow the order of the sections of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters, starting with humanoids, but now that I think about it, it makes more sense to dive right in with the undead.
The most minor undead in Ravenloft is the death’s head, a flying, disembodied head, not to be confused with the vargouille, which is also a flying, disembodied head, but with bat wings for ears. One significant difference is that while vargouilles are always humanoid heads, created from the bites of other vargouilles, a death’s head might originate from a humanoid or beast but also from a monstrosity. The stat block in Ravenloft includes special actions for a death’s head that originates from a nothic or a medusa.
Death’s heads are flying skirmishers with high Wisdom scores. Because they can fly, they have an edge over their victims in difficult terrain, such as forests full of tangled undergrowth and mucky swamps. These types of ground allow them to fly in and out of their opponents’ reach faster than those opponents can pursue. However, their Intelligence is very low. If they’re lucky enough to be encountered in such terrain, they can take advantage of it, but if they’re not, they lack the sense to go someplace else.
Even monstrous death’s heads lack ranged attacks; they can attack only by engaging in melee. Thanks to their Wisdom, however, they have the horse sense to zero in on frailer, less armored targets. (The poor nothic’s head would love to be able to home in on a victim with low Intelligence, but alas, it has no way of knowing who that might be.)
Their first move is always to fly in and bite, but what happens after that varies. A humanoid or beastly death’s head keeps gnashing on the same target unless and until it takes damage, after which it Dodges (it’s not smart enough to know how to Disengage, but its Armor Class is pretty good) and flies away to a safe distance. When it engages again, it does so with a different target from its original one. If it was struck by a melee blow, it avoids the opponent who dealt it as well; if struck by a ranged attack, it might retaliate against that opponent, or it might go after someone else at random. Like I said, not bright.
A nothic’s head that succeeds in disorienting its target takes advantage of their inability to react by flitting directly to a new target. A medusa’s head does the same when its target becomes restrained. In cases other than these, a monstrous death’s head follows the same pattern as a humanoid or beastly one.
Death’s heads are undead and therefore creatures of compulsion. Regardless of how much or what kind of damage they take, they don’t flee.
The boneless possesses no tactical sophistication. With high Strength and Constitution, abysmally low Intelligence and merely average Wisdom, it’s a wind-it-up-and-let-it-go melee brute that goes straight for the nearest target. The main things you need to be aware of are (a) that both the Slam attacks in its Multiattack must hit the same creature for it to use Crushing Embrace, so it never divides these attacks between two targets; and (b) that Crushing Embrace renders the victim unable to breathe, so be ready to open your Player’s Handbook to chapter 8, “Suffocating.” I wouldn’t give the target character the opportunity to catch a breath and hold it before suffering this effect; as with other creatures that suffocate, such as the cloaker, letting the target hold their breath renders this feature wholly ineffective and irrelevant. Start the suffocation immediately, and remember that being unable to breathe also means being unable to speak or to cast spells with verbal components.
Boneless are also driven by compulsion and therefore fight until they’re destroyed.
Next: variant zombies.
Leave a Reply