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Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?
The surrounding mushroom forest had an odd hush to it. Giant mushrooms towered over their smaller brethren in a dizzying number of shapes and shades. Where earlier than the mushrooms had been a riotous explosion of colours, at nighttime some glowed in inexperienced and blue hues. Sparkling spores lit the air, and a few sort of unusual insect buzzed erratically. It was virtually soothing if not for the plain indicators of a disturbance at their camp. The campfire was out. Several mushrooms had been crushed or pushed apart. Of Ra-Aten, there was no signal. Melarae kneeled to examine the bottom. She exchanged a anxious look with Lilliyana.
“What?” requested Allumer, wanting forwards and backwards between them.
“This looks like bear tracks—” started Melarae.
“That’s one big bear,” mentioned Sorrow with a smirk. “Would have to be, so Ra-Aten can carve his way out of it after it eats him.”
“That’s just it.” Lilliyana bent right down to take a more in-depth take a look at the tracks. “It’s a very large bear. And not a normal bear. At least not the kind native to the Gleanniguie forest.”
Inspired by the “screambear” from Annihilation, I wished to have a fungus-controlled bear-like monster who makes use of the voices of its victims to lure characters to their doom. And then when that does not work it simply leaps out from the darkness, grabs a sufferer, and drags them again to its lair.
When gamers cannot play, we give you an excuse to have their characters out of fee. In this case, our human rogue wasn’t capable of play, in order that meant the sporebear had “already gotten him” and was mimicking his voice. Of course, the gamers knew he wasn’t taking part in, so that they knew it wasn’t him.
That left primary ambush techniques. The bear’s screaming causes worry and panic, so it waited to see who failed and ran for his or her lives, and hunted them down. That was the plan, however that is not the way it performed out.
The present celebration is all eighth stage: tiefling sorcerer, tiefling warlock, gnome artificer, elf druid, and elf ranger. Once the sporebear screamed, the druid and artificer panicked and ran. And then it was immediately incinerated by the sorceress.
Just like that, my ambush monster was defeated in below three rounds. So I added one other one.
Ambush!
Hackney pulled a grenade from his pouch and set a timer, shoving it in the skull-like mouth. It beeped thrice earlier than going off. KA-BOOM! The explosion shattered the cranium of the sporebear, launching Hackney backwards. “That’s my opening: Malprg comselh!” KA-FWOOSH! Allumer despatched one other ball of flame into the bear, scorching the encircling mushrooms. The sporebear was on hearth, relentlessly charging towards Hackney. Sorrow landed in entrance of it. “That’s as far as you go!” The bear-thing took a swipe at him and Sorrow blocked it together with his blade. It reared up for an additional blow when it grunted and fell over, an arrow protruding of the again of its cranium.
The gnome regarded like a bite-sized snack, so the second sporebear selected him. The sporebear’s chunk initiated a grapple and it started dragging the gnome again to its lair to eat him. The gnome screamed bloody homicide and the opposite heroes ran to the rescue. The hexblade forged fly on himself and on the ranger, who started monitoring the place the sporebear was from above. They could not see it from the mushroom forest cover, however they might definitely hear the gnome’s screams. The ranger identified that being grappled by the bear wasn’t such a nasty factor, as it’d reveal the creatures’ lair (and the destiny of their lacking companion). But no person was taken with being mauled, so the celebration simply threw all the things that they had at it.
It seems you are able to do fairly a bit whereas grappled in Fifth Edition. The gnome forged thunderwave, which blew the sporebear again ten toes and stopped the grapple. That explosion gave the flying scouts a goal because the thunderwave knocked over mushrooms in addition to the sporebear. They directed the sorceress, who blasted the sporebear (together with a lot of the mushroom forest) into subsequent week with an upcast fireball.
The Art of the Ambush
It’s a standard horror trope, however it’s price distinguishing what makes an ambush monster so scary. The worry of an ambush monster is a fragile balancing act between guaranteeing a personality is dragged towards their will and promising a a lot worse destiny when it drags the character to its lair.
In principle, monsters can grapple characters and drag them away. In observe, grappling is not sufficient to cease a personality from fiercely resisting. That means grappling might be not sufficient for an ambush monster to ambush anybody at greater ranges. Instead, they’re going to have to inflict different situations: incapacitated, paralyzed, petrified, shocked, or unconscious. Some of those are achieved by brute pressure assaults by lowering a PC’s hit factors to zero, which sadly takes away participant company.
Ambush monsters are simplest when characters lose their cool. Fear results work properly, and to that finish the worry impact of the sporebear’s scream tactically achieved what I hoped for. But it required multiple monster to assist separate the characters from one another, with one scaring a runner proper into the ready arms of the opposite one. If I needed to do it another time, I’d emphasize results that scale back motion or quickly paralyze the character reasonably than simply inflicting harm. And it is price giving the monster some resistances or extra hit factors so it could possibly stand up to assaults because it drags victims again, or different technique of transporting with out leaving it open to assaults (burrowing, teleporting, and many others.).
For these of you who have a good time, Happy Halloween!
Your Turn: How do you deal with ambush monsters in your recreation with out simply insta-killing PCs?
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