Which Would You Rather Fight?

Today's Monster Monday tackles that age-old question that has plagued mankind for eons - which would you rather fight: a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses? You can finally answer this question in your game thanks to these two brand new monsters: the horse-sized duck and the swarm of 100 duck-sized horses! And feel free to spread the joy with a new spell (for bards, druids, rangers, and shamans) that lets you put the question to a friend or foe and then watch as they face the consequences of their decision.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2019 Jonah Bomgaars.

This massive duck stands on webbed feet the size of platters, preening its glistening wing feathers with its mighty beak. It could reasonably be described as horse-sized.

Duck, Horse-Sized             CR 2

XP 600

N Large animal

Init +6; Senses low-light vision; Perception +9

DEFENSE

AC 13, touch 11, flat-footed 11 (+2 Dex, +2 natural, -1 size)

hp 22 (3d8+9)

Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +3

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., fly 40 ft. (average), swim 40 ft.

Melee bite +5 (1d8+6)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks Mighty Quack (DC 14)

STATISTICS

Str 18, Dex 15, Con 17, Int 2, Wis 14, Cha 6

Base Atk +2; CMB +7; CMD 19

Feats Improved Initiative, Skill Focus (Perception)

Skills Fly +4, Perception +9, Swim +16

SQ hold breath

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Mighty Quack (Ex)

As a free action, the horse-sized duck lets out a booming quack. All creatures within 30 feet who can hear must succeed on a DC 14 Fortitude save or be shaken for 1 round. Once a creature successfully saves against this ability, it cannot be affected by the same horse-sized duck’s mighty quack for 24 hours.

ECOLOGY

Environment any

Organization solitary, pair, flock (3-12)

Treasure none

This tremendous duck is easily the size of a horse. With a bill the size of a tower shield and webbed feet the size of a smaller size of shield, this freakish waterfowl somehow lends itself easily to size comparisons. While it certainly seems to be the size of a horse, its mass is no doubt less, for horses have trouble floating and rarely fly unaided, while this mighty duck can easily do both.

Galloping forward on tiny hooves, these miniscule equines are all roughly duck-sized, though together they probably have the mass of one normal-sized horse.

100 Duck-Sized Horses               CR 2

XP 600

N Tiny animal (swarm)

Init +2; Senses low-light vision; Perception +7

DEFENSE

AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 12 (+2 Dex, +2 size)

hp 17 (2d8+8)

Fort +7, Ref +5, Will +2

Defensive Abilities swarm traits

OFFENSE

Speed 50 ft.

Melee swarm (1d6)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 0 ft.

Special Attacks distraction (DC 15)

STATISTICS

Str 10, Dex 15, Con 18, Int 2, Wis 14, Cha 11

Base Atk +1; CMB --; CMD --

Feats Endurance, Run^B

Skills Perception +7

ECOLOGY

Environment any land

Organization solitary, herd (2-5 swarms), infestation (6-12 swarms)

Treasure none

What at first appears to be a distant stampede of horses is actually a very close stampede of very small horses, each one approximately 1/100^th the size of a regular horse (in layman’s terms: roughly duck-sized). Still, they gallop with frightening speed for such tiny creatures on such tiny hooves. While clearly duck-sized, each individual horse is much more powerful than a single duck. It would take a duck of roughly horse-size to take them all on in a fair fight.

Horse-Duck Dilemma

School conjuration (summoning); Level bard 2, druid 2, ranger 2, shaman 2

Casting Time 1 round

Components V, S

Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Target one humanoid creature

Duration 1 minute/level

Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

When you cast this spell, the target is telepathically asked a single question: “Which would you rather fight – a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?” The target is compelled to answer immediately (no save), though their answer need not be truthful. Once the choice is made, the monster in question (either a horse-sized duck or a swarm of 100 duck-sized horses) appears at a random point within 30 feet of the target. It acts immediately, on your turn, though you have no control over it. The summoned creature is hostile to the target and attacks it relentlessly, though it will defend itself against other creatures who attack it as well. The summoned duck or horses remain for the spell’s duration, or until either they or the target are slain.

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d20 Despot began 6 years ago today, and by the gods I will not let that anniversary go un-marked.

-your equine/anatidine d20 despot

Monster Monday: Crystal Unicorn - The Prancing Prism

Today's Monster Monday is the crystal unicorn, a dazzlingly brilliant construct hewn from solid rock crystal into the shape of nature's most beautiful creation - the unicorn. This creature filters light into a dazzling array of magically enhanced colors, and its flawless facets are able to reflect spells back on their casters. The crystal unicorn is at once a deadly foe and a wealthy wizard's prized decoration. And don't be to hasty in celebrating your victory over this overgrown knick-knack - when defeated, these unicorns explode in a shower of crystal shards.

© Jennifer Petrie, Creative Commons Licence, via geograph

Like the arachnocalliope, I originally created this monster for my current campaign. The party was fighting their way through the lair of an old witch who, aside from having a lot of stereotypical old lady habits, was also a bloodthirsty murderer who built the bones of her victims into necromantically animated puppets. In one of her rooms, the adventurers had to fight off her private puppet circus which included a wind-up ballerina with a wicked kick, a mechanical magician marionette, and a crystal unicorn.

The best part about the crystal unicorn is, if you grew up in the household of a fantasy enthusiast during the 1980s, you probably already have a suitable miniature. All that's left now is to stat up little pewter wizards and ceramic dragons.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Calaca, the Lively Dead

Today's Monster Monday is the calaca - or calavera - a skeletal undead creature that eschews the traditional shambling and menacing of its undead brethren in favor of just, like, living its unlife. A calaca retains most of the personality it had in life and - unlike other undead - doesn't turn evil!

Calacas come from cultures that have a more positive outlook on death, where death is just an excuse to celebrate a life well-lived. These unique undead creatures reside most of the year in the Boneyard - the purgatorial realm of the psychopomps who usher dead souls to their eternal rests. Calacas are sustained by the memories of their living friends and relatives, and as time goes on they become more exaggerated representations of their living selves, sometimes verging on parody. Calacas can be summoned to the material plane at places to which they had strong attachments in life, or by remembrance rituals performed by the living.

© Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Calacas/calaveras are strongly associated with the Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos in Mexico, Día de los Muertos in the US), a holiday which blends Catholicism with native Mexican traditions regarding the dead. They have deep roots going back to the gods and ceremonies of pre-conquest Mesoamerica, but the modern calavera can be traced back to José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican engraver whose satirical pictures of skeletons acting like the living poked fun at contemporary Mexican society and politics. His most famous calavera - La Calavera Catrina - was a laughing skeleton dressed in the finery of an upper class Mexican woman, a caricature that Posada used to criticize Mexican women who rejected their indigenous roots by adopting European fashions and whitening their skin. Through subsequent decades of folk art, Catrina evolved and became closely associated with Día de Muertos, but always remained at her core a way for the dead to poke fun at the living.

Calavera de la Catrina - José Guadalupe Posada (c. 1910), via Wikimedia

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Skeleton Troop - Bones and Bows

Today's Monster Monday is the skeleton troop, a battalion of fleshless undead fighters armed with bows and bones. Now it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of skeletons. When I put those plot hook and encounter ideas down below each Monster Monday, once of them by default should be "The party encounters a skeletal version of this monster".

Scene from Jason and the Argonauts (1963) Colombia Pictures via Gamers and Grognards

The lowly skeleton archer has been the bane of many a beginning adventurer. It can shoot at you, but your retaliatory arrows are just going to pass through its ribs. Skeleton archers have been an enduring menace through every edition of D&D and similar games, but at high levels it can be hard to threaten the party with them. You either need a lot of them, or you need to stat up some skeletal champions that specialize in ranged combat. But, as we saw last week with the zombie horde, the 'troop' subtype is our friend. Now you can bring a whole bunch of skeletal archers to the table, but they all act as one monster, thus simplifying your job as GM without sacrificing the dangerous combat for your players.
The stat block for the skeleton troop below can fire mass volleys of arrows that deal automatic damage to anyone in their path, and with their troop attack they rip at any enemy that comes within melee range with their bony claws.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Zombie Horde

Today's Monster Monday is the zombie horde, a crushing mob of dozens of shambling undead, their insatiable hunger driving them inexorably onward. Zombies are nothing new in Pathfinder or D&D in general, but if you want to run a fight against a lot of them at once (as I'm sure you do), it can get pretty darn tedious to manage twenty-or-so individual low-level monsters. That's where troops come in.

The troop subtype is one of the best recent(ish) innovation that the Pathfinder RPG brings to the table. It basically functions as a swarm, but of larger and more intelligent creatures - a dozen individual monsters run as one big monster with a shared pool of hit points and an auto-hit swarm-like attack which ensures even low-level fighters can be deadly in large numbers. This allows the GM to run combats against veritable armies of men without getting bogged down keeping track of each individual soldier's attacks and hit points and whatnot, a task which I know from experience soon turns into the GM rolling bucketloads of dice and muttering to themself, robbing the encounter of its momentum and excitement. Currently the selection of available troops is limited to living humanoids organized for battle, but the troop subtype is much more versatile than that.

Night of the Living Dead movie poster, via Wikimedia

This stat block includes a number of special abilities to simulate our cinematic expectations of zombie hordes. Like individual zombies, the horde is staggered - able to take only one action per turn - but once the horde catches up to you it becomes a lot deadlier. The horde's troop attack does an extra d6 of damage to opponents it shares a space with. It also has improved grapple and the constrict special attack, which means it can grab and do ongoing damage to individual opponents that it overwhelms. Finally, once the mob slays an opponent, they take some time to devour them, destroying the body and regaining some health in the process. While D&D and Pathfinder zombies don't by default have the Romero ability to turn the living into more zombies, this 'devour' ability could easily simulate the conversion and addition of the defeated opponent to the zombie lifestyle.

Next week's Halloweenish monster will be another troop, but of a different sort of classic undead monster.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Giant Harvestman - The Daddy of all Longlegs

Today's Monster Monday is the giant harvestman, a gigantic arachnid whose long, spindly legs let it drop down from above without warning. A giant harvestman stalking through the woods on its tree-like legs might go completely unnoticed until its body swoops down to snatch a rider from his horse.

Harvestmen - better known as daddy longlegs (daddies longlegs?) - are common sights for us in our gardens and lawns. If you know any trivia about them, it is probably that they are not actually spiders or that they have very poisonous bites but their mouth parts are too small to be dangerous to humans. It is true that these oddball arachnids are not actually spiders - spiders have a distinct two-part body (the cephalothorax and the abdomen), while the cephalothorax and abdomen of harvestmen are fused into one mass. But their bites are not extremely poisonous; in fact, no species of harvestman has venom glands.

Aside from a ball-like body and a lack of venom, harvestmen also differ from spiders in a couple key ways. They have only two eyes, where spiders have - I think we can agree - far too many. Harvestmen do not spin silk and so can make no webs. Also, they can actually eat solid food. Spiders use poison to paralyze and liquefy their prey, wrap them up in their silk, and then suck the bug smoothie up with their gross mouthparts. Harvestmen are on no such juice cleanse. Their tearing pedipalps can rip off chunks of meat and swallow them whole - a rare ability amongst arachnids, and one that I am sure makes them a hit at parties. A less popular party trick they can do is secrete a stinky fluid from their scent glands to make them unappealing prey.

I have wanted to stat up a giant harvestman for a while, but their strange anatomy made that a challenge. Making them in the Gargantuan size category would be true to their actual size, but so much of that space is just open air because of their trademark long, spindly legs. As a compromise, I settled on a Large-sized body, with their legs not included in their size category but accounted for with special rules. If you are playing out a giant harvestman fight on a battlemap, you might use a Large-sized model as a stand-in for its head and eight coins as counters to represent the position of its legs. It might look something like this:

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Arachnocalliope - Musical Doom Construct

Today's Monster Monday is the arachnocalliope, a mad construct that is like a magical cross between a spider and a pipe organ. Piping atonal, demoralizing notes with every movement of its many brass legs and every contraction of its armored bellows-abdomen, the arachnocalliope is a true visual and aural horror.

This eccentric contraption functions as a sort of anti-bard in combat, laying down de-buffs on its enemies with sonic effects. Not that it is helpless on its own, with two sword-like forelegs and a sonic breath weapon (no one is resistant to sonic damage!).

The genesis of this creature lies in my Graverobbers campaign (which I have not posted an update on in about 3 years, but it's still going). In one session, the players were fighting some constructs made by a creative witch whose chosen artistic medium was bone sculpture. Among the odd bone creations they fought was this arachnocalliope. I decided it worked pretty well as its own stand-alone monster, so I re-worked it a bit to be made out of normal materials and here we are. Some of those other bone creations, like the ballistocentaur and the triskeliettin may make an appearance here in the future, but for now you'll just have to use your imagination to wonder what those polysyllabic monstrosities might be.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Chordopod, Bony Tentacle Beast

Today's Monster Monday is the chordopod, an undead monstrosity that takes the rough form of an octopus or spider made of bones. At its center is a large skull-shaped head formed from twisted and distorted bones, while its many tentacles or legs are long spinal columns which whip and curl and crawl. This twisted undead abomination is the result of a great outpouring of negative energy in places such as mass graves, battlefields, and shipwrecks where the remains of many individuals are left to mingle and decay anonymously.

With the ability to burrow, climb, and swim, these nimble monstrosities are all-terrain foes (I guess you're safe in the sky, unless one of them grabs onto the hull of your airship as you are taking off). I can see them bursting out of the desert sand just as easily as I can see them bursting out of the storm-wracked ocean or bursting through the troubled earth of a bloody battlefield. I guess I just picture them bursting through things.

Also in the stat-block below, a diseased variant that rises from the mass graves of plague victims and stalks through the streets of disease-wracked cities or the pestilential countryside, spreading filth and rot in their wake.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Tomtenisse - Tiny Fey that Pack a Punch

Today's Monster Monday is the tomtenisse, also known as tomte, nisse, or tonttu, an apple-sized little gnome from Scandinavian folklore which acts as a guardian spirit for a plot of land. These little guys have incredible strength for their size, able to punch out a grown man, snap a cow's neck, or carry a one ton load above their head. Why would these helpful farm spirits ever punch a cow to death? Well, tomtenisse can also be pretty dang ornery.

In the Christmas Night by John Bauer (1913), via Wikimedia

Tomtenisse help out around the farm in unseen ways, mending things, tending to the animals, and carrying loads. All they want in return is a bowl of porridge with a pat of butter on it on a specific day. If they don't get their porridge, they can become enraged, breaking things and lashing out at nearby creatures to punish their lax master. The older the tomtenisse, the more particular it gets about how a farm is run, and the quicker it is to inflict corporal punishment. If a new farmer on the land starts putting his tools away in the wrong places, a young nisse might rearrange them all in the night or pile them against the farmer's bedroom door, while an older nisse might simply break every tool that is out of its place. If a farmhand urinates in the barn, they might grab a manure shovel and smack them in the back of the head. If someone eats the nisse's porridge, they will usually be found beaten to within an inch of their life.

In perhaps the most illustrative story of the tomtenisse, a farmer leaves the nisse his usual bowl of porridge, but accidentally puts the butter on the bottom of the porridge. The nisse, thinking the farmer forgot the butter, becomes so enraged that he leaps up and cracks the neck of the farmer's prized cow. He then eats the porridge and finds the pat of butter at the bottom. Remorseful, the nisse runs to all the neighboring farms until he finds an identical cow to bring back for the farmer.

The tomtenisse reserve their deadliest weapon for those who cross them severely: a nisse bite can leave its victim cursed to wither away and die.

The tomtenisse legend may come from a pre-Christian belief in ancestor spirits. The earliest tomtenisse lived in burial mounds, perhaps the spirit of the first farmer to clear and work the land. In the 14th century, Saint Birgitte of Vadstena warned people not to worship the tompta gudhi (the house-lot gods). In modern times, the tomtenisse remain popular as Christmas figures, and though tales remain of angry nisse beating people to a pulp, they are more commonly seen having seasonal fun on Christmas cards.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Armored Grave - This Armor Shall Serve as My Epitaph

Today's Monster Monday is the armored grave, a knight buried in his armor, its once-gleaming plates now bursting at the seams with hard-packed grave dirt and the putrescence of decay. These are the tanks of the low-level undead world.

Buried in their armor, these ritually-prepared undead take on a new body of hard-packed grave dirt, granting them an additional layer of protection. Compared to ordinary skeletons and zombies, armored graves are invulnerable, unstoppable death machines.

Just to kick things up a notch, an armored epitaph is a slightly stronger armored grave which has Intelligence and feats and which isn't staggered.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Whip Scorpion & Pseudoscorpion

Today's Monster Monday is all about things that are called scorpions but which aren't actually scorpions. Whip scorpions are arachnids that spray acid from their butts, and pseudoscorpions have poisonous claws but no tails. They are both really small, but because this is a fantasy RPG I made them big and threatening.

ARACHNOPHOBIA WARNING

This post contains pictures of arachnids. I know most arachnophobic people are okay with seeing scorpions but not okay with seeing spiders, but these guys fall somewhere in between on the spectrum. Personally, I cannot look at pictures of spiders, but for some reason I can see pictures of spider-like arachnids like harvestmen and solifugids with little discomfort. But still, these non-scorpions might be a little too spidery for some people. For the benefit of people scrolling through the main site, I will be putting the page break here instead of right before the stat blocks as I usually do. Click through for more information on these two rarely-discussed types of arachnids and to see pictures of them.

Monster Monday: Bellwether - It Tolls for Thee

Today's Monster Monday is the bellwether, a black ram with a large bronze bell in place of its head. This harbinger of doom delivers blasts of pummeling sonic energy with every toll, leaving its targets shaken. If the bellwether is not stopped before it tolls thirteen times, all who hear its final bell are cursed, and the surrounding land is left blighted.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Mummy Wraps - The Embalming Construct

I approached the door with some trepidation, my earlier discourse with M. H-- on the subject of curses weighing heavily on my fevered mind. As a man of science, I held myself above such superstitions, but in that dark sandstone tunnel, choked with the dust of ages, such things seemed terrifyingly possible. Cuvier beckoned me examine the inscription on the door. Those inscrutable hieroglyphs remain a mystery to me, and I truly have no idea how my companion, learned though he was in such things, and quite more well-endowed with critical faculties than I, was able to derive meaning from them. Nevertheless, he did his best to explain. 'The room beyond must be the embalming chamber. Therein, the cadaver was prepared for the afterlife by the removal of the organs and the preservation of the flesh.'
   This gruesome fact was not new to me. I had, of course, read the MS by the renowned Mr. B-- of the Royal Society on the details of the process, which I have already laid out for you in great detail earlier in my account. But the idea that this place of ritual disemboweling lay just ahead of me through a foot of crumbling stone was, at the time, most disconcerting to my temper. Pallid though I was already, I am certain I grew more so at this news, though good Cuvier either did not notice or was kind enough not to remark upon it.
   Cuvier bade the workers make use of the great prybars which they had brought along for that purpose, and within the hour they had shifted the stone aside enough that we could make our ingress. Cuvier insisted on going first, and to my great and ongoing regret I let him do so with no small measure of relief on my part. He cast the light of his hooded lantern around the room, revealing what to the ancients must have been an impressive laboratory. Jars full of chemicals and unguents stood intact in chests of desiccated wood. An array of tools, equally at home in the hands of an anatomist as in those of a torturer, glinted in the light as if they were new, the dry desert air having preserved them for thousands of years without rust or decay. But in the middle of that cursed room - and I say cursed now, with full confidence and the benefit of hindsight - stood a solid stone mortuary slab topped with a tangle of ancient linen bandages. O that we had taken our leave then! But no.
   Fancying that I spied a scrap of writing on the bandages and fearing that my hands, moist from the fever and - I must admit - from nerves, might damage any ancient ink, I motioned Cuvier to take a closer look. When he did - O! If only this truly had been a fever dream! - the bandages rose up of their own accord and wrapped themselves around him. Helpless before these twining snakes of fabric, Cuvier at first stared in wonder, then tried to scream. His aborted scream, cut off by the living bandages as they covered his mouth, still chills me to my very core. With his last ounce of will, my dear companion reached out a shaking hand in a silent plea for help, but before I could grasp it, the bandages tightened and forced his arms to his sides. Before my very eyes, his skin grew brittle and taut and deathly dry. I could not help but turn away and, in my cowardice, flee headlong into the night.
   I know not how I made it out of that warren of ancient tunnels, the workers long since having fled and my only light source lying abandoned on the ground at the feet of my dead friend. Perhaps the instinct for survival alone carried my tired body back to my apartment on K-- Street. I can tell you that I did not sleep at all that night, as my thoughts were focused entirely on the arrangements I must make to leave this benighted country on the morrow. The full horror and the burden of guilt did not wash over me until that dark hour which lurks in the shadowy spaces between midnight and dawn. Alone with only my thoughts, I fancied that I perceived a dull scratching on my chamber door. I attempted to dispel the notion, but the sound grew only more persistent, its terrifying reality intruding even on my fevered and terror-stricken mind. At last, in a misplaced attempt to assuage my fears, I went to the door and opened it.
   There stood Cuvier, wrapped in those ancient linens, his skin browned with naptha and pulled tight across his bones. It is his face that still haunts me - cracked and sunken, with hollow eye sockets that could only be sightless and yet seemed so terribly perceptive. His papery lips pulled back into an accusing sneer, revealing yellowed teeth and a black tongue. I slammed shut the door immediately, and pushed my steamer trunk in front of it as a barricade. The scratching at the door came again in earnest, quickly becoming an insistent rap, and then a pounding that echoed in my ears. Abandoning my earthly possessions, I made my egress through the shuttered window and went by barge that very night to the port, with the intent of catching a ship bound northward at first light.
   I write this account from within the walls of St. S-- Asylum for the Criminally Insane, in the hopes that someone might read my words and know that, while I did not kill Dr. August Cuvier, I most certainly do not hold myself blameless in the story of his death. If his mummified body is ever recovered, I pray that whosoever finds it has the sense not to touch the bandages. 

Today's Monster Monday is mummy wraps, a dangerous construct that takes the form of spell-inscribed linen bandages with the power to wrap themselves around their victims, embalming them and turning them into mummies. While the victim's companions are presumably trying to figure out how to hit the bandages without harming their friend, the mummy wraps can control their cohort like a puppet, attacking them with their body as the victim watches helplessly.

The above vignette is written in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, albeit with fewer wordy and tortuous digressions on substitution ciphers, the value of inference, and the details of 19th century Parisian police-work. Don't ask me why, it just seemed fitting. Call it a tribute to my first DM, who kept a volume of the complete works of Poe on his shelf and insisted that it was "good fucking literature for Dungeon Masters."

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Qishilong, the Chinese Chimaera

Today's Monster Monday is the qishilong, a chimaera of Chinese mythical creatures that serves as a powerful guardian and master of the four elements. One head is that of the qilin (or kirin), the so-called 'Asian unicorn' which gallops through the air on flaming hooves. The second head is of the shishi, or guardian lion (also known as a foo-dog), omnipresent guardians of palaces and temples throughout East Asia. The third head is of a Chinese dragon, or long (imperial dragon).

The qishilong is not itself a being of Chinese mythology, merely a creation of my own inspired by Chinese mythology. Chimaeras are inherently weird, and it is pretty fun to come up with ideas for new types of them.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

War for the Plane of the Apes: Man-Ape, Simian Killing Machine

Today's Monster Monday is part IV of our month-long series about apes. Today, we take a look at the creature that kicked off my month-long crusade to re-stat the great apes. The man-ape is a savage creature combining the raw strength of an ape with the upright gait and fighting ability of a human. They look like something halfway between a shaved gorilla and a Silly Putty sculpture of Vin Diesel.

If you have read some of the original Conan stories, you have probably encountered a man-ape of some sort. Take, for example, this totally rad Frank Frazetta painting of Conan fighting one:

painting by the late Frank Frazetta

It is worth talking about why Conan occasionally encountered and fought these evolutionary dead ends. Robert E. Howard's worldview was very anti-civilization. He believed that civilization made men soft, weak, and corrupt, while the savage life of the barbarian kept men virile, strong, and true. He was also convinced that mankind was trapped in a cycle of civilization and destruction. His Conan stories are set in the fictional Hyborean Age that existed after the collapse of the Atlantean civilization and before the rise of historical civilizations like Egypt and Sumeria. At the same time, Howard lived in a time when evolution was not well understood, and racist pseudo-sciences like eugenics were popular (along with regular old unvarnished racism). In his description of the Hyborean Age, Howard essentially describes how each of the earth's races evolved from different types of apes at various points in prehistory (including Northern European white people, who he hilariously describes as having evolved from 'snow apes' north of the Arctic Circle).

This is problematic for a number of reasons - mostly that it is wrong and also racist. What it means for the world of Conan is that the races of mankind are: 1) different enough from each other that their closest common ancestors are not humans, and 2) that people of the Hyborean Age are barely removed from savage apes. Conan himself, as Howard's ideal man, is so powerful and brutish that he can face off against one of these gorilla-like proto-humans one-on-one and defeat it. They represent the true, sub-human savagery that Conan comes from, and that he is separated from only by his sharp wits and Cimmerian good looks.

Now you know some of the weird, racist backstory of man-apes in the world of Conan. But I trust you can come up with a decidedly non-racist reason for them to exist in your own campaign setting. It's actually way easier to do that than to follow Howard's tortuous path. Like, you can just say a wizard did it. That always works.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Sword Golem, a Thousand Angry Blades

Today's Monster Monday is the sword golem, a magically animated guardian that is forged, Iron Throne-style, out of thousands of swords. This noisy construct can slice and dice its way through any obstacle, launch individual swords at distant targets, blast groups of enemies with an explosion of blades, and even discorporate and transform its body into a wall of spinning swords. In short, this is a versatile monster that can provide a challenge to seasoned adventuring parties, and which fits in well in nearly any dungeon.

The origins of this monster lie in my childhood. I distinctly recall walking through the neighborhood at night and hearing loud scraping and clanking sounds coming from the neighbor's garage, like someone was shaking a sack full of scissors. Obviously, it was just the neighbor digging through his toolbox or something, but because it was dark out (I lived in a wooded area with no streetlights) and because I was young and easily spooked, I imagined a terrible monster whose body was made out of hundreds of swords and blades, all of them scraping rustily together as it moved. The image stuck with me somehow through the succeeding decades, eventually manifesting itself in this monster.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Phase Serpent, the Slithering Ethereal Hunter

The serpent stirred at the approaching footfalls - a telltale sign of incoming prey. It uncoiled its sleek body, muscles rippling under silvery blue scales, and dove into the floor, passing through the ancient flagstones and into the misty mirror universe of the Ethereal Plane. It slithered through curling wisps of vapor until it came to a place where it sensed the echoes of creatures on the material plane. Slowly, cautiously, it passed its head up through the floor behind the interlopers. There were four of them, two in gleaming metal armor, one in flowing robes, one in black padding. 

   Like flowing water, it lunged, piercing the robed one with its long fangs, then dropped back through the floor and into the ether. The one bearing its venom glowed, visible to the serpent even across dimensions. It followed the warm glow of the venom as the material creatures continued through its lair. When it judged the time to be right, it found a passage through the ether to the ceiling of the room the prey were in. It struck boldly now, hissing and rearing. At it attacked, it blinked back and forth between ether and material. One of the prey swung a cruel sword at the serpent, but the blade passed through curling mist as the creature popped back to the Ethereal Plane for a split second.

   Taking advantage of its distraction, the black padded prey cut deep into the serpent with twin short blades. The serpent recoiled into the ceiling. The black one was a greater threat when part of the group. It needed to be isolated. The serpent sprang out of the ceiling, barreling into the black figure, sinking its fangs deep into its shoulder and pushing it into the floor and through it, dragging it into the shrouding ethereal mists that lay just beyond the edge of the material world. The black padded figure was startled. The serpent tasted its fear on the air. It tried to strike back at the serpent, but the silvery beast simply coiled around it, biting it again and again.

   Suddenly, there was a burst of flame searing the serpent's hide. The serpent turned to find the robed prey blinking erratically in and out of the Ethereal Plane. It was terrified even as it blasted the serpent with another gout of flame. The hunter reared back and struck, but it bit down on nothing as the robed one blinked away. As the serpent hissed in frustration, the robed one reappeared and unleashed a crackling bolt of deadening energy which struck the serpent square in the snout. It felt heavy. It tried to pursue the robed one back to the Material Plane, but it couldn't make a passage there. The ethereal connections to the solid world were closed to the serpent by some magical force. It could only watch angrily as the three remaining prey, still lit up with the serpent's venom, passed deeper into its lair.

   It watched, and it waited.

Today's Monster Monday is the phase serpent, a silvery hunter from the ethereal plane. Armed with an array of dimension-defying abilities that let it strike from anywhere, this slithering terror is the perfect ambush predator to stalk the halls of any dungeon.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Hellmouth, the Gateway Monster

Today's Monster Monday is the hellmouth, a tremendous beast whose very mouth is a gateway to Hell (as you may have guessed from the name). Hellmouths were a motif in medieval art that tended to result in some pretty metal images, as in this detail from an icon showing a black hellmouth swallowing a bunch of damned souls, who are also simultaneously being roasted in flame, tortured by devils, and/or attacked by snakes:

Hellmouth, via Wikimedia

As it is statted up below, the hellmouth is not a monster the GM should use lightly. It is always important, when designing encounters, to take into account what might happen if one or more of the characters succumbs to the monster's powerful abilities. You don't want to throw a medusa at your players if you aren't prepared to spend some time with one or more of them petrified. Just so, you don't want to throw a hellmouth at your players if you aren't prepared to spend the rest of the session with half the part stuck in Hell. The hellmouth is best used when necessary as part of the story, rather than as a random encounter. That said, suddenly having to improvise a rescue mission to get your bard out of Hell sounds like a pretty fun session.

The hellmouth does not have to be a potential campaign derailer. If you aren't ready to randomly throw some of the PC into a screaming torture-dimension, the hellmouth can suppress its throat-gate, allowing it to simply swallow folks into its flaming stomach. It is also designed to act as a living infernal siege engine, launching flaming boulders at distant targets and calling in reinforcements from Hell.

By the way, I've decided to start giving some adventure hooks below each monster, so even if you don't feel like reading a stat block, scroll down for dem sweet hooks.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Vampiric Skeleton

Today's Monster Monday is the vampiric skeleton, a skeleton that sucks blood. These aren't the skeletons of vampires: that's not how vampires work. But they could be the skeletons of a vampire's victims, or creatures who died in a vampire's evil castle, or just of beings who were buried in a particularly evil area charged with necrotic energies.

This is a variant of the skeleton template, so it can be applied to anything that has a skeleton. Blood-sucking ogre skeleton? Sure! Vampiric skeletal wyvern? Sounds good to me. Bloodthirsty badger bones? Yeah, okay, but the alliteration might be a bit much.

Presented below are the vampiric skeleton variant template and two example vampiric skeletons: a human and a dire wolf.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

This human skeleton has been deformed by dark energies. Sharp fangs grow from its gaping mouth.

Vampiric Skeleton, Human   CR 1/2

XP 200

NE Medium undead

Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +0

DEFENSE

AC 16, touch 12, flat-footed 14 (+2 armor, +2 Dex, +2 natural)

hp 6 (1d8+2)

Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +2; +4 channel resistance

DR 5/bludgeoning; Immune cold, undead traits

Vulnerability sunlight destruction

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft.

Melee 2 claws +2 (1d4+2), bite -3 (1d6+1 plus blood drain)

Special Attacks blood drain (1d2 Con)

STATISTICS

Str 15, Dex 10, Con --, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 14

Base Atk +0; CMB +2; CMD 14

Feats Improved Initiative^B

Gear broken chain shirt

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Blood Drain (Ex)

When a vampiric skeleton hits with its bite attack, or if it grapples a foe, it inflicts 1d2 points of Constitution damage on its target. The vampiric skeleton heals 5 hit points or gains 5 temporary hit points for 1 hour (up to a maximum number of temporary hit points equal to its full normal hit points) each round it drains blood.

Sunlight Destruction (Su)

When a vampiric skeleton is exposed to direct sunlight (not the effects of daylight or similar spells), it cannot attack and is staggered. On every subsequent round of exposure, the vampiric skeleton takes 1d4 points of fire damage.

ECOLOGY

Environment any

Organization any

Treasure none 

Monster Monday: Melinoe, Nymph of Madness

Adalis met his muse for the last time at midnight, at the crossroads. She was as beautiful as pure chaos, her skin shifting from black to white like the phases of the moon, now shining brightly, now dissolving into shadows. She embraced him. He felt every emotion well up in his body and then drain out of him like grain from a torn sack, a sack that she would mend and then fill with her genius. She had been there for Adalis when his songs fell on deaf ears, when he was booed out of the inn, when his beloved laughed at his heartfelt poetry. When he was invited to play for the baron, only to discover halfway through his performance that he was the butt of a terrible joke. His muse had always been there for him, ready to whisper in his ear that which he already knew. They were all fools who could never appreciate true beauty. They must learn. They must pay.

Tonight, she would teach him the song that drives men insane.

Today's Monster Monday is melinoe, a tortured nymph who spreads madness to all she encounters. The sight of her can render a stalwart adventurer into a babbling mess. Her mere glance can strip away the mind's defenses. When she sees madness in others, she nurtures it as other nymphs would care for a grove sacred spring.

from Antikes Zaubergerät aus Pergamon (Richard Wünsch, 1905), via Wikipedia

Drawing of a 3rd century AD spell-inscribed bronze tablet found at Pergamon, invoking (among others) Melinoe 

Melinoe is a rather obscure figure from Greek myth, closely associated with Hecate (goddess of crossroads and witchcraft). The real magic tablet* depicted above does not show Melinoe, but does invoke her name. A surviving Orphic hymn to Melinoe calls her "saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth" and describes her thus:

This specter drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitions
as she appears in weird shapes and strange forms,
now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness—
all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night.

All of this, from her power over madness to her shifting form between light and shadow to her 'airy apparitions', played a role in how I statted up melinoe as a monster. Her beautiful visage drives others to madness, her ever-changing form can have an actual effect on the battlefield, and she can summon allips to her service.

*When I say real magic tablet, I mean that this is a real Greek spell-tablet inscribed with magic words, not that magic itself is real. Sorry, D&D still can't teach you the real power.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.