Fiend Factory 5E: Issue 1 and 2 Spinescale

Welcome to a new series, and this one’s a bit different. This time I’m looking through the first 50 issues of White Dwarf magazines, but rather than simply reading and discussing things, I’m focussing on the monster entries that were sent in by readers and contributors, choosing one per issue, and attempting to convert it into D&D 5^th edition statistics.

But of course it’s not just going to be game mechanics. There’s an interesting exercise here in studying the early days of role-playing games through the changing style of the submissions, even when focussed only on the “monsters” for one game.

White Dwarf Issue 1 doesn’t have any new monsters, nor very little in the way of game mechanic-style stuff at all, save for a magic item called the Helm of Vision, and the dubiously tasteful “joke” Pervert character class, and the start of Don Turnbull’s ponderous “Monstermark” system used to calculate a kind of early Challenge Rating, but to three decimal places!

Consequently, we need to look at WD2 for any kind of new creatures, where within the Treasure Chest column there lies a section by then editor Ian Livingstone titled “New Monsters For Use in Wilderness Campaigns”. Of these, the Bloodhawk and the Dune Stalker made it into the Fiend Folio, so I’m leaving those out. The bloodhawk is really just a simple raptor, and there are already stats for hawks, owls, eagles and the like.

The dune stalker is okay, a kind of sand version of the invisible stalker that essentially uses sonic (thunder) attacks and has the ability to set up deadly vibrations in its quarry with a “kiss of death”, not dissimilar to the monk’s Quivering Palm ability. The picture, however, is hilarious, more like a Dune Mincer that a Dune Stalker.

Compare and contrast that to the Fiend Folio image, which is just a *little* bit more menacing…(looks like Bill Millingham’s style to me).

The Giant Caterpillar seemed both a bit too ridiculous and also an unnecessary extra giant insect/worm kind of monster. The Ning is more of a trap than a monster, since it can only be defeated by very precise attacks, plus it’s very silly.

The Ning is a creature captive in a bottle, like a genie, but lives only to crush people with its larger arms. The only way to defeat it is to cut off its smaller “arms”, which are really antennae, thus forcing it back into the bottle. Or one can control one if one possesses a “Ning Ring”.

Yeah. I think I’ll leave that alone.

(As an aside, it feels like Ning Ring ought to be some kind of pun or reference to something else, but I can’t work it out if it is. Perhaps it’s just a silly rhyme).

This basically leaves the Spinescale, which is a kind of venomous mutant frog caused by alchemical pollution. It’s nice and straightforward, not too silly, simple enough and believable enough within a fantasy setting, and it comes with a nice little backstory.

All pretty simple to convert. It’s cumbersome on land so let’s give it a weak land move compared to a swim speed, the weapons bouncing off its skin sounds like damage resistance to me (I’ll give it resistance and not immunity, since we can assume that damage that gets through is via the weak spots). I’ll give it advantage to Stealth checks specifically if it’s in the water and the viewer is on land, and finally the extra poison damage pretty much writes itself for 5^th Edition.

 And there we are:

Spinescale

Small beast, unaligned

Armour Class 13 (natural armour) Hit Points 9 (2d6 + 2) Speed 10 ft., swim 30 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 11 (+0) 12 (+1) 12 (+1) 3 (-4) 10 (+0) 6 (-2)

Proficiency Bonus +2 Damage Resistances bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks Senses passive Perception 10

Languages –

Challenge 1/4 (50 XP)

Amphibious. The spinescale is able to breathe air and water. Camouflage. The spinescale has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide in water, when viewed from land.  ACTIONS

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d6 +1) piercing damage plus 4 (1d8) poison damage.