Fiend Factory 5E: Issue 3 and 4 Death Snake

Issue 4: Death Snake

White Dwarf 3 again has no monster statistics, and the first true “new monsters” column can be found in WD4, an article title “Monsters Mild and Malign” edited by that master of the prolix, Don Turnbull.

To begin his column, Don trawls through other magazines such as Paul Jaquays’ Dungeoneer, and White Dwarf’s predecessor Owl and Weasel, and picks out a few of his favourite creatures. As Don himself says, “I prefer [a monster] to be self-consistent and in some ways vaguely credible in the context of its surroundings. More, I prefer it to have interesting, even humorous or asinine qualities and to make me wonder what the hell to do with it when I come across it.” As we will see in issues to come, Don certainly does like the humorous and asinine.

First up is the Glitch, a tiny furball that follows adventurers around, causing everything they (and the monsters that they encounter) to keep going wrong. Very much an “early dungeon crawl” style of monster. The first to be illustrated is the Droll:

But there’s nothing very interesting about it despite the appearance; mechanically it’s just a bunch of melee attacks. The Smoke Creature and the Smoke Demon are pretty similar to the Belker and Smoke Mephit respectively, and so not really novel enough to bother statting up.

And then there are a bunch of creatures with similar issues. The Typo is similar to the Glitch, but specific to wizards (or rather, magic-users, this is pre 1^st Edition after all), in that it causes spells to be “mis-spelled”. Literally, in this case. The spell “Sleep”, for example, may instead summon up sheep, or sleet. To be honest, that sounds quite fun (if silly), but is probably difficult to DM on the fly.

The Ibem is a kind of octopoid thing, not very exciting, and the Mind Drain is basically a Shadow that affects Intelligence rather than Strength – a nice simple twist but not really a “new” monster. Next we get the Black Leech, Black Monk and Black Orc, which are, essentially, a giant leech, a kind of shadow-dancer character and a tougher orc (an Orog, or Uruk-Hai, perhaps).

I quite like the Black Monks, but they’re not really a “monster” in my book, more of an NPC. So it’s looking like slim pickings, but luckily Don pulls it out of the bag with the last entry, which also happily gets a little illustration – the Death Snake.

The most obvious thing to do here is to take a giant snake, and turn it into an undead. At only 4 HD there are a couple of options – bump up the number of Hit Dice, or reduce the giant snake from Huge size to Large, which is what I’ve done.

I basically used the Wight as a source for the resistances, and also used the 5^th Edition equivalent of level drain, which is a reduction in hit point maximum. I removed this effect from the constriction and gave it only to the bite attack (as if it replaced poison), but the snake does get advantage against grappled opponents when biting them.

One could bump up the number of hit dice for a tougher snake, and I pondered giving it immunity to necrotic energy. However, not all undead have that, so I left it.

Death Snake

Large undead, neutral evil

Armour Class 12 Hit Points 26 (4d10 + 4) Speed 30 ft., climb 30 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 15 (+2) 14 (+2) 12 (+1) 1 (-5) 10 (+0) 3 (-4)

Proficiency Bonus +2 Damage Immunities poison Condition Immunities exhaustion, poisoned Senses passive Perception 10

Languages –

Challenge 2 (450 XP)

ACTIONS

Multiattack. The death snake makes two attacks: one with its bite and one with its constrict. Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) piercing damage, plus  4(1d8) necrotic damage. The target must succeed on a DC 11 Constitution saving throw or its hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken. This reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest. The target dies if this effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0. A humanoid slain by this attack rises 24 hours later as a free-willed spectre, unless the humanoid is restored to life or its body destroyed. Constrict. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (2d4 + 2) bludgeoning damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 12). Until the grapple ends, the target is restrained and the snake can’t constrict another target. The snake can bite at advantage on a grappled creature.