Fiend Factory 5E: Issue 6 The Mite

 Issue 6: The Mite


White Dwarf 6 is the first issue to feature the Fiend Factory proper, and all of the monsters featured in this issue found their way into the Fiend Folio. 














Let’s take a moment to enjoy that banner before we get to the monsters themselves:


Marvellous. That’ll be with us for a while, as will, unfortunately, the artistically stylised names for the monsters which in some cases are almost impossible to read.

First up is the Needleman, by Trevor Graver.


The Needleman is an interesting exercise in how creatures can evolve between iterations. The one published here is described as the result of an incorrectly cast raise dead spell while the corpse lies on a bed of pine needles (yet for some reason the Trevor tells us it is not classed as undead). By the time this monster has got into the Fiend Folio, however, it’s described as a form of plant life, and the picture is rather more evocative.



As is evident from Russ Nicholson’s illustration, the Needleman is able to fire needles from itself. The astute might notice that these things live again in 5E as Needle Blights, still plants but in this case originating from a Gulthias tree. As they’re already effectively statted up for 5E, I won’t do these.







Next is the Throat Leech by Boss Man Ian Livingstone, which I think is really more of a hazard than a monster, and also feels like one of those early monsters designed to punish adventurer curiousity (like Ear Seekers and Rot Grubs).

Not that interesting, really, and so we move on.








I’ve never quite seen the point of the Bonesnapper, also by Boss Man Ian Livingstone, even back when I first bought the Fiend Folio. It’s a human-sized descendant of a “carnivorous dinosaur”, but is classed as non-intelligent despite having some kind of fetish for collecting human jawbones. I mean, it’s fine as it is, but I don’t think there’s anything there that warrants a whole new monster listing. 



Especially as also in the Fiend Folio just a few pages earlier we get the Babbler, which is a kind of mutant lizardman that looks like this


The Fiend (another Livingstone creation) is an intriguing concept (and also, I notice, makes it into the title splash).

It’s the offspring of a fallen angel and the god Pan that enslaved her, and thus it has this kind of multiple personality disorder whereby it’s generally evil and destructive, and then becomes wracked with remorse for a few days during which it tries to atone for its actions, before suddenly and unpredictably becoming evil again. Quite Gollum-like, really.



By the time this got to the Fiend Folio it had changed its name to the Forlarren and had become the offspring of a good nymph and a devil, but otherwise remained much the same, except that now it looked like this:


 Like I say, an interesting concept, but also very much a single-use monster where you could give the same background and psychology to pretty much kind of fey, humanoid, monstrosity etc.


Next up, the Disenchanter, a camel-like creature with a prehensile trunk that sucks the magic out of magic items. Roger Musson comes up with a lot of creatures, some good, some daft. I think the rather goofy appearance of the disenchanter counts against it, as it’s a solid idea, even if one obviously rooted in the notion of relieving player characters of magic items that the DM has suddenly realised were over-powered.



Were it not for the fact that I’ve already done a conversion of these for The Lazy GM: Book of Lost Monsters, I’d probably do this again. I will just say, though, that I diminished the disenchantment aspect a bit. My version drains charges from charged items, and destroys single-use items, but merely suppresses permanent items for 24 hours.









Another Roger Musson special, the Nilbog is a kind of reverse goblin that gets healed by damage and hurt by healing. In some cases, “nilbogism” causes weird time reversal effects, for which I’ll let the Fiend Folio entry explain:


Yeah. That “no saving throw” thing is very 1st Edition. I think if the DM wanted to replicate that episode of Red Dwarf, then, yes, but it kind of makes everyone a plaything of the DM, and personally I really dislike that style of play. The reverse damage/heal thing is simple enough, though. Not a million miles from how undead operated under 3rd Edition.



Which brings me to this week’s selected monster, the Mite (by Ian Livingstone, again).



There’s a certain charm to that pathetic wrinkled thing in the WD illustration, although it actually resembles the very similar Jermlaine (aka Jinxkin aka Bane-Midge). On top of that, the Fiend Folio not only included Gygax’s Jermlaine (first seen in D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth) but also a creature called the Snyad (aka Pestie). How many tiny nuisance monsters does the game actually need?

Of the three, the Mite is probably the least interesting, so I wanted to at least give it a bit of a chance, The Snyad is fast – that’s its main attribute. The Jermlaine are the most detailed, so I kind of wanted to make the Mite something in between.

Most of the stats are pretty much a straightforward “tiny humanoid” set of stats. The mite is given a bite attack, and in the Fiend Folio it’s also noted that they sometimes use the weighted clubs of jermlaine, so a finesse-based club seems a fair attack option. I’ve nicked the snyad’s ability to avoid damage, because I like the idea of these little things being hard to swat (one good it will kill one, but getting that hit is harder than it looks). They’re also described as using traps; I toyed with giving them an ability that bumped up the DC of any traps that they set, but 5E traps don’t really work like that, so instead I gave them an advantage to avoiding traps set by others.

And there we are:

Mite

Tiny humanoid (mite), lawful evil

Armour Class 12

Hit Points 2 (1d4)

Speed 10 ft.

STR

DEX

CON

INT

WIS

CHA

6 (-2)

14 (+2)

10 (+0)

7 (-2)

10 (+0)

6 (-2)

Proficiency Bonus +2

Skills Stealth +6

Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10

Languages Mite

Challenge 1/8 (25 XP)

Trap Master. The mite has advantage on checks to spot and disarm traps.

ACTIONS

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d3 + 2) piercing damage.

Club. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) bludgeoning damage.

REACTIONS

Improved Uncanny Dodge. If the mite is hit with a melee attack, it can use its reaction to turn the hit into a miss instead.

 

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