Fiend Factory 5E. White Dwarf Issue 19: The Stormbiter

 White Dwarf Issue 19: Storm-Biter



Albie Fiore’s next foray into the Fiend Factory gives us a small selection of monsters linked only by being relatively low level (as calculated by the Monstermark system). They’re all pretty interesting, in different ways.

Andy Wouldham’s Empipath is a tiny psionic beastie that is made to look quite frog-like in the illustration, although they are described as furry.

The empipath basically heightens emotions in creatures that it can see, although there’s not any reason given for what it gets out of this – one can assume that it feeds on some kind of psychic energy, but otherwise it’s one of those nuisance monsters that cause discord among the party, like the Carbuncle and others that we’ve seen.

The main issue with this creature is determining what emotion that the characters are experiencing at the time for it to become heightened; tricky to DM, I would have thought.

The Undead Horses, by John Webster, are a simple idea; stats are given for a skeleton and a zombie horse. Of course, the 3rd Edition notion of templates rendered such specific creations redundant and, although they aren’t given explicitly as an applied template in 5E, it’s still easy to modify a base creature into a skeleton or zombie version using the tables in the DMG.

And as Albie Fiore points out, in 1E there’s nothing to say that the skeleton stats were exclusively humanoid, so they could equally serve for any shape skeleton.

The Werefox is basically a kitsune, long before East Asian-themed monsters became trendy. Albie has taken two different contributions, from John R White (love his lemonade) and Robert Watson, and melded them into one. The werefox comes in three flavours – regular, Old and Ancient, becoming more benevolent (or at least less mischevious) as they age. They have illusion magic according to their age, as well as immunity to non-silver weapons.


Plenty of material in the likes of Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio for using these creatures – I’m pretty sure there are tons of 5E versions out there already.

James Meek’s Darkhawk is an unusual undead creature – a falcon-like monster that can cast a few spells (fear, darkness and a particular illusion), but can also fire a beam of green light that affects clerics and clerical objects. Clerics will fall into a coma, holy symbols explode, temples are disintegrated – all potent stuff.

The darkhawk can also act as a familiar to demons, devils and liches (one assume other evil creatures could use one as well), and its master can sense what it senses.

Quite a fun little monster.

But I liked Simon Eaton’s Stormbiter the best.

That said, they’ve got a set of very specific attacks that are difficult to convert into 5th Edition game rules, specifically that they can wrench weapons out of the hands of their attackers, and can also blind them with flying grit.


In the end I made the blinding effect a rider on the regular attack, with a saving throw to avoid it, and then made the disarming effect a special critical hit result, since this is the least likely outcome of the original mechanic, that rolled a d8 to see if the effect of a hit was damage, blinding, or disarming.

The original storm-biter “causes mules to bolt”, which I made somewhat less specific by turning into an aura that makes creatures of the beast type to become frightened. The other is the strange effect of the sleep spell, which in the original has a “30% chance to cause the storm-biter to calm down”. This is made into a kind of “miss a turn” effect instead, which I think works.

 And there we are:

Stormbiter

Medium elemental neutral

Armour Class 13 (natural armour)

Hit Points 16 (3d8 + 3)

Speed 40 ft.

STR

DEX

CON

INT

WIS

CHA

14 (+2)

12 (+1)

13 (+1)

3 (-4)

11 (+0)

10 (+0)

Proficiency Bonus +2

Damage Resistances fire; bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks not made with silvered weapons.

Senses passive Perception 10

Languages understands Druidic and Terran but cannot speak

Challenge 2 (4500 XP)

Disarming Critical If the stormbiter scores a critical hit, the target must make a DC 12 Strength saving throw or have anything that it is holding torn from its grasp. If it is holding an item with two hands it has advantage on the saving throw. Anything dropped items land 1d4 x 10 feet away in a randomly determined direction.

Sleep Susceptibility. The stormbiter does not sleep, but if a sleep spell is cast upon it, it will not attack until the end of its next turn if it fails its saving throw.

Unnatural Aura. The stormbiter causes any beasts within 30 feet of it to become frightened.

ACTIONS

Multiattack. The stormbiter makes two claw attacks

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6+2) slashing damage, and if the target is a creature that can see, it must make a DC 11 Constitution saving throw or become blinded. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its subsequent turns, ending the condition on itself with a success. Alternatively it can end the effect by spending its action to clear its eyes.

 

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