Fiend Factory 5E. White Dwarf 37: The Weed-Delvers

Issue 37 Weed-Delvers 

The title of the Fiend Factory this month is a “Species Special”, which seems to me to be Albie Fiore not being able to think of any kind of unifying theme. Because, really, there’s nothing particular to link the monsters.

Which is fine. Fiend Factory trotted on for years being just a collection of the best reader’s monsters each issue, with no need to link them in a scenario, or by abilities, or by terrain.

Before we get to the Fiend Factory, though, there’s a scenario by Graeme Davis, eventually to become a major contributor to the Warhammer RPG. It’s called The City In The Swamp, and it’s a nice little portable site-based scenario set in an organic-looking ruined city. The set-up revolves around an internal conflict with the slaad chaos frog-men (product identity), but really the city could be used for anything. The city is inhabited by a novel monster, the Ghralthi.

 

The ghralthi are described as being toad-like, not quite the Creature From The Black Lagoon entity that the illustrator made. There’s nothing really novel about them – they’re amphibious and have good tracking and stealth skills in swamp terrain, beyond that the rest is sorting out the warrior and shaman characters among them, so not enormously different to a lizarman stats. Still, a bit of fun.

There’s also an article about vampires, and ways of giving them alternative arrays of vampire abilities and weaknesses, which is a good way of making each vampire encounter more unique. I think I may have used it, actually.

In the Fiend Factory proper, we meet the Crestcat, by Graham Head, inspired by James H Schmitz’s novel, “Novice”.

No, me neither although I looked him up and he’s one of those contributors to Amazing Stories and the like, prolific particularly in the 50s and 60s. I love that kind of stuff, so I’ll try to find the novel in cheapo Kindle format.

Anyway, crestcats have a chameleonic pelt and are able to blend in with their backgrounds. They’re intelligent, and have a kind of warrior culture where they seek to die bravely in battle if they can, and hate sneak attacks.

 

This issue’s bit of Phil Mastery is the Javukchari, a vulture version of the aarakocra.

There’s nothing particularly of note mechanically that sets them apart from another kind of “bird-man” creature (although, despite the illustration, they have no hands, only dextrous feet). But as with a lot of Phil’s creations, it’s the little cultural notes that make it interesting. The clerical worship of Uk-Thruz-Zu and their demand for the bodies of any that die in their land would make for a fun role-playing encounter. For some reason, some of them have psionics – this has been a real trend over the past few months, and considering most of the psionic powers chosen can be mimicked with spells, I’m not sure why everyone keeps adding them to all kinds of monsters. But, still, they’d fit in well in the Dark Sun setting.

 

We’ve had similar creatures to Huw Roberts’ Antmen before, and these are nothing that you wouldn’t expect from an “ant-man” race. Although I like the description of the Queen as a “massive but harmless blob of ant-ness”.

But this month I’ve gone with the Weed-Delvers, by another old reliable, Barney Sloane (Barney has two other published submissions; the Argorian Wormkin from Issue 29, which I statted up, and the Shadow Goblins from Issue 26 which have also statted, to be produced as a bonus round at the end). Although not attributed, these are from Moorcock’s multiverse, which can be spotted by their worship of Pyaray (an octopoid Chaos Lord from the Elric stories). Something similar to these creatures appear in the Stormbringer scenario, Rogue Mistress.

But never mind, because they’re interesting. They’re a race of octopus creatures with a complex culture, with the weed-delvers acting as a kind of worker caste, ruled by the ryll, priests of Pyaray, who enforce their will on the population with the help of the octarni warrior caste. So, once again, I’ve given myself more work to do by having to convert all three castes….

 

They’re mostly straightforward, with a bit of rejigging to convert the spells of the Octarni and Ryll into 5^th Edition equivalents. DMs will need to do a bit of a judgment call for their powers over normal octopus and squid, and the hardening secretions of the weed-delvers (which they use to construct buildings) was fairly easy to convert, with some room for modification.

And there we are:

 

Weed-Delver

Medium monstrosity, chaotic neutral

Armour Class 13 Hit Points 38 (7d8 + 7) Speed 10 ft., swim 40 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 10 (+0) 16 (+3) 12 (+1) 11 (+0) 10 (+0) 8 (-1)

Proficiency Bonus +2 Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10

Languages Weed-delver

Challenge 3 (700 XP)

Hold Breath. The weed-delver can hold its breath while out of water for 1 hour. Slippery. The weed-delver is immune to any magic that would entangle it or impede its movement. It can spend 5 feet of movement to escape from any nonmagical restraints or from being grappled. Water Breathing. The weed-delver can breathe only underwater. ACTIONS

Tentacles. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 2 (1d4) bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 13). The weed-delver cannot use its tentacles to attack another target while it is grappling, but it can use its Bite or its Cocoon actions against a grappled target. Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (3d4 + 3) piercing damage plus 4 (1d8) damage from blood drain. Cocoon (Recharges after a Short or Long Rest). If the weed-delver has a target grappled, it can encase it in a cocoon of rapidly hardening slime. The target is restrained, unless it makes a DC 13 Strength check to break free. The cocoon is immune to fire, but will dissolve if exposed to the blood of a ryll. Ink Cloud (Recharges after a Short or Long Rest). While underwater, the weed-delver can eject a cloud of ink in a 5-foot radius centred on itself. The ink can spread around corners, and that area is heavily obscured. The ink cloud lasts one turn but a strong current can disperse it before then. After using its Ink Cloud the weed-delver can make the Dash action as a bonus action. Octopoid Charm (Recharges after a Long Rest). The weed-delver can charm normal octopus and squid, as the dominate beast spell.

 

Weed-Delver Octarni

Medium monstrosity, chaotic neutral

Armour Class 16 (natural armour) Hit Points 82 (11d8 + 33) Speed swim 30 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 14 (+2) 14 (+2) 16 (+3) 14 (+2) 10 (+0) 10 (+0)

Proficiency Bonus +3 Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10

Languages Weed-delver

Challenge 6 (2,300 XP)

Slippery. The weed-delver is immune to any magic that would entangle it or impede its movement. It can spend 5 feet of movement to escape from any nonmagical restraints or from being grappled. Water Breathing. The weed-delver can breathe only underwater. Innate Spellcasting. The weed-delver’s innate spellcasting ability is Wisdom (save DC 11). It can innately cast the following spells without components.      1/day each: blur, false life, protection from energy, silence, stinking cloud ACTIONS

Tentacles. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d10 + 2) bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 14). The weed-delver cannot use its tentacles to attack another target while it is grappling, but it can use its Bite against a grappled target. Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (3d6 + 2) piercing damage plus 4 (1d8) damage from blood drain. Octopoid Charm (Recharges after a Long Rest). The weed-delver can charm normal octopus and squid, as the dominate beast spell.

  

Weed-Delver Ryll

Medium monstrosity, chaotic neutral

Armour Class 14 (natural armour) Hit Points 97 (15d8 + 30) Speed swim 40 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 10 (+0) 12 (+1) 14 (+2) 17 (+3) 14 (+2) 12 (+1)

Proficiency Bonus +3 Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 12

Languages Weed-delver

Challenge 8 (3,900 XP)

Slippery. The weed-delver is immune to any magic that would entangle it or impede its movement. It can spend 5 feet of movement to escape from any nonmagical restraints or from being grappled. Water Breathing. The weed-delver can breathe only underwater. Innate Spellcasting. The weed-delver’s innate spellcasting ability is Wisdom (save DC 13). It can innately cast the following spells without components.      At Will: message 1/day each: confusion, conjure animals, darkness, detect magic, dispel magic, protection from energy, slow, suggestion, stinking cloud, tongues ACTIONS

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (4d4 + 1) piercing damage plus 4 (1d8) damage from blood drain. Octopoid Charm (Recharges after a Long Rest). The weed-delver can charm normal octopus and squid, as the dominate beast spell. Summon Octarni (1/day). The weed-delver can summon one octarni via a telepathic command. The octarni will arrive in 1d6 rounds.