Fix 5E Fights By Turning Monsters into Glass Cannon Puzzles

I’ll skip the whole preamble establishing how fights in 5E and other modern-style D&D games are too long. Let’s go right to a solution.

The recipe for a glass cannon puzzle monster is as follows: 

• Reduce the HP by a lot. If you like to math this out, you want the total monster HP to be equal to no more than three rounds worth of the party’s total DPS. Probably closer to two rounds. But if you don’t enjoy that math, just eyeball it.
• Make their attacks 25-50% stronger. They are going to get fewer chances to hit, so they should hit harder. You can buff their to-hit somewhat as well, but I don’t find this to be necessary. They should hit hard enough that the first time a PC takes damage, the group should be a bit surprised and taken aback.
• Give them a big edge. Some monsters already have these as they are currently written, but they’re often narrow, superfluous, or transparently obvious to overcome. Give more monsters powers that make them hard to overcome… at least to start.
• Tie that edge to a major weakness. They have some kind of weakness, usually associated with their strength. If understood and exploited, they become much easier to defeat.

1d10 OK give me some examples: 

1. The azer’s heated body and weapons can set creatures and objects on fire, causing them to burn and take damage each turn. The flames can spread to other creatures and objects. An azer who take cold damage or is doused in water loses these abilities until they complete a long rest.
2. If the banshee sees its reflection, all of its immunities and resistances drop away, and it is as vulnerable to damage as a normal person. 
3. The chimera is immune to fire (from its dragon head), fear (from its lion head), and losing its balance (from its goat head). But the heads hate each other. Make a cromulent criticism of a chimera head, even in the midst of a fight, and it loses the attack and immunity associated with that head until the end of its next turn, as the heads bicker and undercut each other.
4. The duergars’ ability to enlarge themselves and turn invisible make them fearsome foes in combat. They have resistance to damage from creatures who are smaller than them or can’t see them. But when fighting creatures who are larger than them and/or that they cannot see, the duergar have disadvantage on morale checks and Wisdom saving throws.
5. The distracting sound of the hook horror’s claws scraping against the rocks of the Underdark requires any spellcaster to pass a concentration check in order to cast a spell. The hook horror has disadvantage on saving throws and vulnerability to damage from any effect with an auditory components (e.g., Tasha’s Hideous Laughter). 
6. The peryton goes directly for the heart. If it succeeds on an attack roll on a dive attack, it is an automatic critical hit, and if the damage leaves the target at or below 0 HP, they must immediately make a death saving throw, or the peryton rips out their heart. The peryton will then attempt to retreat, taking the heart with it. Some resurrection magic will not work without an intact heart. A peryton that has damaged a humanoid but failed to rip out its heart is blinded by single-mindedness and has disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws and attack rolls against other targets until it has killed the wounded target. 
7. Shadows are fully invisible in darkness, torchlight, and even magical light. They are visible and completely susceptible to damage in candlelight.
8. Skeletons are almost completely immune to piercing and slashing weapons, but can typically be destroyed with one hit with bludgeoning weapons.
9. The sphinx can't be harmed until you answer their riddle. If you stump the sphinx with your own riddle, it is vulnerable to damage you deal until it can solve your riddle.
10. The troglodyte’s stench doesn’t only poison those near it, but incapacitates their foes as well, if they fail their saving throw by 5 or more. But the troglodyte’s aversion isn’t limited to just sunlight; soap, running water, or anything else that could dilute or cleanse its stench forces disadvantage on its attacks and Wisdom (perception) ability checks.

D100 Places to Stay that Aren’t Generic Fantasy Inns

Adventurers in a typical vanilla fantasy game arrive in town and need a place to stay for the night. They get directions to the inn. You can readily imagine the inn that the DM improvises. It is familiar from many fantasy TTRPGs, video games, books, and movies. A rough-hewn fireplace, perhaps a full-ass hearth. A heavyset bartender, facial hair guaranteed. Some extremely provincial locals and workaday traveler NPCs gathered in a common room, perhaps with a musician performing.

Of course, that typical fantasy inn is an anachronism. It does not resemble anything that was particularly common in real medieval or renaissance settings. It is instead similar to the English coaching inn, which developed hundreds of years after the source period for D&D and most similar fantasy work.

That’s not a bad thing; D&D is full of anachronisms anyway. The game would not be improved by hunting down those anachronisms. But it does create an opportunity to brainstorm lodging options that add some more variety, particularly for a game that features a lot of travel.

Roll 5d20 for a result that will skew toward the middle of the list, where the (relatively) “normal” results appear. Roll 1d100 for a truly random result. If you’re wondering why the first few entries on this list are so gonzo, it is so they won’t show up at all on the more controlled 5d20 roll. Skip to the entries in the 50s for examples of the more conventional results.

1. Hotel of Dogs. Comfortable and well-appointed, but entirely staffed by dogs, who clumsily but diligently attempt to perform all the tasks of hotel management. They lack opposable thumbs, language, and other key tools of the hotelier trade, but try very hard. Polymorphed humans, or merely well-trained ex-familiars? No one knows.
2. The Terror Beast of Grottug Swamp. Spend an hour or two grooming ratfang ticks out of its fur, and it will perceive you as a cleaning mutualist. Sleeping curled up against it is about as safe as it gets, because everything else in Grottug Swamp is terrified of it. 
3. There Is No Anti-Memetic Hotel. Everyone forgets about this place shortly after checking out due to some ancient enchantment magic. The sensation is mildly distressing and confusing, and it makes it hard to find it in the first place. But it is relatively secure from any non-accidental discovery and attack.
4. Secure demiplane accessed by a one-way magical door. Reasonably safe from everything. The only catch is that you can only leave it by a different one-way magical door, and no one is sure where that door goes.
5. Enormous tortoise trundles across the landscape. Travelers gather in a house on its back. 
6. A gorgon will petrify travelers for the night, de-petrifying them in the morning. Locals will confirm this isn’t a trick. Pretty safe if true, but do you actually feel rested? 
7. Fane to a faded god, long ago the site of human sacrifices. Theurges have now bound the remnant deity and divert its remaining power to the local town, where it serves those who once served it. The emanating divine energy makes this a warm place to stay. 
8. Ongoing construction. Obsessive builders are hard at work on a megastructure of vague and mystifying origin and purpose. The builders will let you sleep within the completed parts of the structure if you spend a day of hard labor contributing to its construction. 
9. Valley of slumbering mists. Living things fall into a deep sleep at dusk each evening. The mist dissipates in the morning. Travelers here get a great night’s rest, and they won’t be bothered by any predators capable of sleep. Things that don’t sleep are a different issue…
10. Shade? A perfectly square area, 100 meters on each side, is shielded from the weather by an invisible, floating structure or object. Provides shade in the summer and shelter in the rain, but some travelers are understandably uncomfortable sleeping under it; it has been there as long as anyone can remember, but who knows if the magic will someday wear off, and whatever is up there will fall from the sky? 
11. The Endless Show. Sleep No More-style interactive theater. You are given a role and expected to stay in character. You can get some sleep, but expect to be woken up at least once or twice by dramatic happenings.
12. Abandoned giant termite mounds. Hollow like dead trees. Not enough room to lay flat, so you must sleep upright. Awkward but functional.
13. Tombs! Safe, dry tombs, at bargain rates! Rumors of a breakthrough in magical immortality research have forced cemetery owners to pivot and market their real estate for a different purpose.
14. The basement backrooms. Huge, underused space underneath the largest building in town. Damp and full of forgotten and worthless echoes of whatever is cherished and valuable up above. Probably connects to local dungeons. 
15. Murder mystery. A shriek in the night. One of the other guests in this sprawling estate is dead? Who could be the killer? No one is recovering HP or memorizing spells in peace until the mystery is solved. 
16. Pleasure gardens. Safe from harm, comfortable, plenty of food and wine… but will you ever want to leave?
17. Mush-room. Toadstools the size of cozy cottages. Come hungry. You have to burrow out the interior to create enough space to sleep for the night.
18. Faerie ring. Sleep here at your own risk, for this place is bound to another world… 
19. Gargoyles guard the abandoned chapel. A local scholar claims to know what kind of offering will appease them, allowing travelers to sleep safely within the chapel. Is it real, or is she scamming the unwary?
20. Quaint witch’s cottage. The witch is currently (1d6): 1. Hungry 2. Bored 3. Horny 4. Polymorphed 5. Wrathful 6. Not Home.
21. Hollow, egg-shaped stone structures. Step into one, and it will close and keep you safe for 777 minutes. Large enough to provide enough air for one sleeper. Can’t be opened early by any known means. Simple, secure, eerie, unnerving.
22. Capsule hotel-style tubes in a massive granite block. The tubes are eerily silent. More than 10,000 years ago this block was part of a prison complex meant to drive prisoners mad through sensory deprivation. The prison and its purpose is long forgotten, and now the permanent Silence spell merely ensures a good night’s sleep. 
23. Wealthy distant relative. What a surprise, it turns out the PC’s wealthy uncle, sister-in-law, or other relation owns a vacation dwelling here. They may take an interest in one of their relative’s companions.
24. Discarded giant’s helm, embedded in the landscape. Provides a cave-like space where every sound echoes sonorously. Despite age and wear, parts exposed to the air gleam brilliantly in the light each morning.
25. The Painted Caves of Cavinto. An ancient cave art site of stunning beauty and sophistication. The Painted Sisters who care for the site welcome all who appreciate its beauty. One of the sisters may decide to paint the portrait of a party member. If they are not finished by the time you depart, they will travel with you until they complete the work. 
26. Slopes of the dormant (?) volcano. Heat from the vents keeps the night’s chill at bay.
27. The traveling circus will provide safe and dry accommodations in exchange for contributing something to the show. Magical tricks, acrobatics, and strongman performance are obvious options for adventurers, but weirder ideas from the PCs are welcome. 
28. Offseason shacks. Whatever the fishers/hunters/punters use this for in-season, it isn’t in use now. Poorly suited to this season’s weather, but otherwise fine.
29. Cartographer’s guild camp. Free admission for anyone who can provide detailed descriptions of the areas they traveled through to get there. The longer the journey and the more they got lost, the better.
30. Romantic spa. The newlyweds’ suite is the only room available, and the owners are strict about only renting it to qualifying customers. They are licensed and willing to perform a marriage between two party members, for a small additional fee. 
31. Abandoned owlbear lair. Safe as long as the smell lingers and keeps other predators away. Probably not a good choice once the nesting season begins.  
32. Laboratory. You will be tested, examined, poked, prodded, quizzed, queried, then tested again. And finally allowed to sleep.
33. Well-guarded ksar. The worse the approaching dust storm is, the greater the ksar's obligation of hospitality compels them to accept travelers. 
34. Leper colony with extra beds. Shunned by the nearby town, but the “lepers” generally have non-contagious or non-threatening skin conditions. Staying with them is actually safer than staying in the nearby town.
35. Convent operated by the Sisters of Perpetual Quietude. No charge to stay, but all visitors must keep completely silent while there; violators are cursed (or so they say (or so they would say, if they could talk)). 
36. Clay furnaces. They fire the furnaces all day, then the residual heat keeps sleepers warm through the bitterly cold night.
37. Brothel. Yes, you can rent just a bed. But the upselling is intense. 
38. Crowded tenement. A stair landing or coat closet is considered a viable rental spot.
39. Blacksmith’s shop. The heat from the forge is nice, but watch out for the cinders and hot ash that can ignite fires long after the blacksmith has gone to sleep.
40. Workhouse. You can stay here, but you need to put in an honest day’s work, or participate in an impromptu musical number. Food, glorious food… 
41. Overhanging cliff forming a natural windbreak. A fire is almost always maintained here, and stories are exchanged, as exaggerated silhouettes dance upon the rocks.
42. All-night bar. I don’t care where you sleep, but you can sleep here!
43. Fishermen shacks. Hammocks made from fishing nets. You will smell like fish for at least three days after staying here.
44. House for rent. The owner will rent it at a rather low price, for any length of time. Suspiciously eager to close the deal even at a discount price. Something happened here…
45. Boomtown mining camp. Think Deadwood season one. Tents, communal campfires, ample gossip and carousing.
46. Communal sleeping quarters. Stretch of bare floor in the largest building in town.
47. Hayloft. Not fancy, but reasonably dry. Moo.
48. Hostel. At least one Weird and Extremely Extroverted Traveler is going to try to get you interested in Their Weird Thing, whatever it may be.
49. Bathhouse. It seems like some people never leave. 
50. Coaching inn. Yeah, this is the basis for the generic fantasy inn described at the beginning of the post. Make it over-the-top stereotypical. You can have one ordinary inn now and then, as a treat.
51. Hollowed out tree. Surprisingly comfortable. There are signs that a gang of kids may have once dwelt here, long ago. 
52. Cells in the local jail, currently unoccupied. Don’t worry, they won’t lock the doors. Worst-case scenario, you get kicked out at 1 a.m. to make space for bar brawlers.
53. Monastery hospitia. They have empty beds. If you can plausibly fake an illness or injury, it is a good place to sleep. Just don’t fake it too well, or they’ll insist that you stay for an extended period.
54. Combination hotel and tattoo parlor. You can stay for free if you get a tattoo advertising the place. 
55. Lumberjack camp. Residents are friendly but boisterous and earnest. Lots of men’s men going around shirtless, wrasslin’, and having a wholesome good time, just hangin' out with the boys. Hope you like flapjacks.
56. Under the bridge downtown. That's where I want to be. Watch out for rattagators. 
57. Nomadic campfire. Of course you can stay here, if you can perform an impressive FEAT OF STRENGTH.
58. Qanat or underground cistern. Built by some long-lost empire that once ruled the area. The water is clean and cool, but paranoid travelers claim they have seen large, shadowy forms swimming in the waters…
59. Couriers’ Mansiones. PCs who wish to stay there will be expected to demonstrate what important information they are carrying on behalf of which governmental entity.  
60. Endless party on a river yacht. Plenty of comfortable places to sleep amongst the revelry, if you don’t mind the noise.
61. Asylum. It is a coinflip between creepy horror movie nonsense and an orderly, clean, professional facility.
62. Lighthouse. Dry and secure but the lighthouse keeper is a little… odd. Pray the weather doesn’t keep you here more than one night.
63. Short on beds. It is an ordinary inn, but the biggest festival of the year is happening right now, didn't you know? They have instituted a two-to-each-bed policy. Parties with an odd number of members should expect a roll on a carousing table or similar to decide who the unlucky (?) adventurer will get paired with.
64. Restaurant. A few hours folding napkins or skewering dire weevils in the basement will earn you a spot to sleep in the back of the kitchen.
65. Chimneyheaps. Creep out onto the roof of the palatial mansions in the wealthy district and sleep against and around the massive chimneys, warm from the heat of fires below, stoked through the night by diligent servants. Just step lightly on the tiles, lest you alert a sleeping noble to your presence…
66. A halfling wagon train has stopped here. Friendly RV camp vibe. They will expect you to sing in the round with them. 
67. Wedding! So large and extravagant, they don’t even try to keep out the wedding crashers. You will be expected to bring a gift for the newlyweds. Everyone dances.  
68. Futons in Dave's creepy shed. Dave is as creepy as advertised, but also extremely harmless.
69. The king has decided to hold open auditions for those who desire a sponsor for their heroic quests. The city is consequently lousy with adventurers. Every inn is completely booked, even at high surge prices. Tinier and tinier subdivisions of space have been made available for rent. Look forward to paying a fortune for a thin strip of floor behind a sideboard, or an uncomfortable night’s sleep on a pile of onions (you aren’t allowed to eat the onions).
70. Dilapidated resort. Just barely still in business, a reminder of better times. The resort is known for (1d4): 1. Skiing / yeti avoidance 2. Diving for enormous pearls 3. Rustic backwoods charm 4. A regrettable incident that the staff will only whisper about.
71. Bandit camp. Risky option, but plausibly a safe place to stay if you can convince the bandits that you are not worth robbing. This one time, at bandit camp… 
72. Haunted manor. Comfortable, spacious, and free, but low level poltergeist activity throughout. The spirits can be placated with fine wine, witty bon mots, or a game of charades.
73. Old folks home. The only payment expected is an attentive audience for their long, rambling stories. Stories may include historical lore that is nominally relevant to the PCs, but the storytellers will inevitably focus on mundane details, and they will get annoyed when someone tries to steer the conversation in that direction.
74. Ramshackle beach hotel. Rooms are rented out around low tide. The proprietor plans to take the money and run before tenants realize they’ll be underwater at 2 a.m.
75. Thieves' den. Guild membership typically required to enter, but if you can “steal” a good night’s sleep here, they would probably be impressed. 
76. Exclusive club. Members only. Very difficult to find unless you know the right person. Members are charming, useless, status-obsessed idiots.  
77. Monkey hot springs. Give them gifts of fruit or they will steal your gear.
78. Fragrant greenhouse. Rumor is that the smell repels predators. In truth, the smell attracts an alpha predator, which frightens the other predators away. But the alpha predator probably won’t come by tonight, right? …Right?
79. Elven hammock commune. Hammocks are available really, really, really high up in the trees.
80. Junior enchanters academy. The apprentices are all practicing the Sleep spell, and need volunteer test subjects. 
81. Mercenary camp. This free company once roved the land, but have taken root in this particularly resource-rich and conflict-prone region. Friendly to adventurers, but will try to recruit them into their ranks, particularly young and impressionable (impress-able?) hirelings and henchmen. Each night there is a cumulative 5% chance that the local political authority launches a surprise attack on the camp. 
82. Dungeon basecamp. Not the dungeon your party is traveling toward, just some other dungeon along the way. The camp is (1d4): 1. Freshly set up for a delve that has not yet started 2. Occupied by adventurers licking their wounds 3. Only guarded by a few hirelings while the adventurers are inside 4. Abandoned ("found a mule"). 
83. Shrine of Revelations. Perfectly safe, dozens will seek shelter here every night. Every night, at least one person who sleeps here will be forever changed by a spiritual awakening, often a traumatic one. 
84. Bulette graveyard. Shells form convenient half-dome shelters. There is a small but very dangerous possibility that a dying bulette will show up during your stay and take offense at your use of its family’s shells as shell-ter. 
85. Cemetery. Make an offering to the dead that reflects what they cared about in life and enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep right there atop their grave. Monsters, animals, and even the weather will be repelled from the gravesite, if you get the offering right. The local historical society will pick the right offering for you, but they charge a high fee.
86. A deep well. At the bottom are muddy ledges surrounding the source of the water. Various moist intelligent creatures hang out at the bottom, loudly advocating the virtues of sleeping at the bottoms of wells, and encouraging passerby up above to come down and join them.  
87. Foxholes. Oh, you didn’t know there was a war? Get in this hole if you want to survive the night.
88. Scarecrow fields. The scarecrow here keeps more than crows away, so this field is a safe place to sleep. In the morning, there is a 1-in-10 chance the scarecrow takes a shine to the travelers and leaves its post to go with them. 
89. Toadstool hovel. Charming, bucolic, safe, and warm. Three months after staying here, visitors will emit clouds of spores that will eventually grow into new toadstool hovels. Otherwise harmless, but likely to anger hoteliers, who don’t appreciate the fungal competition. 
90. Sirens' rocks. An enterprising merchant sets up shop just out of earshot, selling wax earplugs. You can then approach the shoreline where the sirens sing. Your earplugs keep you safe from their song. Their song keeps you safe from bandits and vagabonds. You really have to trust the discretion of the earplug guy not to sell you out, though.
91. Huge sleeping monster’s gaping maw. Locals say it has been open like that for years, and no other monster will approach it, so it is probably a safe place to stay. Bold choice Cotton, we’ll see if it works out for them. 
92. Competitive sleeping event. Professional slumberers will watch you sleep to see if they can learn anything from your technique. No need to post a watch!
93. The dump. Raccoons run it. They will accept visitors, but are extremely raccoons. 
94. This is my hole! It was made for me! Whenever people travel past this ravine, the cliff face inevitably features silhouette-shaped holes perfectly sized to match each traveler. Save or crawl inside.
95. Pitcher-plant like pods that entice creatures to slumber in them with sweet smells. Harmless to the sleepers, but the plant devours any and all insects on the sleeper’s body as recompense. Travelers plagued by lice and similar parasites will actively seek these plants out. 
96. Serpent dream-harvester. (Relatively) friendly/hungry giant snake runs a well-kept bed and breakfast. No money required; harvests dreams are payment.
97. Mandrake’s Mystical Manse. A magical doorway provides access to an extradimensional space with lavish bedrooms and nourishing food. Travelers assume a powerful wizard once cast it and… forgot about it? Died? Plans to return someday?
98. The Infinite Library. A fine place to sleep if you can resist the temptation to read uncountable fascinating books. 
99. Crashed aerial caravel. Upside-down, ploughed into the earth, never to fly again, but the hull provides reasonable shelter. Music from a spectral band (standing inverted on the deck above those sheltering under its hull) seems to keep wild animals away, but wild magic can surge forth from the long-dormant engines at inopportune times. 
100. Tired of being tired? A wizard here will sever you from your dreaming self, for a fee. Trapped in a bottle, your dream-self slumbers constantly, while you live on without the need to sleep. Side effects may include (1d4): 1. Difficulty telling time, gradually getting worse until even clocks and calendars become gibberish. 2. Susceptibility to illusion magic, as the mind gropes for dream images it can no longer find. 3. Enmity of a powerful night hag, who sees your dreamlessness as a professional challenge. 4. Flatulence.

Necromantic Nightmares Part IV: Body Snatchers, Ghouljamming, Rotted Roots

Last time: A Third Corpse-Wagon Full of Necromantic Novelties: Railroads, Sharks, and Skeleton-Style Severance

Faction: Grave Robbers and Body Snatchers

Grave robbing and body snatching was a big thing in real history and real history didn’t even have necromancy. It should be orders of magnitude more popular in a magical fantasy world. There’s a lot to work with when looking at historical examples. Evocative slang (“resurrectionists”). Science and progress versus respect for religion and tradition. Educated elites versus the working class. Racism, if you’re playing in a game that wants to unpack heavy issues.

This subject is a good hook for all kinds of adventures, whether the PCs are working as grave robbers, being paid to stop them, or just tossed back and forth by the ceaseless whims of the funereal world. Consider just a few.

Random table: What are the competing interests creating conflict in and around the world of the grave robbers?

1. The thieves’ guild is hiring skilled rogues to crack mortsafes. Adventurers could work for them, or help the city watch catch these criminals.
2. The vengeful ghost of a prominent politician has sworn to destroy the town if body snatchers take the remains of any member of its family. A volunteer watch group is forming to guard against this eventuality. The complication is that no one is completely certain how many illegitimate children this politician had, and whether or not the ghost would count any such deceased persons as family. Better figure out who they are, and protect their graves to be sure.
3. The ghast who rules over the local cemetery is spreading rumors that great wealth is buried with various recently buried bodies, hoping to let the grave robbers do the hard work of digging, then grab the bodies (of both the dead and the foolish robbers) for itself.
4. A serial killer (perhaps a deceptive monster like a wererat, perhaps just a normal human) is using already-robbed graves as a place to hide his victims. The local resurrectionists are understandably concerned this will lead to a mob blaming them and seeking them out. One group of criminals is thus incentivized to stop the actions of another, even more grim criminal.
5. A marriage between two ghosts has created a complication in the execution of the will of the local potentate. With the help of a wisecracking skull that can cast Speak With Dead at will, adventurers must untangle the legal intricacies of these conflicting life-or-death bonds. 
6. Thieves are following body snatchers and plundering the graves of valuables after the bodies are removed (the body snatchers scrupulously do not take any valuable items from a grave, besides the body itself). The two factions are on the brink of a gang war, each accusing the other of immoral acts.

Location: The Hunger Ship

Before the spelljamming ark departed on its extraplanar journey, the shipwright-priests blessed it, entreating the stellar gods to ensure that no one would ever go hungry aboard the vessel. The blessing worked, but in a perverse way. When the ship strayed from its course and supplies ran out, the passengers found that they would not die of starvation. But their hunger was as strong as ever, and that hunger drove them to survive as ghouls. The ark continues to drift between the stars, full of ghouls fighting amongst themselves and waiting for unwary travelers to stumble on their ship.

Random table: Grim and ghoulish scenes from the cursed corridors of the Hunger Ship.

1. Ghoul-priests have welded iron cages over the mouths of fanatical flagellant ghouls. Prevented from feeding, these monsters are kept in a constant state of frenzy. (visual reference: the garrador from Resident Evil 4)
2. Gunnery ghouls lovingly tend to massive spiked hooks on long cables, ready to fire at passing ships to haul in a fresh meal. (visual reference: the reavers from Firefly)
3. Even as the hooks pull the targeted vessel toward the Hunger Ship, ghoul boarders will clamber up the chains, vying to be the first to taste new flesh. (visual reference: a hectic boarding scene from any pirate or naval movie) 
4. A dining hall filled with exotic "food" that is the refinement of hundreds of years of cannibalistic closed-loop "recycling." Ghoul aesthetes will (temporarily...) hold off on devouring anyone who can give them thoughtful critical input on their quality of the offerings; the ghouls are concerned they have been removed from the culinary world too long and may be out of step with current trends. (visual reference: some combination of the dining room from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the forbidden food from Pan’s Labyrinth, and the bar in From Dusk Til Dawn)
5. The ghoul chirurgeon is relatively diplomatic by ghoul standards, offering to trade a prosthetic replacement for a PC’s tastiest-looking limb. The prosthetics are genuine, not a trick, and each one can do something that a normal limb cannot. (visual reference: Bruce Campbell in Escape from LA or Dr. Steinman in BioShock)
6. The ghoul ascetic abstains from eating living things, consuming only dead matter. They seek to lead the ghouls on the ships to a graveyard planet where they could feast on ethically sourced bones for eternity. A bit of a bore compared to the other ghouls, but basically a good fellow. (visual reference: peaceful Dreamland ghouls in Lovecraftian works)

Monster: Rootrot Treant 

Blood drips from a crude mouth of cracks and splinters. Corrupted by necromancy, this once-mighty  forest guardian now spreads decay. Deceptively slow-moving, when he scents living things he can flip over and walk on hundreds of surprisingly sturdy branches, like a wooden spider with far too many limbs, slamming his body down on his prey.

Necromancers in conflict with vampires for control of the local undead will sometimes use Rootrot Treants as guardians. Bristling with wooden “stakes,” few vampires will engage them in direct combat.

Modern statblock:

Rootrot Treant (huge undead plant) AC 16 (natural armor) HP138 Speed 30’ or 60’ (charge ending in a slam attack that leaves it prone)

RES Poison damage

IMM Poisoned, exhausted

Challenge 9 XP 5000

False Appearance (indistinguishable from dead tree when motionless, mainly works in fall/winter) 

Siege Monster (double damage to objects and structures)

Actions: Bite or Slam

Bite (melee): +10 / 3d6+6 piercing damage

Slam (melee) +10 / 4d10+6 bludgeoning damage and the Rootrot Treant falls prone and cannot move further that turn. Save STR DC 16 or restrained under the treant's bulk; ATH DC 16 to escape.

1/day when the Rootrot Treant rises from prone to standing, as a bonus action, it may spawn a field of rotted thorny vines harming all living things in the affected area (as Spirit Guardians, necrotic damage) 

Old-school statblock: 

Rootrot Treant AC 17 HD 8 HP 36 Att +7 bite (4d6) ML 12 MV normal or x2 normal, then if bite hits, treant falls on top of target and pins to the ground. Surprise on 1-3 at short range in environments with ample dead trees.

A Third Corpse-Wagon Full of Necromantic Novelties: Railroads, Sharks, and Skeleton-Style Severance

Last time: More Necromantic Novelties: Anathema, Bacteria, Dinobomb

Location: Necropolis Railway

Managing the dead is challenging enough when they stay dead. Managing them in a world of undeath is  more complicated by a whole order of magnitude.

The threat of the undead changes how societies handle corpses and remains. But for significantly large urban areas, the first order of business is to get the dead away from the living. Facilitating that process requires serious infrastructure, including a way to get the bodies from where they die to where they will be laid to rest. Depending on the setting, the railway can be a literal railroad, or a more low-tech equivalent (e.g., river barges pulled by beasts of burden on the shoreline).

What dangerous situations might adventurers find on the necropolis line or at its terminus?

1. Overrun cadaver carriage. Zombie unlife has spread amongst the corpses on one of the carriages, and now all the bodies within are trying to get out.
2. Plague rat outbreak. Rats attracted to the cemetery are carrying a virulent new disease. Rumors suggest it is causing the infected dead to walk from their graves, but this may be misinformation.
3. Charnel snuffer. A ghost snagged in the cremation chimney has inhaled enough necromantic energy to move about the crematoriums, blowing out the fires and slowing this crucial work.
4. Missing VIP. Some corpses are preserved, typically because the railway masters anticipate that they may someday be the subjects of magic like Speak With Dead or (in rare cases) Resurrection. One such cadaver is missing, and a frantic search is underway to locate it before it is accidentally destroyed.
5. Religious dispute. The burial grounds around the railway terminus were carefully laid out to keep the faithful of different sects from crossing paths, but a recent schism in the church has led to clashes and disputes over choice burial sites. An opportunistic wight hopes to amplify the violence and turn members of both sides to undeath amid the confusion. 
6. Expired Express. Unsubstantiated reports suggest that necromancers and grave robbers are disguising themselves as ordinary mourners to get through cemetery security. Board the train and investigate suspicious characters, without angering the legitimately grief-stricken travelers.

Monster: Mummy Shark

Undead sharks preserved in formaldehyde and covered in seaweed wrappings. The rot from their bite has a particularly fearsome reputation among sailors, as the pus that emerges from the wound allegedly warps and weakens the wooden parts of sailing ships. Creatures that die within a mummy shark’s stomach emerge as zombies at the next low tide. This blog cannot be held liable if your players begin to sing an obnoxious song after they hear you say the words “mummy shark.”

Modern statblock:

Mummy Shark (large undead beast) AC 13 (natural armor) HP 126 Speed 30’ (swim) or 10’ (a flopping and thrashing crawl on land) 

Challenge 6 XP 2300 

Actions: Bite + Dreadful Glare. 

Bite (melee): +9 / 3d10+6 damage, save CON DC 14 or contract mummy shark rot; can only recover HP while fully immersed in salt water, and ships on which the infected character travel suffer wear and tear at x3 normal rate.

Dreadful Glare: Save WIS DC 13 or frightened until end of mummy shark’s next turn; fail by 5 or more, paralyzed also.

Old-school statblock: 

Mummy Shark AC 13 HD 8 HP 36 Att +7 bite (2d10 + mummy shark rot (can only recover HP while fully immersed in salt water, and ships on which the infected character travel suffer wear and tear at x3 normal rate) ML 12 MV x2 normal swimming, half normal on land. Silent until it attacks, only harmed by magic or electricity, save WIS/PARA on first sight or paralyzed with fear until it attacks or moves out of sight.

Milieu: Skeletal Severance  

Necromancy is legal, but highly regulated. Anyone with healthy bones can sell the rights to the use of their skeleton for a set number of years after their death. 

The clergy condemn this practice, and many right-thinking people are at least… squeamish about such a transaction. But many who are struggling to make ends meet will decide that security in life is worth some indignity in death.

Adventure hook: When a painter with a record-setting skeletal service contract goes missing, the Necromantic Guild has a strong incentive to verify if they’re alive or dead. They will pay well for proof of death, and more for the recovery of the skeleton. But be wary; the church may interfere with your efforts, in the hopes that an unresolved claim will destabilize the skeleton trade. 

More Necromantic Nonsense: The Profane Dead, the Bacterial Ghost, and the Dinobomb

Last time: New Necromantic Monsters and Factions for Weirder Worldbuilding 

Milieu: The Profanity of the Undead

Inherent to the idea of undeath as traditionally understood in most folklore and derived fiction is a wrongness and a fundamental reversal of what that person (or their society) viewed as natural and holy in life. Undead should not be kinda vaguely, ambiently unholy – they should specifically reject, pollute, or invert the values of their pre-undeath society.

Random table: In what way are these undead profaning what was most holy to them in life?

1. Ghoul-minotaurs, mouths dripping with beef tallow, worship at a profane altar to Our Lady of the Abattoir. 
2. Deadwood-dryads and treant snags knock down healthy trees and suck the life out of green shoots.
3. Revived rust monsters galvanize metals instead of rusting them. Highly prized by dwarven metalworkers who are heretical enough to deal with necromancers. 
4. Skeleton-fish, repelled by bodies of water, hurl themselves against the doors and windows of the fishermen who caught them, silently begging for their killers to consume flesh they no longer possess.  
5. Shadow-beholders emit blinding shafts of darkness, haunting living eye tyrants and threatening to deprive them of their most precious sense.
6. Poltergeist-gargoyles enraged by the physicality the spirit can no longer embody, possess statues across the city, toppling them onto unsuspecting passerby.

Monster: Bacterial Ghosts 

Non-sapient animals generally do not project sufficient soul-stuff to create ghosts. But there are exceptions. For example, when particularly large numbers of microscopic organisms die suddenly, their collective extermination can produce a ghost large enough for people to perceive.

This ghost is amoeba-like, with its “mouth” forming on any of its appendages. It is sometimes mistaken for an ooze. It cannot communicate or even really think in a way that people understand, but can be frighteningly motivated, as undeath seems to give it a collective direction that its constituent organisms lacked in their single-celled lives.

Random table: What is the bacterial ghost doing right now?

1. Lurking in a pond, consuming algae until they can build a Swamp Thing-like body.
2. Plotting revenge, hoping to destroy the bleach factory responsible for their innumerable deaths.
3. Unliving symbiotically on a ghost sloth.
4. Possessing the micromancer who foolishly bestowed awareness on their colony.
5. Researching spells with names like “pierce membrane” and “corrupt mitochondria.”
6. Haunting the innards of the cow where they once dwelt while still alive.

Treasure: Necromantic Clothing and Equipment

Much of the ordinary clothing and gear that people use in their daily lives is obviously derived from living things. Usually such items are too far removed from life to be affected by necromancy. Usually.

A particularly diligent necromancer, taking the time to study the processes behind the creation of clothing, tools, and armor, can add a spark of unlife to such items.

Random table: What necromantic equipment is available for those with the stomach to use it?

1. Compass armor. Leather armor that retains the ability of the cattle to sense the planet’s magnetic field. The wearer instinctively aligns north-south when standing around idly for a turn or longer.
2. Silk-shroud robes. Fine silk robes with hidden pockets containing zombie silkworms. The silkworms will spin silk to repair any damage to the robes. With patience, the silkworms can be goaded to reshape the garment; for example, refashioning the robe into strong silk-rope to escape a tower.
3. Snakeskin belt. When unbuckled, the "clasp" is capable of biting to deliver deadly poison once per day. Wearing tough gloves or carrying antivenom is strongly recommended as it is easy to forget and receive a nasty bite while undressing at the end of a long adventuring day. Stylish.
4. Naptha bomb. Rock-oil from a natural seep. Looks a lot like alchemists' fire. When thrown like a grenade, the necromantic reagent reanimates whatever ancient animals decomposed into the oil. Unpredictable due to the unknown (and probably cross-contaminated) mix of biological matter that made up the oil, but the best-case scenario can produce a terrifying amalgamation of undead dinosaurs.

Next time: Yet More Necromantic Novelties: Necropolis, Shark, Severance

New Necromantic Monsters and Factions for Weirder Worldbuilding (Part 1 in an Undying Series)

Necromancy is part of the vanilla fantasy vernacular that informs many RPGs. You can't have your skeleton warriors and life-draining ghosts without some fiction explaining how these spirits are spooking the PCs. Some fiction really digs deep into what a setting defined by necromancy would look like. But many fantasy RPGs only scratch the surface. Let's grab our corpse-exhumation shovels and dig a little deeper.

Monster: The Griefer

Adventurers call it the griefer. It’s a dungeon ghost that can only possess a freshly-killed body. Immaterial and barely visible, the griefer will follow adventurers or dungeon factions around the dungeon, waiting for conflict to produce a suitable corpse to possess.

The longer the griefer lingers without finding a body, the more disruptive it becomes, leveraging what weak spiritual id it possess to generate alarming noises or frightening images, hoping to startle dungeon dwellers into deadly conflict.

Adventure hook: A griefer is piloting the body of an heir to a minor noble family. The sibling who is second in the line of succession badly wants the body returned, so they can prove that the heir is dead. The reward depends on retrieving the body in reasonably good condition. The griefer is very motivated to avoid capture... but its possession of the body is also staving off decomposition.

Milieu: Necroarchy

With age comes wisdom, and mere death does not change that equation. Indeed, serving as a living member of the city council is almost like an audition for service after death in a city where broad acceptance of necromancy makes this possible. The enormous round council table features seats for the living members, while the undead members’ skulls sit on ornate stands at their stations. 

Adventure hook: The council requires a quorum to make important decisions, but several of the council skulls have been stolen. The government is paralyzed by this bizarre and unprecedented theft. The living council members suspect each other of the crime. Or perhaps it is a rival city-state, seeking to undermine the dead city's power. What no one yet knows is that the thief is actually the former lover of one of the deceased members, who they seek to resurrect. They stole the other skulls only to draw suspicion away from them.

Faction: The Great Skeleton Army

Animated skeletons persist. Bleached and fleshless, they do not rot like zombies. Indifferent to the sun, they do not need to flee the light, as vampires and shadows do. Easy to create en masse, they can be raised even by a necromancer of relatively modest power. And they often persist long after their creator has died (and likely joined their ranks). The great skeleton army is one such example, inspired by great examples like this one.

No one remembers why the great skeleton army was created, or who they were originally intended to fight. It obeys no clear leader, although some skeletons mimic the roles of officers. 

Random table: Encounters amidst and near the Great Skeleton Army

1. Skull-scout. Catapulted ahead or dropped from the sky by skeletal birds, these disembodied skulls scout for activity and then report their findings after the army recovers them. Endowed with more intelligence than a typical skeleton, they are usually bored, and eager to chat with passersby.
2. Grave sapper. Skeletons that spent ages buried underneath the earth are particularly adept at digging. Travelers are in for a harrowing experience if they meet the sappers by stepping on a weak patch of ground falling into an active tomb-tunnel.  
3. Parallel travelers. Like small fish swimming alongside a shark because the big predator scares off smaller predators, some living people will travel in the wake of the skeleton army to protect themselves from living threats they feel are more dangerous.
4. Impressment gangboss. Gathering skeletons to swell the skelly ranks. They are supposed to find “naturally occurring” skeletons, but are not above sourcing them from the living when needed. "I swear these skeletons just fell off the back of a wagon, boss."
5. Skelevangalist. Seeks to free bony brethren from their meat-prisons. Will shush living creatures who attempt to speak to it, claiming it is listening to their “bones' voices.”
6. Camp followers. Not that kind! No boner jokes, please. Opportunistic humans will trade goods and services that skeleton soldiers can't manage themselves. 
7. Bone collector. Skeletal ragman who collects stray bones from the battlefields, offering its wares to skeletons that have lost pieces to time or turmoil. Humble and easy to miss, but secretly essential to the army’s (literal) cohesion.
8. Desiccated deserter. Fleeing the military life and eager to find a place among the fleshy world.

Next time: More Necromantic Nonsense: The Profane Dead, the Bacterial Ghost, and the Dinobomb

An Even Closer Look at the Medusa: Seven More Variant Gorgons

Several years ago I wrote a post with variant versions of the classic gorgon. As noted in that post, we’re talking gorgons as in "people who have serpentine features and can turn things to stone by looking at them," not gorgons as in "big metal bulls that fart petrifying gas." 

Calling gorgons “medusas” is like if aliens made first contact with a human named Glen, then insisted on calling all other humans “glens.”

Although... now the idea of aliens who call humans "glens" is growing on me.

Anyway, gorgon variants. Here we go.

The Deep Time Enthusiast

Medusa was not a vain fool. She was not jealous of her immortal sisters because they would be forever young and beautiful. She was jealous of them because they would live long enough to see the world transformed in ways that even the gods couldn’t predict. Medusa was a deep time enthusiast, and immortality was a path to seeing the future.

Immortality allowed Medusa to study changes in the world, from the rise and fall of kingdoms to the evolution of species to the geologic development of the world itself. The petrifying gaze, nominally a “curse” associated with the condition, also proved useful in her studies. Petrifying a living thing ensured a level of preservation that archeologists can only dream of. 

Building wealth is trivially easy for the immortal, who can rely on compounding passive gains over long periods. Medusa invested her wealth broadly, and used the proceeds to build the world’s greatest museum and biological storehouse. Because petrification can be (relatively) easily reversed, it is an ideal way of preserving organic life.

Random table: What long-gone creatures has Medusa stored in stone in her archive of deep time?

1. Ravenous meglopedes. Nearly wiped out by humans because of their ruinous consumption of crops. A petrified weapon of mass destruction that fits in your hand.
2. Party of neanderthal adventurers. Recognizably a fighter, wizard, cleric, and thief, but with exaggerated caveman aesthetics. 
3. Polonium elemental. Inert in stone form, but highly radioactive if de-petrified. 
4. Corewurm. Massive interstellar wurm that seeks volcanically active planets, burrows to their core, and consumes them, destroying the planet in the process. Sticky note reading “do NOT reanimate” attached to its stone snout.
5. Genesis Seed. A single seed, turned to stone. If revitalized and planted, it will produce a rampant explosion of new life, evolving at a greatly intensified speed; and likely displacing existing life.
6. Doppleooze. Protoplasmic ooze that takes on the form of what it touches. Petrified before its kind drove themselves to extinction via excessively successful doppling. If de-stoned, will turn into the first living thing it can touch.

Credit to Epochrypha by Skerples for inspiration.

The Graft Surgeon

There are various options available to adventurers who have lost limbs, ranging from simple prosthetics up through the powerful Regenerate spell. Somewhere in between those extremes is the exotic procedure known as petrigrafting.

The gorgon known as the graft surgeon practices a craft somewhere between doctor and sculptor (the distinction is… not fixed among gorgonkind). After carefully examining a patient who has lost a limb and taking various measurements, they will search through their storehouse of statuary, looking for a limb that is as close as possible to the missing one. They’ll then petrify the (willing) patient.

The next step is most critical. They must carefully chisel both the patient’s stump and the donor limb so they fit together as exactly as possible. The stump and then limb must then be bonded with adhesive made entirely from organic components. The closer the ingredients are to human physiology, the better.

Finally, the surgeon applies restorative magic to reverse the petrification. As with any graft, there is no guarantee that the body will accept the new addition. Sometimes, the graft fails, and the surgeon will need to re-petrfiy and remove the failed graft. 

But in many cases, the process is a success, and the patient walks out of the operating theater with a newly functional limb. The arm is always conspicuously different; the surgeon cares little for aesthetics, and skin color, musculature, and even biological origin may vary.

The surgeon is always seeking donations for their statuary collection. A common way of defraying the surgeon's bill is for a patient to agree to donate their body after death, so that their limbs may one day be donated to others. For patients fortunate enough to die of natural causes, the graft surgeon is often the last to visit them at their bedside, to call in that debt from years before. 

Random table: What ingredient does the surgeon need you to find in order to create a stone-to-flesh graft adhesive?

1. Basilisk tears.
2. The heart of a galeb-duhr.
3. Saliva from a mimic that has feasted on human flesh.
4. A branch from a tree in a petrified forest. 
5. A flagstone from the hall of the king of Urgos, located deep within the elemental plane of earth.
6. A fang from the snake-hair of a gorgon (no, the surgeon is not interested in donating one of his).

The Stonework Stablemaster

Nomenclature mixups aside, gorgons (the petrifying people) are sometimes found in the company of “gorgons” (the metal bulls). The bull-like creature that many humans call a “gorgon” is actually a close cousin of the catoblepas; a more correct taxonomic name would be petroblepas. Both the former’s stench and the latter’s petrifying gas comes from their specialized stomachs; like cows, they are ruminants.

In isolated areas, gorgons are known to raise basilisks and petroblepases. While gorgons are not immune to their petrifaction, they do understand its dangers better than most creatures, and have some inherent resistance to it. 

Gorgon stablemasters can provide a stable supply of food in the form of petrified stone, which allows them to domesticate both of these petrified flesh-eating creatures. Basilisks are useful because gorgons know how to use the oil from their digestive system to create the alchemical combination that cures petrification, which is very helpful for any gorgon that wishes to maintain peaceful relations with their neighbors.

Random table: What useful things are available for sale or trade at the gorgon’s farm?

1. Cockatrice egg-grenade. Reproduces the effect of the cockatrice’s bite, in grenade form. Fragile.
2. Cockatrice-feather cloak. AC as scale, at half the weight. Stylish. 
3. Basilisk oil. A single vial can restore one petrified creature.
4. Basilisk kidney. Filters out trace rare metals in stone that the basilisk can’t digest. Highly sought after by alchemists.
5. Basilisk cornea. Expertly removed intact and preserved in oil. Can be placed over the wearer’s eye like a contact lens. Allows a one-time use of the basilisk's petrification gaze.
6. Petroblepas oil. The oil that naturally lubricates their armored plating. Functions as oil of slipperiness. Can also be used to restore even seriously rusted metal.
7. Petroblepas haggis. Pudding made from the organs. Eating it causes petrification, but only gradually over a period of about 48 hours, as most creatures can only digest it very slowly.
8. Petroblepas armor. AC as full plate, but half again heavier. Advantage on saves versus petrification.

The Surveillance Assassin

The idea of meeting a gorgon’s gaze is terrifying, but most people can take comfort in the knowledge that gorgons usually dwell in remote ruins and dungeons. Surely, here in the world’s greatest city, there is no reason to fear that a gorgon's glance could turn one into stone.

Don’t be so sure. With the proper application of spells like Scrying and Project Image, a gorgon with magical powers can instantiate its petrifying visage far from its own lair. This method of remote petrification is particularly useful for targeting wizards, as their crystal balls and scrying pools can be magically hacked by the gorgon. 

Adventure hook: Just one more thing… The PCs are investigating the mysterious fate of an aristocratic leader who was turned to stone. No one is fessing up to hiring the gorgon who conducted the remote-stoning, but someone certainly bought up all the basilisk oil in the region over the past few years to prevent an easy cure. If the PCs can figure out who, they will have a strong lead on the responsible party. 

The Mirror-Maze Prisoner

Gorgons are famously vulnerable to their own gaze. Many gorgons end their immortal lives amidst their own statue gardens, after letting their guard down for just a moment. And for some, the double-edged danger of that gaze becomes a prison.

King Calviano's pursuit of immortality may have driven him half-mad, but he found it. The forbidden magics that transformed him into a gorgon ensured he would live forever. Queen Calviano recognized the danger he presented to the people of the land, but could not bring herself to kill him. Instead, she trapped him in a prison of unbreakable mirrors.

The maze is not so difficult to navigate for someone with normal vision. Ordinary techniques for escaping a mirrored carnival funhouse will work, including looking at the ceiling and floor, or finding smudges and marks that give away the glass. 

The maze is more difficult for someone who cannot risk looking at their reflection. The glass is unusually tough so that the king cannot easily break it. And the maze includes loops and gaps that make it difficult to navigate by touch alone. Doors include strange handles and locks that are relatively easy to open when looking at them, but impossible to manage blind. While the king has tried to escape by blindly wandering the halls, the maze’s construction has been enough to keep him trapped at the heart of the maze. 

Adventure hook: Not a place of honor. That all happened over a thousand years ago, and despite the queen’s best efforts to ward intruders away from the mirror maze, people have forgotten the place’s purpose. Adventurers have recently begun to enter it in search of treasure. The king stirs, sensing an opportunity to escape and return to the outside world.

Stone-Cold Counsel 

It’s a quandary that many mortal rulers face. They’ve accomplished great things in their life. But time comes for everyone, and the leader of a hereditary monarchy must ask: can the next generation be relied on to rule effectively? Well, maybe. If only there was a better way.

There is! In stately palanquin, surrounded by lead-lined screens, the gorgon Gravieska travels from court to court, offering aged rulers a tempting bargain; meet her gaze and become a statue. Their heir will receive a dose of petrification-reversing basilisk oil as part of the deal. The statue and oil are passed down from generation to generation. At times of great danger or opportunity, when the wise ancestor's counsel would be most valuable, the current ruler can de-petrify them to seek their aid.

Adventure hook: Succession crisis. The emperor, diagnosed with an incurable disease, was thought to only have a few weeks of life left to them. They underwent the petrification process so that they could save those precious weeks to provide advice to future generations. Several decades later, a cure has been found for the disease. The new emperor’s reign has been controversial, reversing many of the previous emperor’s signature accomplishments. Amidst the old guard in the imperial court, there is more and more talk of bringing back the old emperor; not to provide counsel to the current emperor, but to overthrow their own heir and rule once again.

The Mother of Flesh and Stone

In the beginning, the world was nothing but a writhing mass of organic matter. 

Life, microscopic and thoughtless, was caught in a constant cycle of mad consumption and thoughtless reproduction. This went on for a really long time. 

Into this primordial chaos came the first gorgon. Was it an alien? A monster? A god? There was no observer there to make such distinctions. But it was able to transform the other denizens of this world into non-organic material. For the first time, there was stone. The core of a world. 

Gorgons gradually transformed more and more life into stone, and that stone provided a stable core for the life of this world. For the first time, living things were not in constant contact with other living things. There was room for water to settle, habitats to form, and creatures to specialize. 

Random table: What weird creatures flourished in this gorgon-influenced world? 

1. Giant shipworms. Kinda like nautical purple worms. Harbormasters will lay stone pilings well outside the harbor, laced with tasty minerals, to keep these creatures away from the piers.
2. Mage-bane lichen. Lichen colonies that specifically grow on sapient creatures that have been petrified. Acidically eroding this particular type of stone seems to supercharge their growth. The lichen is a serious threat to any gorgons (like the Deep Time Enthusiast) who use petrification to preserve samples of living things. 
3. Piddock-folk. These molluskular creatures bore into soft rock in search of locations to form new colonies. They appear to be intelligent, but are incapable of verbal communication, or just very rude (scholars disagree).
4. Dire parrotfish. Particularly common around colonies of coral gorgons. As they scrape statues, they can sometimes ingest intelligence or magic from petrified persons. 

SOMETHING Happens on Every Watch

Many games have dealt with “the boring campsite watch” problem. It goes something like this.

DM: “OK, so Stonks the thief will take the first watch, Sir Melvin will take the second watch, and Talita of Frond will take the third watch. OK, Stonks, let’s see… rolls dice… it’s a quiet night. Nothing happens during your watch, and so at the end of your turn, you wake up Melvin. Melvin, uh, it is pretty late now. The moon is overhead. Um, rolls more dice… looks like your watch passes uneventfully also. Talita, you’re on the last watch…”

Pretty boring, right? Dead time. What if instead something happened on every watch? Wouldn’t that be more interesting? What would that look like?

Use Random Events, Not (Just) Random Encounters

Depending on your preferred style of play, something happening on every watch may immediately sound like overkill. A positive hit on the ol’ random encounter table three or four times every night the party rests? Too much!

Part of the reason that random encounter tables and similar procedures have atrophied in modern play is that encounters in modern play have a strong presumption of combat, and combat takes a long time. The latter issue is hard to fix. You can nibble at the edges, but you’re not going to fully solve long combats in 5E and similar games without switching to another system and maybe even an entirely different style of play. 

But the former is much easier to solve. De-incentivizing combat in the first place is relatively easy. So easy that it was solved in some of the earliest iterations of the game, where encounter distance plus a reaction roll went a long way toward implying a situation that was not likely to lead directly to combat. Even the absurdly large “no. appearing” counts in early monster manuals communicated that rolls on wilderness tables were suggesting a factional presence or wildlife population, not a Final-Fantasy-battle-music sudden confrontation. Another lost art, “% in lair,” also provides a tool for avoiding obligatory combat, as a lair appearance suggests a creature at rest and perhaps provides a risk/reward choice for the players who can opt-in to risking danger, but aren’t obligated to do so.

The leveled up version of the old-school approach appears in tables like those in Hot Springs Island (still my favorite random encounter table) and Skerples’ Monster Overhaul. These tables give monsters something to do, imply pasts and futures, and often put monsters in conflict with other monsters. 

Campfire by Cody Claus

But even without using those tools, it is pretty easy to adjudicate interesting situations that do not necessarily force combat. Say for example “goblin” comes up on a random table, with no other elaboration. Here are d8 ideas that I came up with quickly, off the top of my head, without using any prompts or tables.

1. A single goblin scout. She is not individually dangerous, but will report the PCs presence to a larger group, if she leaves undetected.
2. Tracks from the goblins cross very close to the campsite; a PC stumbles on them when they go to relieve themself. 
3. Goblins are fleeing rival goblins, clumsily crashing through the campsite in the dead of night.
4. Sounds of goblin drums in the distance. A hunt? A ceremony? Something else?
5. The distinctive smell of goblin cooking, wafting up through a chimney vent in the ground. Unbeknownst to the players, they have camped directly above the goblins’ underground dwelling.
6. Goblins are looking for the PCs, but are unsure exactly where the party is. They are close by, noisily arguing about where to look next.
7. A goblin hunting party chasing a wild boar; for extra chaos, one goblin has a lasso around the hog and is being dragged through the undergrowth. If combat breaks out, the boar will gore both goblins or PCs indiscriminately.
8. A curious goblin spying on the PCs from a safe distance. Are they a thief? A potential hireling? Something else?

This is just scratching the surface, and most ideas like these imply yet more ideas. Practice producing ideas like these for a while, and hooks for non-combat encounters will start to feel like the default way to present random encounters, rather than obligatory fights.

Campfire by Cannonbreed

Offer More Robust Echoes and Omens

This is age-old advice, but warrants rebroadcast for the GMs who don’t already have it in their toolkit. One of the easiest ways to create something interesting based on a random table roll – but without incentivizing combat – is to simply contextualize it in the past or the future, instead of in the present.

Consider a random encounter roll for an owlbear. Spoor? Ominous hooting? Clawed-up tree bark? The screech of prey a few miles off, suddenly cut short?

An easy way to think of this method is in terms of echoes and omens. What has happened in the recent past and what will happen in the near future? What signs can the PCs find for what the monster was doing in this area just before they got there? What warnings can the PCs perceive that the monster is nearby?

Next week: Ends, Themes, Scenes, and Cuts

Treat Lists of Deities Like Roll Tables to Create a Scrambled Pantheon

Mythological pantheons in the real world are fascinating. They raise all kinds of fascinating questions about how the people who worshipped those gods thought about the world and understood their place in it. Pantheons in fantasy worlds are often a lot less interesting. 

Look at those tables in Appendix B of the 2014 5E players handbook. We have gods like “Leira, goddess of illusion; CN; Trickery; Point-down triangle containing a swirl of mist” or “Rao, god of peace and reason; LG; Knowledge; White heart.” These are… easy to remember, I guess? They are tropey and linear. Not very evocative, though. Most of these gods lack implicit internal tension. Some of them have obvious roles vis-a-vis their believers, but others only make sense as a flavor hook for a possible cleric character’s desired domain selection.

What if we treat these tables as roll tables? If you count from the first entry in Appendix B, on the Forgotten Realms table, and then number it up through 100, you get most of the way through Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Eberron. Roll five d100 – once for each column, plus twice on the first column, splitting the name and honorific. I re-rolled entries that came up more than once. Here’s what I got.

Name: Gond
Honorific: Goddess of the Moon
Alignment: LG
Domain: Death, Knowledge
Symbol: Oak Leaf

I just rolled this up outta nowhere. A few details jump out right away. Note that in Appendix B, all the gods with the death domain are either neutral or evil. What does it mean to have a lawful good death goddess? How important is death to the order and well-being of the world? And what’s with the moon and the oak leaf? Are these pure symbology? Or do they mean something more? Is the moon the world of the dead? Are oak trees mystical gates to the moon?

Name: Mystra
Honorific: Goddess of Wrath and Madness
Alignment: N
Domain: Knowledge
Symbol: Feather

I love the idea that the goddess of madness also has the knowledge domain. Very evocative to think of madness as a contingent risk to seeking more knowledge.

Name: Hiddukel
Honorific: God of Meditation and Order
Alignment: NE
Domain: Knowledge
Symbol: Flame drawn on silver or molded from silver

This is what I love. Why is the god of order NE? There’s a story there. My first thought is that he is an usurper. But it could be even weirder. What if the former god of meditation and order trapped him in this role, forcing a NE deity to rule over an order-inducing pantheon? Is he meditating to gather knowledge? Perhaps his parishioners are split between those who venerate him in his captivity, versus those who want to set it free. That’s an interesting deity.

Real-world mythologies are more interesting. In fantasy creators' defense, ancient Egypt has a 5000-year head start. Colossal figures in front of the Great temple of Abu Simbel, via Old Book Illustrations

Name: Milil
Honorific: God of Fire and Change
Alignment: LN
Domain: no clerics
Symbol: Upright flaming sword

Right away we have a “god of change” who is LN. How do we even square that? Some kind of dynamic change that is part of a larger rebalancing of the world? The domain is “no clerics,” an entry specific to Dragonlance, which raises further questions. Perhaps this god considers divine magic to be an impermissible exception to the LN “change” they allow? Perhaps in this god’s view, it is clerics themselves who unbalance the world, and they seek to apply their power in ways that punish or curtail divine casters.

Name: Kelemvor
Honorific: God of Storms
Alignment: LG
Domain: Life, Light
Symbol: Blank Scroll

Again, we get more interesting results from random rolls. Storms are typically chaotic, but what if we associate them with law instead? And the domain of life? And the symbol of a blank scroll? Perhaps a world where lighting strikes spawn new demigods and monsters who serve to maintain the divine order? 

Name: Lunitari
Honorific: God of Thieves
Alignment: NG
Domain: Death, Life
Symbol: Bundle of five sharpened bones

What do you even make of a NG death/life god of thieves? I’m thinking of a mythology where Lunitari steals souls from competing law and chaos factions to balance the scales.

The basic idea of all these ordinary-pantheons-turned-weird-by-roll-tables is this – the incongruities and contradictions that the rolls produce are features, not bugs. The world does not need more chaotic-weather-god-versus-good-light-god-versus-evil-death-god pantheons. Rolling forces the DM/worldbuilder to grapple with weird contradictions. That’s what produces strange, distinct, actionable worlds. Go for that energy when worldbuilding. 

d100 Questions to Design a More Memorable Dragon

A dragon is the single most evocative visual element of fantasy games. That same universal familiarity makes it difficult to describe to players in fresh, evocative ways. 

Below is a series of questions and prompts for mixing up the appearance of a dragon. Some of these will suggest novel monster designs or adventure hooks. But many of them will have no concrete gameplay application. The point is that when you tell your players to “picture a dragon” their brains should be lighting up in a way that is measurably different from telling them to “picture a Toyota Camry.”

Much credit to this Wikipedia list of dragons in mythology and folklore as a source of dragons that break conventional mass-media informed conceptions of dragons. You could run dragons based on these mythologies for a lifetime and never run out of interesting ideas. And it is funny to note how many non-dragon creatures (by Monster Manual taxonomy) are listed here as types of dragons – behirs, tarasques, hydras, many such cases.

A memorable dragon by Iguanadon't

d100 Ask Yourself, What Does This Dragon Look Like?

Roll as many times as needed, until the dragon is clear in your mind's eye.

1. How many colors are the scales? If it's a chromatic dragon, is it consistent coloration across the body, or does it vary (e.g., darker on top, lighter on the bottom?)
2. Are the scales reflective or matte? 
3. Do their scales camouflage the dragon in its environment? Or are they bright and distracting colors?
4. What do the scales feel like to the touch? Warm or cool? Rough or smooth?
5. Do they have patterns? Banded scales, like a coral snake, are a personal favorite aesthetic for me.
6. If they’re bright and distracting, is it a warning to other creatures? A mating display? A form of dazzle camouflage to make it harder for the few things that can threaten them (mainly other dragons) to hit them?
7. What are the scales made of? Keratin? Something else? 
8. Are they perhaps scaleless, like a sphynx cat? Natural, or lost to disease?
9. Do metallic dragon scales make a sound like metal when they strike against something? Or are they metallic in appearance only?
10. How big are the scales anyway? Small and countless? Human-shield-sized? Really big like an armored dinosaur?
11. Bones. Light and thin like birds, or strong like steel?
12. Does it have externalized bones, like a carapace? Scales could be absent or just in a supporting role.
13. Shedding skin, for more-explicitly reptilian dragons. What do they do with the shed skin? Hugely valuable to alchemists and treasure hunters, but obviously dangerous to get ahold of.
14. If dragons are not related to reptiles, what characteristics most differentiate them from reptiles?
15. Accretion of treasure. Superheated gold tracing the seams of the red dragon’s scales. A gold dragon whose scales are actually melted gold that they basked in.
16. Do they have feathers? For flying, heat regulation, mating rituals, or something else?
17. Is the dragon sleek and impossibly clean, or scarred and marked by age?
18. Does it have a shell?
19. Frills or a crest, like some lizards? 
20. Does any part of the dragon change color depending on its mood, level of activity, or age?
21. What about its spine? Is there a mane, ridges, or even a sail-like protrudence?
22. Are shed scales and egg fragments left in the lair? Destroyed? Bartered to alchemists? 
23. Quills or spines? For defense, offense, presentation, something else?
24. How many limbs? Two arms and two legs?
25. Does it even distinguish between arms and legs? Does it have claws capable of manipulating objects on each limb, and use them as the situation dictates?
26. Are the wings unusual? Feathered? Bat-like? Manta-like? Jellyfish-like? Don’t worry too much about the physics of how the dragon stays aloft, just think about an evocative way to describe how they fly.
27. When it flies, does it cruise like a raptor? Or flap constantly? Can it bank tightly or does it have a wide turning radius?
28. Is the skin of its wings translucent? Same color as the scales, or contrasting?
29. Does it shed talons?
30. Any vestigial wings or legs?
31. No legs at all, like a lindworm? 
32. Weirder limbs? Tentacles? Ew.
33. Can they regrow lost limbs? Maybe even other parts of their bodies, like salamanders?
34. Artificial limb(s)? Don’t get too steampunk with it. Or do, I’m not your boss.
35. How soon can the dragon fly? Right out of the egg? If not, how long? Does a parent protect it or is it immediately on its own after leaving the egg?
36. Does it walk on all fours, or slither, and only use its feet to climb or hurdle obstacles?
37. How finely can its claws manipulate things? Is it characterized by broad monstrous movement, or delicate manipulation that belies its size?
38. Are they rough and indiscriminate with their claws, or are they capable of fine digital manipulation? For example, could they pluck a single coin out of their hoard? What does it look like if they can?
39. Are there parts of their bodies they can’t reach?
40. Does the dragon have a flat or peaked head? A flared hood?
41. Dragons in most versions of D&D have enhanced sight (blindsight in 5E). How does that work? Is it through their eyes, or some other organ (e.g., pit organs, like in some snakes)? What combination of senses gives it that heightened awareness of its surroundings? 
42. What’s the tongue like? Smooth? Ridged? Sticky? Prehensile? Eww.
43. What organs power its breath weapon? Are they located in the mouth, throat, or abdomen?
44. Can you see the breath weapon charging from the outside? Smell it? Feel it?
45. Horns and antlers? Think about what purpose they serve. Do they shed them?
46. What are its teeth like? When it closes its mouth are they all hidden, or do they stick out?
47. Are its teeth like teeth (they stop growing when mature) or like tusks (they grow continuously)?
48. Are any teeth missing? What does that look like? Does the dragon care?
49. How does it digest prey? What does it look like if the dragon vomits? Especially a black or green dragon?
50. How long is the neck? Does it have a discernable shoulders to its body (like most quadriped-style dragons) or does it continue into the body without an obvious break (like a Chinese-style dragon)?
51. What does the inside of the mouth look like? Do the jaws distend like a snake?
52. Internal or external ears? Do they have good hearing, or do they favor other senses?
53. Can they hear high or low frequencies, beyond what is typical of most creatures?
54. Is their breath weapon apparent when they are not actively using it? Do they seep acid from their mouth while talking? Leave trails of fire through the sky?
55. What about its eyes? Like a snake? Like a bird? Something else?
56. Does it have binocular vision or monocular vision? If the latter, why, given that they are apex predators? Don’t worry about making it evolutionarily logical, but do think about it.
57. Can it see parts of the visible light spectrum that humans can’t? If so, would it use that to leave messages for other dragons?
58. What smells does it emit? Do they differ when the dragon is active versus slumbering?
59. If they can transform into other forms, do they reflect their natural physical traits while transformed? Will a red dragon polymorphed into a human have reddish hair or ruddy skin? Or can they hide their form completely?
60. Altered by magic. What spells left their mark on the dragon? Were they cast by the dragon? It’s allies? It’s enemies? 
61. Does it have runes or sigils on its body, representing protective spells or other enchantments?
62. If it can cast spells, what does that look like? What are the somatic components like?
63. Is the dragon a tyrant? Does it have heraldry, markings, symbols to denote this? If it sleeps for hundreds of years, does it want humans to recognize it from stories when it awakes again?
64. Decorations? Tattoos, pigmentation, jewelry?
65. Are they marked by a mate? Do they wear an equivalent of a ring? Or show scars from aggressive mating behavior?
66. Cold-blooded? We don’t need to get too scientific about it, but does the dragon like or dislike heat?
67. Symbiotic organisms. What do they provide to the dragon that the dragon can't or won't do on its own? 
68. Scars and discoloration. Sickness? Battles? If this old dragon fought in that ancient war, can it point to the part of its body that bears the mark?
69. Any embedded weapons? There’s a story there. 
70. Prey adaptations. What does it eat, and can you see the signs? How are its teeth shaped accordingly?
71. Does it consume anything really unusual? Gold? Moonlight? Does a red dragon drink lava?
72. Does it ingest stones like a bird to grind up food? Perhaps only special stones like diamonds?
73. How long do the remains of digested adventurers stay in its body? LINK Dungeon Meshi
74. Where does it defecate? A designated place in its lair?
75. Does it hork up pellets like an owl?
76. What kind of spoor does it leave?
77. What happens when they hibernate? Will mushrooms and moss grow on their sleeping forms? Or do they cover themselves in anti-fungal treasure while dreaming through the centuries?
78. What kind of ridges or protrusions do they have?
79. Does it have an relationship with other creatures that comes across in its appearance or the trappings of its lair? What kind of guests, if any, are allowed in the lair?
80. Are the teeth like huge tusks? Or tiny rows of thousands of daggers? One row of teeth, or many?
81. If the dragon was hungry or even starving, could you tell? What does it look like shortly after it wakes from a centuries-long hibernation? 
82. What fluids, if any, are present? Can it cry? Sweat? Drool?
83. Can the dragon be suffocated or die from exposure to a vacuum? Or does it merely go into a hibernation state?
84. Does the dragon have any predators at all? What does it taste like? 
85. Does it’s body reflect its preferred mode of locomotion? Will it always fly unless constrained? Or does flying take great effort, and it only does it while hunting?
86. Does their appearance change during mating season?
87. How do they regulate heat? Similar to a reptile, or different? Are they slow to get moving when in torpor, or can they wake up fast like a cat?
88. If the dragon is a type that spends part of its time underwater, what does that look like? Does it have gills? Or just hold its breath for a phenomenally long time, like a whale or dolphin?
89. How much does it drink? What does it look like while drinking? Does it lap up water like a beast, or drink out of vessels like a civilized creature?
90. How high into the sky can they fly?
91. How does it sleep? Spread out or coiled up? Out in the open or wormed into a burrow?
92. Does it display sexual dimorphism? Is its sex obvious on sight? 
93. Does it even have a binary sex? Do dragons experience sequential hermaphroditism? 
94. Are they producing eggs? Can an expert tell? If yes, how?
95. Do they lay unfertilized eggs, like some birds and reptiles? What happens to unfertilized eggs?
96. Are they capable of parthenogenesis?
97. What parts of their body decompose? How quickly? 
98. What does the skeleton look like? Regular yellow-white bones, or colored by their environment, symbiosis, diet?
99. Do they go somewhere special to die? Do they dig graves? Incinerate themselves when it is time?
100. Can it die from old age? Or does it just kinda keep going forever, like a Greenland shark?