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Wintry Blast |
During the #PlayItForward event on the DMs Guild I picked up a number of titles. Among them, Legendary Bestiary from Christopher Walz, Christian Eichhorn, and Alex Clippinger. I'm so glad I did!
This supplement is amazing in a number of ways:
Allow me to elaborate. We've all ran encounters with a "leader" among minions. Think of Yeemik from Lost Mine of Phandelver as one example. This goblin boss doesn't get any special abilities in the adventure other than he has max hit points. That is boring. Very boring. It's one thing to give a goblin max hit points (from the standard 7 to 12). It's another entirely to give max hit points to an ogre chief (59 to 91). What a slog! When I run combats, particularly one's where there might be some potential roleplaying opportunities, I typically make one monster the defacto leader. Come across some hobgoblins in the wood? One of them is the interesting one, the others are background actors. Come across bandits on the road? Same deal. Often times I name these "special" NPCs just in case my characters ask or engage them with dialogue. My new rule after picking up Legendary Bestiary? If I name a low level NPC, its getting legendary actions. You can also grant legendary actions to "legendary" creatures. Is there an old, fabled owlbear living in the forest? Spice it up and make it unique from the general run-of-the-mill owlbear. This supplement covers all creatures from the Monster Manual that fall in the CR 1 to 3 range. The legendary actions found within add flavor and personality to your creatures. It adds a little something extra to your combat and keeps your players on their toes. Experienced players can easily metagame (accidentally or not) when they face a familiar foe. These extras abilities will keep them guessing. The extra abilities aren't game breaking, either. As long as you use them wisely, your encounters go from "Medium" to "Deadly" by incorporating this supplement at your table. Here's one example using that ogre I mentioned earlier: Angry Idiot. The ogre makes a melee weapon attack against a target that used words the ogre cannot understand (such as casting a spell with verbal components or speaking in an unknown language) this round. I find that fun! It makes the ogre boss more than a simple sack of hit points like the rest of his clan. You can also add these abilities to pets of your higher level monsters. Let's say you have a CR 9 evil druid as the big bad for your campaign. Maybe that druid has a pet direwolf, but this direwolf has been trained to destroy armor: Sunder Armor. The wolf tears away at an enemy’s armor, creating an opening for the pack. The wolf makes a melee weapon attack against a creature wearing nonmagical armor. The attack does not deal damage, but the nonmagical armor takes a permanent and cumulative −1 penalty to the AC it offers. The armor is destroyed if the penalty reduces its AC to 10. Suddenly, the combat gets a lot more interesting. I wish I had this supplement while writing Wintry Blast. I definitely would have worked in some of these concepts. As I said earlier though, it's super easy to implement Legendary Bestiary at your table for encounters that are already written. Get it today. Use it at your next game. Looking for more great resources? Checkout the Toolkit page where I've listed my favorites. Legendary Bestiary is definitely among them!
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AuthorD&D 5e enthusiast. Creator on DMsguild. Supporter of creators, content and good times. Follow me on Twitter @rjquestgiver Archives
July 2021
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