Tag: tabletop
About
I started this blog years ago. I had been in the periphery of tabletop games and participated in a few since 2010, but when a group of us started a Storm King’s Thunder campaign, I decided to throw myself into it, dedicating myself to learning all I could about the world’s greatest roleplaying game. In this blog and the accompanying dungeons_and_doodles_ Instagram, I set out to research and post reports on classes, races, monsters. I started sharing memes my friends sent to me or I found in the wild—there was a lot to be learned in the process of getting caught up on the references and jokes.
Over these past few years spent in the online realm of tabletop games, I’ve met wonderful people from all around the world. I’ve fallen in love with the vibrant ttrpg community. It’s reignited my creative spirit, kept me close to friends, gave me something to look forward to even in difficult times. Dungeons and Dragons has changed my life in so many ways and I will always be grateful to the brilliant minds behind the game and the community that is so welcoming and kind.
The dungeons_and_doodles_ Instagram account sparks great conversations, but there’s only so much you can do in one meme caption! This blog is to expound on those thoughts, share tales from our tabletop, compile cool community happenings, ttrpg news, and resources.
If you see me reference my D&D character anywhere online and I don’t specify, you can bet that’s Faelinthara Moonwalker, level 17 Circle of the Moon druid in our Storm King’s Thunder-turned homebrew masterpiece.
Welcome! I’m glad you’re here!
Beware… behir!
So in our Storm King’s Thunder campaign, we happened upon a mysterious clock that led us on a crazy quest to a lost temple of Gond, god of smiths and craftswork–but the trek there was perilous. Our obstacles included deep canyons, mysteriously full of storms… that turned out to be behirs!
A cross between a crocodile and a centipede, behirs were created long, long ago by storm giants as a weapon against their enemy, dragons. The serpentine creature still harbors a natural hatred of dragons, never settling its lair near dragons. Should a dragon move in nearby, it is obligated to either kill or drive off the dragons, or move on itself.
But you may not be here for a history lesson. You may be here to know the whole point of a behir is its LIGHTNING BREATH. The Monsters Manual tells us that “its lightning breath can incinerate most creatures, even as more powerful foes are constricted in its coils and eaten alive.”
Metal.
They are kind of defensive creatures, choosing to make their lairs where it would be extremely difficult for intruders to access, favoring “deep pits, high caves in cliffs walls, and caverns reached only by narrow, twisting tunnels.”
Read after its stats to see how we took care of the two behirs that ambushed us!
For quite a while it appeared that our efforts were futile. Then, as our fighter and barbarian advanced on it, my druid, Faelinthara, used Transmute Rock on the rock pillar it was standing on, trapping it in mud, leaving it vulnerable.
The boys finished it off while the warlock and I took care of the second behir. I ultimately used Polymorph to turn it into a sloth. I really like to use sloths for Polymorph, as they are small and slow, and a little less likely to get into trouble and turn back into its monstrous form before its hour is up. Then I took the sloth and gently placed it in the mud I had created, and we were on our way!
I like to harvest creatures to sell their poisons sacs or skin or fangs or what have you to sell to a certain vendor in Mirabar, but unfortunately we didn’t have time for me to work on the dead behir. Its skin probably would have made for excellent lightning resistant armor!
Have you ever encountered a behir?
Have you ever encountered a behir?
Bulettes
I recognized bulettes the first time I encountered one in our Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, immediately, as one of the most feared monsters in cinema history.
The fearsome graboid, from the Kevin Bacon classic, Tremors. All right, they’re like a graboid with claws, which is worse than the ass-blasters, even!
Thought to be the result of an experiment crossing snapping turtles and armadillos with an infusion of demon ichor, they burst out from the ground, grabbing everything within reach in their powerful jaws. They don’t have lairs, but do have a hunting ground of thirty miles, where they live until food sources dry up, and then they move on, or until they are killed. And while they are terrifying, with an armor class of 17, they can indeed be killed, as “they attack with no regard for superior numbers or strength.”
They’ll feed on anything they come across, any animals or humanoids, though it prefers halfling to dwarves and elves.
Bulettes are, naturally, loners, though horrifyingly enough, they “come together only to mate, resulting in a bloody act of claws and teeth that usually ends with the male’s death and consumption.” Eeeeesh.
Facing Fears–the Ettercap
I hate bugs. All bugs, harmless ones, butterflies even, gross. So spiders are out of the question. But today I’m spending some quality time with the ettercap–“humanoid spiders that tend, feed, and watch over spiders the way a shepherd oversees a flock of sheep.” GROSS.
Ettercaps live deep in dark forests, where they use their silk to trap and kill their victims. While it has a -2 Intelligence, it is smart enough to create snares and nets around its forest lair. While some travelers and adventurers meet their ends in such a trap, “others, the ettercap garrotes with strands of web or envenoms with its poisonous bite.” Horrifying, right?!
As a neutral evil creature, while they live in forests, that “have no desire to live in harmony with nature.” They’ll litter their areas with their webs and traps, creating a perfect environment for giant spiders, giant insects, and other sinister predators. If that wasn’t awful enough, the Monsters Manual points out that “creatures that wander too far into such a wood are soon lost in a maze of webs that dangle with the bones and lost treasures of the ettercaps’ victims.”
But what is most interesting to me is that they are natural enemies of fey creatures, setting traps specifically to capture sprites, pixies, or even dryads.
Check out their stats:
Well, I know what I’ll be seeing in my nightmares tonight…
For more spidery fun, check out Jorphdan’s video here on driders!
Water Weirds!
Learning about water weirds today. My only experience with them comes from Princes of the Apocalypse, I believe in the Temple of the Crashing Wave.
They’re water elemental guardian of a body of water, such as a pool or fountain. Elementals are, by their nature, neutral, with no concept of good or evil… just nature. However, they tend to take on the nature of the water they guard. So if they’re guarding a sacred fountain, they may be neutral good. Or if their water gets befouled, they could be neutral evil. This will dictate how they act towards interlopers; if they’ll just warn them away from their sacred spot, or if they’ll try to kill. The Monsters Manual says that “a water weird loses its evil alignment if its waters are cleansed with a purify food and drink spell.”
As for appearance, they are actually invisible under the waters, but when they rise to attack they appear as a serpentine water spout, “using its coils to crush any creature other than its summoner and those its summoner declares as off limits.” When an adventuring party defeats a water weird, it turns into an inanimate pool of water.
Have you ever encountered a water weird? Or maybe you put it in a campaign to excellent effect? Let me know! Find me on instagram at dungeons_and_doodles_!
Amazing Owlbears!
We play D&D on roll20, so we often have the benefit of visual aids and artwork for our games. One day we stumbled upon a creature I wasn’t familiar with–an owlbear and its cubs–and even without artwork, I knew exactly what it would look like.
I rolled a 19 on my Animal Handling check, and then was well over 20 by the time I added my modifiers–as a Beastermaster Ranger, it was nothing to sneeze at. It was nearly docile and allowed us to complete our task in the area. I didn’t know much about their nature at the time, but the other party members urged me to kill it immediately. As an animal lover, and as the weird kid growing up who owned magical bestiary books, I’m always hesitant to kill something that I could leave in peace, so we let it live and it let us leave, to the relief of the party.
Knowing what I know now–YIKES. We got lucky.
The prevailing theory is that a wizard crossed a giant owl with a bear; however, some elves claim that they’ve existed for thousands of years in the Feywilds.
Their “reputation for ferocity, aggression, stubbornness, and sheer ill temper makes it one of the most feared predators of the wild.” Even creatures much larger than they are will avoid them, because a hungry owlbear knows no fear and “attacks without provocation”. They live in caves or ruins, surrounded by the bones of their kills and half-eaten carcasses, a putrid smell rising from their homes, possibly attracting their next meal.
“Owlbears hunt alone or in mated pairs. If quarry is plentiful, a family of owlbears might remain together for longer than is required to rear offspring. Otherwise, they part ways as soon as the young as ready to hunt.”
It is possible–the Monster Manual says “with enough time, food, and luck”–to train an owlbear. Not tame exactly, but they can recognize you as master, and serve as a guard or even a mount. The Monster Manual recounts tales of owlbear races in rural areas, but just as bets were taken to see who would win, bets were taken on which owlbear would eat its handler first.
I’ll always remember my friend the owlbear, and my friend and fellow party member will always roll his eyes.
Stats!
Have you ever encountered an owlbear? Tell me about it! Find me on instagram at lyndsi_skwerl or dungeons_and_doodles_!
Dungeons and Doodles | Tales from the Tabletop 