rootring
rooted in blogs, linked in a ring52 Monsters
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On the ring since 2026-04-24
Latest activity 3y ago
326 posts
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24 – 30 September 2023 Captains of the Seas The whims of the marids, those chaotic and noble spirits of the Elemental Plane of Water, are as fluid and unpredictable as the...
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I fully admit that I tend to use elementals as mindless brutes, forces of destruction, raw energy which gladly fights until destruction. In my games, they’ve typically been...
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17 – 23 September 2023 The Speckled Lacuna Bean Rare even its natural habitat, the velvet vine of the Tuiren-Tashi archipelago goes by many names: velvet bean, fireitch, lacuna...
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Those bold enough to seek out the rare velvet vine of the Tuiren-Tashi archipelago are after the valuable materials they can extract from it. It is said that those who draw...
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I’ve got plants on the brain. Part of it’s because I recently purchased a copy of the Herbalist’s Primer by Anna Urbanek, in an effort to add some fine-grained detail to my...
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10 – 16 September 2023 He of the Black Hand Across the field of battle, the champion of the undead horde strode relentlessly, his shadow-dark blade singing as it cut his...
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The other night, I had to spin a bunch of gibberish in response to a legend lore spell, which means everything I made up on the spot is now canon. This is not unusual. Entire...
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3 – 9 September 2023 Eustus D. Normalhuman Nothing to see here, nosir. Just minding my own business by the streetcorner. Looks like rain, got m’hat and coat. Yup, yup. Yes, my...
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Who are your goblins? I try to avoid being all essentialist about the species in my games, but it’s a shorthand that gets baked in pretty deep in some fiction. Escaping that –...
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For reasons which have everything to do with the big-but-manageable age range of my usual RPG groups – largest difference is not quite two decades – certain pop culture...
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27 August – 2 September 2023 Or Is It Ulfire? The color of the little amoeboid creature was singular, like something only imagined in a dream, or lost in fever. Tassamaghia had...
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Okay, I got distracted last week, and the intended goal of making another impish, low-threat fiend swerved into a fearsome pack of murder dogs. Oops. It’s strange to let the...
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20 – 26 August 2023 The Bleak Dogs Melchrammardh the Insightful (a self-applied honorific), an avowed enthusiast of canines, spent decades in cautious pursuit of the...
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After a few big, scary, high-CR monsters, it’s time to step it back a bit. Less complicated, suitable for the first tier. When encountered alone, anyway. I put together a...
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13 – 19 August 2023 A Mountain of a Troll In the ancient legends, it is known as the earthshaker, the trollfather, the mountain which eats. The dwarves, long-lived in their...
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Much of the classic D&D foundation rests upon an understanding that this world is built upon the ruins of the former one. Or several. And those prior worlds – the sprawling...
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6 – 12 August 2023 A Living Library In the far ancient ages, before the rise of humans, before the elven empires, before the dragons and giants fought for control of the world,...
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They’re in the name of the game, so why not have another dragon to mix things up? So far we’ve had a minor lindwyrm and an even-more-minor drake to spice things up. What other...
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30 July – 5 August 2023 The Mechanical Harvestman Mastering the secrets of metallurgy, mechabiology, and magiconversion, the Conclave of Artificers in the mobile desert city of...
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My copy of Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart has arrived, and in honor of that most special of things – more Venture Brothers! – I’m taking a minor detour into...
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23 – 29 July 2023 Even the Fey Plants Aren’t Plants… Oh, the Lands of the Fey Folk, where nothing is quite what it seems, rules are impossibly convoluted, and getting caught up...
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A few days ago, I was certain I’d meander on down the monstrosity path. Silly ideas, though, they burst forth like weeds through the sidewalk cracks. Hence the central feature...
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Swarms occupy a small niche in the 5e monster universe, much like oozes have their own limited-but-useful space. As an assemblage of (usually) tiny things, they operate as a...
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16 – 22 July 2023 Skunk-cattle! Woe unto the hunter of the Bonnacon! These shaggy bovines often live a solitary life, the beasts of the forest giving them a wide berth, as do...
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Ancient tales are rich with strange beasts, whether faraway animals distorted through an extended game of telephone and fanciful thinking or composite oddities completely...
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9 – 15 July 2023 Revenge, Animated Hadrugar knew full well he could never defeat the tribe’s shaman and regain the standing he needed to succeed his mother as chief. His...
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If the tales of the tupilaq call for a magic ritual, well, then let’s have one. You want to create a bespoke murder monster, you get a new option. Why hire a boring old...
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What’s the functional difference between an “object” and a “construct” in 5e? Both might kill you, but only the latter does so with intent. A construct is also inherently...
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2 – 8 July 2023 Double Trouble Serpopards, by their nature, bond in pairs, and the nightmarish fusion of their monstrous biology with an alien Aemkhik parasite often warps both...
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We’ve done this before. Something like this, anyway. Toss a pair of strange monsters into one of Seth Brundle’s telepods and see what emerges from the other one. Pick a few...