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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Well, here we are. Over the halfway mark. And me having phoned it in last week, being out of town for vacation. Thus this week’s semi-repeat, another what-if combination of an...
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25 June – 1 July 2023 The Lioness Queen When Ramphandel, sorcerer-king of the great city-state Enduvhir, looked out upon the encroaching desert, he could see that all of his...
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If I were to pick my favorite sorts of D&D monsters, they’d lean heavily to the monstrosities and undead. Uncomplicated, unburdened by real-world narrative, okay for murder....
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18 – 24 June 2023 A Creature Without Place Parasitized by a strange biology, the essence of a monstrous Sauvolk shudders, attempting to seal the invader within like a splinter...
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Sometimes, oftentimes, the preferred means to making a new monster is simply slicing up a few other, related stat blocks and recombining. The Sauvolk is a fairly...
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Having established an aberrant parasite and a monstrous being grafting two dissimilar species together, it’s time to see what happens when they collide. The advance ground has...
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11 – 17 June 2023 “Pigheads” and “Boarbrains” Math son of Mathonwy, as the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi tells us, would die if he could not rest his feet in the lap of a...
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To continue with the theme of the Aemkhik, we need an infectable creature which triggers the corruption effect instead of simply letting the parasite gestate and crawl away...
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4 – 10 June 2023 Corrupters The few who have seen the Far Realm and returned describe it as place of terrifying, violent nonsense, where little that we take for granted in this...
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How does one make a monster? (A new one, a fictional one. We’re not getting into some weird tirade against inadequate parenting.) There are plenty of approaches, and I have a...
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When scary monsters just won’t do, when creepy horrors in the dark aren’t upsetting enough, it’s time to dip into the bizarro well and see what aberrations emerge. Weirdness...
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28 May – 3 June 2023 An Ancient Curse There are curses which have existed for so long that their origins are lost to time. Tales of the first vampire, the first troll, the...
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Bridge trolls are a low-level threat in 5e, the sort of danger for your remote subsistence farming village that threatens to cut them off from the rest of the settled lands....
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21 – 27 May 2023 Parasitic Giants Like their ancient-world foes, the dragons, giants are best known as the stuff of legends, great and massive beings whose domains lie far...
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We all remember the tale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, right? I believe it goes something like this: Der var engang tre Bukke, som skulde gåe til Sæters og gjøre sig fede, og...
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An irritating, dumpster-diving dragon demands a suitable low-level complement from its team of mortal foes, the giants. Sure, there are ogres at CR 2, but they’re dumb brutes...
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14 – 20 May 2023 Scavenger Dragons For great swaths of the multiverse, dragons are but great creatures of legend, no more a part of a commoner’s everyday life than vampires or...
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I have yet to live in or visit a place of human habitation without animals making their own way around the margins. We expect bears and raccoons raiding trash cans in places...
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7 – 13 May 2023 Defender of the Mortal Realm The most insidious threats are those which hide in plain sight, which conceal themselves among the ordinary people to sow...
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If I’m to assemble a toolkit for an exorcist, what’s essential? And from those essentials, what does that imply? If I were to pick a class most appropriate for an exorcist, I’d...
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Humanoids! I tend to lump them into three loose categories: Number three’s my favorite. They’re something special, and abilities laid out in the stat block are always easier to...
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30 April – 6 May 2023 Animator of the Dead The poor undead, creatures robbed of the gift of sweet death, instead saddled with a desperate compulsion which guides their every...
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Undead monsters fall into several categories, and mixing and matching them in your necropolis-themed dungeon crawl lets your players stretch their various skills and combat...
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I like using undead creatures. For the most part, they’re straightforward enemies, ones for which destruction and defeat are all-around good news, and in a comabt-focused RPG...
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23 – 29 April 2023 Dragon Hunter In great antiquity, before the first elves danced through the primeval forests, when the giants were in their cultural infancy, the Ur-Dragons...
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Smaller. Weaker. Not as badass as. When compared to a beast 150 feet tall and capable of flattening great stone fortifications with the flick of a tail, those don’t mean much....
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Is there a group of critters which might qualify as “lesser kaiju?” There should be. The tarrasque is the classic D&D kaiju, but you could also reasonably include a kraken or...
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16 – 22 April 2023 They of Nine Tails The legends say that if you see a fox with more than one tail, it is a being from the spirit realm, and that strange luck will soon find...
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Fey in 5e tend toward the style of the Fair Folk of the British Isles, with bits drawn from Scandinavian tradition and old Germanic tales, too. Fairies, elves, hags, and the...
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9 – 15 April 2023 Dwinpikls, Wizards of Ale Revered most highly in Urnach society, dwinpikls are the celebrated brewers of ale and makers of pickles, infusing their creations...