Stat Blocks - Creatures of the Dread Ring, Part One

I've been sitting on an actual play post for several weeks now involving my 4E PCs seeking out the Dread Ring in the Neverwinter Wood. There's been a session already with a couple of combats and there is at least one more session to come.

Here are the stat blocks for the creatures they have/will encounter but the stat block for the lich Valindra Shadowmantle can be found <here>.

Askarro the Unlich

I believe I came up with the name Askarro about 20 years when watching some crappy fantasy-themed movie on TV. I never used it until the second or third session of this campaign back in 2012 and it was for an undead wizard I termed an "unlich" or "lich construct" depending on how I was feeling on a particular day.

This was, of course, simply a way of having an undead spellcaster be able to return to "life" so as to become a recurring foe without having said spellcaster be as powerful as a normal lich. And Askarro is indeed a recurring foe. When the PCs first fought him he was a level 3 elite artillery. The more recent confrontation was with him as a level 7 artillery - same XP value as a level 3 elite - with the same powers but changes to his number of actions, damage, defences etc....

Suffice to say that the PCs were surprised to see him back after they defeated when they were level 2 or so.  Earlier, Askarro and his undead wyvern mount had something of a roving brief over the lands north of Neverwinter. Since being "rejuvenated", he and his mount are now the chief guard dogs of the Dread Ring, tirelessly soaring above the fell location and searching for intruders which they engage in conjunction with one of more packs of werewolves (see below).

One of the things some people don't like about Paizo adventure paths is how the NPCs often have really extensive backstories that never see any actual use in play. Askarro was a bit like this for me. I had him as a thrall of Eltab and an expert in some of the magic used in the construction of the Dread Ring. (IMC, Eltab is the master of rune magic that can be used to release primordials rather than bind them: the complete opposite of the purpose of rune magic described in the runepriest entry in Player's Handbook 3.)

Despite his pact with Eltab, Szass Tam valued his knowledge and was responsible for Askarro's undead status. And that's all I will say about Askarro for now as it was and is rather irrelevant in terms of actually deploying him in combat and he is simply a combat encounter and a simple one at that: death lightning, rinse and repeat.

By contrast, Askarro's wyvern is much more tactically interesting and its ability to snatch, fly, and drop was fun to use in play. Sting of undeath also has potential but needs further development; I would love to take a fresh look at that in radiant keyword-heavy party especially where there is an invoker with radiant attacks that only damage enemies. In such a case, I would be so tempted to have the target treated as a enemy while it is subject to that effect.

Grey Wolf Werewolf

In the Neverwinter Campaign Setting, the Grey Wolf tribe of the Uthgardt are loyal servants of the Netherese who are delving the ruined city of Xinlenal east of the Dread Ring. I decided in my campaign that the Netherese had been defeated by the Thayans (frankly, I had no use for the Netherese as I had enough factions already) due to a combination of the silver-fanged treant Silvermaw and the Bones of the Thunderbeast. The Bones are the remains of an apatosaurus and are a sacred relic of the Uthgardt barbarians. The Thayans have corrupted the Bones through (clichéd) evil rituals that has also allowed them to subvert the loyalty of the Grey Wolf tribe.

And that's my long way of explaining why the Thayans are using werewolves as guard dogs.

Bone Weird

As far as I know, the bone weird first appeared in 2E's Return to the Tomb of Horrors. No doubt inspired by the serpentine water weird, the bone weird was a snake-like conglomeration of bones animated by negative energy.

When I was thinking about creatures to include in the encounters in the Dread Ring, I wanted undead that were not common and the bone weird sprang to mind. I thought in a place like the Dread Ring where death and undeath were such real presences, that the remains of various creatures would sometimes spontaneously animate: these are the bone weirds.

I also imagined them crawling through the earth like the undead version of earthworms or ankheg and that made me think of the bulette. And looking at the stat block for the young bulette in Monster Vault, I realised that I had the creature I needed with a modicum of reskinning....

Living Wall

And here's another obscure 2E monster: the living wall. I first saw these in the 2E Monstrous Compendium; I have no idea where they first appeared.

I was thinking that the walls of the Dread Ring are largely ruined by the failed ritual performed there but they must have also absorbed some of the ruinous necromantic and demonic energy that was unleashed. Thinking about the walls being animated in such a fashion made me think of the living wall and then it was a matter of converting them to 4E.

The 2E version of the living wall could be incredibly complex (and powerful!) depending on what creatures it had absorbed. I decided to markedly simplify it as a monster and simply have it grab and absorb a creature and then share damage with its victim to the point where I am left with a fairly simple stat block that is definitely a soldier.

If I was going to use them again, I would consider other options such as making them lurkers and having them, much like a gargoyle, be able to assume a stony form but also to capture a creature and petrify it with them before leeching away its life force. I also thought about having it dominate a creature it absorbed and forcing it to attack.

But simple is often better and I'm rather happy with the simple stat block in this case.

Stat Blocks - The Nashers

The Nashers played an important role in my Neverwinter: Year of the Ageless One campaign back in 2012 when we first began. (It's been a long haul to get as far as we have!)

I had them as an amoral counterpart to the Sons of Alagondar, with the Sons representing those who wanted a true heir of the last king/lord Nasher Alagondar to rule the city - and considered Lord Neverember nothing but a pretender - while the Nashers were claiming that they were, indeed, the legitimate heirs of Nasher Alagondar and thus should rule Neverwinter.

The Nashers had also attracted quite a following in Blacklake District in part because they were relatively wealthy and ran the district's only abattoir.  They were also loansharks and thugs. 

The reason they played an important role is that the best (and first) skill challenge that I ever ran involved a scene where the Nashers and the PCs were competing to sway a crowd to their side and the PCs won. The result was great but, as a DM, I was simply more happy that I was able to get a skill challenge to work!

Anyway, on the off chance that someone is still running 4E and may get some use from their stat blocks, there they are.

Andorn Nasher

The oldest of the four brothers and definitely their leader, the charismatic demagogue Andorn was, in the course of the skill challenge, the one whom the PCs were really competing with. However, he was no match for the thaneborn barbarian Griemolt whose outstanding rolls and good roleplaying - coupled with the voice amplification provided by the bard Aelar (as Aelar had an at-will thunder power, I allowed him to use this to boost Griemolt's voice with a successful Arcana check) - won the crowd over in very short order.

All that was left to Andorn was to order his brothers to kill these "usurpers" but he played a negligible role in the ensuing combat as Griemolt killed him in the first round. Things would have ended very differently if Griemolt et al had failed to win the crowd to their side....

In the picture above, Andorn is the first on the left.

Boelel Nasher

I think my favourite 4E monster type is the brute. They're simple to design and they're satisfying in play. I like combination of low AC (the PCs almost always hit...), high hit points (... but the brute keeps fighting...), and high damage (... and the players are scared). 

In the combat that followed, Boelel did something that I think has only happened two times in this campaign: he dropped the dwarf fighter to 0 hit points. I enjoyed that.

Boelel appears on the far right of the picture above.

Darraudan Nasher

Darraudan was there for the PCs to hate. In keeping with his chaotic evil alignment, he was the one the other residents of Blacklake complained about and was the casus belli, so to speak, for the PCs' confrontation with the Nashers.

He was fairly effective in combat and his quick feint worked fairly well to set up decent damage.

Story-wise, my plan was actually to have this psychopathic murderer return as a higher level undead mohrg but the PCs chose to take the unconscious Darraudan to be executed and he was beheaded. I didn't think a headless mohrg made that much sense.... However, I still have hopes of running another group through Neverwinter and, if I do, the defeated Darraundan is definitely going to come back!

He's the second from the left in the picture above. 

Gommar Nasher

My predilection for brutes appears once more.

While Andorn may have dropped the PC dwarf fighter, it was Gommar who did the damage in the first instance. Oh yes, I enjoyed unleashing this brute against the PCs. One of the things I like about both Andorn and Gommar is that you can see their pictures and imagine exactly what they do in the course of their butchery business, and then the stat block reflects the way that would translate into a fighting style. That's something I don't you can do in 5E.

Obviously, Gommar is the second from the right waving a butcher's hammer above his head.

A Note on Formatting

I don't know what goes wrong with Blogger so often. I cannot put the pictures where I want them to go, nor can I get the fonts to stay constant through my posts. And, consistent with the saying "beggars can't be chooser" I cannot really complain as this is a free product. Nevertheless, it is still annoying....