Tag: Homebrew

WARNING: TRAVEL AT NIGHT STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

The guild is currently undergoing an investigation of the missing persons along this road. All disappearances occur during the night. For your safety all travels past 10pm are forbidden until further notice. Thank you.

– A warning posted by a local guild.

Abductors: The Overview

The first of the Aberrations, the Abductor! Consisting of a smallish body compensated by two long and razor sharp claws, Abductors are not common enemies within a majority of the planes within the D&D realm. The thought behind these creatures is that they are designed less as mindless creatures and more intellectual hunters, sent by something stronger to detain and capture persons of interest while fending off any interlopers that stand in-between them and and their target. Quick, nimble, and aggressive, Abductors prefer to utilize swift hit-and-run and ambush tactics to quickly capture their target and quickly get out, sometimes securing another creature alongside their target to feed on to help rejuvenate themselves after a fight.

The overall idea I had for this creature was for it to be a decently strong ambush monster that could use its agility to whittle the party down and forcefully reposition them/remove individuals from the fight for a short time. This is a fairly dangerous encounter even by itself due to the ability to outright remove combatants from the field for a time, making it so there is one less creature attacking it and that there is one less enemy for it to focus on. On top of this, I wanted Abductors to be able to survive and heal themselves mid combat, so they can suck the vitality from creatures they get in their grasp.

Stats and Abilities:

As mentioned, this is a fairly dangerous, nimble, and intelligent creature, so its stats are nothing to scoff at. It is decently frail for its level in its defensive capabilities, but it makes up for it in spades with its offensive prowess.

As we can see, the Abductor lacks a lot of bulk and resistances that a lot of other creatures at this level would have. Despite my prior statements harping on its agile and nimble nature its DEX is still lower than its STR score. My reasoning for this behind some of the secondary attacks this creature can cause when it attacks the player’s characters require a higher STR than DEX to maintain the effect. Despite this, it is still agile with a 40ft. flying speed (most creatures usually have a 30ft. movement (walking/running) speed). With a high WIS and INT this is not a creature that can be easily deceived or evaded and can quickly figure out a plan or ambush held against it.

• Stats and Skills: Focusing on strength, intelligence, and speed rather than defensive bulk, Abductors rely on ambushing to quickly gain momentum in a fight and keep their targets on the back foot. Being able to fly about leaves them hard to pin down by most classes, allowing them to terrorize from above with swooping attacks, though getting too close leaves them susceptible to be attacked when entering a player’s range. Only gaining proficiency with the Perception and Stealth skills means the Abductors lean more into hiding away and watching for potential victims or targets rather than brashly charging in for a fight.
• Resistances, Immunities, and Senses: Being resistant to specifically nonmagical weapons means this creature is not for the novice adventurers to confront. Usually, a starting hero will have not a lot of valuable or powerful equipment to wield and such would not be able to properly deal with an Abductor before it either kills the adventurer or whisks them away. immune to the Charmed condition means the Abductor cannot be swayed or influenced easily by those it’s attacking or stalking. While nothing is impossible, this would be a very steep check to make in order to try and talk your way out from a fight. Darkvision allows the Abductor to see in gray hues in dark areas, allowing it to hunt and ambush in the dead of night against unprepared or unsuspecting individuals. Without a torch, Darkvision, or some other source of light/sight the party would be attacking wildly, leaving the Abductor largely unscathed and free to act as it pleases. While it can speak, only being able to speak in Deep Speech leaves it difficult to communicate with as Deep Speech is a language widely saved for the aberrant creatures from beyond the realms like Mind Flayers.

Passive Abilities and Actions:

Now that we have moved through the introduction of the Abductor’s stats and abilities, its time to get to the real meat and bones of this creature’s statblock:

Faultless Tracker allows the Abductor to stake out creatures and follow them for great distances, possibly allowing for it to escape a combat only to return later when its target is resting from any wounds it took.

Its no surprise that magic plays a big part of the D&D world with how many classes get access to spells in one way or another. Magic Resistance is a frequent ability used by possibly hundreds of D&D creatures, especially as you enter the higher tiers of monsters. Being able to roll at advantage can really make or break a combat encounter, saving the Abductor from an otherwise quick loss at the hands of a sudden Polymorph or similar spell.

This was the reason I wanted the Abductor to have a higher STR than DEX as with 5th editions rulings for grappling, grappled creatures can make a contested check using either their Acrobatics (DEX) or Athletics (STR) skills while the creature maintaining the grapple (the Abductor in this case) must use its Athletics (STR) to continue the grapple. So long as the Abductor has a creature grappled, it continues to both damage the grappled target but also heal itself, prolonging the fight. This does pose a bit of a bigger threat than the Abductor has a right to as a CR 8, by bumping the collective damage between all its Claw attacks and Siphon Vitality to a collective 46 average damage per turn, which is a monstrous amount.

This is possibly the most common ability for monsters within D&D as nearly everything above CR (Challenge Rating) 5 has Multiattack tacked on allowing it to make multiple attacks in a single turn. The only caveat for this feature is if something is incredibly slow or if it packs all of its damage into one singular strike, which is rare.

This is the basic attack of the Abductor and is arguably a bit strong for being CR 8. On top of grappling a creature on hit, this attack also inflicts the Restrained condition which does differ from the Grappled condition. While Grappled only reduces a creatures movement speed to 0, Restrained makes it so all attacks towards the restrained target are made at advantage while all attacks made by the restrained creature are made at disadvantage and it still cannot move. After successfully grappling a creature, the Abductor now has to attack the same creature until the creature breaks free, the Abductor decides to release the creature itself, or if the Abductor dies.

The Astral Plane is a sperate plane of existence, often acting as a bridge for the other planes within the realm. This ability poses a massive threat to a party as with one bad save, a player could become stranded in a completely different plane of existence with no foreseeable way back. While I personally envisioned this more of a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ ability, I cannot deny that the ability to toss a creature into the Astral Plane at this level is not only dangerous, but also unfun for players as you’re doing more than just removing them from combat as if they were stunned or downed, you are instead outright removing them from the scene and story.

The target must succeed on a DC 16 Charisma saving throw or be pulled into an extradimensional space within the abductor’s body. While inside, the target is blinded and restrained. The abductor can hold only one creature at a time in this manner. A restrained target can repeat this saving throw at the end of each of its turns. If the abductor dies, the restrained creature is freed and appears at a random spot within 30ft. of the abductor’s corpse.

This is the crowning ability for the Abductor, being able to magically teleport a creature it can see into a pocket dimension stored within its body. I imagined this as the orange light underneath its face and within its head. Another dangerous ability as it can quickly lock a player inside, removing them from the fight and quickly flee, depositing the trapped creature a good distance away or using its Planar Hopping ability to escape to the Astral Plane with the creature in tow.

Revisions

The Abductor is by no means an easy foe to conquer, and in retrospect it is a tad over-tuned. While there is a lot of good in this statblock as I think the synergy between its claws being able to grapple and syphoning hit points to help heal itself is a good combo, having not one but two separate ways to outright remove players not only from the combat but from the same plane of existence as the rest of their party is too much. While I wish to keep the Void Cell feature mostly as it is, I think the Planar Hop feature should not be able to drag grappled creatures with it. This way it remains the escape card for the abductor to be able to flee quickly if a fight gets tricky for it and to return to ambush at a later time but can’t just remove a player off of one failed save with no way back to the fight or plane. Additionally, the damage output when factoring in Siphon Vitality is a bit much for a CR 8 creature as when compared to a Hezrou from the Monster Manual, its Multiattack feature uses one attack from its Bite (15 damage) and one from its Claws (11 damage) for a total of 26 damage. Already, the Abductor deals slightly more damage at 28 damage from its two claws, but adding the additional 18 from Siphon Vitality brings this way out of the league of the average CR 8. Instead of lowering the damage however, bumping the Challenge Rating up to 10 and increasing the stats and hit points slightly would make for a better change as this creature all-in-all is not designed for weaker or lower level parties.

This wraps it up for the first Aberration and the first D&D Homebrew Monster of the Week. Stay tuned next week for the next addition!