05-Friday – #FightNight

Fridays are for fights and encounters that will help enrich the adventure for the party.

Lómipilu – Master of Illusion

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Welcome to a Friday Fightnight! Tonight we look at the Lómipilu – Master of illusion and bringer of fear as it welcomes the party into its trap. Tonight we look at Lair actions and what what means for our games so sit back and let’s read on.

Lómipilu – Master of Illusion

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Created in tetra-cube

Lómipilu Lair

The Lómipilu lair is in reality a large (60ft x 60ft) pocket dimension where it the Lómipilu has brought in elements of the shadowlands (Shadowfell / Shadowplane) into the dimension. The dimension swallows dim light completely, bright light is reduced to a quarter of its normal range (torches are now only 5ft bright and a further 5ft dim) and only daylight seems to piece the veil.

Generally the Lómipilu creates illusionary structures from condensed shadow that are so real that they are physical to touch and only those who can convince their own minds that its not an illusion can see the room for what it really is.

Lair Actions

The nature of the Dimension and thus the Lómipilu’s lair is of unbridled chaotic illusion and the creature that calls this liar home is its embodiment. On initiative 20 the Lómipilu takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects. The Lómipilu can’t take the same action 2 rounds in a row.

  • The rooms shift, doors that used to lead to halls or other rooms change to a new position and the lair reforms around its central core.
  • Creatures made of shadow shift in and out of existence and throw themselves at invaders of their territory at the behest of the Lómipilu. These creatures are called Lómipilu Shades (Shadowless Shades). They take the form that the Lómipilu desires, have 7ac and 1 hp and cause no damage on an attack. They also die after 1d4 rounds.
  • The Shadow energy of the pocket dimension erupts forth and causes all exposed flames and non-permanent magical lights to go out.

Thoughts

The Lómipilu would rather try an convince the party to attack each other by using the shades and its ability to create illusions seemingly at will to convince each other that what they are seeing is or isnt real.

When the Lómipilu feels threatened it will fade into darkness (hide action) and will attack isolated or vulnerable creatures savagely as it will always try and fight with an upper hand.

Thanks for visiting tonight and for looking at the stat block tonight for the Lómipilu. I have a few writeups for tomorrow so make sure to come back to keep up to date with Brazen Wolfe Tabletop. Oh, and as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Players Discretion Advised

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Welcome to Friday Fight-night where this week is really short. Yup going to go straight to the point and call out that the entire combat and/or conflict this week is player discretion advised.

Players Discretion Advised

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This week has a problem to solve. How do you catch a shadow. Whilst not like the incorporeal shadow creature this one is something that uses the shadow to move between the material plane and pocket dimensions it creates. The question is how do we catch it.

For me this week is easy. The first cool sounding, plausible solution the party comes up with we go for. No holding back and jump with two feet. The outcomes is what we will cover tonight.

What ever the solution the creature will dive towards and into the nearest patch of shadow (remember that it’s human size so its got to make sense.) And it will create a portal to its central pocket dimensions. The portal will be big enough for the party to fit through (big-medium or smaller) and it will remain open as long as a source of light is present on both sides of the portal.

Our orb of light friend may pose a solution here but more on that this weekend.

Once open we cut to next weeks adventure, fighting the creature in it’s home turf.

Thanks for dropping by this double post night. Don’t forget to come back this weekend where I look at the Sovereign Smash tournament I am playing at and maybe another less known tabletop game. Intrigued? Well you better not forget to come back this weekend to find out more, and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Seekers of Truth

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Welcome to a fight night where we may not see that much combat. Tonight we look at the focus of this week more court intrigue as our party become seekers of truth! Tonight we find our parties trying to sought fact from fiction to uncover what’s going on at Heavens Reach Castle.

Seekers of Truth

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Now in order for this week to go smoothly we need to have a few things ironed out. In fact we need to know exactly what the end goal of the month is and for me that’s easy. I want the party to find, confront and then defeat the creature that is so well accustomed to lies and illusion that its existence is in fact one. But how do we confront an illusion. This is the question we need to answer tonight by the following.

  1. Strange happenings
  2. Illusion
  3. Mirrored espionage

Strange happenings

For our party to be truth seekers we need them to have leads. Takeo, Kyoko or even the members of the household may come forth (indeed a few of them will) and advise that they saw other members of staff different ones, acting strangely. The common denominator is that all of them cant remember who it was. but give a generic explanation that they feel as though they were friends and remember them at dinners and festivals.

Each person though, when questioned more, had a jade serpentine bracelet on their right wrist. The party can either ask the question outright or if they are a bit stumped we can assist. To assist the party the second person they question would look uncertain and come back to bring it up that they remembered something that stood out. The jade bracelet. They would explain that the Jade bracelet normally was reserved for a certain level of staff as a symbol of their favour from the emperor.

When finding the member of staff, the keeper of Jade, who is responsible for these bracelets is the next step. Once there they show off the five bracelets they have – as they are returned and stored in a chest every night at which point the party can investigate them.

Illusion

The Jade bracelet is our first clue. One of them is an illusion and DC 15 investigation or arcana check will see through it. Those with witch sight or the ability to detect magic can tell that all of them have an enchantment placed upon them but one of them has a strong illusion magic placed on it.

The Keeper of Jade goes into panic mode and wants to raise the issue with the emperor. The party can let it happen at which point it makes the third step harder or they can urge them to remain quiet – Something that both Takeo and Kyoko would have mentioned to them.

The Jade Bracelet that is missing and an illusion (its a rusted copper ring with fell writing inscribed into it) belongs to a member of staff who deals with serving food, primarily to the emperor and family.

When the person is questioned about the bracelet, if they are, they snap out as if coming out from a trance and become extremely disorientated. Upon questioning they cant remember the last two weeks. They remember walking into the library to take a scholar there some food and that’s the last thing they remember. The staff member has flashes of dream like memories of conversations with new staff where parts of the memory are disjointed or blurry.

As part of this dream memory they distinctly remember that one of the staff had their shadow shift and stir as if a candle was flickering on the other side of them but there was nothing there. The staff of house show the party to the library and to where the new staff reside.

The library has an entire book shelf cast in illusion which is only broken by DC 15 investigation or arcana check. Once broken the party realises that he books are either missing or strewn around the shelf and floor. The illusion is powerful enough that physical interaction from our seekers of truth doesn’t break the illusion.

The staff quarters has no illusion on it.

Mirrored Espionage

During their investigation a successful DC17 perception check will reveal that they are being followed by someone who knows how to tail them. This person (creature) wears an ordinary face of a member of staff. In fact they may have spoken to this person already who came to them to report something odd or out of the ordinary that was completely different to everyone else.

If confronted the creature will move swiftly but in a calculating way through the halls and the party will lose track of them in a door way. The doorway wont be to anything in specific but I would maybe have it lead to a lesser family members room who wont take kindly to being interrupted or questioned.

If not confronted they will tail the party for the rest of the session unless they go to the library – at which point it will hurriedly leave.

Well that’s what we have for tonight’s content. Thanks for dropping by and don’t forget to come back this weekend where I will be, hopefully, posting some more painting progress for my Flesh eater courts army as well as the end of week writeup. Don’t forget to check out the posts previous to today where I delved a bit deeper into some more finesse driven DM tools for our toolkits and, always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Subtlety and illusion

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Welcome to a slightly changed up Friday. Tonight instead of fightnight I wanted to talk about something that I see used very infrequently and used successfully even less so. Subtlety and Illusion.

Subtlety and illusion

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Now the second adventure I ever had when playing D&D I will never forget. We had heard rumours of a group of bandits, well assumed bandits who were terrorising a nearby town and robbing them. Always near the village dump. When we got to town we met a helpful wizard who bought us a meal and offered to help us catch the culprits.

The next day we head out to the dump, weapons waiting and expecting an ambush. What we didn’t expect was a giant rat to run at us, shape shifting and growing in size as it ran. Soon the rat that was as large as a dog was now bigger than a house and our weapons seemed to do nothing to it. The wizard was calling out saying that the spell he was trying to cast on the rat wasn’t working. But he kept trying, always chanting and gesturing at the rat.

We passed out and next thing we knew we were robbed blind. Naked with no equipment, armour or weapons we started from scratch. Rigging a bull tug-o-war to win 5gp of prize money to start to rebuild our equipment and gear.

Now being a bit more experienced in DnD now I still fondly remembered when Hunter, my wizard-fighter was robbed without a weapon being drawn. It still inspires ideas of illusion winning the day and either the great Illusionist saving a city, or, enslaving them.

To get the illusion to work the player needs to believe it, or doubt that it could be anything other than real. Its got to be believable, realistic, plausible and without fault. Many of these qualities can be achieved by simply describing the scene and making the illusion sound real. The other part is mechanics of the illusion.

The mechanics are simple in dnd5e. If they think its an illusion they need to succeed on an investigation check vs the spell cast dc. Of they pass they know straight away. Of they don’t they don’t know – well… They shouldn’t know.

It tales a great deal of commitment from the player to have their character knowingly, from their end, believe an illusion. Even if the player knows the on character may not and. This is where the truly experienced and veteran players can flex their roleplaying muscles.

Thanks for dropping by tonight for a glimpse at what I want to cover next month. Sort of. Don’t forget to come back this weekend for the ene of month write-up and as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Mugrave the Shadow-born

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Welcome to fight night where we have some insight into Mugrave the Shadow-born and how the changes to her powers through the Shadows interference alters her combat abilities.

Mugrave the Shadow-born

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Created in Tetra-cube

Now having Mugrave as a “Shadow Blessed” Oni originally doesn’t leave her with much of a stat block when it comes to being upgraded to “Mugrave the Shadow-born”. But when we apply the template created this week we will gain a few new traits, enhanced stats and, my personal way to make a boss fight feel more real. Legendary actions and resistance.

Now for some reason I can’t access the template creator tonight – so we will just have to wait but the legendary actions are reasonably straight forward.

Legendary actions

Mugrave the Shadow-born is faster, stronger and more durable than her previous state and so her reactions should indicate this. As with normal legendary actions they occur at the end of another creatures turn and we cant double up. So with that in mind we want to have something like the following.

  1. Fast as shadow: Mugrave can use misty step as a legendary action
  2. Counter strike: Mugrave gets to make a headbutt attack against a creature within 5ft.
  3. Shadow Tendrils: Mugrave can target a creature within 30 feet. They must make a DC16 Dexterity saving throw or become restrained as per the entangle spell.

This gives some mid range control, a damaging close quarters attack (and when I can create a new stat-block it also inflicts daze) and a defensive action.

Legendary resistance provides the layer of durability where we see her decide to pass a saving throw instead of failing, up to a certain limitation of course and finally the template and enhanced stat block should make the fight feel more challenging and intense from the last time they encountered her (if they can remember that far back).

Closing thoughts

Mugrave the Shadow-born should be a melee powerhouse after this but to ensure she doesn’t get too out of control I would also remove her spell casting as a result of the conflicting energies within her body. The word of caution to have when designing boss encounters is its a fine line between fun and deadly – so tread carefully.

Thanks for visiting tonight and apologies that I was unable to provide an upgraded stat block for Mugrave the Shadow-born. So don’t forget to come back this weekend to see that stat block and the end of week writeup and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Urban Ambush

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Welcome to Fight night where this week we are looking at a good old fashion urban Ambush. This week saw Mugrave making a more aggressive move by unleashing her pets upon the party. It also saw some dark dealings being negotiated and a darker pacts being made.

Urban Ambush

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Made with Tetra-Cube

The new and improved Kobold-fight club is beautiful. The improvements made on the UI and the ability to generate encounters is phenomenal and I can say that it made balancing this encounter easy. For this encounter 4 of these creatures is what we are targeting. Attacking in pairs at a minimum and trying to use their grapple to an advantage is what the general play would be before going in for the bite attacks on those restrained.

The idea behind this fight is that they will flee when the fight looks rough and re-ambush the party in the streets. Using the height of rooftops to their advantage and pouncing down upon their prey. These creatures aren’t meant to be pushovers and they aren’t dumb hunters. They know when to retreat and will retreat as a pack rather than individuals.

Description

Inspiration comes from, duh, the displacer beast but I also would add certain fey like inspirations. Only 4 legs, 2 tentacles that are sensory primarily (hence the blind sight) but a row of frills around the back of their skull that gives the look of a Dilophosaurus. Relatively fine hair is sporadic and in tufts whilst a thick scaly hide sits under their skin.

This with their muted colour, silent approach make them perfect urban ambush creatures.

Closing thoughts

The fight should feel hard, frantic and desperate but when the first of the large feline like creatures is significantly wounded (more than half) then the pack will flee.

If the party give chase, I hope they do, then they will find that the Night prowlers will use their injured pack-mate as bait and ambush the party when they close in for the kill. They are not silly kitties.

Thanks for joining me tonight to look at Night prowlers and how they can make awesome urban ambush encounters. Don’t forget that tomorrow is another creative evening so drop in for that, and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Formless

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Welcome back to another Friday-fightnight where our party encounter the formless Quaigin. These shapeshifters are known as the scouts and minions of the dreaded skin walkers who serve the Shadow. In fact these shapeless beings take on the shape of others as a way of interacting with the world after all its not easy having no face. In fact its not that they don’t have a face that gives them a bad reputation its that they consist of thousands of finger-length slugs that does the trick.

Formless

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Quaigin - the formless ones who use their inherent magical abilities to take the form of other creatures.
Made in tetra-cube

As she moved forward across the wet grass her anticipation fluttered in her chest. It wasn’t because she liked these creatures, they were below here, far, far below her but they were loyal and obedient. She appreciated their skills, the abilities that made them formless, that gave them an edge when interacting with the real world. These spirit-folk, the fey as the foreigners had called them, were not evil or malicious by nature but they respected their place in the world and did as they were told. The squirming prisoner, a guard that had strayed too far away from their post, looked up at Mugrave with horror in her eyes as she tried to back away from the Oni.

“Hush child,” the Oni said through sharpened teeth, “I wont harm you”.

The faceless creatures near by moved backwards a few feet away from the huddles guard. “Thank you.” she stuttered as she looked around at the creatures around her. “What are you going to do with me?”

“I will release you once I get some information from you.” The Oni said as she squatted down in front of the human, the sheer difference in size enough to make the warrior pale.

“What do you want to know, I’ll tell you anything” the guard caved quickly.

“I don’t want you to tell me anything. I want you to show me everything” Mugrave said as her arms darted forwards. Wrapping her hands around the head of the smaller humanoid she began to extract the information from her memories. Orders for movement of guards from the wall, the size and strength of the battalions and a titbit about Kyoko being spotted coming through the Kunagi ranges. The final piece of the puzzle was the reports of a fair foreigner who could heal wounds and the earth having appeared at Heavens Reach castle.

“The light. She has arrived. Interesting” Mugrave said dropping the human like a dirty dish cloth. “You are free to go” Mugrave said as the quivering human rose to her hands and knees and began to run off towards her barracks.

“Get her.” Mugrave said as the faceless shapes ran after her and dragged her silently into the earth.

Closing thoughts

Developing the Quaigin is an interesting one. Being formless by nature makes their description sway easily from useful (for a DM) and horrifying which can only enrich the stories we can tell.

These creatures being able to mimic, perfectly, those that they touch make them perfect spies and assassins and I look forward to using them in the future.

Thanks for joining me tonight. As always the stat blocks are created in Tetra-cube, a great little web application for us DMs to make life a bit easier. In fact this whole week is about making life easier by answering the simple question. How do I get an Oni inside a fortress. The ability for Mugrave and her Quaigin to shapeshift makes this process an easy one – but more on that next week. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for a creative writeup. I am excited to bring another one of these back to the table as I haven’t really timed myself in a while since I have been focusing on improving my writing. So, don’t forget to come back this weekend and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Laelóng – Multi staged Encounter

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Welcome to a Friday Fight-night! where tonight we look at the Laelóng in our Multi staged Encounter. Tonight the Stat block is made in tetra-cube as my preferred stat-block creating tool. However I am trying something a bit different tonight as I try and work out an easy way to balance custom creatures. So while I try and work out the maths, let’s see how it works out.

Kunagi Ranges Encounter

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The Laelóng is a large bird like wyvern which in rare cases, when they grow to a old age, develop the ability to summon and control ice. The sages in the lands believe it is a boon given to them by their dragon cousins out of pity but there is some debate on the origins of their powers. Some newer scholars believe that their powers come from The Shadow who gifted the control over ice to the Laelóng as payment for fighting against the ancestral dragons of men. What ever the reason and cause of their powers they retained their vanity of their cousins, and their strength.

Generally social in nature when young their disposition changes dramatically when they reach maturity and old age. Becoming distant, antisocial and paranoid they hide away and only re-join their large flocks to mate – which is more violent than romantic.

Laelóng - Multi staged Encounter stat block for D&D 5e
Created in Tetra-Cube

The Laelóng is a terrifying opponent, preferring to attack from the air rather than join its prey on the ground. The first encounter where its fighting with Ester clutched in its claws it wont be able to use its legendary actions, One of its claw attacks and will fight as if its everfrost claws are broken.

The second phase it will make one claw attack and attempt to push (prone) a target then fly away.

The third phase it fights uninhibited and will use its breath weapon when possible. Focusing on hitting as many targets without provoking attacks of opportunity as possible. When this is impossible the Laelóng will heal its claws or move and launch its breath weapon.

Thanks for joining me tonight for more Brazen Wolfe Tabletop for the final weeks content. Don’t forget that this weekend is the monthly finale and that means one big adventure write-up. So make sure you come back for that and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

No retreat

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Welcome to a fight night Friday where tonight I want to keep to very short and sweet to save some of the surprises for the weekend writeup.

Tonight I’ll go over the three stages of this weeks combat and explore what that means for our party, what trials they’ll face and what difficulties they may encounter.

So to get on with it, let’s stop my jabbering.

Calculating predator

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So the first part of the encounter is a slog fest with some hindrance or handicaps on my creatures due to holding Ester. The creature moves slowly, half speed, with disadvantage on attack rolls and dex saves as it’s currently carrying a prisoner and because one of its back feet is occupied in its attempt to stay upright in the snow its a bit more clumsy. This however doesn’t restrict some of its abilities which it will use as often as it can. The goal of the creature is to immobilise or cause as many of the player characters to become restrained by the ice or environment so it can savour their death.

The snow it self makes the players move at half speed but wont affect the creature, as its already slow. This evens the Playfield a smidge and grants a small advantage for the creature as it can cause parts of the battlefield to become hazards where they are nearly impossible to cross over. The goal of this round is to shatter the ice that cover the front clawed sections of wing which will cause it to slip over until it puts down Ester. The creature will also throw Ester at a party member that is within 30 feet as a reaction to their action (movement, attack, spell cast) when its at or below 50% health. Once it does this it will leap into the sky and summon spears of everfrost into the mountain peaks nearby creating an avalanche.

Round 2

Round 2 is avoiding a terrain hazard, the avalanche, whilst fending off the creature as it swoops down to try and kill or drown (in snow) the party. It will always move in, attack once then bonus action disengage during this phase whilst sparing its ice breath. After the avalanche begins they party has five rounds until the avalanche his them and the exit/entrance to the valley is 300 feet away. The in party’s goal is to get out of the valley alive whilst the creatures goal is to prevent them from doing so (but not make it impossible). The wagon is back a further 200ft. If the party are caught by the avalanche they have 3 rounds of fighting a against the avalanche with a mixture of either skill and saving throws before being dumped onto the soggy ground at the end of the valley, just past its walls, from up high a battered creature is now furious for being denied it’s prize, but its now un-inhibited and mad gaining some additional combat options.

Round 3.

Round three is… Coming soon.

More on all of this on the weekend but trying a multi-stage boss fight gives three encounters with the party being swept and moved along by something outside of their control. I find this style of encounter rich and engaging without feeling overwhelming or lacklustre.

Thanks for joining me again for another night. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for more content, and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Rattled and shattered

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Welcome to Friday where tonight we normally investigate the encounter of the week and when combat isn’t an option we try to add some form of encounter that enables our party to use those acrylic geometric shapes that keep us addicted to the hobby – yup dice.

Spooked

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The image of those creatures, large and small alike threaded upon those needle like spikes of ever frost was enough to rattle even the bravest of souls. As the party moved through the valley more large scrapes, cuts, and spikes of ice with threaded animals and creatures were encountered but all other evidence of the cause, natural or otherwise were no where to be found.

As the party turn a bend around a particularly expansive spire of ice a sudden flash of movement in the ice and snow gave them cause to pause and press themselves up against the spire of ice, well close to it at risk of freezing themselves. Focusing on where the movement was, their heart beats fluttering like mad, a tentative white rabbit with little stag-like horns appeared, sniffed the air a few times before quickly hopping from the bush it hid behind to another one further down the road.

This wasn’t the only such encounter that set the parties senses on edge as they continued, slower since they wanted to scout the way for the wagon a few hundred feet in advance, but after seeing, and continuing to see the threaded creatures on spikes of un-melting ice they were not going to take any chances.

The creatures aren’t meant to be ferocious or create a threat for the party – they are the prey in this valley just as much as the party and so they will be doing their best to avoid being seen. As the party encounter them, randomly roll and describe but perhaps starting with the boar, then the goat and wolf then the horned rabbit – then it could set the pace between potential encounter, potential encounter then suspenseful encounter before we move on for the week.

Thanks for joining me tonight and a special call out to the awesome person who suggested a name for the village! So far we have the winning name of Laniidae. Its pretty neat so currently we have the name of our village, but two more weeks until I finalise it so there is still time to put forward suggestions!

Don’t forget to come back this weekend, I have a pretty full social calendar for a change this weekend so I will perhaps not get around to as much as I want to this Saturday but on Sunday we have the end of week writeup which will summarise and knit together the content of the week! So don’t forget to come back for that and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe