Needed a summoned monster for a magic-using sect doing their evil business underneath a tavern. I wanted to foreshadow its presence and nature, and as that is something in which I have little practice it needed to be about as subtle as a custard pie. As I sat with my notebook to hand, the well-travelled nearby roundabout entertained a young driver wishing to show off their manliness with a display of the squealies. I had my smell.
I had a Dyson map set up on Roll20 so I knew a token would be handy. In a attempt to shift away from the cartoony style used up to this point, and to fit in a bit better with the Dyson house style, I quickly scribbled down a few generic monster images. Turns out my default setting is to do a human or lizard with slightly exaggerated features. Will have to work on that.
I resolved to not get too drawn in to sketching out the whole thing. Sometimes less is more – too definitive a portrayal removes the mystique from an encounter, and it would allow for a bit more flexibility when describing the thing at the table.
Name: Monster 006 (boiling tar-exuding rubbed monster)
HD: 8
AC: As plate
Att: Bludgeon x2, +8, 2d8+4
or
Spew boiling tar, up to three targets in front must pass DEX save or suffer 4d8 damage (1/day), and d6 damage from anyone standing on it at the start of their turn.
Notes:
– Will inflate its body like bullfrog before exhaling a boiling tarry substance.
– Anyone striking it with a slashing or piercing melee weapon takes d6 damage as they get splashed.
– Stinks of burned rubber, can inflate itself to fill a confined space. Stretchable limbs give it extended reach.
I deliberately avoided naming it anything specific. I’d made the mistake of referring to a wine golem by its name earlier in the dungeon, and even in an online game I could sense the shift in player’s approach to what had been a weird creature punching its way out of a storeroom barrel. Suddenly it was a quantifiable thing.
This thing, instead, remains labelled in a Roll20 folder as Monster 006.
There Could Have Been Snakes 