Kuo-Toa Raiders
Frogs On The Road
Hello, and welcome to this week’s issue of LoreMasters - Your regular source of inspirations, ideas, and homebrew for your TTRPG games. In each issue, I'm going to be bringing you a veritable Heroes Feast of items, spells, podcasts, streams, Kickstarters, and STUFF, so if you like this, please subscribe and pass it on to your close friends and distant relatives.
As always, the main chunk of this newsletter is a homebrew for your game and if you have any questions, comments, or thoughts, come find me on the Twitters.
(Also, please check out my work on DMsGuild)
Kuo-Toa Raiders
The night was still and quiet, the loud noises of the day dropped away as night fell on the swamp, the brackish water waving gently in the faint breeze.
Sumunar was on watch, as their allies rested from the days battles. Her warhammer rested gently on her knees, her keen eyes scanning the dark horizon.
From the corner of her eye, she sees a reflection that seems to move wrong in the moonlight, her hands grip the handle tighter, as a rough hewn arrow flies from the other direction, embedding itself deep in her shoulder.
Her cry wakes the others, as all around the party, small figures emerge from the gloom, some wielding bows, some hammers and some small wicked looking knives.
With their large eyes gleaming in the light, the kuo-toa raiders descend on their next targets….
Kuo-Toa Raiders
Kuo-Toa Raiders
So often with monsters in 5E, a race is often reduced to a single variation, or at most different variations based on level (a standard level, a boss level, etc) but this often feels disingenuous, any group of intelligent bad guys is going to have different weapons and specialists in their midsts.
It is entirely possible to re-skin a collection of monsters to form such a party, but you lose out on the species flavouring from having unity.
So, for a recent encounter in a swamp, I wanted the party to be ambushed by a group of frog bandits, so set to work building this group of raiders.
I wanted to to go beyond simply having them armed with different weapons, I wanted to give them abilities that compliment their specialisation too. And I was aiming for this fight to have a very dangerous and fast-paced vibe, so I gave the poisoner and the sharpshooter the ability to take death saving throws when they take someone to 0 hp. This puts anyone unconscious one bad roll from death, forcing the players to react instantly to save their allies, rather than killing monsters.
The brute I took a slightly different approach, I saw them much more as the front line fighters, working to draw attacks on to themselves to free the poisoners and sharpshooters to do the real damage.
The idea at the core of these three monsters is that they work as a unit, each playing to their strength and keeping the players harried and under attack at all times.
Things To Check Out
This is the part of the newsletter where I bring you a few things to check out that inspired me and might inspire you.
What Am I Rolling?
A couple of weeks back, I wrote about Long Haul 1983 and how evocative I found it, and to my great delight, WAIR have started a series running and exploring the game. Fiona does a wonderful job of balancing the exploration of the mechanics, and cultivating a deep and engaging story. I’m serious when I say this episode is one of the most hauntingly beautiful episodes of any podcast I’ve ever listened to.
(Also, the show has a long and wonderous archive covering all manner of games, they are an stellar show well worth diving into.