I've never run bullywugs. Other monsters got higher priority for making an appearance those relatively few times the PCs had occasion to go trompin' through the swamps.
Only ran kuo-toa once, but it was memorable for resulting in the death of a PC. The main party had founded a mercenary guild about 4 sessions earlier. For this session, two of the five players were missing so we decided to do a short adventure using some of their new recruits. They were hired by a poor old lady to find her missing husband, and their only lead was that one of the husband's old friends, who suffered from a mild case of schizophrenia, had been pestering him lately.
They confronted the madman and got him to reveal he had wandered into a watery cave system 10 miles outside of town, where he discovered a strange golden orb perched atop a rocky shrine in the middle of a small lake. He convinced the husband to help him retrieve it so they could sell it and be rich. Unfortunately, when they went to fetch the orb, they were beset upon by the kuo-toa. The husband was taken, but the madman escaped.
The party got directions to the caves and set to exploring. At the lake with the orb, the kuo-toa attacked and dragged one of them into the water with a hook staff. My system for handling drowning gave him 4-6 rounds to resurface before getting a lungful of water. He successfully broke out of the grapple multiple times, but each time he tried to move away, the kuo-toa got an opportunity attack that landed, resetting the grapple. Poor guy drowned.
The rest of the party survived and found the husband alive, being prepared as a sacrifice to their god. Between the husband's testimony and some good lore checks, the party was able to ascertain a few things. The orb was a mind control device created centuries ago by illithids to enslave the kuo-toa. The illithid had long ago vanished and left the orb and the fishmen behind, during which time the orb degraded and inflicted the madness upon them for which kuo-toa are classically known. That is, in my setting kuo-toa would normally be sane, but the orb made them otherwise. They had come to worship this orb as their god, and meant to sacrifice the husband to it. Owing to some weirdness in the metaphysics of my setting, the orb had acquired a small degree of sentience, and had actually reached out to the madman through dreams to lure him to it.
For their troubles, the PCs were awarded a trifling amount of gold by the grateful but poor husband and wife. They kept the orb, though, and conspired to make use of it, sell it as a curio, or smelt it down for the raw gold. We never really got back to addressing its existence, so it basically sat in their coffers for the remainder of the campaign. I had a long term goal to make it relevant again at a later stage in the campaign, but never found the opportunity I was looking for, alas.
Only ran kuo-toa once, but it was memorable for resulting in the death of a PC. The main party had founded a mercenary guild about 4 sessions earlier. For this session, two of the five players were missing so we decided to do a short adventure using some of their new recruits. They were hired by a poor old lady to find her missing husband, and their only lead was that one of the husband's old friends, who suffered from a mild case of schizophrenia, had been pestering him lately.
They confronted the madman and got him to reveal he had wandered into a watery cave system 10 miles outside of town, where he discovered a strange golden orb perched atop a rocky shrine in the middle of a small lake. He convinced the husband to help him retrieve it so they could sell it and be rich. Unfortunately, when they went to fetch the orb, they were beset upon by the kuo-toa. The husband was taken, but the madman escaped.
The party got directions to the caves and set to exploring. At the lake with the orb, the kuo-toa attacked and dragged one of them into the water with a hook staff. My system for handling drowning gave him 4-6 rounds to resurface before getting a lungful of water. He successfully broke out of the grapple multiple times, but each time he tried to move away, the kuo-toa got an opportunity attack that landed, resetting the grapple. Poor guy drowned.
The rest of the party survived and found the husband alive, being prepared as a sacrifice to their god. Between the husband's testimony and some good lore checks, the party was able to ascertain a few things. The orb was a mind control device created centuries ago by illithids to enslave the kuo-toa. The illithid had long ago vanished and left the orb and the fishmen behind, during which time the orb degraded and inflicted the madness upon them for which kuo-toa are classically known. That is, in my setting kuo-toa would normally be sane, but the orb made them otherwise. They had come to worship this orb as their god, and meant to sacrifice the husband to it. Owing to some weirdness in the metaphysics of my setting, the orb had acquired a small degree of sentience, and had actually reached out to the madman through dreams to lure him to it.
For their troubles, the PCs were awarded a trifling amount of gold by the grateful but poor husband and wife. They kept the orb, though, and conspired to make use of it, sell it as a curio, or smelt it down for the raw gold. We never really got back to addressing its existence, so it basically sat in their coffers for the remainder of the campaign. I had a long term goal to make it relevant again at a later stage in the campaign, but never found the opportunity I was looking for, alas.
