Weiley31
Legend
Or 4E's Swordwings.
D&D 5E Let’s Read Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
- Thread starter Leatherhead
- Start date
Uni-the-Unicorn!
Hero
FitzTheRuke
Legend
There is!
Interestingly, in spite of me just arguing that the two pictures look the same, I did not recognize the WizKids mini as a Kruthik, though I was familiar with the monster.
Leatherhead
Possibly a Idiot.
Leucrotta (VGtM)
If there was a contest for D&D's nastiest creature, the Leucrotta would be in contention for sure. Following the typical build your own monster from parts of animals trend, the Leucrotta has the head of a badger, the body of a hyena, and the legs of a deer. All oozing a demonic smell that is all but unbearable to everyone that isn’t another leucrotta or a gnoll. And lest you think their nastiness is merely physical, the Leucrotta has a nasty personality too. They are typically found in the company of gnolls, because they too were spawned from hyenas corrupted by Yeenoghu. And are by most measures worse than the other kinds of twisted hyenas. Not only do they enjoy rampaging around the countryside eating people, but they take particular delight in torturing their prey. This wicked pastime is aided by the Leucrotta’s ability to mimic voices and animal sounds. Imagine if you will, being hunted by a pack of gnolls, only to hear loved ones beg for help over and over, long after you have seen them consumed.
In combat, the Leucrotta is big enough to be ridden as a mount by gnolls, and often serves as a trusted steed to a gnoll warlord or other high ranking pack members. With a movement speed of 50, and the ability to disengage as a bonus action, there is little that can stop them from darting around a battlefield. Seeking out weaker targets to finish off, while remaining out of range from the PCs heavy melee hitters. As an additional anti-melee defense, their stench is potent enough to weaponize, causing any creature that somehow gets in melee range of the beast to risk getting poisoned just for the trouble of being there.
In the changeover, the Leucrotta lost their Rampage ability, but gained the Stench ability. While this makes them better outside of a Gnoll warband, it gives them slightly less synergy with Gnoll leaders.
Leatherhead
Possibly a Idiot.
Leviathan (MToF)
The Leviathan is a CR 20 legendary Water Elemental. While they can be found naturally on the plane of water, the book recommends using them as a summoned creature, brought to the world via a portal or cult activities, and really the latter is where it would best work.
To explain this, we should discuss the creature in combat first. The Leviathan has great size, great mobility, and appropriate DPR for the CR. Its most powerful attack has a massive AoE size, but only inflicts the prone condition (Which is handy against fliers, but otherwise a bit lackluster of a control option at this level of the game). And that’s really it. They are, in essence, a big sack of HP type monsters when squaring off against PCs. Even their legendary actions are just move and attack. To make matters worse, they have a built in weakness, where if they take enough cold damage, they suffer disadvantage on their attacks as a speed penalty.
To work around this, you should really have the monster rampage against a town or port. They have the Siege Monster ability, meaning they should be smashing ships and buildings. Their Tidal Wave attack deals a huge 90 points of damage (average) against structures, meaning they can almost totally incapacite a ship in one action, or multiple ships if they are close enough together. This is what makes the creature feel dangerous. You will also note that the monster is extremely hard to pin down, due to lots of movespeed, and the ability to fit into a 1’ gap despite being the size of a full grown dragon. Having a summoner actively work on the creature's continued existence in the world gives lower leveled PCs and/or slower PCs a chance to stop the monster without catching up and directly confronting it. Take out the summoner, and you send the Leviathan back home. Bonus points if the Leviathan is in range to speed back across a bay, so they defend their summoner in a few rounds, allowing for a round or two against its brute strength without having to go the full combat against it. Just make sure to back up the summoner with a few more cultists to keep the fight even until the climax.
In the changeover, the Leviathan was massively overhauled. Its STR was lowered, bringing down its accuracy.
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MonsterEnvy
Legend
The Old Leviathan only had one Slam attack.
Old
Multiattack. The leviathan makes two attacks: one with its slam and one with its tail.
New
Multiattack. The leviathan makes one Slam attack and one Tail attack.
Old
Multiattack. The leviathan makes two attacks: one with its slam and one with its tail.
New
Multiattack. The leviathan makes one Slam attack and one Tail attack.
Leatherhead
Possibly a Idiot.
Martial Arts Adept (VGtM)
The Martial Arts Adept is not a Monk, despite punching things, and having unarmored defense, and deflect missiles. This is likely an oversight, as the flavor text paragraph for this entry states they are Monks. But for whatever reason, they lack both “Monk'' in their name and the Monk tag.
While this is easily houseruled, it shouldn’t have to be this way. For those of you who need a refresher, a creature is only supposed to get a class tag if their class isn’t part of their name. This mostly just allows them to use magic items that are class restricted, but it can also be used to denote NPCs that you could use as teachers (which is perhaps the most useful for wizards who need to get spells). For some reason, martial NPCs don’t normally get a class tag, even if they are clearly trying to emulate a class. Really, they should have just included a class tag regardless of the name, as it's just good practice, and would make it far easier to enter into their newly acquired D&D Beyond database. #standardizeyourtagswotc
Can you tell there isn’t that much to talk about when discussing NPCs? NPCs are always a bit hard to talk about because they are intended to be generic mechanical frameworks for you to stretch a character over. To make up for this deficiency, the Martial Arts Adept has a table to describe their tattoos. Most of these entries easily track to some subclass or another, but I am curious as to what subclass could inspire the “Constellations on the palm of each hand” tattoo. As far as I’m aware, there is no Star-Monk, or even a Far-Realm-Monk. Though those would be rad I have to admit.
Despite whatever flavor you settle for, the Martial Arts Adept functions most like an Open Hand Monk, being able to make a push or prone attempt for free whenever they land a punch. Prone is generally the preferred option, as it will grant advantage on subsequent attacks, but pushing someone off a cliff is always a fun time. On the other hand, short ranged combat is where they are deceptively deady. Despite only using darts for ranged combat, they can toss out 5 of them (perhaps in a nod to Dart specialists of old), giving them a higher DPR than using unarmed strikes (unless you are adding in that prone condition). And they can also use their Deflect Missiles reaction, giving them slightly longer longevity.
In the changeover, the Martial Arts Adept was heavily nerfed. Previously, they could toss out up to three stuns per turn, or three prones, or three pushes. Now they can only push or prone, and only once per round no matter how many unarmed strikes they land. On the upside, their Dart attacks were increased from 3 to 5.
JEB
Legend
Interesting about the lack of a monk tag. Crazy idea: they're considering renaming the class to Adept in 2024. Which would be a rename no one else has come up with before, certainly not anyone here on ENWorld...
Possibly Tasha's Way of the Astral Self? It seemed to take inspiration from anime like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and the constellations could be a nod to Fist of the North Star.
Remathilis
Legend
The class tags are wildly inconsistent and practically pointless. I guess it lets you know a blackguard can use a holy avenger, but it really doesn't give us any expectation on what the NPC's abilities are. Saying that an NPC is a cleric, a warlock or a sorcerer doesn't seem to imply anything about them. If it barely means anything to the classes that have defined spell lists and magical features, I can certainly see what it doesn't for classes that are basically different variants of "hits you with sword".
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