Sunday, 9 February 2020

C is for “Crikey, instant death no save”

On to C in the Monster Manual alphabet - might give this up before I get to D, which frankly looks like a pain in the arse!!
There are many C monsters to ignore, camels, centipedes and cattle do not get the juices flowing and neither do crayfish or crocodiles; please feel free to read all about them but remember time is a precious commodity.
On to the good stuff, in no particular order - Couatl, a psionic lawful good beast with “from 9-16 clerical abilities” whatever that means. And speaking of psionics, the cerebral parasite, purely intended to annoy those players who insist in mental abilities; take my advise and just ignore that bit of the books.
Chimera and cockatrice. Now these are proper fantasy monsters, nothing new here but as old school as Scottish dwarves who like beer and gold.
Centaur - nothing much of interest here, though for some reason only leaders have shields. (On a related centaur note a Kenzerco Hackmaster adventure, possibly Little Keep on the Borderlands, has a chap in prison whose only crime has been to bring back monster heads for reward  as requested by the local lord - you guessed it, monster heads in question were that of centaurs!!
Carrion Crawlers are another standard in the DMs locker but with 8 attacks each inflicting paralysis they are a TPK waiting to happen.
And lastly, but not leastly, the Catoblepas, a beast of ugliness and general horror. I’ll leave this here —ITS GAZE CAN CAUSE DEATH WITH NO SAVE IF EYE CONTACT IS MADE.  EVEN IF IT LOOKS AT YOU RUNNING AWAY YOU CAN STILL DIE - BLOODY HELL!!

And that’s it for C monsters, and not a Kraken among them

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