Stream Results—October 10th, 2018: Jack O'Slaughter, Anguis Machinam, and Golemeka (Patreon)

Hey Everybody! 

Here's another smattering of monsters from my weekly Twitch monster stream. Still trying to get caught up, and prepping for the Halloween one-shot last week didn't help, but I digress! You'll find the stats and descriptions below, and the full GM Binder doc is right over here. 

As always, thanks to everyone who keeps tuning in. The stream has actually been (very) slowly but steadily increasing in viewership, which is encouraging! Keep telling your friends/DMs (DM friends?)!

Anyway, here are the monsters:

Jack O'Slaughter

Based on this reddit post, where I was tagged by redditors  /u/Uzrukai and /u/yamiyaiba.

This one I thought was appropriate for the (then) coming Halloween season, and looked adequately terrifying and monster-worthy. The bulk of the stats came together pretty easily, though I did have some back-and-forth about whether it should be a plant or undead. I settled on undead, justifying it by inventing the backstory that it is actually a violent spirit inhabiting a collection of vines and gourds.

As you can see, it's not only got a slam attack as you'd expect, but also can simultaneously attack with slashing vine whips which reach out in all directions. It also has the ability to toss a burning pumpkin stuffed with offal and other magical rot, causing an area of effect attack that deals fire and poison damage, as well as to breathe out this same fiery miasma in a cone.

Anguis Machinam

Art credit: Clinton Felker on Artstation 

Suggested by @whistlehunter, this big boi was a heck of a thing. Turning this massive fantasy monster into something y'all can fight in D&D was a decent amount of work, but was relatively straightforward, all things considered.

It was obviously Gargantuan, some kind of fiend, and demon made the most sense we thought, so that came together pretty quickly. The abilities are pretty standard, but the snake-arm was where we got to have some fun. We gave it a lashing attack like a whip or tendril, then also gave it a sweeping attack as a legendary action.

There was a little bit of indecision on how exactly the sweep should work, but I ultimately reasoned that a cone wouldn't really make sense, as a sweep is a horizontal swipe as opposed to a 3-dimensional cone, and specifying an angle would be too clunky, so I just went with a full, 360-degree sweep.

Golemeka

Image source: Wookiepedia 

I had a lot of fun with this one. It's based on the Droidekas from the Star Wars prequels, and was suggested by @SherlockHole1.

First off, I already liked it because it's got so many mechanical elements already established in the source material: the near-impenetrable shield, the rolling vs slow movement, and the constant barrage of blaster fire. I quickly added each of these to the stat block, trying to represent them as faithfully but simply as I could. The biggest speed bump here was the shield.

It reminded me a lot of the shield spell, so I took inspiration from that, but then lightning was suggested as a potential weakness for it, and I thought that seemed to make sense, and I liked the idea of a wizard or sorcerer finding this out mid-battle.

Lastly though, the iconic image of them to me is a pair of them in a corridor, marching ever so slowly toward their opponents, and unleashing a absolute hail of suppressing fire. To replicate this feeling in 5e mechanics, I made sure they not only had a slow movement speed (when not rolling), but also gave them an extra round of ranged attacks if they moved only half of their already slow speed.

One final detail was to allow them to make ranged attacks normally even while within reach of hostile creatures. They don't really have a melee weapon to speak of, and being forced to ineffectually smack targets with their blaster arms once they got too close would be pretty lame.

And that's it for this one! I hope to have the next few up sooner rather than later...as I am constantly assuring you all (press X to doubt), but this time I really mean it!

In any event, see you all next time!

Cheers!

~IADnDMN

Edit: Rolled back previous edit to the golemeka which reduced its attack bonus.