Stream Results—February 6th, 2019: Crabtank, Ursatyr Smoke Bolter, and Giant Brawler Mimic (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

It's time again for monsters from my weekly Twitch monster making stream!

Once more, the stats and descriptions for these monsters are down below, and the GM Binder doc is right here.

But first, as always, thanks a ton to everyone who continues to tune in to the stream, and for those of us who continue to join us. You are great.

And now, the monsters:

Crabtank

This one was suggested by redditor /u/ifandbut, who tagged me in this reddit thread. I'm not sure what the source is on this...and maybe that's for the best? Haha.

Tanks of all kinds have been suggested to me before, and I've always been hesitant to make stat blocks for them because any kind of vehicle (at least in 5e) has always been problematic to represent as a single stat block.

...And no joke, while typing this write-up, I've just remembered that there was an Unearthed Arcana article just a few weeks back that debuted a new stat block format specifically for vehicles, including details for hull, movement, and all battle stations ... which would've been really freaking useful for this.

...sigh.

Oh, well. Maybe I can release that as an addendum to this week's stream doc at some point. In any event, nearly all the challenges I faced while making this stat block would've been solved by using that new format, so I guess just keep a lookout for that. 

Ursatyr Smoke Bolter

This one was suggested by our friend @kleinroux, based on an art piece that we initially didn't know the source of, but we have since learned it was created by the super-talented Kyle Enochs.

Starting out, I really wanted this creature to be some kind of bestial monstrosity-humanoid, something akin to like the strength, speed, and demeanor of a werewolf, but with a crossbow and neat smoke tricks. However, chat kept insisting that it looked like a satyr, which, I fully acknowledged, but I had a hard time thinking of a way to make that interesting—mainly just because, "slightly-different satyr" didn't spark any ideas in me.

However, when coming up with the name, "Ursatyr" was thrown out there, which I immediately latched on to because, in my mind, it instantly explained to me how these guys could be related to satyrs, but still be unique. For anyone who doesn't know, the prefix "Ur-" means "first"—or to be more precise—"that from which all others came."

In this context, I immediately imagined that this was some kind of primitive, nomadic hunter subspecies of satyrs, older than most of the other "modern" fey humanoids.

This immediately told me that, just as how ordinary satyrs live for hedonistic pleasures, the ursatyrs live for the pleasure of the hunt. This means that these guys need to be fast, stealthy, and cunning, on top of all their other accouterments shown in the illustration: Perception, Stealth, and Survival skills, as well as ambusher and a whole bunch of neat disabling and distracting tricks with the smoky bolts seen on their person.

Just talking about all this made me want to really just dive in to the lore we were creating for the ursatyrs, on whole separate stream, even. It's yet to happen at this point, but I'm still not ruling it out.

Giant Brawler Mimic

This meme was suggested by Patron and Discord regular @ScottyMcScotterson, and the prospect certainly entertained me.

Overall, this one was pretty quick. We had decided early on that we wanted this to be larger than an ordinary mimic, and that Huge actually sounded like the most fun. I realized that your average mimic is Medium, as is your average treasure chest. So if this mimic is Huge, so too would be the treasure chest it would appear as, meaning that really, it'd have to be a giant's treasure chest.

And if there was a giant treasure chest in a giant's castle, I don't think most groups would really find it that out of place.

From there, it was just a matter of upscaling the existing mimic to Huge, which also means upping Strength and Constitution. Other than that, I basically just swapped its attacks for a good ol' punch using that high Str score, and the Giant Brawler Mimic was born.

And that's them.

Again, thanks a lot to those who watched the stream. You're cool people and I appreciate you.

Until next time, cheers!

~IADnDMN