You can convince Muggles of a lot, huh?
Specifically, you can tell normal people that the frog-monster eating all the cattle is only a hoax, and that’s apparently enough for everyone. Fantastic Beasts doesn’t really hint at whether memory charms are used to hide the existence of Hodag, so I’m guessing people think a wild animal ate all the calves? That farm went out of business and they never found what ate only the baby animals but that’s a hoax, I guess?
At first, the Hodag is a plain, easy D&D monster. However, whilst the book doesn’t specifically state it has any special powers, the effect it’s horns have when ingested seems to suggest something strange about the Hodag etymology.
Hodag
So a wizard once saw the horns on a big frog beast and thought, “I’d going to grind those and inhale them and nothing bad will happen”. Amazingly, that wizard didn’t die, and also discovered that they couldn’t get drunk and didn’t need sleep.
So, whilst it’s not directly stated, I applied immunity to poison and exhaustion conditions. The latter is the more interesting. A monster that doesn’t get exhausted can appear day and night to cause grief. There’s no planning to catch the Hodag whilst it’s sleeping, no rest if they are hunting you.
It’s up to you as DM to decide how aggressive these beasts are. On the one hand, they’re bold enough to invade farms to hunt. On the other hand, you might only be in danger if you’re the size of a baby cow. In D&D that’s all the gnomes and halflings…?
Thank You For Reading
The rest of the Fantastic Beasts turned into D&D monsters are here!
Gamer Peak 