Every time I re-read the description of a Fantastic Beast and I see a phrase like ‘instant death’ I get nervous. Not because death is scary, but because a sudden demise in Dungeons & Dragons is a tricky thing.
There are ways to destroy a character in a single moment. A few spells end a life if they strip away all the hit points. Then there’s power word kill, a top-tier spell that puts your down instantly. Occasional adventures are set up as death traps, ‘meat-grinders’ that require the players to have a second character at the ready.
In a long term campaign, however, having a instant kill button can leave players feeling hard done by. All the hours of gaming, the levelling up, character development, just to be dropped with a single tail sting will definitely leave the people around the table wallowing in bemused disappointment.
So I’m playing fast-and-loose with instant death on this one. The Manticore I have created can kill you fast, and will ab-so-lute-ly murder your average NPC or 1st level characters in one hit, but I’ve decided to go with “instant death for anyone who is not a seasoned adventurer”.
Manticore (Mr Whiskers)
A 1st level character is going to have, at very best, 15 hit points. At level 2, anyone except a Barbarian is going to have less than 30hp. By comparison, a humble commoner has 4hp and the lord of the manor will have 9hp. So a single swipe from the Manticore is definitively deadly to the vast majority of the population.
Oh, and the reason for the name: that’s a nod to a little bit of lore involving a wizard that secretly kept a pet manticore until it became a horrendous problem. This was my way of distinguishing this stat block from the Manticore that already exists in D&D. They are both spelt the same way, so I can’t rely on the Chimera/Chimaera spelling distinction.
This monster is different enough from the original D&D manticore to make it interesting too. The Fantastic Beast version cannot fly, but is faster. The D&D manticore has bards on its tail that it can fling out as ranged weapons instead of a stinger. This new version is also more powerful.
This would definitely be a nice surprise for any seasoned players of D&D. Oh yes, I’ve fought Manticores before, nothing to worry about!
Thank You For Reading
The rest of the Fantastic Beasts line-up can be found here.
Gamer Peak 