D&D – Page 9 – Gamer Peak

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Fairy

My daughter and wife were watching one of the Tinkerbell movies. I caught ten minutes of it, before declaring “well that isn’t Tinkerbell” (you know, in that way that only the most obnoxious people nit-pick movies). My wife looked at me puzzled (my daughter carried on enjoying the movie and ignoring her silly daddy) and I reminded her that in the original story Tinkerbell is not the super-happy, kind and caring friend she’s more recently portrayed as.

No, Tinkerbell is just awful. She’s vain and spiteful, she’s more than ready to shank anyone that crosses her, and if she considers you a rival she will gleefully put you in mortal danger. She’s a terrible creature.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Erumpent

Should it charge, the results are usually catastrophic.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

In Dungeons & Dragons, there are a few circumstances where a player’s character dies out right. Taking an enormous amount of damage in one go for example. There are some spells and effects that state: ‘if you go to 0 hit points, you are dead now’. The vast majority of the time, characters have a chance to fight for their lives, but every now and then something comes along and stomps the player’s creation into the dirt.

An effect that causes the target to explode is therefore in the realms of possibility, but one that needs to be handled cautiously. Telling a player that they are knocked out by a charging, bulbous rhino-monster is one thing; suddenly revealing that they have been impaled on its huge horn and blown into meaty chunks is another…

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Erkling

Dungeons & Dragons is high-adventure for a lot of the time. Tolkien-esque heroic tales full of might and magic. Sometimes though, D&D adventures stride out into the horror genre.

Playing horror-based D&D is rarely an intensely scary experience. It’s hard to jumpscare when you’re carefully describing the world. A player can only be as creeped out as their imagination will allow. Yet you can build some pretty unsettling, twisted moments. The campaign book Curse of Strahd is especially effective because it leans into camp-horror; a mixed of sinister and the comical that blends really well together.

The Fantastic Beast known as an Erkling immediately inspires a horrific encounter for any D&D game.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Dugbog

This journey has its ups and downs.

From a dozen deadly dragons, to a Dugbog. From giant reptilian, fire-spitting monstrosities, to a small amphibian that looks like a log. It’s a bit of a drop off. Nevertheless, I said I would turn all the Fantastic Beasts into D&D monsters, and so I shall.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Dragons

Did you know that there are dragons in Dungeons & Dragons? I know, I know, I was surprised as well. Not just a few dragons either. The world of Harry Potter has some dragons to deal with too.

They come in all shapes – from babies the size of a horse to elders thirty feet in length – and all sorts of colours. The ‘good’ dragons are all shiny colours, golds and silvers, whilst the ‘bad’ dudes are standard colours like red and blue. Not only does the colour inform their general behaviour and habits, but different breath weapons.

(I’ll never forget the first time a new player confidentially stated, pre-fight: “Don’t worry guys, I’ve got this. I’m resistant to fire damage!” only to watch in horror as the green dragon unleashed an intense cloud of poison on their fledgling character. Priceless.)

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Doxy

Another easy one this week. A curtain-nibbling, beetle-winged pest of the Potterverse gets the D&D treatment. The Doxy isn’t going to challenge most RPG adventurers, but it’s a fun little nuisance. A Dungeon Master could have some fun telling characters that they see a fairy on a nearby tree, only to discover that it’s this angry blighter.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Diricawl

It’s always nice to learn that the human race didn’t wipe out a species. It turns out, the Dodo is still alive. The species is actually a ‘Diricawl’, a magical bird that can teleport. So it’s not extinct, it just learned that humans are unsafe spaces and made themselves scarce. Good for them.

So for today’s converstion from Fantastic Beasts to Dungeons & Dragons, we have a lil’ fluffy bird that can teleport.

Category: D&D