Gamer Peak

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Grindylow

If there’s one clear distinction between the Potterverse and the real world, it’s the absence of health and safety. Yes I know, there are some other minor differences but the main contrast is the clear lack of any safeguarding of anyone’s rights to keep all their limbs.

So of course, the lake around Hogwards is filled with monsters. And of course, they send the youngest students across those waters every year. Neither are there any signs, notices or barriers preventing people from taking a dip.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Griffin & Hippogriff

It’s a two-for-one today.

Neither of these beasts really needs their own blogpost. I could push and pull and statistics about, but they are mechanically very similar creatures. Moreover, these are another pair of beasts that already exist in the D&D Monster Manual, and there’s not enough in Fantastic Beasts to really cause either creature to stand out as particularly different to the original.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Graphorn

Now this is more like it.

The last few beasts I’ve given the D&D treatment to have been a little wimpy – pet ghouls, tiny glumbumbles and irritating gnomes – which are good for a low-level encounter or to add as a little curiosity. But I really wanted to get back to the beasts that are fantastically dangerous. Along comes the super-angry Graphorn, and I’m a happy gent.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Gnome

This is the oddest beasts I’ve tackled so far. There’s plenty of Fantastic Beasts and Dungeons & Dragons monsters that have the same name/origins. So far, they’ve been different enough to make the creation of their game stats interesting.

A Gnome is not a beast or monster in D&D though. No, a Gnome is a playable race, with their own history, culture and intelligence.

Suggesting that a D&D Gnome was a small pest that infests gardens, steals vegetables and occasionally bites ankles would be extremely racist.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Glumbumble

It’s a bug that makes honey taste bad…

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Ghoul

This is another monster that shows up in D&D and the Potterverse. This time, the different is quite striking.

A fight with a pack of Dungeons & Dragons Ghouls can get nasty surprisingly quickly. A single claw swipe can cause paralysis, which makes every subsequent bite and scratch a Critical Hit. Visually, they are look like a powered up zombie, complete with bloated, blue skin and a glassy-eyed stare.

The Fantastic Beast ghoul is… sometimes kept as a pet?

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Demiguise

So on my trek through Fantastic Beasts, making them into D&D monsters, I missed one. Weirdly, the one I missed is a beast that can turn invisible and can avoid being captured because it can see the future.

But I finally caught them.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Fwooper

Today, we have another bird that has a magic cry. The Augurey has a irritating call that tells you the weather is about to change. The Fwooper has a lovely call that makes you go loopy. What luck: D&D has rules for when creatures go mad.

Why didn’t You tell me about Resident Evil?

It was a small, niggling regret that I had not played the original Resident Evil.

I had, up until recently, only played Resident Evil 4 and 5. I’ve also played the prologue of RE6, but I didn’t play further because I could already sense I was heading for a less-than-fun time. So I’ve watched a stream of someone else playing it, as well as 7 & 8, whilst marking and lesson planning, and that’s it.

Now, I actually own the RE remake. I hadn’t played it because I’d convinced myself that horror games were not how I should spend my few weekly gaming hours. Spooks and stress before bed sounds bad. However, I’ve also recently grumbled that there’s a Dead Space-sized hole in my gaming that I want filled. As I watched Resident Evil Village, I realised that I should be playing it. Yet, another voice in my head sternly reminded me that I should play Resident Evil 1 first.

So I did…

…

Why did no one tell me what this game was actually like?!

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Flobberworm

If you were running a table top adventure in the Potterverse, or a campaign inspired by that world, you would want to include as many of the Fantastic Beasts as possible. But do you really need to include the flobberworm?