Some animal stat blocks

[demonslayerelf]

Hello all! Still working on too much at the same time. Since I'm doing this, though, I figured I would put all of the animals I remake in a single thread. Hope y'all enjoy them.

Here ya go. (http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/B1WDtkshQz)


Note: I don't use CR. Because it doesn't work. It you want a rough estimate, use their number of hit dice. Have funsies.

[GalacticAxekick]

Careful. You've offered the editing page instead of the viewing page. I almost misclicked and deleted the Tiger stat block!

[demonslayerelf]

Very thank you, Galactic, that could've been pretty bad >.<

Fixed now.
What do y'all think?

[Potato_Priest]

The Dire Bat:

Screech should probably state that it can also cause people to stop holding their breath (or that shouldn't be a trigger for losing concentration), because as it is now, if you're holding your breath and not concentrating, you make a saving throw, and regardless of whether you fail or succeed nothing happens. Other than this, I really like the screech ability. Non-damaging effects that remove concentration are something I'd like to see more of.

Drink Blood is kinda weird, since unless you let people heal in your games for eating a slice of pizza mid-combat, a bat shouldn't really be spontaneously healing from consuming nonmagical blood without some magic properties of its own. If you want your dire bats to be somewhat magical this is fine, but it's certainly not a mundane ability.

The Bat should have either Fly Away or Powerful Wings but not both, since at the moment the bat can fly faster when it's carrying a human than when it isn't, which just doesn't make sense. If I had to choose which to keep, I'd keep Fly Away, since it interacts in a more interesting way with the Dire bat's other abilities (by consuming a bonus action).



I like pretty much everything in the tiger statblock apart from 2 things:

1.Apex Predator. Tigers should be encouraged to use stealth to separate animals from their group for a quick kill like they do in nature, rather than going after large groups of weaker creatures and slaughtering them all, which is what Apex Predator lends itself to.

2. Pounce. I actually prefer the way that the monster manual handles pounce attacks, where using one just grants extra effects to another kind of attack that the animal can normally make (in this case probably a claw attack) The other thing I don't like about it is the sheer difficulty of the saving throw to avoid being knocked prone. It's both a very difficult saving throw and one that does not account at all for size, so that a Mammoth or Fire Giant would have a less than even chance of passing this saving throw if the tiger rolled average damage, which is just a bit ridiculous.


A more general critique would be that these monsters are very high in damage compared to their hit points, and in this way resemble PCs more than other monsters or NPCs. The main problem that could occur with this design is that low level fights might come down to a game of "rocket tag" where the victor is solely dependent on who gets to act first. I know that you want to represent the pure power of animals in IRL battles (and believe me, I understand, and have a hard time reigning myself in when I design animals too), but either more hp or lower damage would probably help these be more entertaining fights for the players. (depending on what level you want these to be good enemies for).

[demonslayerelf]

Screech should probably state that it can also cause people to stop holding their breath (or that shouldn't be a trigger for losing concentration), because as it is now, if you're holding your breath and not concentrating, you make a saving throw, and regardless of whether you fail or succeed nothing happens. Other than this, I really like the screech ability.
Yeah, that was a part of the intention of the ability, I fixed it. A bit of homebrewed area in my games, you know? Holding your breath is your concentration slot, unless you have a swim speed.


Drink Blood is kinda weird, since unless you let people heal in your games for eating a slice of pizza mid-combat, a bat shouldn't really be spontaneously healing from consuming nonmagical blood without some magic properties of its own. If you want your dire bats to be somewhat magical this is fine, but it's certainly not a mundane ability.
Well, by nature, Dire animals ARE sorta magical. They're not just your "Prehistoric Variant", because the real-world dire wolf is nothing like the dire wolf in dnd.

Also, Second Wind exists, and I have no clue how taking a few deep breaths heals you from being stabbed in the face. #DnD_Give_Some_Leeway


The Bat should have either Fly Away or Powerful Wings but not both, since at the moment the bat can fly faster when it's carrying a human than when it isn't, which just doesn't make sense.
In my mind, it's less so that it's ABLE to fly faster, so much as it WANTS to fly faster in that moment, so it puts more effort into it.


1.Apex Predator. Tigers should be encouraged to use stealth to separate animals from their group for a quick kill like they do in nature, rather than going after large groups of weaker creatures and slaughtering them all, which is what Apex Predator lends itself to.
Tigers ARE encouraged to do that, particularly with their Roar and Talented Hunter features. Apex Predator is just the idea that a random squirrel isn't going to just go nuts on a tiger unless it's very provoked to do so.
While it does lend itself towards the tiger going on a murder-spree, there's nothing in our own world which stops them from doing that anyway. Tigers just don't because it's not how they roll.


2. Pounce. I actually prefer the way that the monster manual handles pounce attacks, where using one just grants extra effects to another kind of attack that the animal can normally make. The other thing I don't like about it is the difficulty of the saving throw to avoid being knocked prone. It's both a very difficult saving throw and one that does not account at all for size, so that a Mammoth or Fire Giant would have a less than even chance of passing this saving throw if the tiger rolled average damage, which is just a bit ridiculous.

The save was supposed to be 10+ half the damage, my mistake, I fixed it.

I do like how the MM handles Pounce, but when I started thinking about it, Claws have nothing to do with pouncing. Honestly, the pounce is just jumping on top of someone; Which is neither slashing damage, nor tied to the claws. It's a nice solution, but not one I understood the logic of. It also didn't add damage, which is a good motivator for cats to pounce on something.

I also don't really take size into account here, because as a general rule, bigger creatures are stronger, and more likely to make the save than a smaller one. That's just a generalization though, and the more important reason is that a pounce would still function on larger creatures, it would just be more out of confusion, or getting a lucky hit in on the tiger's part.(Such as; Pouncing at a giant's face and knocking it over, or slamming into the legs of a big creature to make it buckle and fall.)
(And if you doubt the fire giant thing, imagine if a big spider just landed on your face. Not even jumped, just landed on it. You would be on the ground screaming for days :P )

Thanks for the feedback, mate, hope you like the ones I'll be making in the future.

[Potato_Priest]

Tigers ARE encouraged to do that, particularly with their Roar and Talented Hunter features. Apex Predator is just the idea that a random squirrel isn't going to just go nuts on a tiger unless it's very provoked to do so.
While it does lend itself towards the tiger going on a murder-spree, there's nothing in our own world which stops them from doing that anyway. Tigers just don't because it's not how they roll.


Squirrels aren't going to attack a tiger anyway though unless they're rabid if the DM is any good at their job.

You're using "the tiger isn't going to go on a mass murder spree because that's not what tigers do" as justification for the ability and then you justify the ability further with not wanting a squirrel to recklessly attack it, despite the fact that no sane squirrel is going to do that either. If you're playing the animals with semi-realistic behavior the ability becomes unnecessary, unless you really want to make 3rd level barbarians cry.


I do have a request though, after I've been ragging all over your ideas.

I'd really like D&D stats for one of the larger whales. It's just not something that's covered very often, and it's an interesting design challenge to make something that big work well with the 5e system.

[demonslayerelf]

Squirrels aren't going to attack a tiger anyway though unless they're rabid if the DM is any good at their job.

You're using "the tiger isn't going to go on a mass murder spree because that's not what tigers do" as justification for the ability and then you justify the ability further with not wanting a squirrel to recklessly attack it, despite the fact that no sane squirrel is going to do that either. If you're playing the animals with semi-realistic behavior the ability becomes unnecessary, unless you really want to make 3rd level barbarians cry.
Potato, I'm kinda doing it the other way around. A rabid squirrel would be immune to fear(At least, I'd rule it that way), and will therefore attack the tiger. I'm using this ability as a justification as to why the squirrel wouldn't.

Yeah, just logically, it wouldn't, but Apex Predator is the mechanical justification as to WHY that logic exists... Beyond just logic itself. Essentially, I'm QUANTIFYING the logic as to why a squirrel wouldn't attack, not rationalizing the logic.


I do have a request though, after I've been ragging all over your ideas.

I'd really like D&D stats for one of the larger whales. It's just not something that's covered very often, and it's an interesting design challenge to make something that big work well with the 5e system.

Those are definitely on my hit list... I mean, they were lower down, but I would get to them. I will definitely bump them up on my list for ya, though... Might even be the next ones to come out.

Scratch that. I decided to just do it, and I made a goddamn blue whale.
I believe it is appropriately terrifying... Maybe even a little too terrifying :P

[Potato_Priest]

Those are definitely on my hit list... I mean, they were lower down, but I would get to them. I will definitely bump them up on my list for ya, though... Might even be the next ones to come out.

Scratch that. I decided to just do it, and I made a goddamn blue whale.
I believe it is appropriately terrifying... Maybe even a little too terrifying :P

I quite like the way you handled most of that. Ram is especially impressive from a mental physics perspective, I think.

I do believe I have only one question/critique this time around.

Why does Thick Blubber provide immunity to piercing and not bludgeoning damage? It seems to me like it would be easier to actually hurt a whale with a pike than a warhammer.

[demonslayerelf]

I quite like the way you handled most of that. Ram is especially impressive from a mental physics perspective, I think.

I do believe I have only one question/critique this time around.

Why does Thick Blubber provide immunity to piercing and not bludgeoning damage? It seems to me like it would be easier to actually hurt a whale with a pike than a warhammer.

Good point on the bludgeoning, Ima put that in.
The idea is that it's blubber is so thick, that it's kinda like giving a person a splinter. It just does nothing. I mean, it hurts, probably, but you won't die via splinter, and whales won't die via tiny arrows.

[Potato_Priest]

Good point on the bludgeoning, Ima put that in.
The idea is that it's blubber is so thick, that it's kinda like giving a person a splinter. It just does nothing. I mean, it hurts, probably, but you won't die via splinter, and whales won't die via tiny arrows.

Oh, I've got another one now.

If I'm not mistaken, the way that historic whaling worked was that you would harpoon the whale (a usually nonlethal form of attack), which would then try to flee. The whaleboat would just sort of get towed along for a while until the whale got tired out enough that they could have a lancer actually deal the whale a mortal blow, after which you would back off again and let it finally die. Although historically blue whales were not a target, if you really wanted to kill one with midieval tech, this would probably be your best bet for doing it.

Because part of the strategy involves the whale getting tired out, perhaps a feature that lets them swim for more than 8 hours a day or rest while they travel would be better than flat out immunity to exhaustion?

Sorry if I come across as obnoxious. It's just that I enjoy overthinking my monster design.

[demonslayerelf]

Oh, I've got another one now.

If I'm not mistaken, the way that historic whaling worked was that you would harpoon the whale (a usually nonlethal form of attack), which would then try to flee. The whaleboat would just sort of get towed along for a while until the whale got tired out enough that they could have a lancer actually deal the whale a mortal blow, after which you would back off again and let it finally die. Although historically blue whales were not a target, if you really wanted to kill one with medieval tech, this would probably be your best bet for doing it.

Because part of the strategy involves the whale getting tired out, perhaps a feature that lets them swim for more than 8 hours a day or rest while they travel would be better than flat out immunity to exhaustion?

Sorry if I come across as obnoxious. It's just that I enjoy overthinking my monster design.

I think that would be a good idea. And you're not mistaken about the IRL stuff, but I'm also basing this thing on whale-folk stories. A Blue Whale can't actually swallow a person, but with the absurdly large number of stories which take place inside of a whale... You get where I'm going with this.

The whaling thing was actually the reason whales get the "Non-siege weapon" resistances. A spear won't do much, but a giant harpoon(IE; A Ballista-ish thing.)...

Also, you aren't being obnoxious. I totally get the feeling, that's why I'm doing this. :P




It also occurred to me that I missed one of the early things you said, which is that they have very high damage compared to their hit points. And while that's true, that's because I don't enjoy that every single monster in 5e uses health like a sponge, rather than having some modicum of defense or healing. Their damage isn't much higher than what you'd expect of things fighting a 4th-ish level party, they just do better things.

Keep the challenges coming, mate. :)