More Playtest Monsters

As of right now, the v1.1 update to the CORE20 Playtest Creature Package is live for your gaming pleasure! As always, you can find the new document and all the other v1.1 playtest docs in the CORE Playtest Files folder on Google Drive: 

http://tinyurl.com/CORE20Playtest

(If the short URL doesn’t work for you, you can click or copy the full link here.)

The initial v1.0 Playtest Package featured a solid array of over 180 creature stat blocks from d20 fantasy, covering potential foes, foils, enemies, and allies for your CORE20 games. The v1.1 package ups the monstrous ante to over 240 stat blocks with the addition of 54 new creatures, including:

• Bulette
• Grick
• Hippogriff
• Ilvalaak — a new name for the naga
• Kraal — inspired by the grell
• Krenshar
• Werebear
• Mesmeroth — a renamed and reworked gibbering mouther
• Oni
• Peryton
• Praetyrian and venenatus — two new drakes
• Remorhaz
• Revenant
• Satyr
• The skulker — a revisiting and combining of the classic AD&D monsters the trapper and the lurker below
• Specter
• Transfixer — the piercer, but really cool
• Vampire spawn
• Vargouille
• Vermacarn — a reworked carrion crawler
• Vocoeur — CORE20’s version of the displacer beast
• Wurfrur — the renamed blink dog
• Xorn
• Lineage traits for the gnoll and the mergyyr (a new name for the merfolk), allowing the easy creation of a broad range of NPCs

And many more! 

In addition to new threats and allies, the Playtest Creature Package has seen all manner of updates, tweaks, corrections, and rules and language fixes. Huge thanks as always to all the folks in the playtest who have pointed out typos and asked the questions that have let us make the game even better. (The Playtest v1.1 Changelog doc in the playtest folder notes changes to existing stat blocks and lists the playtest package’s new creatures.)

Once again, the CORE20 Playtest Creature Package is available in two variations. The regular version features the stat block color-coding throughout all sections of the stat block, while the “(Low Color)” version features the color coding only on stat block section heads. (A post back toward the beginning of the public playtest talks about the evolution and design of the stat block format, including using color to make it easier to navigate stat blocks during play.)

I’ve been playtesting and fine-tuning all these new creatures in my own campaigns for a while now, and I’m happy to finally turn them loose. Good gaming!

Art by Xavier Beaudlet

Creature Preview: Mesmeroth

A gibbering mouther by any other name would… well, still be pretty horrible. But the renaming of this classic weird fantasy aberration was a relatively late addition to CORE20, in the course of my learning that ableist language is something that too easily hides within familiar usage.

The gibbering mouther was so-named for the endless maws that would appear across their amoeboid form, and for the confusion-inducing gibbering of the voices that would issue forth from those many mouths. Terrifying heroes since the early days of AD&D, the mouther had always seemed a classic aberrant creature to me, possessed of an alien intelligence whose very language would tear at the minds of those who heard it.

Except then during a round of sensitivity consulting on the last CORE20 alpha playtest, I was asked, “You do know that ‘gibber’ and ‘gibbering’ likely originated as a description of the speech of the mentally ill, right?” And I said, “Uh… no” — even as I realized I probably should have. I definitely wish it was something I’d known when I was the editor of the 5e D&D Monster Manual in 2014, so that there might have been a conversation on the topic at the time. Not that it likely would have made any difference, as D&D is a large ship that changes course very slowly when it comes to dealing with making little fixes. Thankfully, though, CORE20 is a bit more nimble in its desire to improve the language and context of the game.

During the final alpha playtest of CORE20, the gibbering mouther became the mesmeric mouther for a time. It’s now become the more subtly named mesmeroth in the upcoming public playtest CORE20 Playtest Creature Package v1.1. The mesmeroth for our game is built on the chassis of the SRD mouther, but swaps out the traditional confusion effect of their many voices for a luring drone that draws adventurers ever-closer to their doom.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Gnoll

The gnoll has always been one of my favorite humanoids, back from the days when “humanoid” was a dirty word in D&D, used exclusively to describe the evil, monstrous folk designed to antagonize the humans and demi-humans (elves, dwarves, and the like) who were the heroes of the game. D&D has always had a consistently one-note version of who gnolls are and how they live, building on the evil pack hunters of AD&D and 3e, to 5e’s fiend-spawned humanoids/actual fiends. But in keeping with the central tenet of CORE20, it felt like gnolls in our game would be most interesting if they can be anything they — and you — want.

It’s easy to focus on the gnoll as a feral hunter, and to create a stat block that builds them out around that single theme. But as with the worldborn lineages in CORE20 (the game’s name for D&D’s humanoids), the cultures of the more unusual — and often magically evolved — wondrous worldborn are meant to cover the broadest possible range of characters and types. As such, the upcoming update to the CORE20 Playtest Creature Package sets up the gnoll as a lineage trait stat block, giving them the same treatment as humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and the rest of the worldborn lines. 

As with worldborn NPCs, the gnoll’s lineage traits can be added to one of the game’s twelve nonplayer character stat blocks, creating gnoll-themed scouts, warriors, and wildlings who’ll feel at home alongside any previous versions of the gnoll. But you can also use the flavor and culture of the gnoll to lend a distinct shape to spellcasters, protectors, scoundrels, and more. 

Additionally, it’s easy to see how the stat block lineage traits for the twelve worldborn lineages in the Playtest Creature Package have been adapted straight from the player character traits in chapter 4 of the CORE20 Player’s Guide. So it’s an easy guess that these gnoll lineage traits have been created with an eye to a future project — setting up character traits that will allow players to create wondrous worldborn characters in addition to the baseline worldborn options. More info on that as it comes together.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Bulette

The bulette is a delightful monster whose name I definitely pronounce as “bull-EHT,” not “boo-LAY” as some do. (I have been known to joke that the creature is only pronounced “boolay” if it comes from the Boolay region of Greyhawk. Otherwise, it’s just sparkling landshark.)

The bulette for CORE20 maintains much of the feel of the D&D original. As a tier 3 creature, it makes an excellent solo threat against a tier 1 or tier 2 party, built for power and jumping, and with a prodigious ability to flatten foes. In a recent encounter, I was able to happily confirm that this design had its intended effect when, after watching a bulette break the ground with a surging leap, then drop onto a pack of miniature mammoths they were hunting, the player characters elected to all flee the scene at high speed.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Cheetah and Hippopotamus

A half-dozen or so new creatures will be making their way into the already-well-populated “Animals” section of the CORE20 Creature Playtest Package, including the cheetah and the hippopotamus.

The cheetah was a creature I’ve wanted to set up for CORE20 for a while now, just because translating the speed of their 70-mile-per-hour sprint into game terms just gets weird. I also liked the idea that cheetahs in our world are known for almost never attacking humans, which makes them a bit novel for carnivores.

The hippopotamus was another animal I wanted to have a CORE20 version of, because it’s well known that the hippo is one of the most dangerous large animals in our world in terms of the number of people they kill annually. And because that’s a well-known fact, many players are aware of it, which means it’s great fun to see their reactions when an adventuring party runs into a hippo in their own world.

(Click on the stat block headers below to download the full stat blocks in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Warrener and Xorn

Two of the coolest monsters adventurers are likely to meet underground are the warrener — built from D&D’s umber hulk — and the xorn. Both are weird looking, not necessarily a threat unless you end up annoying them (intentionally or otherwise), and far more sapient than their appearance suggests.

The umber hulk was considered product identity in the original days of the Open Game license (as with the displacer beast). But with the movement of the Dungeons & Dragons SRD into Creative Commons, there are no prohibitions on a game built around the chassis of D&D (as CORE20 proudly is) from getting their umber hulk on. That said, that name always seemed a little meh to me, so “warrener” takes its place — from the way the relentless digging of these creatures creates warrens that wary underground adventurers learn to watch for and avoid.

One big update made to the warrener involves replacing the umber hulk’s confusion gaze with a slowing gaze. The confusion effect of the umber hulk always seemed a bit strange as an evolutionary defensive or offensive strategy, given that a creature under its effect is just as likely to attack the umber hulk as to flee them or stand fast. By slowing other creatures, the warrener is in a better position to catch up to prey, or to evade threats or creatures they just want to ignore.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat blocks in PDF.)

Creature Preview: Cyclops

When D&D was in its earliest days, giants were the well-known core of the so-called “true giants” — hill giants, fire giants, frost giants, stone giants, cloud giants, and storm giants — alongside lesser “giant-like” creatures such as ettins and ogres. As the game expanded, it made “giant” into a formal creature type and added other folk to that type. But in so doing, it created a kind of schism in the giants, whereby folk such as cyclopses and fomorians couldn’t be a part of the core identity because they were effectively an afterthought to it.

For both the fomorians (still awaiting final development) and the cyclops, I wanted to work with the idea that they were effectively peers of the core six giant peoples (renamed in CORE20 as the hallaek, the wiirdhar, the fiirmar, the rohkhad, the clohmad, and the istruhmad, because having sapient creatures with advanced and ancient cultures named in the languages of other cultures is part of that colonialism thing that D&D has long struggled with). But even as peers, cyclopses and fomorians (as athachs, ettins, and ogres) needed to be set up as outcasts from the core giant culture in some way. 

The specific angle for the cyclops and fomorians that appealed to me is that they have a connection to druidas magic, which traditionally isn’t part of the whole giant magical oeuvre. As such, the idea is that the giants have an overall ancient arcane tradition, but those two subgroups started messing around with nature magic and ended up splitting off from the giants’ central culture as a result.

(Click on the stat block header below to download the full stat block in PDF.)