The fighter pulled his blade from the downed creature, cutting off its shriek. He eyed the blackened blood upon his blood distastefully and wiped it upon the freshly made corpse before a sound from the cleric drew his focus deeper down the cave. Lifting his cleaned sword, he marched towards the priest, peering down the tunnel he stood before and noting the rogue and wizard at the end of it. They crept towards the pair, remaining wary as the silver-haried rogue pressed a slender finger to her lips. Standing upon the cusp of an opening into a wider cavern, she pointed into the hollow below. The duo looked down to see more of the horrid creatures filling the chamber, all subserviently fixated upon a vast bloated figure. The heroes watched silently as a tentacle struck out from this corpulent figure, seizing one of the darkspawn that was hauled overhead. Another tentacle lashed around its limbs, and a scream ripped from it as it was torn in half. Gore and viscera rained down upon the wicked creature, which she happily lapped up before unleashing a shriek echoed by her horde – as she pointed a clawed finger at the lurking heroes.
I have to be careful with the pictures for this creature this time around, but I wanted to fulfill this request that I received to build the broodmother from Dragon Age. A corrupted humanoid twisted into a darkspawn, the broodmother is used infrequently and usually as a boss sort of monster. Following this design, I built her as a level 15 aberration with a Huge size. A nice thing when it came to building this creature is that the monsters of Dragon Age all have abilities for me to specifically reference and base things off of.
Her primary weapons are her tentacles and her Grab seizes a target and crushes them. To represent this, she has the Improved Grab ability on her tentacle Strike as well as Constrict, giving her a single action damaging ability not affected by her multiple attack penalty. The broodmother’s Spit launches a glob of acid at a target on a very comparatively low cooldown, which I adapted into her acid spit Strike. Both of these Strikes utilize a high attack bonus and respectively deal high and moderate damage.
In addition to her spit, she has a wider ranged cone of acid in Vomit, represented with the Vomit Spew, a pretty simple limited use area attack that uses a high DC to deal acid damage. Rotting Gas is one of her powers that unleashes a gaseous cloud that deals damage over time. The Pathfinder 2e version of Rotting Gas is an emanation that is 2-actions to create initially but can be sustained after that, which I actually borrowed from my 1e design of the creature. I included the sustain effect in that version because I didn’t have a good way of creating the DoT for it, but I ended up liking it enough to bringing it into 2e even though this effect does already have the persistent damage on a critical failure. The last effect based on its in-game abilities comes from its Scream, translated into Cacophonous Shriek. In Dragon Age, the severity of this effect is based on the proximity of the creature to the broodmother, which I tried to bring over. Given this design, the fact that it is a non-damaging ability, and that it goes on cooldown, I built it as a single action effect.
I also came up with a few abilities not based on the broodmother’s abilities but that I liked the idea of. Sweeping Tendrils is a damaging ability akin to her Vomit Spew, but one that deals less damage, doesn’t have a cooldown, and can knock people prone. In addition to its Constrict, the broodmother has another option to inflict upon her grabbed victims – Rip Apart. This functions somewhat similar to Rend, being a damage amplifier that relies on landing multiple hits, but this also has some debilitating effects that it leaves on enemies as she tries to tear them apart. Finally, inspired by the likes of the ankhrav hive mother, the broodmother can Command Corruption to inspire other darkspawn. Hopefully, this will inspire me to work on other darkspawn down the line.
Pathfinder 2e:
The biggest difference in 1e broodmother came in its design as a grappler. Replacing the likes of Rip Apart is rend and the Rending Fury feat chain. Because of these feats, I kept the tentacles required to rend to a higher number. The rake ability means that it can rend its grappled targets by landing multiple tentacles. The way that ranged natural attacks function in PF1e made it too difficult to include its acidic spit but I managed to squeeze in her spew acid.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER DESIGN
Instead of encounter hooks, I want to take a moment to talk about designing encounters around the broodmother – for either edition. Once enemies get in her reach, she can become oppressive with her grabs and rend, and the other area effects that she can produce. However, her low speed means that placing her in an open area can lead to her getting kited to death. Fortunately, she is a largely subterranean creature, meaning that placing her in a cave is both effective and appropriate. Twisting tunnels and caverns suit this creature well, providing natural funnels to deliver enemies to the broodmother.
If you're interested in joining the discussion on what creatures I'm working on or just discussing your own homebrew works, check out our Discord! If you want to get some teasers or help us get to our yet unlisted milestones for extra content, check out the Twitter.
I've been keeping at making vids for the Ready to Die YouTube channel. I put together the broodmother video a little late, but I'm happy with it. Over on the Monster Mash vid, we've learned a good bit already but we're still figuring out Foundry. This time, we struggled with reloading - only to figure it out after the stream. Please check them out or share them with others, and then let me know what you think. Still learning how to best make these.
Have a monstrous Monday!
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