Monster Monday - Dokkaebi

Continuing the tour of Asian monsters started with the kuchisake-onna, our next stop is in South Korea. I had to do some research to find some fun monsters to draw upon from over there and ultimately had to reach out to a friend that has spent some time there. He asked around for me so I want to extend a thanks to him for tuning me into the 'Korean goblin' - the dokkaebi.

A wide variety of myths and legends surround the dokkaebi, enough so that it was initially difficult to decide how to approach this creature. Despite being known as Korean goblins, they are described as nature deities or spirits that possess supernatural powers that they will use to help or trick people at their whim. Some legends tell that dokkaebi are household objects stained with human blood that gain a spirit and take on a new form. One of the most persistent stories is how they enjoy ssireum, a type of wrestling and that certain weaknesses must be exploited to beat them at it. They have a hat that can make them invisible and a wand that can do other magic with that unfortunately isn't explained further. Supposedly they can bring good harvests or hunts but are also thought to bring diseases, depending on the region.

Starting with the idea of them being nature spirits, I decided to settle on fey for the dokkaebi's creature type. Through the conflicting tales, dokkaebi definitely seem more powerful than mortals but not as big as some other monsters, leading me to put them at a CR 3. My first test run revealed that these creatures were way too fragile but I didn't want to raise their Constitution too high, and raise a DC too high, so I opted to give them DR bypassed by cold iron, since they are fey. To capture the idea of their wand, I picked a greatclub or clubs as their main armament though they like using their slams and attempting to grapple people just as much. As supposed bringers of disease, I gave them a disease special attack that inflicts a disease based off of one that was common in Korea the time myths and legends of the dokkaebi began to emerge. Giving them invisibility as a spell-like ability mimics the powers their hats supposedly held while the idea that they can bring good harvests or hunts led me to also giving them create food and water. Despite their small stature, I wanted these dokkaebi to be beefy grapplers, leading to me giving them a slightly higher Strength. Most of their feats are dedicated to grappling with the exception of Great Fortitude, which was done to make them slightly more sturdy. To help with their grappling, since they are Small creatures, I also gave them tenacious wrestler, an ability copied off of the canopy troll's cradling but flavored a little differently.

Pathfinder First Edition:

Making the second edition version wasn't too difficult as I drew heavily upon the first edition version. I opted to give it a slightly higher pool of hit points here so I didn't have to rely on any resistances and since I was forgoing those, I decided against a weakness to cold iron as well. The dokkaebi still wields the greatclub and its clubs as well as its fists in combat, but given the limit on the size of creatures you can grapple, I made Tenacious Grappler allow it grapple creatures of a larger size. I included its spells as well as what amounts to a 2e version of its Whirling Hold in the form of Sickening Spin, which is simply a fun use for a third action when it has a creature grappled.

Pathfinder Second Edition:

Blue's D&D 5e Version (https://discord.gg/W4THAs5)

ENCOUNTER HOOKS

Dokkaebi Wrestling Federation: There’s been a recent rash of disappearances that seem unconnected except for one thing – the victims have been famous grapplers, ruffians, or other unarmed combatants. Either the heroes are drawn into the mystery by being employed or because one of them is targeted by the perpetrators – a tribe of dokkaebi whose leader has begun to demand new foes to test his wrestling skills against. If the heroes are captured, they can go free once they defeat the leader, but they must first prove themselves against other competitors before they can face him. The heroes can also attempt to break out on their own, but risk riling up the whole camp if they do so.

Original Prankster: Dokkaebi pranks can range from harmless to outright malicious and when the latter begin occurring around town, the heroes are hired to get to the bottom of it. During the course of their investigation, they also discover a string of more benign pranks. Following the new pranks lead the heroes to a good-natured by mischievous dokkaebi who swears that the crueler tricks are played by another of its kind. Having already been badly beaten in a fight by this dokkaebi once, it offers its assistance in finding and capturing the culprit, who is an unusually vicious dokkaebi.

If you want to share your thoughts on the dokkaebi, suggest other creatures I should, join the discussion of monsters I'm working on, or just hang out and chat about general TTRPG homebrew stuff, then have we got a Discord server for you! Come join us at the Monster Monday Discord, and tell us your ideas for monsters, items, maybe even homebrew classes.

Have a Monstrous Monday!