A reverberating shriek tore through the sky, accompanied by a shadow that swooped over the party. They turned their eyes skyward, expecting to see a dragon or similar monstrosity but what dominated their vision was a bizarre beast. Its body was made of metal plates, dark wires, and blinking lights; built into the form of vast bats whose wings blotted out the sun. Crimson eyes glared from above a fanged maw and strange clusters of other lights flickered along its form. Wings flared as it suddenly brought itself to a stop midair and several canisters emerged from its chest. They flashed with lights before launching from its chest, streaking through the air before impacting around the party and detonating in a fiery explosion.
The dreadwing is both the name of a Transformer as well as a monster from the Horizon Zero Dawn series of games, and this post is about the latter! An early difficulty I had in designing the creature was determining what level it should be. In its original game, the dreadwing is a level 26 creature but this is a game where the simple watchers are level 25 creatures. After some deliberation, I settled on CR 14 and then started the build. The choice of construct was obvious and the robot subtype from first edition worked out rather well though I decided against including the usual vulnerability to electricity as dreadwing is described as being resistant to both acid, electricity, and frost damage, leading to its resistances while its weakness is to fire. I debated keeping the vulnerability to critical hits shared by robots since I also wanted to keep the dismantle mechanic, referencing the ability to take out parts of constructs in the Horizon games. The dreadwing’s basic attacks include bites, wing swipes, and scrabbling with the claws of its feet though this attack is normally limited by its flight. I decided to keep it in, and built its attacks to have a higher attack roll for damage on the lower end of its CR range.
Within game, the dreadwing wields a vast array of systems, starting with the radar system near its tail, which gives it blindsight as per a bat. I built towards a slightly higher AC to account for the lower HP common among constructs, but it does have two other things to help balance this – its innate hardness as well as its cloaking field to go invisible at-will though only with a basic invisibility. In my research on the creature, I saw the dreadwing perform heavy stomps as it advanced upon creature, which I thought was best represented through the trample ability. Another part of its more standard arsenal is a powerful swoop followed by an attack using the force of the dive. For that, this build of the dreadwing uses the Death From Above feat to give it a +5 on its charge.
Getting into its more unique abilities, the dreadwing can scatter bombs across an area, which appears similar to a fireball, so I designed the scatter bombs ability similar to that. The ‘ears’ atop the dreadwing’s head are actually panels that it can use to unleash a blinding light. While in-game, the blindness caused by the dreadwing is short-lived, referencing similar abilities with Pathfinder use durations of a minute if not longer, which led to me using a lengthy duration for the dreadwing’s strobe flash. Another weapon in the dreadwing’s extensive arsenal is acid spit that it can seemingly use regularly, which led to the inclusion of a smaller area and lower damage acid spray ability lacking a cooldown. The final ability that I attempted to assemble was its dubious ability to fly along and leave behind cryo mines. While I heard about this ability from a couple of sites, I couldn’t find a single demonstration of its or a better description than the one I just gave. With the intent of including it but also to let myself have a little fun with it, I designed its snowfall protocol ability. Since this ability includes movement, I decided to make it a full-round action, but alternatively, it gives the characters a chance to react to its effects. As such, I pumped up its damage slightly while also including an effect to stagger foes, representing frost covering and slowing its victims.
Pathfinder 1e:
The test of the dreadwing went well with the party initially struggling against the flying robot, but a supremely lucky crit by a produce flame (which would have only hit on a 19 or 20) crippled the creature thanks to the persistent damage I couldn’t shake off. It also struggled as two-thirds of the party has Evasion, meaning successes against its Bomb Barrage, Snowfall Protocol, and even its Trample ended up dealing no damage. All these abilities follow similar design processes as the 1e version, save for changes made to it following the test. We felt that the ability was lacking as it initially only triggered at the start of the dreadwing’s next turn and only dealt damage. Playing into the fact that the dreadwing leaves behind mines, I designed the ability to detonate from creatures moving through the space unless they carefully Step their way out. Additionally, it covers the area in frost and snow, turning it into difficult terrain until it melts after a minute. An ability that the 2e dreadwing exclusively wields is its Toxic Fumes reaction, another ability that I couldn’t find a good fit for but one that references the dreadwing’s supposed ability to make victims sickened and also drain stamina. I initially designed this ability to inflicted sickened and then fatigued on a critical failure, before realizing that their effects don’t really stack. As stamina is required for attacks, dodges, and similar actions in the Horizon game, limiting actions with the slowed trait seemed like a right way to go with it, leading to that change following the test.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue’s D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Bat Out of Hull: A strange vessel crashes into the land and the heroes are the first to arrive, possibly to claim whatever treasures the silvery craft contains or in hope of finding survivors. Making their way through a hole in the flying ship’s hull, what they encounter instead is a malfunctioning dreadwing that stalks them through the halls of the ship. The heroes can either face the dreadwing, which moves with surprising deftness through the ship or savvy characters may discover a method to reset it, so that it treats them as allies.
Assault and Bat-tery: To cross a land ravaged by mechanical invaders, the heroes need to lay claim to a specialized staff made of the same technology as the robots. There are several options by which they could potentially acquire such an item, but the most direct is acquiring it from a local warlord that rides atop a dreadwing. The heroes may be able to talk the warlord out of the staff, complete a quest on behalf of the warlord, or simply face the warlord and the mechanized mount in combat.
As I've said the past few weeks, I'm going on hiatus for the month of March! I'll be back in April with new monsters and new builds as well as hopefully some other new forms of content. Until then, I hope you all stay safe and well.
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.
Have a monstrous Monday and see you in April!
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