Returning to the wondrous world of Monster Hunter, we have a twofer for you this week! As somebody who only got into the series with World, I've not had the fortune to face these monsters, but I did as much research as I could before setting out to build their stat blocks. So let's get worked into a frenzy over gore magala and shagaru magala!
Having never had the pleasure of playing the game these monsters originate from, I had to do some research, consisting of reading their entries in Monster Hunter wikis and watching several lore and fight videos. Once I felt properly prepared, I set about on building that statblock. They discuss gore magala lacking visible eyes, leading me to opt for making it blind with blindsense and another acute sense in the form of scent. To help with its innate blindsense, I also gave it the Blind-Fight line of feats, letting it better defend itself from unseen attackers as well as return their attacks. I also determined that it needed some damage mitigation, so I gave it DR 5/-, keeping it small to account for the untyped DR. While it mostly uses its wing talons in combat, I wanted to add in a bite and tail slap to give it some variation in its attacks and also granted it the ability to spread its signature disease with its attacks. Naturally, I had to include its ability to fire off blasts of its frenzy virus as a breath weapon, include the disease itself, allow it to become enraged with frenzy, and then cover in area with its pollen burst to enhance its own senses and make others more susceptible to its virus. It appeared that those latter two abilities were linked in the MH game, but for the sake of simplicity here, I opted to keep them separate. Aside from Blind-Fight and its build tree, the gore magala's feats are pretty ordinary, featuring some flight feats, such as Flyby Attack and Hover, as well as basic combat feats, along the lines of Power Attack and Weapon Focus (wing talons).
For the shagaru magala, much of his build came from taking the gore magala as a baseline and making some improvements to it, along with the obvious changes. Shagaru has eyes, leading to it losing much of its blindsense and scent abilities. Its immunities were similarly modified, dropping the ones granted by its sightlessness but including one to negative energy as the shagaru magala throws a lot of that around the field and we don't want it succumbing to its own abilities. I wasn't originally going to include any wing attacks, and even the gore attack was mostly added for flavor's sake, but the feat line I chose automatically gave it some wing attacks. I changed its breath weapon into a cone while keeping the length to demonstrate its increased strength while also dropping the pollen burst to give it viral burst - instantly spreading the disease to those nearby, like it does in the game when it turns the area around it purple. I included some abilities from true dragons, such as dragon senses and crush, but also added in its ability to shake up the earth through earth shatter, a non-damaging ability that still has some tactical uses. When paired with its frenzy spout, representing its in-game ability to lay down exploding blobs of frenzy virus, a clever shagaru magala can use earth shatter one turn and then follow it up with frenzy spout to ensure creatures are caught in at least one of them. For feats, I invested a bit more heavily in flight-based feats, though most of them were leading up to Fling, an awesome feat I couldn't just let pass me by. I also invested in the Vital Strike line over Power Attack, allowing it to make a Flyby Attack amplified by Greater Vital Strike and then still snatch up its victim thanks to its grab ability on its wing talon.
Pathfinder First Edition Gore Magala:
Pathfinder First Edition Shagaru Magala:
When it came to the 2e version, there wasn't much I felt like I wanted to change. I did decide to give the gore magala and shagaru magala a reaction with Wing Deflection. I decided to keep the wing attacks for the 2e shagaru magala to give it some more variety in its attacks, and also included its Fling though I based it more off of the doprillu's Body Strike ability. With how diseases work in 2e, I also decided to enhance the shagaru magala's Viral Burst, allowing it to progress people along the stage. To reflect the Wisdom damage imparted by the frenzy virus, I used the stupefied condition, which worked wonders during our test of the monster. As pretty basic and savage creatures, while surprisingly intelligent for their source, I kept their skills rather basic.
Pathfinder Second Edition Gore Magala:
Pathfinder Second Edition Shagaru Magala:
Blue's D&D 5e Gore and Shagaru Magala (https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/XSVlrnPq)
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Viral Vectors: A plague has begun to ravage the kingdom, turning the beasts within it into feral beasts that fight until their bodies are but flayed corpses. Meanwhile, the men and women of the kingdom who seem to catch this virus can’t heal from any wounds they sustain. The kingdom’s physicians are struggling to find a means to stop the disease, but require the source of the virus to develop a cure. They call upon the heroes to track down this source, looking at the bodies of the infected creatures for clues to trace it back to the progenitor. Through investigating the wounds of the creatures and discerning their regular habitats, the heroes eventually find the source – a gore magala that isn’t going to come easily.
Ill Winds From the Mountain: A monastery built upon a legendary mountain has recently come in contact with part of that original legends – the shagaru magala. Many of the monastery’s inhabitants have already been afflicted with the frenzy virus, leading to them to dispatch a messenger to a nearby village to fetch heroes. Upon arriving at the monastery, the heroes discover that the monks have decided to abandon their home. This leaves the heroes with the choice of guiding the monks safely down the mountain, making a slow and large target for the shagaru magala, or attempting the climb up the mountain, dispatching the other monsters infected by the dragon before they face it.
The Monster Hunter world has a lot of fun things to draw upon, so we might be here for a bit! I'm excited for the upcoming Monster Hunter: Rise game and can't wait to learn more about tetranadon so that I can stat him out.
If you want to join the discussion on monsters we're making and other homebrew content, come join the Discord: https://discord.gg/W4THAs5. If you wanna see me actually building monsters and sometimes character, consider checking out my Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/readytodiettrpg. I stream pretty irregularly but I'm trying to get better at it.
Have a Monstrous Monday!