After doing some of Monster Hunter's bigger monsters, I wanted to give some love to the smaller guys from it. The folks that make these games are able to make fun and interesting monsters at all level of play, and I wanted to share some of them! I'm also eagerly awaiting the full release of Monster Hunter Rise so that I can start statting out those monsters - in particular, I've got my eyes on tetranadon and goss harag as stat blocks I want to build. But, until they come out, I've still got plenty of other creatures to stat out - such as the great jaggi and its pack!
I built the entire pack for this one - all the way up from the wily little jaggis to the great jaggi. They're largely simple creatures that are weak to fire and can be frightened away by that, but they are highly coordinated creatures. Swarming is an ability that takes advantage of their diminutive size and ability to work together to take down larger prey. While a little burlier than the immature males of their pack, the female jaggia don't have too many interesting tricks in their arsenal. Getting to the great jaggi is where I was able to have a little fun in designing the pack leader ability, which essentially functions like a cavalier's 'tactician' class feature. I gave the great jaggi two different teamwork feats that it can potentially share with its pack - Precise Strike for some extra damage and Shake It Off for some defense - but those can easily be swapped out for others depending on you want your pack to work together. I do particularly like Precise Strike as it allows the jaggi to really take advantage of their swarming ability.
Pathfinder 1e Version:
While building the PF2e version, I decided to build in Precise Strike with the Pack Attack, a relatively common ability found among several creatures. Again, most of the fun stuff is packed into the great jaggi in the form of its Commanding Bark, replacing pack leader and allowing it to grant specific bonuses to its companions. I decided to have it be only a single action since the effects can't be concurrent. I made sure all of the jaggi had the weakness to fire and invested in the same skills for most of them - the classic Acrobatics and Athletics, but I threw in Stealth as these essentially seemed to be raptors with a more dog-like mentality so I figured they would be using ambush tactics.
Pathfinder 2e Version:
Blue's D&D 5e Version:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Fox in the Henhouse: Over the past several nights, a farmer’s chickens have been attacked by some predator but when he attempts to catch the pest, he is instead attacked by some beast. Left unconscious, he wakes up to find the fence for his cow pasture broken and many of the cattle loose. With his injuries, he needs help wrangling the cows when he realizes that some of them are missing. He asks the heroes to help him out, both in gathering the cows and then hunting down whatever took the others. The heroes can follow the trail left by the monsters to find a pack of jaggi with a great jaggi who have dragged some cows back to their lair. The pack fiercely protects their meals from any that dare disturb them.
Run With the Pack: There have been reports of a pack of jaggi, including a great jaggi, that has been attacking caravans along a route, but the goods the reptilian creatures are taking seem unusual. While the horses or oxen pulling the cart being taken isn’t odd, the mercantile goods and other valuables aren’t of much use to the feral creatures. When the heroes are hired as guards for a caravan that comes under attack from this pack, they discover the reason behind the strange behavior – a human has been adopted into the pack. The humanoid may have been raised by the pack, like a feral child, or may have simply trained them and now fights as a cavalier or hunter along his fearsome companions. While his allies take whatever they can eat, he absconds with goods that he uses to either enhance the pack’s hunting capability or trade with less than savory individuals.
Got some more fun creatures coming up with a whole range of CRs that I'm excited to share. I've got monsters slotted in my schedule all they way out to February 15th. If you want to join in on the discussion of those monsters and my build for them or share some of your own homebrew stuff, come join our Discord. We also just started up a Twitter where we'll be posting teasers for upcoming stuff as well as our usual stat blocks and the like. So if that's more your speed, check us out there too!
Have a Monstrous Monday!
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