The barbarian grumbles as he is forced to low crawl up to the edge of the ridge alongside the rest of the party. They peer down into the desert valley where a green wyvern-like creature prowls across the sandy floor. Despite her reptilian eyes scouring the scene, she fails to notice the crouching party as the ranger furiously scribbles in her book as she takes notes on the creature. Growing bored of the study, the barbarian moves to stand up when a shadow flits by overhead. A warm wind blows down upon them and they slowly turn as a red-scaled creature similar to the one below eyes them hungrily, fire brimming from its jaws before it unleashes a deafening roar.
I've done quite a few monsters from MH at this point, even a few flagship title ones, but I felt it was time to post what amounts to the flagships monster for the entire game with rathalos! And I can't just post the king of the sky without his queen, so y'all are getting a twofer today. I'll start by explaining the CR - the raths are face mid to early-late game and given that I set the baseline for big monsters around CR 4 and haven't gone past CR 18 yet, I went for a CR close to the middle. Rathian's CR might be a little closer to rathalos than where she is faced in-game would suggest, but I wanted these two to be able to fight as a pair without one of them getting completely bodied. Aside from that though, this pair is probably one of the most straightforward MH stat blocks that I have done. They have a breath weapon, venomous tails or talons, and are otherwise just dumb wyverns. That felt a little lame so I did try to spice things up a bit with the widow's fury giving them essentially a rage ability when they see one of their own get downed. I was also able to include the rathian's ability to sort of take the time to gather her breath weapon before unleashing it with immolating breath, even trying to make it slightly interactive with the ability to disrupt her. I worry I might have put too much power into the ability to do so, but am mostly happy with it. Also rathian has higher HP because according to my research, rathian does indeed have higher base HP than rathalos but because total HP is based on the rank of the quest and she appears in lower-ranked quests, she doesn't have as much, usually. Still, by putting them closer together, I decided to give her this edge.
Pathfinder 1e:
I simplified some stuff for the 2e versions - renaming widow's fury to Mated Fury, allowing rathian to spend a single action to Gather Flame, and removing the wing attacks. My worry about immolating breath never actually get a chance to be used leaked through in the design of the 2e version, but I tried to balance by having the action put her breath weapon on a longer cooldown. I also did my usual thing where I tried to give some unique reactions to the creatures in the form of the rathian's Tail Lash and the rathalos's Wing Deflection. I also added rathian's infamous flying tail attack in the form of Tail Slam while endeavoring to include some of rathalos's more unique attack patterns. I first had to give it the Snatch ability, absolutely snatched from the giant eagle's statblock, so that it could move with a grabbed creature to begin with. Plummeting Slam lets the rathalos dive 40 feet out of the air to slam the target on the ground, which is only really good damage on a critical failure, but this felt like the best way to balance it and it does some damage even on a successful save. Also, since these two are more dragon than pretty much anything that isn't an elder dragon in MH, I opted to give them some of the classic dragon abilities such as Draconic Frenzy and Draconic Momentum.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
A Bird in the Hand: A band of local hunters managed to sneak up on a sleeping rathian and captured it alive with the mad idea of possibly taming the creature. While elders doubt this idea, their victory creates an infectious mood about the town that leads to a celebration that the heroes find themselves dragged into. However, the festivities are interrupted by the arrival of the rathian’s mate – an enraged rathalos. As it torches the town in search of its beloved, the heroes are faced with several options, one of which is simply freeing the rathian. Bound but conscious, she thrashes at anybody that draws near, but if the heroes are able to open the locks holding her down, she flies away to join her mate and both leave. The heroes may also have to try to rescue people trapped in burning buildings as they make their way through the enflamed town and convince the hunters to give up their prize.
Royal Rampage: A mated rathian and rathalos have found a perfect spot to make their love nest. Unfortunately, it's in a spot already settled by humanoids, driving the lovebirds to assault the frontier town that struggles to fend off the draconic duo. They put out a call for heroes who are swiftly escorted to town in the midst of an attack. While the rathian and rathalos retreat quickly at the sign of this stronger resistance than they were expecting, it is clear that they will be back. The heroes can attempt to track the surly sweethearts and face them at their current lair or prepare the town for another assault, setting up defenses to make it easier on them.
I should have posted these two a long time ago, but now they're finally here! These were fun to do, but lemme know what you think of them. Next week is gonna be an insidious little original monster I made before we return to Monster Hunter Rise for a bit. If you want to join in on the discussion of those builds or just talk about general homebrew ideas, consider checking out the blog's Discord where I have something a little special planned when we get to 100 people. You can also follow us on Twitter where we try to post teases for upcoming monsters and builds.
Have a Monstrous Monday!
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