With a swing of his axe, the barbarian scattered the crowd of dark-winged creatures that flocked about him, managing to cleave into one of them. They flapped on leathery wings as serpentine heads wove through the air, seeking a way past his flailing axe to sink their fangs into his flesh. A shot from the ranger found its mark, dropping one of them as it gave its final convulsions upon the ground, other of the band descended upon it. They feasted upon it in a ravenous display of disloyalty as the bard conjured up a blast of sound that sent them scattering, a number of them falling to the ground. One of the remobra pulled higher, its throat bulging before it unleashed a glob of purple saliva that splashed upon impact with the ground to spray across the barbarian and the sorcerer taking covers behind him. He flinched and she shrieked as it burned upon their flesh, seeping through their skin and poisoning their veins.
It’s nice to kick back sometimes and just throw together a low-level critter like the remobra, a snake wyvern from Monster Hunter. It was an interesting design largely from the perspective of trying to build a flying creature at such a low level because you have to keep in mind that players at these levels don’t have flight or a way of dealing with such effects. To that end, the remobra’s defenses aren’t great – both its Armor and Hit Points are moderate. The ability of flight affords it some degree of protection already but to ensure it isn’t too protected, it does have a Delicate Inner Ear. Any sonic damage that the heroes can manage to deal to the remobra has the chance of knocking it out of the air, based on the way that sonic bombs and monster roars can drop them from the air in Monster Hunter.
On the offensive side of things, the remobra uses a high attack bonus for both Strikes with its fangs dealing moderate damage but having the deadly d10, which is based on the crit-related skills of the remobra’s armor. Its tail has reach, which might be a little strong for a flying creature, but it only deals low damage. Given that remobra’s are portents of doom, due to their tendency to flock around elder dragons, they can descend with a Screeching Swoop to terrify creatures, which can set them up to spit a Toxic Glob. This is the remobra’s only other damaging ability and given its range, it isn’t terribly high damage. It actually deals unlimited use area damage in a small little burst and that lower damage is because I wanted to include the poison status they can inflict in Monster Hunter, represented here through persistent poison damage.
Pathfinder 2e:
The design of the Pathfinder 1e remobra was fairly simple, putting together a flying critter. It uses frightful presence instead of something like its Screeching Swoop to represent the ill omen they are considered to be within their home setting. The toxic glob became a bit more complicated due to the lack of poison damage in PF1e, forcing me to instead rely on an actual poison that deals Constitution damage to ship away at the health of players. I avoided giving it Flyby Attack this early on given that doing so feels too safe for such a low-level creature.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOK
Viper Pit: For some reason or another, the heroes are tasked with retrieving the corpse of a recently felled monster – perhaps as a hazing ritual by senior adventurers or maybe on a request from researchers – but when they arrive, remobras have already descended upon the creature. They fight to defend their prey but aren’t willing to die for it and can be scattered with enough violence. Expanding upon this encounter, the remobras could also scatter at the approach of a larger creature that has been drawn in by the smell of the dead. However, in such a state, they will still linger, backing up the larger beast in hopes of feasting upon the fallen heroes. This instance of the encounter should obviously be saved for a slightly higher level party though still early in the game.
There's a quick little video that you can check out over here.
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Have a monstrous Monday!
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