Warning! This is a Monster Hunter Rise creature. If avoiding any sort of spoilers for the game, go no further.
Leading the way through the thick mire, the barbarian grumbled to himself as he heard the rest of the party undergoing similar struggles behind him. Even keeping to the more obvious paths as they were, it was slow going, but stepping off the path could see them swiftly swallowed by the bog. As his heavy boot landed on what he had thought was firm ground by turned out to be a grassy patch of mud, he slipped into the dark water of the swamp and groaned as he felt it soak his boot. Before he pulled free, he paused as he felt a sudden current in the otherwise stagnant water. Scowling at it, he glanced up and balked at the creature that greedily gulped down water to swell to a daunting size over the band that it had crept up upon. The tetranadon fixed them with a beady stare before lifting a powerful leg and slamming it into the swamp, throwing up mud and water as it roared its challenge.
Back to doing some Rise monsters! Of the early level boys, tetranadon is probably my favorite so I was eager to give a shot at building him. Determining CR can be a little difficult for creatures from Monster Hunter with the Low Rank, High Rank, and Master Rank system, so Blue and I usually try to judge where their baseline creature would fit. Being a still fairly early monster but not one you face right away, we landed on CR 6. The range of his abilities made magical beast feel like an appropriate choice. Given that leaves himself somewhat vulnerable when he uses swell, with the decrease to AC, I wanted to give him a standard AC and HP. In-game, tetranadon is weak to the thunder element, which was naturally adapted into a vulnerability to electricity. While most Large creatures tend to have a higher speed, tetranadon can be a bit sluggish so I settled on that 30' speed for him. I know he makes some beak strikes, but they seemed minor from what I saw and I wanted to put a bit more focus on his slam attacks. I went with a higher to-hit bonus on them since that is also impacted by his size changing with swell and gave them decent damage as well as the ability to grab people. I wanted to represent his ability where he essentially claps characters to stun them, so I created discombobulate, which amounts to a rend attack for bludgeoning weapons that limits a creature's actions instead of dealing extra damage. I probably could have cranked the condition it afflicted up to stunned, but given the tetranadon's accuracy and damage, I didn't want to crank things too high. I also included tetranadon's ability to throw rocks, which seemed limited to his engorged form but I allowed in either for simplicity's sake.
I actually got to reference a previous monster I've done a stat block for in the form of the leaping shockwave from tetsucabra! Which, admittedly, is in turn based off of the bulette's leap, but it was fun going back to that and giving him a way to leap into the fray with a powerful slam. After seeing tetranadon try to drown arzuros and seeing that he even has the ability to temporarily swallow players in Rise, I wanted to do something 'fun' with his swallow whole. That fun happened to be drowning PCs, but at the very least, I think it's a unique and interesting form of it. Swell is the tetranadon's bread and butter that I've already referenced and I might have made it too powerful by making it a move action - be sure to lemme know your thoughts on that. Overall, it's a pretty simple and straightforward ability that just increases his size for a set period of time and goes on a cooldown at the end of its duration. It does give him access to torrent, his breath weapon, which I gave a slightly higher amount of damage than normal due to its limited usage.
Pathfinder 1e:
With the reclassification of creature types in Pathfinder 2e, tetranadon ended up becoming an animal rather than a beast. Since darkvision didn't feel super integral to the creature, not that darkness affects much of anybody in Monster Hunter, I gave him low-light vision. While he has the classic skills most monsters get, he has a much heavier focus on Athletics since that allows him to Leap and Swim. Deep Breath lets him spend the majority of his time underwater but is overall basic and just something he needs to function. I kept his AC moderate but went with a slightly higher health pool since Swell no longer increases his HP. I also compensated for this with more moderate numbers elsewhere. The weakness to electricity is still there, but I did find a reaction I liked with Belly Deflection. I think I recall seeing a tetranadon doing this, but even if I didn't this felt like a very 'sumo' sort of move where he heaves his gut forward into an opponent to knock them back. I made Discombobulate into its own action for simplicity's sake and once again referenced the tetsucabra for Leaping Shockwave. Outside of that, things are pretty much the same as they were, just translated over for 2e.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
King of the Ring: The heroes require some information from a local gang boss who dwells in the swamps outside of town. Never without his usual coterie of bodyguards and enforcers, the heroes face insurmountable odds if they fight them head on, but if they try to bargain for the info, the gang lord comes up with an idea. He runs a fight ring out in the swamp and months ago, a tetranadon wandered in and started fighting in the ring, enjoying the opportunity to wrestle. It has since become the champion of the ring and the gang boss’s favored pet, and is confident enough that he challenges the heroes to dethrone his champ. However, if the heroes want to face the champion directly, they have to offer up an entry fee of some sort. Otherwise, the heroes have to fight their way up the entire bracket before they can fight the tetranadon and earn whatever they’re looking for.
Watering Whole: A recent drought has seen the recession of local swamplands and the displacement of its resident lifeforms. One such lifeform is a tetranadon who resettles in a town’s reservoir that it has claimed as its own. The town beseeches the heroes to somehow get the tetranadon out of their reservoir, but ask that they don’t kill the tetranadon in their water to avoid contamination. The heroes may discover that the swamp has been hit harder than other areas due to the scheme of a greater evil that’s draining the water for their own use.
As long as I have the art for it, next week's monster is going to be an original one with something a little special. I'm excited to share it.
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. Until next time, have a Monstrous Monday!
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