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likeafoxdm · 5 years

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Loot Drop

Ok! Time for Part 2 of the monster loot drop! I personally love it when bad guys have super cool weapons and items that allow them to pull of crazy abilities or deal extra nasty damage. For the most part, bad guys in D&d follow the regular stats for weapon type and damage, or follow the logic that weapons for larger creatures deal double the normal damage (a Planetar’s greatsword deals 4d6 slashing damage, for example), or a huge creature’s weapon might triple that damage. Sometimes there are exceptions though, and some of the coolest ones pop up in Mordenkeinen’s Tome of Foes! These are the enemy items we will be looking at today!

First up is the Narzugon’s Hellfire Lance!

An interesting item, and we’ll get to why but for starters, it operates perfectly as a regular lance. For the Narzugon, it deals an extra 3d10 fire damage, so lets say that if the wielder moves at least 10 feet before hitting with the lance, they may add 1d10 points of fire damage per 10 feet. For a hasted creature or a mounted combatant, this could get pretty impressive! The extra cool part about this lance remains true no matter who wields it - as written in Mordenkeinen’s Tome of Foes: “A narzugon's lances are forged in hellfire. The soul of anyone killed by such a lance is shunted to the River Styx for rebirth as a lemure. Each lance is unique to its owner, bearing the marks of both the narzugon and its master.” Killing with this lance may draw the attention of the Narzugon’s master - and that attention may be favorable... or vengeful.

Now for some cool Drow weapons!

Inquisitor’s Death Lance: Actually a sort of short-spear. requires attunement by a non-good aligned creature. For the Inquisitor, it deals 1d6 piercing +4d8 necrotic, and reduces the target’s hit point maximum for a value equal to that necrotic damage. The Drow Inquisitor is a spell caster, and CR 14 so I don’t mind giving this item straight up to the PCs, who must be pretty high level at this point to defeat the Inquisitor, with the exception that it be attuned by a spellcaster. If we are giving this to just any PC, lets give it 1d8 necrotic, and on a crit, reduces that target’s HP max for the Total damage dealt in that attack. A mighty weapon for an assassin rogue PC!

The Drow Matron’s demon staff is a pretty amazing item as well, and for her it deals 1d6 bludgeoning like normal, plus 4d6 psychic AND forces a DC 19 wisdom save, with the target becoming frightened for 1 minute (with a chance to repeat the save at the end of turns) on a failure. Pretty badass and she is a CR 20 villain, so once again I am totally down with giving this to a PC spellcaster wholly, with perhaps the caveat that we give the staff 3 or so charges to channel that fear effect. Otherwise I could picture a druid turning into a giant ape and just going... well, going ape with that staff.

Dropping back into the lower Challenge ratings, we have the Drow Shadowblade, who’s Shadow Sword deals regular shortsword damage, plus 3d6 necrotic PLUS 3d6 poison, AND then lets the drow fill an unoccupied 5 foot square with darkness for 1 minute. This darkness triggers an amazing ability of the shadowblade; If the target of an attack with the sword is within 10 feet of one of those cubes of darkness, the darkness disappears and the target takes 6d6 necrotic damage, once per turn. So I had a cool idea with this one! Requires attunement by a rogue, the reason being that the rogue’s sneak attack damage may now be dealt as poison or necrotic damage, and they get to make that darkness appear when sneak attack is triggered. Lets also throw on that when the attacker is within dim light or darkness, they don’t need advantage to use sneak attack, and when attacking from magical darkness, can use it more than once per turn, but no more than once per target. This will create some pretty strategic use of the darkness. If we don’t have a rogue PC though, perhaps we can simply stack on a sneak attack-like ability - when attacking from dim light or darkness with advantage on the attack, you may add 1d6 each of poison and necrotic damage, and if attacking with advantage from magical darkness, it increases to 2d6 each, and using the extra damage triggers the magical darkness cubes. Still in the realm of the underdark, lets take a look the Duergar Xarrorn’s Fire Lance! Unique among the Duergar weapons in MTOF in that it is not an entirely psionic special weapon, but also alchemical. It simply deals an extra 1d6 fire damage, and otherwise is a lance. Even at CR2 I’m fine handing that over to the PCs, but the weapon also has a fire spray recharge ability, that shoots a 15 foot cone of fire, OR a 30 foot line, that deals 3d6 fire damage on a failed dex save, DC12 so not super high. I’d say once per day we can hand that ability over to the PCs as well, IF they can recharge it over a long rest with an alchemy tools test. I really enjoy this idea because I love using tools in a game and they rarely get to be applied. Maybe they’ll even have the idea to use alchemy to channel some other element types into it! Cryofluid is a good deal easier to make than napalm in the real world, so I’d let a clever PC turn this into an ice lance if they thought of it!

Stepping away from the Underdark, but not yet into the light, we move on to the Shadar Kai, those agents of the Raven Queen herself.

The Gloom Weaver is another high level spell caster with a powerful staff weapon. Their Shadow Spear deals and extra 4d12 necrotic damage on a hit. I would say that when not wielded by the Gloom Weaver herself, this is a regular staff that requires attunement. Once attuned, once per day the wielder may cast a Shadow Blade spell on the staff - causing it to become a spear. The blade deals necrotic instead of psychic damage and the wielder can either cast it at 4th level, dealing 3d8 necrotic, or spend a spell slot of 5th or 6th to increase the damage to 4d8, or else a spell slot even higher level to cause the weapon to deal 5d8 necrotic.

The Shadow Dancer is an excellent baddie, who swings spiked chains wrapped around their arm, which in addition to some gnarly damage (2d6 piercing) also force a DC 14 dex save, the cost of failure being either the target is grappled, knocked prone, or takes an extra 4d10 necrotic. This one I’d let anyone who can use a whip wield, and on a hit, force that DC 14 dex save against being grappled if the wielder uses their reaction to make it so. Once grappled, the wielder can use an attack to automatically do that 2d6 again and force the target prone, or they can remain grappled without taking any further damage. If the wielder happens to be a warlock of the raven queen, I’d say they can use the extra 4d10 necrotic once as an Eldrich Invocation against a target grappled in the chain.

The last creature gifted with an extra special weapon we are going to look at now is the Star Spawn Seer. The Comet Staff they wield deals extra psychic damage, a hallmark of all the Star Spawn, but also forces a DC 19 con save against incapacitation until the end of the target’s next turn. The Seer is a decently high CR, at 13, and is usually in the company of a Star Spawn Hulk, a pretty powerful combination so we can assume a party that defeats them is pretty powerful already. The incapacitate ability is super useful but the Star Spawn have such amazing abilities I cant resist handing one over to the PCs! So that being the case, lets make it a regular staff with a 1/day ability to use Collapse Distance, the Seer’s recharge ability. “The seer warps space around a creature it can see within 30 feet of it. That creature must make a DC 19 Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the target, along with any equipment it is wearing or carrying, is magically teleported up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space the seer can see, and all other creatures within 10 feet of the target's original space each takes 39 (6d12) psychic damage. On a successful save, the target takes 19 (3d12) psychic damage.” Lets say the DC is a solid 16 for the item itself, and make that AOE psycic damage 3d12 as well so it isn’t too too crazy.

That’s all for the unique items potentially dropped by monsters from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes! In part 3 perhaps we’ll look at Volo’s Guide to Monsters or some other sources! If you find these interesting or useful, please let me know! If you think they’re absurd or you have better ideas, let me know that as well!

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