Lion's Tactical Guide to the Gibberling

One thing that you must know about me as a Dungeon Master, dear reader, is that I consider myself to be something of an admirer of the great tabletop tactician himslf, Keith Ammann. I follow his iconic blog, The Monsters Know What They're Doing, I have purchased all of his books (including some of the supplements he writes on the side), and I wholeheartedly believe that the incorporation of his advice in broad strokes has improved the way I think about playing these games by leaps and bounds. However, for understandable reasons, there is a considerable degree of 5e content which he will simply not cover on his blog, and so, I decided to take it upon myself to contribute my own tactical insights on a lesser known book produced by Wizards of the Coast a few years ago now. Entitled Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy, this supplement is basically a brand new source book on the Forgotten Realms as 5e imagines it from the perspective of the iconic character Minsc, featuring gazetteers, guides to running factions, new overarching antagonists alongside their minions, and a small handful of unique monsters whose tactics I sought to enumerate...right in the comments of Mr. Ammann's blog. Needless to say, I learned my lesson soon enough, but at this point, I figure that I might as well recycle everything I'd been smart enough to save for just such an occasion as this. Thus, for this first series of "Tactical Guides," I will be covering the handful of new monsters introduced in Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy, beginning with the gibberling!

Gibberlings are small, nocturnal aberrations that hunt in packs and ambush travelers with weapons that they stole from previous victims. Their highest ability score is Dexterity, with average Strength and Constitution and below-average mental ability scores. This would ordinarily suggest a rather dim-witted and inflexible skirmisher, but with only 12 AC and 7 hit points on top of having features that heavily favor melee engagement over ranged attacks, they probably aren’t gonna get out of melee once they get into it. That’s fine by them, though, since the flavor text helpfully points out that they lack any sense of self-preservation: they are determined to cut their victims apart, and if they die, they die. Because of their Light Sensitivity trait, they are nocturnal hunters by necessity, and while their Stealth proficiency indicates their tendency to ambush their foes, the flavor text remarks that their constant chattering often gives them away. Feel free to ignore this if you wish, and if you’re having a group of these guys ambush your players, make sure to have them burrow into the ground before they do so in order to give them advantage on the Stealth roll thanks to their Burrow trait.

As far as their attacks are concerned, they have a basic Dagger attack made more deadly by their Reckless trait, giving them advantage on melee attacks at the cost of giving their enemies advantage on attacks against them. However, they’ve got a much deadlier trick up their sleeves than this: the Swarm attack, a non-damaging melee attack that grapples their opponent (escape DC 10) and allows every gibberling within 5 feet of said opponent to use their reaction to stab them with advantage. This particular feature is so potent that it means gibberlings will not attack if they don’t outnumber their opponents by at least two-to-one, preferably three-to-one or more if you don’t mind making over a dozen attack rolls. When they do attack, they split off into groups of two or more and tag-team each of their opponents, with one of them using Reckless to get advantage on their Swarm attack and allow the rest of them to stab away with their reaction Dagger attack and a Reckless-powered Dagger attack with their own action. This process continues until either all of their opponents are dead or they are.

Not positive on a schedule for these posts yet, but I'll be sure to clean up the rest of the posts I've already written, at least. For now, though, let me know what you think of this series in the comments below! Next up: Taslois! Take care!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lion's Tactical Guide to Skeleton Warriors

Skeleton warriors are formed by skilled necromancers out of the remains of great warriors that retain their ability to speak and their considerable combat skills even after death. This essentially makes them super-skeletons, with much higher AC, hit points, and ability scores than typical skeletons possess across the board. More than this, however, skeleton warriors have immunity to the charmed and frightened conditions, resistance to cold and necrotic damage, and outright immunity to nonmagical weapon damage, at the cost of now being vulnerable to bludgeoning damage from magical attacks. They also come equipped with Magic Resistance and Magic Weapons in the form of a +3 greatsword that, for balancing purposes, I would recommend only functions as a +3 greatsword when held by the skeleton warrior that wielded it in life. Their highest ability scores are a three-way tie between Strength, Constitution, and Intelligence, curiously enough. They’re not just brutes, but rather cunning brutes,...
Read more

Lion's Tactical Guide to Phaerimm

Phaerimms are another creature from previous editions of the game that have been alluded to in 5e’s lore before (in this case, within the flavor text description of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden’s grotesque tomb tapper constructs), but only given a stat block now, and only in a book that very few are likely to have heard of. These highly intelligent funnel-shaped aberrations with rows and rows of teeth dwelled in the Underdark and posed a particular problem for the ancient Netherese of 5e’s Forgotten Realms setting due to their evil magic draining the vitality from the world, which is why they designed the aforementioned tomb tappers specifically to go out into the Underdark and exterminate them alongside other threats such as the mind flayers. They were nearly successful in this endeavor, but a handful of phaerimm survived and are now motivated primarily by their desire to rebuild their population. Of course, with each phaerimm only being able to produce one egg every century,...
Read more

Random Rough Draft #3

  Hardly anything stirred as a freckled, red-haired girl wearing a plain black tank top and ripped denim jeans trudged through the forest. She carried a flashlight in her left hand, a swiss army knife in her front right pocket, and a school backpack full of assorted supplies on her back. All of these things she had taken from her house without her father’s knowledge. With luck, he would remain unaware of their absence for at least eight hours. Twelve, if he had been drinking right before he went to bed. Which meant it would take at least twelve hours. “Sam!” the girl called out, careful not to attract the attention of anything other than her friend, who had promised to meet her there with hardly any advanced notice. She hoped she hadn’t kept them waiting for too long. She knew how much the woods creeped them out. “Quiet down a little, will you, Heidi?” a voice replied from her right, their form obscured by shadow for a brief moment before they came out into the moonlight, wea...
Read more