Monster Review - The Marid [Monster Manual, 146]

The Marid is a strange fish. It is one of several elementals who derive from Arabic culture and language, yet is has almost nothing in common with the mythological progenitor: a marid is simply a rebellious jinn and jinns have nothing to do with water.

I much prefer them to the other kinds of elemental, as they have far more character than 'a big living wave' and feel more like living things. Let's make waves...


Art
I have mixed feelings on this piece. The face is amazingly characterful and the face slightly looking over the shoulder just screams low cunning - I can imagine being ripped off by this corpulent cod-man. It manages the rare feat of having personality and character yet looking totally alien. There are some good little characterful designs in the clothing which are the kind of tiny hooks which can make a race memorable to players: are those big shoulders an example of Marid power-dressing? What's that fish on his belt for? I think a key inspiration here is the Vodyanoi of the Bas-Lag universe, which I can always get behind.

However, I hate the 'below the waist I am water/air/fire/some rocks' conceit in elemental design, and here is looks bizarre and amateurish. Because the Marid is a chubby fellow it looks even more incongruous. There's also the lack of thought - why does this creature wear obviously not waterproof clothing made from cloth? Wouldn't everything in that bag get soaked in water? Why is he wearing a belt when he doesn't have legs, never mind trousers? The fluff even claims they wear pantaloons...

Purpose and Tactics

The Marid, being an intelligent and powerful Chaotic Neutral creature, could easily be a quest-giver, patron, rival or contact of the player-characters, especially in an aquatic or maritime campaign. I'd love to run one as a rival to a party, swimming around on some half-sunk barge with slaves in tow.

Should you use one as an antagonist, they are not the most interesting battlers, working best as a boss supporting a group of damaging melee combatants like Sauhagin, Kuo-Toa, Chuul, Sharks or Merfolk. The most interesting mise-en-scene for such a battle would be a rocky coastline, island chain, coral reef, shipwreck, cliff-face or other place where there is an interplay of air, water and land, foregrounding the advantages and tactics of the Marid. His spells are fairly useless in an actual fight, and probably frustrating to player-characters if he is an antagonist: he can use Invisibility, Plane Shift or Gaseous Form to easily escape. He also carries a load of spells clearly intended to be helpful to a friendly party: Water-Walk, Water Breathing, Purify Food and Water, Tongues...The only spells that will see much use in a scrap are Conjure Elemental (note the one minute casting time though), Fog Cloud, Invisibility and Control Water. Aside from buffing sneaky minions with Invisibility or Fog Cloud, most actions spent on casting are a waste.

This reduces our Marid to a rather shallow pool of combat options. He has a Trident multiattack which deals reasonable if unimpressive damage - you should always use it two-handed in melee as the Marid has no shield and does not require an arcane focus etc for its innate spellcasting. The Water Jet is a pretty tidy supportive option, potentially pushing back foes and knocking them prone so your minions can smack them with advantage.


The Marid's other abilities revolve around being really, really time-consuming to kill. Ignoring the previously mentioned ability to just nope out of a combat with your players with Plane Shift or Gaseous Form, it also has a very fast swim and fly speed, a big pile of hit points and a few resistances to shore it up even more. I personally don't find battles of attrition all that fun, but a chase scene or combat where killing the Marid is not the direct goal could still be very fun - rescuing people from a sinking ship, hunting a great white whale or escaping a flood perhaps.

Fluff
The Marid gets a pretty big write-up for a Z-list monster which very few people will use and which can't be summoned with Conjure Elemental. Much of this info would make for a very memorable recurring NPC: they're egotistical and obsessed with self-aggrandising titles (never introduce a  Bob the Marid when you can introduce Sovereign of Saltwater, Sultan of the Seven Seas, Most Resplendent Emperor of Dew and Rain and Damp, Pearl of the Oceans, His Supreme Magnificence the Imperator Bob the Marid ...) They collect slaves but get a pass on being kicked down into chaotic evil because they're mostly just baubles - more of an entourage for this Z lister than someone who lowers themselves to work.  They also possess an almost bardic focus on stories, tales and legends: something which always makes an NPC interesting. I'd love to hear more of their coral fortresses, but I find its hard to tow the line between the tone of good underwater fantasy and silly My Little Mermaid-esque Disney underwater fantasy.

It's also full of rich tidbits for plot-hooks and adventure ideas: Marids politicking with wizards, Marids seeking out stories, Marids trapped in conch-shells, Marids kidnapping rock stars for their underwater courts....

Plot Hooks
Thuuloso the Ever-Wise, Countess of Crashing Tides can scarcely contain her rage. She shatters boat-hulls and throws up storms to lash at the shore in impotent fury. A cunning magi has stolen her beloved wife and secreted her in an old wine bottle to blackmail Thuuloso into obedience. She would like some mercenaries to walk their 'feet' over the dry lands to find this wine bottle and humble the braggart who would tear her from her soul-mate.

Sulis, Master of the Maberonian Sea, swans about on his great under-water flotilla across the sea, served by his chained mer-men and propelled by his prized hunting-sharks. Should it take his fancy he will drift underneath a mortal ship: some heavy-hulled merchant vessel groaning with amber, antler and fur, or some sharp blade-prowed warship with full complement of ballistae and and braggadocio - or even some low-decked fishing-sloop where a lone and aging man feeds his ever-growing family. From each Sulis will exact a tribute: a fine pearl, or strange delicacy from the land-dwellers (this small brown orb contains the heart of a great oak tree) or spun tale or joke or limerick or service - it matters not the tribute, for Sulis is as capricious as the sea itself.

Throughout the Gilded Sea there is an old legend about the island of Palette's End. Its jagged, romantic visage has inspired countless artists to greatness and yet....there are the disappearances. The losses. Some say artists, ever flighty and prone to melancholy, might have thrown themselves in the sea. Others whisper that the starving artists, penniless, fell victim to debt-collectors. Peasants gossip of the Witch of the Waves who plucks them like o'er-ripe fruit and drags them to her undersea court. But the fact remains - whenever the truly great stay to long on that strange, water-wracked coast, they disappear...

Verdict: A reasonably interesting creature concept let down by a stat-block which doesn't give much for the players to chew on in combat.

Monster Review - The Merregon [Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, 166]

The Merregon is one of a legion of new monsters introduced in Mordenkainen's to flesh out the hierarchy of Team Fiend. Based on an unthinking, automaton-like soldier, he is the G.I. of Avernus - the banal evil marching to Hell's drum.

These foot-soldiers of Old Scratch are fairly old themselves, having been in  Third Edition and Pathfinder supplements, and they really help bulk out the armies of Hell without having a CR budget that looks more like a phone number. Let's march on to the Merregon:






Art
I adore this piece. The strange, slightly-too-low facial mask is perfect uncanny valley fodder, and manages to be chilling whilst evoking the Merregon's focus on uniformity and discipline. There is a fear not just of being physically defeated but of being assimilated and dehumanised by a faceless mass. It even has a sort of beatific calm to the face - standing in gross juxtaposition to the violence which typifies a Merregon's existence.

The focus on armour makes the Merregon seem almost mechanical rather than organic, but there are clear burly arms holding aloft the halberd. The creature seems to even stand in a way that shows submission before another authority. This is a great example of art reflecting fluff, and the subtle horror of this image made me immediately want to throw some at my players.

Purpose and Tactics
The Merregon's is not to reason why, his is but to do and die. As plodding poor bloody infantry their singular purpose is to fight and die in the endless parade of carnage which is politics in Hell. When used in your campaign, they work brilliantly as cohorts and bodyguards of the big bads of Hell. If you're running a Chain Devil or Erinye other powerful 'leader' of Hell, they make excellent support characters. Not only do they gain an extra attack when within 60 feet of any CR 6 or stronger devils, they can stand between them and an opponent and take hits. Whilst a measly 45 HP is not going to last long against focused PC assault, having them die in the place of the big bad keeps the scarier Devils alive long enough to loose their terrifying abilities. Additionally, like most fiends they have a big pile of resistances, boosting their durability. An immunity to Fire make them great opponents to cluster around a group of PCs who are about to be hit by a Fireball or other Fire attack - the Merregons can pin them in place and prevent them moving (fearful of attacks of opportunity) whilst a fiery fusillade of hell-fire rains down.



In terms of positioning, they should crowd around an infernal dignitary, halberds out - they can unleash a weak barrage of crossbow bolts on PCs that maintain distance and use their reach to try and keep player-characters at bay. Like all Devils, they have the Devil's Sight ability, so if they're guarding a spellcaster he could cast a high-level magical Darkness on his Merregon underlings to make a moving phalanx of shadow and spikes - a tough nut for any PCs to track. Weirdly, I was unable to find any Devil with the Darkness spell to take advantage of this - but you could use the Warlock and Mage NPC stat-blocks from the Monster Manual and Volo's to unleash this nasty combo.

To conclude, like the Guard Drake they are best as carb to bulk out an encounter, and work best in cahoots with big-name Devils or evil spellcasters.




Fluff
I really dig the Merregon fluff: these are the unfeeling lackeys of the big bad, those 'just following orders', the foot-soldiers of mortal evil performing the same role in Hell's legions. They are completely de-individualised by their masks and the process, making them a chilling foe to fight - in any combat, I'd emphasise that they feel no pain, remorse or passion, and simply coldly execute their orders with the absolute certainty of a madman or automaton. Even in death, they wouldn't react - standing in the way of the Paladin's smite and being cleaved in two without even a change in heart-beat.

Those masks are physically (and no doubt painfully) bolted their faces, so even their de-individuation is as element of punishment and damnation. Can someone be rescued from this state? Should they? Weirdly the Merregon have no ability to speak (having no working mouth-parts) but can communicate telepathically. What do they speak about to each other? I'd have left them unable to communicate in any-way but able to understand orders - a la "I have no mouth but I must scream".

My problem would be that this doesn't give much to work with: unthinking, unfeeling and unflinching soldiers of Hell are going to perform a singular role on stage in your campaign world: to fight and die at the hands of PCs as intelligent opposition without the requisite guilt of massacring a living being. There simply can be no negotiation or surrender or diplomacy, which starts to restrict play-options the moment the Merregon frog-marches into view.

Plot Hooks: 

Deep in Avernus is Facility Nine, a vast stronghold where errant souls are molded by exquisite torture into the unflinching soldiers of Hell. Should someone disrupt this process, it would be a weighty blow to the puissance of Hell's vaunted legions...

They are wordless, and yet they whisper - behind their masks of perfect stillness. Sometimes, when Merregon are stored in a lull in the Blood War, the telepathic energy is like the buzz of some enormous bee-hive. Their overseer Devils walk a little quicker as they inspect the faceless multitude. Could they think? Dispute? Rebel? Their masks remain impassive, giving no answer but an infinite silence.


Verdict: A good stock baddy - a fascist you can punch with minimal controversy. 

Monster Review - The Black Pudding [Monster Manual, 241]

The Black Pudding

In that nebulous area between monstrosity and quintessential English breakfast item lurks the Black Pudding. This oft-neglected Ooze has been dripping and dissolving since First Edition, but it a monster I have never sought to use or seen used. Perhaps its the self-satisfied pun, perhaps its the fact I find fighting a spillage more reminiscent of janitorial duty than heroic adventure. Let's see if the proof is in the pudding...

Art

It's hard to illustrate a splodge of semi-sentient slime, and I don't envy the artist given that brief. They've gone for the option of showing it in action, devouring an Orc with pseudopods a-flailing.This doesn't quite manage to be menacing, somehow, whereas the Gelatinous Cube across the page has a spooky inevitability as it consumes an unlucky Dwarf. I feel a Black Pudding or any other Ooze is really best placed in an environment - lurking, about to fall, or creeping up some stairs. In all honesty, I don't think a single depiction of a Black Pudding in any WOTC book really gets me excited. Does anyone have a Black Pudding masterpiece to prove me wrong?

Purpose and Tactics
Somewhere in the No Man's Land between the nations of Monster and Trap sit the Oozes. They will essentially have no motivation or agency in your game-world so they're best thrown in as a disposable hazard, or as a threat being used by someone else. Luckily, they can fit into almost any dungeon or adventure locale: a wizard's tower, an abandoned ruin, sealed in a jar for millennia, hunting in a forest - wherever adventurers may go, an Ooze can creep after.

A cursory glance doesn't seem to make the Black Pudding look like much of a threat. With a paltry armour class of 7, your characters are not going to struggle to hit the Black Pudding, and with 85HP it should go down very quickly to concerted PC firepower. It also deals a paltry 1d6 + 3 damage, which is hardly going to dent a PC. What the Black Pudding does have in its grubby arsenal is its Corrosive Form ability and Pseudpod riders which will gradually obliterate a fighting party's equipment, slowly lowering their to-hit chance and AC. The intention being that an encounter with Black Pudding will force a party to replace their weapons and amour (a tedious result in most campaigns) or move through the adventure with a big dent in their effectiveness that doesn't come back after resting. This mechanic fits the design goals of the Black Pudding, but doesn't seem very '5e' to me. "Go home and buy more stuff." doesn't seem like the spur to a great adventure. My current campaign 'The Gloom' has a big emphasis on resource management with equipment, but I'd still find it a little onerous if characters lost their weapons - which are expensive - and either had to return to town or hope to come across replacement equipment, which you, the DM probably placed to hand, rather nixing the purpose of using the Black Pudding in the first place. Nothing about this seems to give the players much to utilise, and once they realise how this works they's simply retreat (good luck catching up with 20" movement) and obliterate the Black Pudding with ranged attacks. (Additionally, it hurts Fighters a hell of a lot more than say, Druids.)

To avoid this response, you're going to need to set your Black Pudding up as an 'accidental ambush' predator. It should fall from the ceiling in cramped conditions, be at the base of a pit-trap, be thrown at the players in a bottle by intelligent enemies - whatever gets it into the midst of your player-characters and stops them being able to simply high-tail out of the area works. So the Black Pudding is best as a trap or ambush encounter early in a dungeon, or as an ancillary obstacle whilst fighting big-ticket foes. This also gives the players the chance of utilising the Black Pudding (throwing enemies into it, for example..) which players always love.

The 'split' ability is an interesting way to play with the Action Economy, and will almost certainly happen in your party's first encounter with the Black Pudding as slashing damage is so common. This is an interesting mechanic in that it increases the actions your Black Pudding can take and makes it considerably more threatening....but, again, the effectiveness is lessened by the fact that most of the Black Pudding's abilities are passive or defensive - who cares about an extra Pseudopod a turn?

Fluff
The Black Pudding fluff is merely a paragraph, but manages to be fairly evocative - describing it as a 'blot of shadow' which characters could stumble into. The more generic Ooze fluff describes them brilliantly, as almost every sentence clicks into a possible plot hook or encounter - describing Oozes' locations and hiding places as they slip out to consume the living.  The 'unwitting servants' paragraph gives NPCs (and players) a range of uses for Oozes - this is all excellent gameable stuff.

As every creature needs some patron or god - even the ones that are essentially snot given hit dice - the Oozes owe their measly existence to Juiblex, a Demon Lord who has the unenviable job of being in charge of oozes. I quite like the idea that they're all some part or aspect of the Demon Lord (begging the question of how he might be reassembled....) more than that they are simply his syrupy progeny. I'm not sure this origin works for me, and I prefer the idea they're simply magic experiments or byproducts that got away, or simply a form of life as natural as any bird or bee.

Plot Hooks
The depths of Kvaroduun are teeming with Oozes and slimes that slither and devour anything that tries to delve in those ancient depths.  The King has offered a hefty purse to any who can find a way to capture, contain and bring back a selection of Oozes that His Majesty might employ against his foes.

The great Alchemist Huolto passed away unmourned after his fractious and snide life in academia. In a final act of spite he loosed a horde of experimental oozes that now drip over his laboratory, devouring any who would recover his research....

The Hobgoblin war-machine is supplied with oozes from a single fortress where they are harnessed, split and contained in magical flasks to be hurled at enemies.  A small team infiltrating that fortress could let loose a lot of chaos and a whole lot more Oozes....

Verdict
A useful and different trap-monster which could be as much a resource for the party as an obstacle, let down my mechanics that don't fit the spirit of 5e.

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