A Pack of Vicious Grithiks

One of my favorite parts of fourth edition is the ease with which it’s possible to create monsters that are fairly assured to be a reasonable challenge for the party.  Given a careful selection of powers, there’s not much to worry about; a monster of a certain level, when placed with sufficient other monsters of around that level in an encounter, will provide a decent challenge to the typical party of around that level.  To top it off, Asmor’s provided a wonderful tool for automating most of the annoying bits that remain.

As a result, I find myself developing custom monsters a lot more often than I did in third edition.  Case in point:  in my most recent game, the PCs found themselves delving into a massive cavern system chasing a lead.  (Apologies for the vagueness, but I don’t want to give away any potentially still-active plot points when my players might read this.)  This cavern was home to, among other things, a clan of troglodytes.

The Monster Manual suggests gricks and rage drakes as troglodyte companions in its sample encounter groups, but I wanted to create another monster to throw in, too, in order to lend the troglodyte encounters more variety.  (There were also non-troglodyte encounters, but that’s neither here nor there.)  While looking for inspiration, I started flipping through my first-edition Monster Manual, or maybe it was the Monster Manual II.

Now, there were (and are) some really silly monsters in D&D.  But the one that made me stop flipping wasn’t anything terribly unusual.  It was one of the incredible number of giant animals scattered through the old MMs.  Specifically, it was a giant skunk.  I have no idea why a party of adventurers might have ever needed to fight a giant skunk, but the stats for it were there, by god.

Then again, these were the days in which giant frogs were one of the deadliest encounters in the Temple of Elemental Evil.  Technically, outside of the temple.  You didn’t even reach the real dungeon before these guys hopped out of hiding, snared you with their tongues, and devoured you whole.

At this point, I recalled a recent discussion about some of the odd traits possessed by real-world animals.  And I realized that, while giant skunks didn’t really work for me, their musk spray actually dovetailed pretty well with the troglodytes.

I decided to take that attack and apply it to a reptilian creature the size of a large dog, and the grithik was born.  Its spray of musk made it an interesting controller-type, which suited my needs pretty well.  To make it a little more dangerous, I gave it a ranged venom attack similar to a spitting cobra’s.  I gave it an aura like the troglodytes’.  And for a little extra defense, since they need to be pretty close to the front lines to really control the way their troglodyte masters would want them to, I gave them an immediate reaction ability:  when a troglodyte ally enters an adjacent square, the grithik can shift up to two squares, remaining adjacent to the ally.  That means they can move from the front line to the back pretty quickly, and also can easily flank in conjunction with the trogs.

All things considered, it turned out to be a vicious little critter.

Grithiks are reptilian beasts the size of large dogs.  They are native to the underdark and have been domesticated by some troglodyte clans for use as guard animals.

Grithiks will typically slither into battle ahead of their troglodyte allies.  They normally use their musk spray as soon as they close, and then shift toward the back lines when their allies catch up.  They will repeat this process whenever their spray recharges, using their venomous spittle to attack from range in the meantime.  Some grithiks are trained to use their Slink ability in order to slip through enemy lines and flank the troglodytes’ opponents; these will typically try to maintain their flanking position, attacking with their fangs when their spray is not available.

I also have a downloadable grithik stat block PDF in a nicer format.

Related posts:

1. Fox Magic: Allies and Adversaries
2. Monster Manual
3. Fox Magic: Martial Feats
4. Shadows in the Shadows
5. Ten Monsters I Love (But Rarely Use)