Now That’s a Fire

Last week, we built out our backyard gameboard for the big Night Hag encounter and showed off some swell terrain by Dwarven Forge and Crippled God Foundry. Today, we’ll share the selected miniatures and their combat mechanics!

There are more Fire Elemental miniature options than we can count, but we are 3D RPG, after all, so we decided to feature this supportless hottie by Brite Minis today! We adore their monthly Patreon and print the latest release as quickly as possible.

To recap: our adventurers are trying to rescue several kiddos snatched up by a mysterious old woman (actually a Night Hag) who captures their tears to keep her magic going. The scene we focused on today is one of the children being helped prisoner over a magic flame in the backyard of her cabin.

Once again, resident painter Kimmy Utah put the firey brushstrokes on this beauty. We wanted the mini to really feel like it was literally rising out of the flames. You can just hear those arcane flames a flutterin’, can’t you?!

The backyard will be eerily quiet. Just a simple, magic reddish flame sits below the suspended cage. The prisoner inside has passed out and will not answer to anyone. The Night Hag uses this outdoor cage as her holding area until she can move the next captive to the basement for “processing.” At first, the group won’t realize that the flame is magical (Arcana DC 20) and not cooking the prisoner. Their instincts will naturally be to rush in to help, and that’s where the fun really starts.

Let’s discuss monster mechanics here. As they approached the Night Hag’s cabin, the party has been” nickeled and dimed” with smaller, pesky encounters to wear them out. This particular Fire Elemental is by no means meant to be some big boss fight. It’s just another annoying obstacle to overcome in order to free the child from its flame. So, for that reason, we’re going to decrease D&D Beyond’s 102 HP by default down to 55 when it battles our level four party of six characters.

Here’s where things will get funky: anytime the momma bear fire elemental is hit, she will spawn 1d4+1 fire minions!

Wait! Did you just say, “minions?” DM Ben often avoids single monsters on a gameboard. An adventuring party of six can knock down a single enemy so darn fast. Consequently, he likes lots of big-hit, low-AC minions like Goblins, Kobolds, or any ancillary creature, to clutter up the map and help with flanking mechanics, attacking ranged fighters, and keeping others occupied.

Sadly, the concept for combat Minions came forth in D&D 4E but didn’t really come over to 5E. So, we typically build them out like so:

• low hit points (5 HP),
• easy to hit (AC 14-ish),
• high attack (+8-ish)
• larger damage (2d8+2)

This way, the group can’t really ignore them (and that bides a couple extra rounds for the main beast to get some cool abilities off). 😉

So we’ll use these fire elementals by MageKnight to fill the minion supporting cast role. These little guys went by the name Volcorga. DM Ben just de-based them from their original click stands, made some firey bases, and then glued them together. You can buy big ol’ lots of old MageKnight figs (often for a song) and do this for all sorts of cool creatures.

And just like that, you’re party is ready to get their fire on!