Dire Ducks

Greetings, fellow quackers! We have some not-so-cuddly creatures to showcase for you today, and the sculpt leapt out at us the second we saw this one in the designer’s library. Let’s waddle our way to it!

Continually building our free Wandering Monster Wilderness Trek table is always at the back of our minds because traveling to new places is just a core mechanic in our DnD campaign. DM Ben needs to be able to continually pull new options from our table without the stress of making a TTRPG encounter at the last minute.

Some Dungeon Masters just wing it or just draw from an existing module table, which is totally cool, but there’s just something incredibly satisfying about 3D-printing a scenario from scratch to use as a random travel event later in your own game. Sometimes, DM Ben even pulls an encounter from our table because he is dying to play it, or he just wants to liven up a particular game night!

We found some trippy zombie ducks that we think we can use in any number of ways, including:

• As new Wandering Monsters.
• As a crazy swamp guy’s personal soldier squad.
• As a new prize for The Collector’s crazy creature collection.

If everything goes well, DM Ben plans on utilizing all three storylines. First, he’ll tease these fierce feather snappers in a Wandering Monster encounter. Then the party will learn they actually belong to a hermit deep in a swamp who doesn’t take kindly to trespassers. We’ll finish with The Collector wanting one for his personal collection, and it’s up to our adventurers to capture a male and a female.

The magnificent mallard in question comes from the mighty Schlossbauer. He’s dubbed this one a Bog Hunter, and it’s a free download in his amazing library of STLs. He seems to share that same passion for DnD monsters as we do, as we often find ourselves 3D printing out five-ish of each his STLs so we can instill enough chaos into our party’s travel plans.

These back-from-the-dead waterfowl have some nice big eyes, so DM Ben was willing to pick up a brush this past weekend and get to work. He once again asked The Google to recommend some Army Painter & Green Stuff World paint combinations that weren’t too technical for his skill level.

• Flat Black Prime | Slapchop Base.
• Head: FAN Emerald Forest with black drybrush.
• Body: ASP Hardened Leather with FAN Leather Brown drybrush.
• Wings: ASP Gravelord Grey with GSW Skull Linen Dip blotted on top.
• Beak: ASP Fire Giant Orange (with black toes).
• Tongue: FAN Barbarian Flesh (with Soft Tone wash).
• Eyes: John Blanche Fiery Vermillion
• Edging: FAN Matt Black randomly in any of the STL’s divots.
• Wash: cover the head and body with FAN Green Tone.
• Lower Half: GSW Gloss Varnish on the legs and feet (for a little mild wetness effect).

For the base, he used our tried-and-true ASP Tidal Wave technique for a couple of random water spots, with AKI’s Water Gel Effect over the top. For the dirt ground cover, ASP Desolate Brown is a rockstar; optionally, add a light drybrush of ASP Forest Sprite. And then finish that off with a swampy grass tuft.

DM Ben pictures these nasty ankle biters as more of a pack unit, so he’ll probably do five to ten of them in total. These went pretty quickly once he finally stopped overthinking the wing colors. For their stats, we have a lot of geese and ducks in our office complex parking lot, and they’re mean SOBs. Hence, he wanted to translate our disgust for them in the game. 😉

The D&D Wiki gave us a solid Giant Duck 5e stat base: AC 13, HP 30, Att: Beak +5/1d6+3, Claws +5/2d6+3. We’re just going to tweak the AC to 17 because have you ever tried to catch a duck? And then we’re going to add a swarm effect: if three or more ducks are within 10 feet of each other, they get an extra bite attack that round. Also, we also loved this Quack trait we saw from another version: DC 15 Wis save or fear for 1d4 rounds.

Now all that’s left to do is update our free d20 DnD Wilderness Trek Wandering Monster Table! We’re tinkering with the frequency and the methodology for triggering a roll on the table. Two options: (1) Each player rolls a d6, and if one of the table results is a six, then a wandering monster is triggered. (2) The DM rolls a percentile dice, but the specific percentile ranges from 10 to 30%-ish based on the circumstances around their long rest or travel.

Until next time!