Few Survive Mushroom Alley!

Greetings, fellow Fungi (and gals)! We hope your TTRPG dice were red-hot this weekend… and if they weren’t, good news: that’s sesh is in the past. Let’s look forward with a fun new DnD homebrewed mushroom encounter!

Sometimes a Dungeon Master has a new storyline pop into his head, but he delays crafting it because there’s no clear opening to insert that arc into the ongoing TTRPG campaign. So, instead, the idea lingers and lingers some more until he/she can’t take it any longer! Welp, that’s exactly what happened to DM Ben, and here’s how we approached what happened next!

Longtime 3DRPG readers probably know where we’re going through here, but let’s briefly catch you up. The High Forest is a big part of our ongoing DnD campaign. The group has had many travels and homebrewed exploits within its heavy canopy. DM Ben created two warring factions: (1) Shady Tree & his Angry Acorns and (2) a competing Miffed Mushroom contingent. He even teased the leader of the Miffed Mushroom clan, Tibarious Trunk, in a recent bump-in encounter! The seeds were firmly planted! He’s been dying to develop a Hatfield–McCoy rivalry and force his players to pick a side!

Well, lo and behold, in our last DnD Sesh, DM Ben brought that homebrewed storyline dream front and center when he had several Angry Acorns come to the aid of the party during a nasty Goblin ambush! Not that the group needed it, though, thanks to two fierce fireballs by the party’s magic users.

Still, DM Ben knew this was his chance to insert his desired Mushroom Alley map point into the campaign. The dust settled on the goblin battle, and the guys really wanted to know why the Angry Acorns came to their aid. DM Ben created an acorn lieutenant named Shelby (as well as a lunatic, bloodthirsty acorn called Harry). Shelby knew the party hadn’t picked a side, so he did a brilliant job convincing the players the acorn alliance was their best bet (even though the mushrooms are more ruthless and larger in number).

That new truce-pact was exactly what DM Ben wanted to have happen because now he can have a hair-raising mushroom encounter when the players return to the vast High Forest! Basically, the players will have a fierce encounter with the mushrooms within their own borders. Tibarious will enter the fray at some point and call for a ceasefire. He will then explain how insanely disappointed he is that the group sided with those untrustworthy acorns! So, today we’re going to start building this new Mushroom Alley encounter, as it’s gonna be a biggy!

Let’s start with some initial mushroom scatter. We’re nearly positive this mushroom cluster on the left is by Printable Scenery and was from their slick The Gloaming Swamps and Wilderness Kickstarter. They actually have all their amazing mushroom STLs in this nifty website bundle, and we highly recommend you gobble it up.

Resident painter Kimmy Utah has been our go-to colorist for nearly all our mushroom terrain and miniatures. We can’t wait to show you more of them! DM Ben is going to do his patented terrain-for-minis-swap when the encounter timing is just right.

That other miniature from the pic above is by Dragon Trappers Lodge and is their amazing Myconid Sovereign mini. It’s from their epic Mushroom Bayou series. We’ve bought most of this three-part series and will certainly be showcasing more completed minis from it as time moves on.

Again, Kimmy Utah’s paintbrush was all over this TTRPG miniature, and we’re really thrilled that she did them in lots of different colors! DM Ben is going to start by having this one sprout from the ground in the blink of an eye and greet the players. This mini represents one of their “knowledge trees” while also serving as a lookout in Mushroom Alley. He’e goes by the name Hymeno and is a Spore Keeper of their sacred lands.

He will spring up and stop the party dead in their tracks with a “Who dares enter Mushroom Alley uninvited. State your name and your case, or you won’t like what happens next!” Our office game group has named themselves The Contractors, and when they explain who they are, the Spore Keeper will instantly know who they are, as their new acorn alliance traveled the vines fast. He will demand they break their truce with the Angry Acorns or pay a hefty toll (100 gp) to pass unharmed.

Now, the group could talk their way through the encounter with a series of persuasion and charisma checks, but if things take a nasty turn, Hymeno will suddenly rip off several smaller mushrooms from his body and create some fierce soldiers for his side! And the minis that are going to be used for those menacing monsters are these Deathcap Hydras by Printed Encounter! These nasty chompers are a free download, and the sculpt is wicked good!

We 3D-printed a small group of these un-fungi and shipped them off to Kimmy Utah to paint. She knows that whenever we send her duplicates of a miniature, she should paint them a little differently so we can better identify them at a glance as monster 1, monster 2, etc. Boy howdy, did she absolutely crush these guys! We’ve had these front and center in a display case for some time now. We just love ’em!

DM Ben adores things with a lot of attacks because it can be way easier to balance a fight when a monster can attack more than one enemy in a single round (especially when there are six players in our party).

In terms of some DnD 5e stats, the Myconid Deathcap is pretty solid. Our three-headed warriors have an AC 15 and 90 HP. To better fit our wonderful new miniatures, we’re just going to tweak the following:

• Change the multi-attack to three bite attacks.
• Change the damage type to piercing.
• Give them immunity to stun (cause they’re a plant).
• Each time they do 30 points to one monster, one of its heads falls off.
• The to-hit bonus for each bite attack is upped to +7 (since we have a sixth-level party).
• Damage is also revised to 2d8+3.
• Their long necks give them a reach of 10.
• They can fire a deathcap spore or slumner spore once per round as a bonus action.

Hymeno, the Spore Keeper, is a non-combatant here. The instant he takes damage, he drops these Death Caps and crumbles back into the earth. Pretty fun, right? You could use all these guys in one of our Wilderness Trek Wandering Monster table rolls, too!

Until next time!