Take a Walk on the Wetter Side

Dungeon Masters love it when a homebrewed DnD encounter gets multiple uses during a campaign. That’s exactly the scenario we found ourselves in as ol’ DM Ben gets ready for a jampacked TTRPG weekend with two sessions on the books!

Let’s start with a quick office campaign recap: our party of six adventurers just completed exploring the mysterious underground caverns below the old Night Hag’s hideout (and now their first Bastion). Part of their exploration required crossing a shallow stream with water levels sometimes as high as their thighs. Turns out those cavernous waterways are filled with all sorts of unfriendly inhabitants, and if anyone stumps too loudly through their turf, that hasty movement can rile the river’s residents.

So, DM Ben made a fun wet one-shot and used some 3D-printed Quips as the angry tenants. The challenge was that each player had to make a Dex saving throw (DC 12). On a failed save, the adventurer stirred up the water enough to usher in a school of angry nippers. Creature swarms can be especially challenging for a party due to their immunities to effects like stun and their resistances to specific types of damage. We hope you get a chance to run this one in your own game – satisfaction guaranteed!

Knowing the players had to cross these very same waters again in order to get back to their aboveground cabin in The High Forest, we wanted to do this encounter again, but change out the monsters so our players would be surprised. Predicatability in a DnD game is a death sentence in terms of overall session fun. So, we spotted this awesome free Bago, Bago monster 3D print by the mighty Schlossbauer and rushed it to our resin printer. We even included a handy, simple paint guide.

So, DM Ben used some extra vacation and utilized a recent four-day weekend to rustle up some more of these whipper snappers. Our paint steps remained relatively the same, except we decided to try some alternate colors for the heads & tails.

• Alternate Head/Tail 1: GSW Green Shark Skin.
• Alternate Head/Tail 2: Citadel Contrast Aethermatic Blue (our fav).
• Alternate Head/Tail 3: Citadel Contrast Gore-Grunta Fur.
• Alternate Head/Tail 4: Citadel Contrast Nighthaunt Gloom.
• Edging: ASP Battleship Grey.
• Eyeballs: ASP Blood Red.
• Bones: Citadel Contrast Skeleton Horde.
• Teeth: P3 Menoth White Highlight.
• Stand: ASP Tidal Wave.
• All: AKI Wet Effect.

We especially liked the brownish Gore-Gunta Fur color because it had that ugly Brown Rockfish vibe. The Nighthaunt Gloom was nearly the same as the Green Shark Skin color, so that choice is a “push.” The lighter Aethermatic Blue turned out to be our favorite color here!

We’re using Milestone Heroes’ water cavern terrain for our slippery hallways and such, but when a big throw-down fight is going to occur within one of those areas, we need a zoomed-in terrain board for better minis movement and combat tactics. Thankfully, Dwarven Forge makes these setups especially easy.

We started with two of their Mountain Lake Terrain Trays. Our pics could never do these game aids justice as they’re just beautiful to look at, and they’re magnetized, so our Dwarven Forge Cavern Terrain sticks to ’em. Sadly, we didn’t realize we had zero cavern edging terrain, so we had to improvise with the pieces we had. However, one makes do in a pinch, right?

The key, though, is that DM Ben wanted to convey that it’s very easy to get lost during an initial cavern exploration. He’ll require the party to pass a tough group Survival check (DC 18), as they did nothing to mark their path on the way in. Most likely, they’ll end up taking the long way back and consequently, come across a larger and deeper underground stream with even nastier inhabitants than those Quippers. Movement here will also be reduced to half, as the water here is higher/up to their waists, and water visibility will be murky. Anyone wearing armor or using a shield will even have their attacks at disadvantage.

Schlossbauer calls this 3D-printed DnD miniature a “Bago, Bago” but of course, there’s not a specific WotC monster going by that name. So, DM Ben decided to basically use most of the 5e Merrow monster skin here with a couple of tweaks: AC 15, HP 45, Bite (+6, 1d8+4), and a Frenzied Tail (+6, 2d4+4) covering a 2×2 d20 square area. There will be up to five of these meanies in all. The challenge rating here will be on the medium scale, but they’ve taken a bit of a beating traveling down here, and they’re not the greatest when it comes to rest management.

Pretty fun, right?! DM Ben keeps his players guessing with a new aquatic foe and visually enticing gameboard, while subtly reminding them to improve their exploration tactics.

Until next time!