Hunting Displacer Beasts || D&D w/ Dael Kingsmill

look check it out this was totally accidental i do i it did look more like a black panther when i put it on not much more honestly actually the temporary tattoos weren't the best quality all right hello humans my name is dale kingsmill and today we're talking about dnd for people who don't know uh over on my twitter my sister gave me this idea uh for a much madness thing that i could do sometimes on this channel i do breakdowns of how i would run different monsters from d d in a vague and evocative fashion and my sister ray said you could do a march madness where you pit different d d monsters up against each other which was a great idea so i i went through the monster manual and i got 68 monsters from dnd i put them all up in polls on twitter and people voted four winners four finalists are going to be made into videos but um you know it was the last day of march so the videos are coming out in april but i think it counts as march madness because we did do the voting happened in march the first of our march madness winners as you probably figured out based on the title is the displacer beast big cat six legs displacement i look at this beastie and i instantly want a session focused around this creature to be i want it to feel like uh like like muldoon hunting the velociraptors in jurassic park hunter hunted kill or be killed tropical jungle night encroaching these are the vibes that i want so let's see how we might go about that i think you can get a solid session adventure out of this just a nice tight pit stop i would probably frame it using like oh the people of this village outpost have been um under constant attacks in the night by a local pride of dysplasia beasts every other night someone is taken please great adventurers we need you to rid us of the displacer beast menace now you'll notice the first thing i did there i feel like uh the displacer beast as written in the monster manual is kind of inexplicably written as though it's meant to be a solo body but i think if you're gonna do a big cat that isn't a tiger you're missing out if you don't have a pride working together get that hunting lionesses vibe particularly if we're going for this this real oh vicious hunter thing with the big cat they describe the displacer beast in all the fluff text there they're sort of saying oh it's this vicious killer it hunts for sport but there are a couple of things in the way that the stat block is put together that don't really reinforce that concept so over the course of this video i'm going to try and re-reinforce that concept so the people of this outpost are being hunted and now it's up to you the adventurers to hunt the hunter while the party's in town talking to npcs i would really probably milk some of that ooh be afraid-ness emphasize that these creatures get stronger in the dark we'll get back to that in a minute throw in the line you are alive when they start to eat you and see if anyone picks up that that's from jurassic park it's just a very good line throughout this part it's pretty standard probably encourage the party to to leave in the morning they'll want as much daylight as they can to try and track down the displacer beasts and kill them before night time i have reworked the the displaced bee statlock a bit it's very strength heavy and apart from the displacement it kind of you know doesn't do anything interesting so if the interesting thing is the displacement right then i want to change the emphasis from being sort of strength and hitting to sneaky faster pussycat kill kill i've seen that movie it's a weird movie so partly because of that and partly because um i mean people who are familiar with my stuff probably know by now that i have kind of a thing with the way i homebrew where if something doesn't feel like it has to be magic like it necessitates magic then i kind of have a rule that i have to find a way to make it mundane instead not mundane like boring but mundane like non-magical and in my case i decided maybe there's like a weird shimmer to its coat that means that when it's in when it's in shadows when it's in dim light or in darkness it makes it really hard to tell exactly where it is what its orientation is it's a little bit like dazzle paint on ships right so they've got that going for them you might just decide that they're still magic and that that's totally fine but i did kind of couple it with this idea of darkness they're slinking through the dark i mean they're based on a black panther you know you've got them in the jungles in the shadows really using darkness to their advantage creeping around suddenly striking and killing plus the other benefit of this is that it puts kind of a timer on the tracking phase of this session you really want to try and find these creatures before sundown not because you won't be able to fight them after sundown but because they will be much stronger after sundown so now aha the meat of this session i think should be a tracking mini game the thing with tracking in d d is that uh it kind of is a one roll succeed oh good you found the thing right which wouldn't make a great session so i for the purposes of this have devised a little way of kind of um zooming in on the process of tracking and sort of um for characters who are good at it still having it be like look how good you are at tracking but breaking it up into smaller pieces so that it feels more in-depth and intricate and like clever and strategic let me just say this was going to be a very different video until this idea came to me in a dream i'm not saying it's divine but as i stirred from my sleep this morning i heard a voice in my mind and the voice said the most beautiful words i've ever heard and the words were it's like mind sweeper you know minesweeper it's got that little grit of squares and you click on them and it shows um around the border of the area it's like well this is touching two minds and this is touching three and you know that game since waking up this morning i have made a little tracking minigame that is like minesweeper and i think is pretty good so as preparation for this uh the things that you're going to need to do make up a little grid of squares for me i've i've kept it simple to six by six pick a side that is designated to be closest to the village outpost since their last kill the displacers have gone back into the jungle so you as the dm are going to trace a path that the displacers have followed i think a solid length for this path is ten squares diagonals are okay you don't have to do any of that oh it takes twice as long for a diagonal you can only travel to adjacent squares and you've got 10 squares worth of travel wherever you decide to end your path that's where the displacer beasts have like camped out for the night or whatever the cat equivalent of camping is also while you're here i think it's worthwhile uh the idea that the these displacer bees have been plaguing this village for a while now take 2d6 roll them like three times i think is a good number those squares have trapped in them the town's people in the past have braved going into the jungle and setting traps in the hopes that they might catch the displacer beasts so here you go you've got your abcdef one two three four five six plus on your grid you have your your path the displacer beasts have taken and you have your secret locations of traps this is the copy that you keep behind the dm screen it's battleships it's it's fury of dracula right it's hidden movement elements the players also get a grid but their grid is blank they have to work this stuff out as they go now i've written out an example i i did sort of a test simulation with dice of how this would work to see if it actually would function and this is how that example went all right so the first thing that your party are going to do is that they're going to roll a stealth check that will kind of apply to their general approach throughout the rest of this they're going to be rolling enough things i don't want them to also be rolling stealth checks every single turn so instead of doing that the team rolls a stealth check at the beginning before they head into the jungle so my example party is made up of a ranger a rogue a fighter and a wizard before beginning the hunt each can make a dexterity stealth role if the character is proficient in survival or nature then they may add their modifiers for one of those skills to their total or they can add it to the total of another party member so in this example the stealth checks rolled uh the ranger totaled 17 the rogue totaled 14 the fighter 11 and the wizard 8. the dc for this check is a 14 chose that number because it's the passive perception of a panther in the monster manual i don't really understand why the dysplasia beast has so many stats that are worse than a panther seems strange to me by the way feel free to let the players know that the dc is 14. i think that that just adds to the knowledge way up ahead of time that oh they're hunting you as well you're going to be hunted it'll cede that knowledge which is always fun anyway dc14 so the fighter and the wizard are likely to be noticed fairly quickly based on their initial roles but of course like any good ranger the ranger is trained in survival they have a plus six so they decide to spend their prep time helping the wizard out they particularly focus their energy on the components pouch which they think might have a lot of strange smells that will draw attention to themselves so the rain just stuffs some some pungent herbs into the into the components pouch to kind of to mask some of that scent a little bit better so the ranges plus six in survival is added to the wizards total which brings their total to 15. so that means that out of four this party has three successes those will become the number of successful perception checks that the dysplasia beasts need to make before they fully realize that someone is encroaching into their territory so the heroes are going to get a little bit of a head start depending on how stealthy they are being but again is that is that sort of ticking element at some point the displacer beasts will notice that they're here and when they notice the game is on now the party choose where to enter the jungle anywhere along the a column i rolled a d6 to decide for the party and they just happened to enter on a3 which you'll notice is exactly the same spot that might just that i decided the displacer b centered so the displacer beasts pass through this square so as long as someone anyone in the group is trained in survival they get a freebie to realize that the beasts were here they they automatically recognize that as soon as they step into this space since it happened instantly um i would maybe describe this as uh the the party following a trail of blood from the last victim following the smear of blood on the on the leaves of ferns but as they move deeper that trail of blood dries up okay they're in the jungle now from here the players can suggest different skills that they would like to use in order to try and track the displacer beasts to follow in the wake of their quarry the character chooses a direction in which to focus their search north south east or west and the character makes a dc-16 check of their choosing i went with dc16 because the like passive stealth of my version of the dysplasia beast it would be 16. you can change that number if you want but keep in mind that some failures in this minigame will be interesting so i wouldn't make the dc too low the character does have to be able to explain what they're doing to make that skill that they've chosen useful however this fits a little bit like a skill challenge right so there are going to be some skills that are really obviously useful for this like like survival to follow the footprints but someone could suggest something unusual maybe a character would suggest that they want to make a medicine check to see where the blood is freshest and and they can try and extrapolate the pathing from there i would avoid telling the players the exact dc for this particular thing but yeah basically for each successful check the players unlock some information about each square in the grid attached to their chosen cardinal direction so for example the ranger decides that they want to make a survival check to pick up the trail again and they want to focus their attention on the east where they're going to cover the most number of squares so it basically would include any any square that has that letter in it right so so east covers northeast east and southeast square so ranger totals are 22 on their check they absolutely pass the jungle is full of undergrowth plant life and you can't see any disturbances that that would match the the weight or the size of a big cat like a displacer beast nothing is is crushed or snapped in the way that you would expect so after you take your time carefully surveying the area you're pretty confident in saying that the displacer beasts didn't go through any of these three squares so that was one check the players can choose to make another check from this first square that they've entered which will increase the information they have available but it will take them longer to do so and remember they're on a countdown if they left it like a reasonable time in the morning i'd say they have like 10 hours before nightfall right they want to get it done before dusk now each one of these squares represents one hour's worth of travel and that covers a lot of stuff it covers them taking the time to carefully track as they go losing the trail picking it up again moving quietly um cutting your way through vines picking your way carefully over rocks all sorts of things go into that so that's why traveling through each square takes an hour now one skill check to keep tracking your quarry is automatically included in each square's worth of travel that's already grouped in with the time that's taken but every additional check adds another hour to the time taken if the same person wants to make checks twice the every character has to have contributed a check before the same person can go again so it can't just be the ranger going oh i made a survival check and now i'll make another one no the rangers had their turn so now it's someone else's turn our party know not to head eastways at all if they want to keep the trail they could make a guess and leave now in the direction of their choice without wasting any extra time but they feel like they need more information they figure it still early in the day can't hurt the fighter makes an investigation check focused south of the party's position 17. the fighter walks back to the last place that they had clear evidence gets down low and takes a look at the area from a kneeling view examining the undergrowth carefully they can just barely discern a disturbance in the ferns all bent ever so slightly to lean to the right you take your time to be sure but it's enough to convince you that they headed south so the dm in this case marks two hours off the clock and as the party are traveling it's time for the displacer beasts to take their turn at the moment it's nothing too exciting the displacers are just rolling to see if they have noticed the incursion into their territory i would probably announce what the role is for um but not the result for the dc you might make it a 14 because that was the dc that the stealth checks the party made were against or i think it might work to make it the average of the party's total stealth roll results which is a bit more matsy but you know makes sense in this particular case the outcome comes to about 14 either way and my displacer beasts rolled a six which is a big yikes deployed on underwiser the party don't know this though if you roll low just like raise your eyebrows and jut something down on your paper and go hmm just you know just sprinkle a little paranoia in there now this is a video so i'm not going to take you through every single thing but just to summarize what happened over the next few rounds the ranger checked south total 20 they moved to b5 that was their third hour spent the displacers succeed on their second perception check so they've got one of the three that they need there's the party's turn the ranger rolls are 16 east the party moves to c5 that was their fourth hour the displacers succeed on their second of three those work with the same core mechanic loop that the first one we talked about did this time because the ranger kept on top of the trail none of the other party members have had to make a second roll they haven't wasted any extra time now aha during the fifth hour the ranger rolls an eight on the dice bringing their tracking total to 14 east now something slightly different happens so i like to complicate it a little bit here keep it fresh so the dc is 16 16 is like certainty you know what's going on but a 14 isn't a bad roll either so if your players roll between say a 12 and the target number they glean information they just aren't necessarily sure about it the party have come to a rocky area where there's just less to go by there are some markings on the trees southeast that could indicate that the big cats traded to traveling up in the canopy they are very good climbers they've got six legs but also scouting a little further to the northeast now there's a return to that undergrowth which bears the signs of a semi-regularly traveled route through the greenery you really don't have a strong inclination either way our party know that they're headed into the afternoon now so even though sunset is still a ways off they don't want to waste time unnecessarily they take their chances and they head north east while the party are moving the displaced beasts take their turn and they roll a 15 on their perception check that's three of three now they've realized that they're being hunted and starting on their next turn they'll be able to begin some hunting of their own back to the party they've stumbled across one of my secretly laid traps you activated my trap card yeah treat this like a regular trap i would say maybe they'll spot it in time and avoid it or maybe they'll get their legs stuck in like a bear trap they'll have to break free or break the trap or you know disarm it whatever it is they do any of that stuff classic trap business hunting and tracking wise the important information that's being gathered by entering this square is that the trail was probably trod by humans coming out to lay traps for the displacers not the displacers themselves now the party could head back the way that they've come having lost another hour but this group are clever they've recognized based on their map that they're filling out it looks like the displacers were headed in a generally eastward direction anyway so the party take a risk they decide to try their luck and attempt to pick up the trail again from where they are looking east the ranger rolls a 24. directly to the east of the party they find signs of their quarry's passage it was headed south to north till that point but it must bend away from the northward trajectory after that so the party move to e4 now this places can start their own hunt now the pride can split up at the start of their turn if they want to they don't have to and each group can move one square independently if at any time after dusk the displacers have two groups that both converge on the same square that the party is in that his places will launch an ambush surprising the party for now though these displacers just split into two groups trying to get themselves into advantageous positions where they won't be seen just for some spice decide whether you want to keep rolling fake perception checks maybe lull your players into a false sense of security or don't roll and don't mention it and just see if they notice that something is different from the last time the displacers took their turn why isn't she rolling why aren't you rolling aha so now the player parties suspect the beasts were moving north but they aren't sure whether to try northwest or north east they already know that directly north of them isn't going to help the ranger pulls out their goodall survival check and rolls a 17. towards the northeast you find some animal excrement it's about large enough and once you identify that it contains some some crushed bone fragments you determine that you're on the right track the party moves to f3 the timer is only into its seventh hour and the displacers want to hold off on attacking until they're at their strongest which is the tenth hour and beyond so for the next few rounds they're gonna have to play cat and mouse trying to avoid the players alpha group move to c1 but beat a group stay where they are they're hoping to wrap around behind the party and catch them off guard the ranger rolls are 16 they get caught for a moment between two different trails but having been mislead earlier they now know what signs to look for from the human trappers based on this the ranger thinks that the displacer beasts must have deftly avoided the trap because their trail heads to the north west displacer beast's turn alpha group wants to lead the party away before doubling back to surprise them so they moved to b2 beta group want to quietly follow in the party's wake stalking them through the shadows so they moved to f2 the displacer beast worked out where all the traps were ages ago so they don't have to worry about making any trap checks now remember that each square covers a large area so the displacements aren't quite close enough yet to have to start really making stealth checks we join the player party again just as they walk into an area hot with the stench of flesh and blood at first you don't see it this place is dark with the shadows of ancient trees but the ranger probably knows where to look or else the wizard feels something drip onto their shoulder from above in the trees overhead hooked into the forks of branches are mutilated half-eaten carcasses that is places dragged them to where they could eat in peace now that you're looking for it you can see where the claw marks dug into the trunk even with all that extra weight the climb was easy with six powerful legs one way or another maybe the rogue can tell that the carcasses are fresh the displacers were here until very very recently they're close now a check worth 25 to the west shows the distinctive track pattern of a six-legged gate in the soft impressionable soil headed north-west despite the precision of this the party decide to head due west instead in the hopes that they'll be able to catch the displacers if they divert their course to the south they're short on time now and they need every advantage they can get beating it moves to e2 while alpha group move to c2 it's a risky move that puts them in the line of discovery but the displaces early and mislead didn't pan out and the adventurers are catching up the cats would rather launch their attack sooner than later it's the 10th hour now once the players finish this turn it will be dusk and the displacer's strength will come into play in the darkened jungle just in time for them to take their turn the players have to hope that they get the drop on the beasts now unbelievably of all the roles the imaginary ranger that i've been rolling for rolled a 10 total on their survival check to the west they've lost the trail the rogue says they'll have a go in the same direction with the with a perception check and they roll in 18. they notice a few things in succession first but it's a lot harder to see with the sun sinking away as it is they hear a scatter of birds and monkeys suddenly taking flight the monkeys metaphorically speaking then they spot a series of reflective yellow eyes hidden among the inky shadows of the jungle flora it's too late the displacers on either side converge on the player's position in d2 and they get to attempt a surprise round they all rolled together for their stealth thing for the surprise round because it was a coordinated attack so just like any surprise round the uh stealth role of the displaces will be compared to the passive perception of the players in this case i would let the rogue choose the active perception role that they just made if they wanted and the ranger might have some stuff that would give them bonuses there but that's it the time is up it's dusk it's a surprise round and combat is go okay now that was a lot uh but i really wanted to take you through the different kind of mechanics of it particularly that overarching mechanical loop give you an idea of the elements that make up the basis for any of these scenarios this could have gone so many different ways this was a pretty close call and ultimately bad luck for the players but it's entirely possible that the players could have realized the ambush at the last minute in that case they would have been fighting at dusk still but without the surprise round against them in another reality the places might have gotten a run of crummy rolls and taken ages to realize that anyone was looking for them not notice the intruders until it was too late the ranger might have natural explorer bonuses that let them work out that the displacers have split up in that case they might they might know that an ambush is coming or they might be checking behind them to make sure that they're not being followed maybe when the players located that second trap they might have wanted to do something with it set up a trixie trap ploy of their own maybe they would split up to do that maybe the party would have to fight while split up maybe each of the displacer groups would have to fight while split up there are so many variables that i haven't covered but all of them have have such juicy potential so now the actual comeback let's talk about this i've written my own uh displacer beast stat block knowing me i probably haven't got a gm binder version of it written up at the time of upload but also knowing me i will probably do one at some point and add the link to the description so if you're watching this a little further down the line check the description so now i already mentioned uh that i've shifted a lot of the stat block to reflect more of the panther than i did the actual displacer beast because let's be real it's a it's a panther with six legs and tentacles i don't understand why so many of its stats are so much worse boring boring initiative plus three stealth dark vision okay i gave it an ability called sprint it recharges on a six its movement becomes 60 feet and it can dash as a bonus action for one round i wanted to reflect the idea that you know if if it was trying to keep pace with a horse for a long time it probably couldn't but in a short distance sprint it could probably catch a horse i gave it the keen smell advantage on perception checks that you smell because why didn't it have that i also added something called shadow stalker in darkness or dim light the displacer beast doubles its proficiency bonus to stealth it's already stealthy but when it's dark it gets even stealthier it just blends right on into the jungle and at night whoo you're gone defense the ac remains 13 hit points i dropped the hit points to 22 because i think 85 hit points which i think is what it is in the book that's that's a lot that feels like you're meant to be fighting just this thing because as soon as you make it two displace a beast or three displacer beasts yeah you're really that's a lot of hit points to be contending with at the same time as taking damage action economy and i want a whole pride of them right displacement the standard displacement thing in this version avoidance which if you um you know try to hit a displaced beast with like a fireball or something that requires a saving throw to take half damage it has the same as like evasion because it's reflecting the idea that the displacer beast isn't quite where you think it is in my version it only gets avoidance if it's in dim lighting or darkness i did not make this decision lightly i gave the displaced beast so many things some things had to be limited to if it's fighting in darkness because i want there to be a distinct difference between fighting during the day you can kind of see what's going on or fighting at night you got no idea where it ends and where it begins i also gave it an ability called feline grace that just means that it can't be knocked prone cats already can barely fall on their side let alone one that's on six legs it's gonna be harder to push over now offensive stuff here's the thing about the dysplasia beast i don't understand why it's only cool things for something that is written about as a deadly hunter to be feared it's only cool things are defensive it doesn't even do anything cool with its tentacles it literally it doesn't even attack you with its claws it just goes back back with the tentacles and that's it not in my house no thank you no surrey offense i got i got the standard sort of big cat stuff um but a little amped up because come on make them deadly if you promise deadly make them deadly claws are pretty standard uh it's got a bite attack that's pretty standard yes the pounceability that a lot of big cats get its tentacles now are used for grappling you know how a lot of big cats when they're hunting like they they do the sprint they leap up and they grab the animal by their neck break their neck to paralyze them and then they drag them away i wanted a little bit of that i wanted to give something cool to the tentacles so now the tentacles uh if they hit they grapple the displacer beast can can drag you away to a tree they don't break your neck unless you want them to break the player's decks you can add that in if you want to it seems a bit cut through it to me but i also added another thing that's pack tactics but i called it pride tactics so because they're now framed like cooperative lionesses on the hunt they get packed tactics but if they are in dim light or in darkness the displaced beast gets pride tactics all on their lonesome even if they're by themselves because of that displacement right in the actual fluff it said that it looks like they are a couple of feet away from where they actually are so it's that idea that you're kind of guarding in a different place to where you're meant to be the displacements takes advantage of that and they literally get advantage they take advantage on the attack only in darkness though super dangerous in darkness and i also kind of have toyed with the concept of um of like a frenzied mauling for whichever is the last beast standing so the whole pride is being killed there's one left they get a super multi-attack which is because they have six legs i kind of did this because um all the signature moves for displays of beasts kind of happen early or a passive throughout and that doesn't make as much of an impression on players so i needed to find a signature like attack moment so it could be this which is just like an uber multi-attack frenzy mauling they use four of their legs to cut them up slice slice slice so they get four chlor attacks and a bite attack which is huge i know i know it's huge but it'll be dramatic though so those are my thoughts on displacer beasts i want it to really be sort of a a patient long-term hunt i want it to really bring tracking to the fore and make it make it a significant thing and i really want that vibe of hunter v hunted you think you've got a lock on the displacer beast and then they come at you from the side and you're like clever girl and then you know you don't die because you've got death in a sack anyway that's it for today i hope you enjoyed it if you did hey subscribe and hit the notification bell i know i know but there are three more in this series coming and if you like this sort of thing where you get sort of a deep dive on how i might run a specific monster you don't want to miss them apart from that i do believe that's it i'm done email this to your grandma and i'll see you some other time i wonder how long that video was felt like a long one

Channel: MonarchsFactory

Views: 31,726

Rating: 4.9839735 out of 5

Keywords: MonarchsFactory, Dael Kingsmill, Geek and Sundry, Geek, nerd, australian, Greek mythology, myths, mythology, Dale Kingsmill, story, storyteller, story teller, funny, dnd, d&d, dungeons and dragons, dungeons, dragons, pathfinder, 5e, rpg, ttrpg, fairytales, grimm, dungeon master, dm, displacer beast, monsters, monster manual, march madness, monster madness

Id: aV1-VNRqTtA

Length: 29min 32sec (1772 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/sdgardner]

I very much enjoy the idea but I for sure need an instruction list.