“I looked into that glowing red eye of his and knew, ‘boy, that guy’s crazy.’ And I know crazy! If the Reaper still actually does what Veridos wants him to do, then I’ll eat my shoe! If I had any left to eat, that is. My hat, maybe?” Rabidus, mad sorcerer.
The Reaper of Veridos was created for The Encroaching Wood, the upcoming Adventure Zine for characters at 3rd level. The statblock is attached below. This plant monster is the servant of a nature god, gone a little mad. It was built as the final boss of this zine, because it is the leader of an army of plant monsters inside of this ever-growing forest.
An excerpt from the zine: Standing before the steps is a being made of vines: black tendrils, writhing together to form a vaguely humanoid shape with a singular red, glowing eye.
A “contradiction” you may notice within its statblock is that the Reaper is resistant to fire, but the trait Verdant Regeneration is undone if it takes fire damage. We figured that players would eventually conclude that fire is the best method for exterminating plants, and so to stop it from regenerating each turn, they would try setting it on fire.
The Reaper of Veridos IS a boss, though! It can’t be defeated so easily. In the end, yes, fire is the best way of dealing with this guy, but it’ll chip away at him rather than incinerate him completely. It’s like wearing sunblock.
You could call the Reaper a melee brute, at first glance, but it does do decent ranged attacks. Using the Tendril action, it can pull its victim close to it. Then, with the Root Eruption attack, it churns out damage to the player. This is its AOE, adding another layer to it rather than just a guy that hits hard and has a lot of XP.
Its reaction, Protective Tendrils, invoke plant life, too. It literally looks like vines erupting from its body, but its action acts like bark protecting a tree, as well.
The Reaper of Veridos was a fun statblock to write, because this was for a low level one-shot. We couldn’t go crazy on its abilities and damage, but still had to keep it interesting. To do that, we diversified its abilities, and gave it a cool design, and still made it a tough enough fight for the culminating event in The Encroaching Wood.
Stay tuned for my posts on Goodberry Press’s Patreon covering behind the scenes info on our zines, lore for the world, and other fun topics. Also keep an eye out for our Goodberry Adventure Zines, which we’ll start rolling out once a month to those subscribed to our “Adventurer” tier. See you soon!
This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 (“SRD 5.2.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond. com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
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