Friday, September 20, 2019

Bugbear, Bulette, Bull

OG Bugbear

Literally described as 'Hairy Giant Goblins' , they menace with extra surprise chances due to quick and quiet movement, which most people remember bugbears for and, curiously enough, the ability to throw various hand weapons as missile weapons, which is rarely mentioned. Swords, spiked clubs, maces, hammers, axes, and spears, all yeeted from about 1/3rd human movement range at the furthest, or half that treated as medium range. They deal plenty of damage unarmed, so a rain of miscellaneous melee weapons seems a perfectly reasonable opening tactic.

That's about it for interesting things apart from the usual humanoid filler of 'they have a big buff leader type and a bunch of noncombatant women and children(stats as hobgoblin and kobold respectively) for your players to go all Anakin on and then spawn infinite internet arguments about the true alignment of killing orc babies. Thanks Gygax.

I believe there was an early artistic hilarity occurring when an artist, given vague and uncertain direction, drew them with literal jack-o-lantern heads. This variety managed to survive as the Jackobear, and I must say I am partial to the players battling food monsters for a lighter vibe. Lungfungus has tree-spawned fruit-bugbears in Fassulia as well.

Sunset Realm Bugbears
 There aren't any. I've got my thing with goblins and ogres being the shadowless, nameless servitors spun from shadow by ancient elf (or alf, rather) supervillains already, so 'basically just bigger goblins' might as well just actually BE bigger goblins to avoid redundancy. The weapon-throwing thing is pretty hilarious though, I think I'll include that as goblin-style secret fighter technique and have it be a thing.
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If you wanted a spicy take on bugbears though, look no further than below
http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2013/01/on-ecology-of-bugbear.html

OG Bulette
A monster with absolutely incredible melee damage. It has a bite/claw/claw routine of 4d12/3d6/3d6, and 9hd to back it up, or it can leap the height of a man and squash someone for 4 claw attacks. The creature has weirdly sectional armor- a -2AC, equivalent to +5 platemail, but the eyes are only as chain+shield, and it has a crest it raises when 'in a fierce fight' that exposes an area on the back that can be struck as studded leather+shield. I wonder how this came to be- a DM, regretful of the overly high AC beast they made demolishing the party and applying some nerfs? Some rulings made when players asked if they could aim for where the beast wasn't protected by armor? It's certainly killable with magic artillery, as it is stupid and hungry and unlikely to think to evade Fireballs and so on with burrowing.

A dwarvern craftsman can create a shield of +1 to +3 value from this crest, which is a nice reward for an otherwise treasure-free monster. As smaller 6hd and larger 11hd bulettes are said to exist, the 'default' bulette crest shield is probably +2.

I had a player in one of my bad teenage 3.5e campaigns I ran actually die to a bulette making a critical hit and biting his head off and I think ruining the player's power fantasy and causing them to lose interest after revival. That was the only time the threat of danger ever had teeth, as that campaign was all manner of chosen one big quest baloney that was the final game of 3.5 I ran, I believe. Nothing much of that game is remembered save that and a dreadful scene where 12 crossbowmen were all shooting ineffectually at the players from a balcony and killing everyone IRL of boredom, and something about a snakeman assassin stabbing the PC in the throat as they slept and the PC not dying because they had enough HP to survive.

So thanks for killing that crappy campaign, Bulette.

Sunset Realm Bulette
Again, I don't think there are any. They seem like the sort of monster that loses a bit of its monstrousness when they go from 'horrible nameless monster that bit the fighter in half in one hit' to 'known species and source of +2 shields' Name the beast, tame the beast, ya know.

Bulls 

these are just buffalos with slightly different combat stats, who else is ready for the C monsters yeesh

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