Bloodweed

This will be a short post.  I worked all week, all weekend, and had 6 additional hours of commuting time.

Bloodweed

The lighter color tips turn red when the plant is feeding.
Image by Kerstin Riemer from Pixabay

Armor Class	17 (special)
Hit Dice	2
Move	0' (see below)
Attacks	Special
Damage	1 hp/round
Number Appearing	1
Morale	n/a
Treasure Type	Special
Intelligence	Animal (2)
Alignment	Neutral
Monster Type	Normal Plant
Terrain	Oases
% in Lair	n/a
Special Attacks	Vine attachment/blood drain
Special Defenses	Hidden stem
Magic Resistance	Normal
Size	L

Last week I called this "Bloodvine." Both names are used.

Bloodweed climbs like ivy, and collects in deep (knee-high) thickets where possible. Anyone wading in the thicket is subject to attack. 

When a person or animal enters the thicket, the vine will seek to attach itself to the victim. This takes 1 round for a person wearing no armor, 2 rounds for a person wearing leather, 3 rounds for chain, and 4 for plate armor.  Shields have no effect.

The vine anesthetizes the victim's skin when it attaches, causing the victim to be unaware of what's happening. Each round after the vine attaches, it will do 1 hp of damage as it drains blood from the victim. The vines and leaves closest to the victim will start to turn red as they fill with blood, and the victim will notice that he is feeling weakened.  Finding the attachment site requires a successful Wisdom save.  Once the attachment site is located, the vine can be simply pulled out. Remaining in the thicket will start the attachment timer over again.

The vine can feed off of any number of victims as long as they're all in the thicket.

Attacking the main stem require a hit against AC 17.  The vine is considered to have 2 hit dice, but "killing it" is temporary: the weed will grow back within a month.  The only way to permanently kill it is with fire, acid, or an appropriate spell.  

Bloodfruit

Bloodweed doesn't collect any treasure, though sometimes the bodies of former victims will contain valuables. 

Having said that, there is a 25% chance that a feeding bloodweed will produce a bloodfruit. Eating a bloodfruit initially causes 1d4 hit points of damage. If the character survives the damage, they then heal 2d6 hit points at the rate of 1 point per round.  The healing effect can even boost the character's hit points above their normal maximum, but the "extra" hit points "wear off" at the rate of 1 hit point per turn.

That's all!

That's all for this week.  Maybe next week we'll finish the fort!

Do you like the bloodweed?  It's little bit of a monster and a little bit of a trap.

The Riddle's Answer

This is the middle of one of my twelve day workweeks, so this post will be short.

Seven weeks ago, I posted a riddle of sorts.

Is the Hint too Subtle?

A second post this week! This one is really just a request for your opinion, so I don’t count it as “content.”

I’m have mixed feeling about secret doors. On the one hand, they’re very much “realistic”, in-genre, and add to the feel of the game. On the other hand, it seems that in a lot of early modules and adventures, a good 50-75% of a dungeon would be hidden behind a secret door and there would be no clue or hint that such a door even existed, never mind where it was. This would lead to players either:

Level Based Trick #1

I’m always leery about how much information I should post about an upcoming dungeon. Will a player read this post?

Let’s risk it.

This post is about a trick.

What Wrong with the Sun?

Remember that hex in the Dreadwood where the party shrinks down to a fraction of their size? This is like that, but with two differences:

• It’s in the Firelands.

• It messes with time instead of space.

Sundial photo by liz west / CC BY

Honey, I Shrunk the Party

This is an idea for a hex or grid on the Crowfield map, somewhere in the Dreadwood.

The area was once the domain of a druid named Ælfride. She cast a spell of protection on her lands. Even though she is long gone, the effects of the spell remain.

The effect is quite simple. Any being (and all their gear, etc) entering the land after the spell was cast shrinks to 1/12th their size while in the region with no saving throw allowed. Thus a 6-foot tall fighter, will shrink down to 6 inches. The tricky part, though, is that the change happens gradually over the course of a quarter-mile or so. Because of this, the characters will be unaware that they're shrinking and instead think that they're entering an area filled with giant flora and fauna.

The spell reverses itself when the players leave the hex. The party suffers no ill effects, and is unaware that it happened to them.

Why is this tricky? Because until the players figure it out, it will severely mess with their mapping. The main play map of the area will be 5 miles per hex (or grid, I haven't decided yet). That means it takes about 2 hours to travel from one hex to the next. But while shrunken, 5 miles of the Giant Land will feel link 60 miles to the characters. Instead of taking 2 hours to cross, it will take 24 hours. Assuming that a party only travels for 8 hours a day, they'll spend 3 days in that hex!

Maybe a picture will help:

The hex marked with the dotted triangle is the "giant hex." If the party starts at hex "A" and travels in a straight line to hex "D," the journey will start normal. As they move into the "giant hex" though, I'll say "you notice that the vegetation around you is larger than normal. After another hour it's huge... you are confronted with a dandelion as tell as a man!" As mentioned above, this one hex will take 24 hours of travel time, and I'll present every two hour block as them entering a new hex. In fact, I'll probably use a map like this to represent that one hex:

On the other hand, if the party travels from "A" to "B" to "C" to "D" then the whole trip would only take 6 hours, even though it was "longer."

From a map making perspective, this should really confuse them. "It takes 3 days to travel from A to D."

Of course, any encounters in the hex will be "giant" bees and "giant" rats, etc. From the player's point of view, they are in a weird "Land of the Giants" until they figure it out.

It's just an idea.

Follow up: The next post contains my responses to some comments that I've received about this post.