Friday, May 12, 2023

Golems and Owlbears

The Bones 5: Escape from Pizza Dungeons Kickstarter from Reaper Miniatures included several nice sculpts using the Bones Black material. I was particularly looking forward to painting up a pair of new golem models that had been included in the Core Set. Although I already had a few stone golems, I wasn’t completely enamored with them—and I really didn’t have any clay golems. While I’m not certain who sculpted these figures, the stone golem closely resembles an earlier model (77171) credited to James Van Schaik, so perhaps he worked on both.

These golems were some of the first miniatures I used my new airbrush on because they seemed fairly simple. I primed both with the Army Painter spray primer, then used the airbrush to base coat the stone golem with Reaper MSP stone gray. For the clay golem I used a mix of Army Painter airbrush brown and red. The stone golem got a wash with Reaper stone wash, while I used the Vallejo umber wash on the clay golem. After drybrushing highlights on both, I hit the stone golem with Testor Dullcote and used Vallejo gloss varnish on the clay golem to give it a wet look. Overall, I was relatively happy with both.

The Bones 5 set also had a great owlbear figure by Bobby Jackson. Even though I already had a pretty awesome model sculpted by Jason Wiebe from an earlier Bones set, I really wanted to tackle this bad boy. I also primed this with Army Painter gray and then basecoated the model with Army Painter leather brown. I washed it with Vallejo umber and used drybrushing to bring out the highly detailed feathers and fur. In retrospect I wish I had used a higher contrast color scheme on this mini, but it still looks pretty good on the table.

What I like most about this figure is it successfully blends owl and bear components into a fearsome-looking hybrid, but also harkens back to the weird, chonky look of early owlbear illustrations. The Erol Otus owlbear from AD&D Rogue’s Gallery (1980) is a good example of this look, and calls back to David Sutherland’s illustration in the original AD&D Monster Manual., which depicts a creature that doesn’t much resemble either an owl or a bear.

A surprising amount of energy has been spent on trying to track down the origin of this curious creature. The artist Tony DiTerlizzi convincingly demonstrated in his post Owlbears, Rust Monsters and Bulettes, Oh My! that the Sutherland illustration used a Chinasaur toy as a reference. Over at En World Michael Tresca tried to track down the ultimate origin of this toy in his article The Plastic Ancestry of the Owlbear.

Peter Fitz, in his blog Shouting into the Void, has an interesting retrospective: Alas, Poor Owlbear, You Were Great Once. Fitz observes that owlbears in 1e AD&D were truly nasty: they would “attack prey on sight and will fight to the death.” Moreover, they had an iconic attack that got dropped in the transition from 2e to 3e: the dreaded owlbear hug. On a claw attack of 18 or more, “the owlbear has dragged the victim to itself; and the opponent will take an additional 2-16 hit points damage from the hug, that melee round and every melee round thereafter until the owlbear is killed.” Fitz’s post reminded me how truly nasty these monsters could be in earlier editions.

Instead of a hug, 3e gave owlbears the improved grab ability, which is similar in concept to the old owlbear hug but not nearly as dangerous, and the 5e designers dropped this ability altogether. I appreciate the attempt to simplify monster design, I really do—5e monsters are usually far easier for harried DMs to run than their earlier incarnations. But in some cases the 5e approach flattens the monsters until they sometimes just seem like bags of hit points differentiated only by paint job. This CR 3 creature works exactly like this other CR 3, except one is green and flies and one is orange and swims.

Fitz noted that he intended to revise the owlbear to bring back its iconic and interesting abilities, which seems like an excellent idea. To develop my own take on a retro-owl bear, I went back to Moldvay D&D as well as AD&D 1e for guidance. In D&D owlbears (or rather, “owl bears” show up on the both the Level 4–5 and the Level 6–7 Wandering Monster tables. In AD&D owlbears are on the Monster Level IV table, though their XP value (225 + 8/hp) would suggest the average specimen (421 XP) might work better on the Monster Level V table. As standard 5e owlbears are Challenge 3 monsters, I designed my souped-up version for Challenge 5.

The following text is Open Game Content.

Horrible Owlbear

Horrible owlbears are larger and even more vicious specimens of standard owlbears. Highly aggressive and voracious, horrible owlbears attack any living creatures they spy and once engaged will not relent until slain.

Horrible Owlbear
Large monstrosity, unaligned
Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 95 (10d10 + 40)
Speed 40 ft.
StrDexConIntWisCha
20 (+5)12 (+1)19 (+4)3 (-4)12 (+1)7 (-2)
Skills Perception +4
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)
Keen Sight and Smell. The horrible owlbear has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight or smell.
Owlbear Hug. If the horrible owlbear hits a creature with two claw attacks in the same turn, the target is grappled. The horrible owlbear has advantage on beak attacks against a creature it has grappled and may use a bonus action to inflict 14 (2d8 + 5) bludgeoning damage on the grappled creature.
Actions
Multiattack. The horrible owlbear makes three attacks: one with its beak and two with its claws.
Beak. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (1d10 + 5) piercing damage.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) slashing damage.

OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a

The following text is the property of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and is Copyright 2000 Wizards of the Coast, Inc (“Wizards”). All Rights Reserved.

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