These creatures exist somewhere between parasitism and symbiosis. A writhing mass of thick tentacles, capable of great, undulating speed when independent, but vastly preferring to attach itself to the back of another creature.

Writhing Partners. Once attached to another creature, the tentacular demands compliance through the simple expedience of strangling its host if attempts to remove or threaten the tentacular in any way. The tentacular draws it sustenance from the blood of its host (and is otherwise incapable of feeding), but will also aid its host by defending it and helping it to gather food (usually through butchery and murder on a grand scale). Elves speak in hushed whispers of deer with blood-stained maws and squirming black masses on their backs.

Corpse Riders. If the host of a tentacular dies, some of its tentacles will vanish into the corpse and puppeteer. This state of affairs can last for several days until the rotten meat can no longer by forced into a facsimile of life. Such horrific creatures are often mistaken for undead.

Spawning Tentaculum. A tentacular reproduces by abruptly sprouting a multitude of small tentacles in a process known to scholars as “budding.” After tripling or quadrupling its number of tentacles, the tentacular will abruptly fission, “shedding” individual tentacles until it has split apart entirely. The individual tentacles seek new hosts, at which point the tentacles will sprout additional tentacles as it grows into an adult tentacular.

TENTACULAR
Small aberration, neutral evil

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Armor Class 15

Hit Points 75 (20d6)

Speed 30 ft.

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STR 12 (+1), DEX 15 (+2), CON 11 (+0), INT 3 (-4), WIS 10 (+0), CHA 5 (-3)

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Skills Stealth +5

Senses passive Perception 10

Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +3

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Parasite. If not attached to a host, the tentacular must succeed at a DC 10 Constitution saving throw once per day or suffer one level of exhaustion, which cannot be removed until it attaches to a host. When the tentacular is attached to a host, the host must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw once per day or suffer one level of exhaustion, which cannot be removed as long the tentacular remains attached.

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ACTIONS.

Multiattack. The tentacular makes four tentacle attacks.

Tentacles. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (2d6+1) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 15). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the tentacular can’t use its tentacles on another target.

Strangle. The tentacular forces a creature it is grappling to make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or begin choking. Once a creature is choking, it can survive a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can’t regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again. The creature can attempt the save again each round on its turn, with a success indicating that it has managed to get some air (and is no longer choking).

Attach. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one grappled target. Hit: 8 (2d6+1) necrotic damage and the tentacular attaches to the target. While attached, the tentacular can’t make Attach attacks. The tentacular can detach itself by spending 5 feet of its movement. As an action, a creature within reach of the tentacular can try to detach it, doing so with a successful DC 17 Strength check. (The attached victim has disadvantage on this check.)

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Go to Table of Contents

In Phase 2 of Storm King’s Thunder, the PCs travel to one of three cities: Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, or Triboar. Each of these cities will be attacked by giants shortly after the PCs arrive, and in each of these cities there are six “Special NPCs” that the DM is supposed to give to the players to play during the attack:

In this chapter, each player runs not only a player character but also an NPC who has ties to the settlement that the characters are defending. Once you’ve determined where the adventure begins, make photocopies of the six NPCs corresponding to the location you’ve chosen.

(…)

Each NPC comes with a brief description, personality traits (a bond, an ideal, and a flaw), and a stat block. When the giant attack begins, give one NPC to each player and tell the player where the NPC is at the start of the encounter, as noted in the encounter description.

The structural concept here is that each Special NPC who survives the giant attack will deliver a Special Quest. The DM is supposed to spell this out to the players, by reading the following boxed text aloud:

In addition to your character, each of you has received a special nonplayer character with ties to the location where the adventure begins. Take a moment to review your NPC’s personality traits and statistics. One of your goals in this part of the adventure is to keep your special NPC alive. For each of these NPCs that survives, your party will receive a special quest that yields a reward upon its successful completion. The details of these special quests won’t be revealed until the end of this part of the adventure.

These Special Quests are the scenario hooks that propel the PCs from Phase 2 into Phase 3 of the campaign. The point, obviously, is for the PCs to exit Phase 2 of the campaign with a fistful of scenario hooks pointing in a whole bunch of different directions. In Bryn Shander, for example, you can get hooks pointing to:

• Ironmaster
• Waterdeep (x2)
• Hundelstone
• Neverwinter
• deeper into Icewind Dale

Looking at this section of the campaign, I really like the Special NPC dossiers and the gimmick of taking on these additional roles during the giant attack can be quite effective in lending an epic scope to these events.

What I DON’T like is that “explicitly explain the structural conceit” thing. It pierces the veil in a way that makes the game world feel less like a real place by popping a yellow exclamation mark over the NPCs’ heads. It’s also a little awkward to hand the players brand new characters to play just as a major combat is breaking out, because the pace of events will get bogged down in the procedural aspects of passing out the dossiers, explaining what they’re doing, figuring out the stat blocks, etc.

RUNNING THE PROXIES

Instead of waiting for the giant attack, give the Special NPCs to the players as they’re approaching the city limits. For example:

You see Bryn Shander on a hill rising from the wind-swept tundra. The sun is lowering in the sky and the chill of the wind is taking on a vicious edge. Ahead you can see two 30-foot-tall cylindrical towers flanking the gate.

CUT TO: Six people living in Bryn Shander.

At this point, distribute the NPC dossiers to the players and give them a minute to look things over. Put a copy of the Bryn Shander map on the table for the players to reference. Then prompt each player to frame a simple scene:

• What is something Augrek does every day?
• Where is Sirac right now?
• Markham is in Rendaril’s Emporium. What is he looking for?
• Duvessa Shane is having an argument. Who is she arguing with?
• Beldora is following someone. Who?
• Sir Baric, give me a Perception check to see if you catch the pickpocket taking your purse.

Briefly play through these scenes. Then cut back to the PCs entering the town.

Your goal here is to very quickly make the town come to life and get the players invested in it. When the giants attack later, the players now have a reason to really care about the community AND they’re already oriented to the Special NPCs and their lives, so they can jump straight in.

BEFORE THE GIANT ATTACK

The PCs will now go about their business. (Shopping, finding lodging, following up on whatever scenario hooks brought them to this city in the first place.) As they’re doing this, reincorporate the NPCs whenever you can:

• The PCs meet Sirac when they look for someone to give them directions.
• Markham is, conveniently, who they’re looking for.
• Duvessa comes in while they’re talking to Markham. She wants to talk to him about the argument she just had.
• As they head to the general store for supplies, they run into Sir Baric who is just finishing that pickpocketing scene.
• At the store, they meet Beldora.

And so forth. Whatever feels right for your group, based on how those first scenes played out.

The PCs don’t need to coincidentally meet every Special NPC. (No reason to force it.) But if that happens naturally… great!

Then, suddenly, in the middle of one of these scenes: GIANTS ATTACK!

AFTER THE GIANT ATTACK

In addition to the NPC dossiers, you’ll also want to have prepped a short handout for each scenario hook they can offer to the PCs. After the giant attack is complete, hand these to the appropriate players and let them frame up the scenes where they give the hooks to the PCs.

(You can give these out over time instead of all at once if that feels more appropriate. The pacing here is more art than science.)

The text from Storm King’s Thunder can serve as a good base for these briefing sheets, but you may want to tweak them a bit. For example, Beldora’s reads:

Beldora urges the characters to head southwest and take Ten Trail through the mountains to the mining settlement of Hundelstone. She suggests they make contact with a gnome named Thwip Ironbottom, who lives there year-round. If one or more of the party members are Harpers, she tells them that Thwip serves as the organization’s eyes and ears in Hundelstone. Beldora uses her sending stone to inform Thwip that the characters are coming.

This is very scripted and will likely feel awkward to the player. Shift the phrasing to give the player more leeway in playing the scene:

Beldora is impressed by the actions of the party and would like to recruit them as Harpers. If they’re interested, she’ll direct them to make contact with Thwip Ironbottom in the mining settlement of Hundelstone (which lies to the southwest and can be reached by following the Ten Trail through the mountains).

It’s a small shift, but hopefully the effect is fairly clear.

EXTENDING THE GIMMICK

In the Storm King’s Remix, you’ll repeat this same structure three times. This is good: Each time you do it, the players will feel more comfortable with what they’re expected to do, and the results will grow stronger as a result. You might worry that it will become repetitive, but in practice this won’t happen because the NPCs are unique and the circumstances distinct. The result will play out very differently each time.

Having done so, you might think about how this gimmick could be extended. (Particularly if it seems to be well-received by the players.) There are several ways to do this:

• When the PCs return to one of the three cities, take the time to once again frame up day-in-the-life scenes with the Special NPCs.
• Even if the PCs don’t return to one of the cities, perhaps one or more of the Special NPCs could be encountered elsewhere. (Beldora, for example, might be reassigned by the Harpers.)
• If the players seem really attached to their Special NPCs, you might use some light bluebooking to allow them to stay connected to the characters and follow up on what’s happening with them. (You could also use this as a vector for establishing the scope of the crisis affecting Faerûn; you might even have these NPCs maintain some form of correspondence with the PCs, allowing them to be conduits for additional information or scenario hooks as the campaign continues.)

You might also consider keeping an eye out for opportunities to use a similar technique in other locations during the campaign. (You would, of course, have to write up the appropriate NPC dossiers.) For example, what if the players took on the roles of various giants in Maelstrom when visiting the storm giant court for the first time?

Go to Storm King’s Remix

In its most basic form, of course, the hexcrawl is a collection of hexes. Each hex contains some form of keyed content, and the PCs move from one hex to the next, encountering whatever each hex happens to contain.

Insofar as it goes, this basic functionality is just fine. Essential, really. It’s what makes the hexcrawl a fundamentally robust structure in which the players can never truly become stuck, because they can always just choose another hex to explore.

But if this basic functionality is the only thing a hexcrawl has to offer, then the hexcrawl becomes like a game of Memory with no matching tiles: You just select a tile at random, flip it up, and collect it. In order for a game of Memory to become interesting, there has to be a connection between the tiles (i.e., the pairs you’re trying to match). By learning these connections, the choice of tile in Memory becomes meaningful.

Similarly, for a hexcrawl to truly come to life at the gaming table, the players need to be able to learn meaningful information about the hexes and use that information to guide their exploration of the hexmap.

• “Those bandits told us their main camp was located in a cave three miles west of the waterfall. Let’s head there and shut them down for good.”
• “Do you want to go back and check out that weird tower with the bleeding walls we saw sticking out of the Sepulchral Holt?”
• “I don’t know where this map leads, but there must have been a reason that demon was carrying it.”

As the PCs gain information like this, they transcend random wandering and are able to set goals. Aimless curiosity is transformed into purposeful searching and true exploration is achieved.

There are a number of ways that the PCs can get this information. Rumors, for example, can either be freely distributed or gleaned from urban locations. Tracks can turn almost any random encounter into an information source. (“We can follow these goblin raiders back to their village.”)

But one of the most powerful technique is to connect your hexes: By exploring one hex, the PCs gain information that leads them to another hex. In this way, the random hexes of aimless curiosity are transmuted into purpose, and that purpose becomes self-perpetuating as each additional hex the PCs explore teaches them more and more about the area they’re exploring.

CLUES & LEADS

At a basic level, you’re including leads in your hex key that point to other hexes.

• The goblins are working for the necromancer, so if you raid their village you might maps or correspondence with the necromancer; or you might interrogate them or follow their tracks to the necromancer’s tower in the Sepulchral Holt.
• Conversely, if you go to the Sepulchral Holt you’ll find goblins from the village serving there (offering any number of opportunities for planting leads). Also, the necromancer is trying to help the goblins wipe out the bandits in the area (to eliminate the competition), so there’s a map indicating the location of the cave where they make their lair.

And so forth.

Since we’re talking about clues and leads, your thoughts might naturally lead you towards the Three Clue Rule:

For any conclusion you want the PCs to make, include at least three clues.

When it comes to hex connections, however, this is not strictly necessary. Remember that the hexcrawl structure itself provides a default method for discovering keyed content, so it’s okay if the clues for a location “fail.” So it’s fine if you only have two or one or even zero clues pointing to a location. (For the same reason that you don’t need three clues pointing to every room in a dungeon.)

Nevertheless, in keying your hexmap, you might want to keep a revelation list of your hexes to track how the various locations are being connected to each other. This may be particularly useful if you haven’t designed a hexcrawl before and want to make establishing hex connections a point of emphasis.

As a rule of thumb for your first hex key, for example, you might just make sure that every keyed location has at least one clue pointing to another location. That will likely result in some locations have lots of clues pointing to them and other locations not having any clues pointing to them, but it does make sure that the PCs are likely to quickly find specific information they can pursue if they’re currently without a specific goal.

TREASURE MAPS & RANDOM GENERATION

An interesting feature of the original 1974 edition of D&D is that its random treasure tables featured treasure maps. Lots of treasure maps. (25% of all “magic item” results, for example, would actually result in a map.)

This is a very interesting mechanic, because it systematizes the injection of hex connections (or to similar effect in a megadungeon). Rolling to generate a monster’s treasure would periodically prompt the DM to provide a clear-cut (and very tantalizing!) lead to another location.

(A similar system was that monster treasure was, by default, only found in the monster’s lair. So if you encountered a monster as a random encounter, you would need to track them back to their lair — which would likely have other encounters in it — in order to get your pay day.)

These systems were removed from the game, most likely because being randomly prompted to provide a full-blown treasure map to your players was daunting for many DMs, but I take a couple of lessons from this.

First, literal treasure maps are awesome. Include them in myriad forms. (Tattered parchment. Scrawled in charcoal on a ruined wall. A small blue orb that vibrates when you head in a particular direction.)

Second, some degree of randomization can be an excellent prompt to challenge ourselves and seek creative solutions that might otherwise have never occurred to us.

You can play around with this in all kinds of ways. For example, a fun exercise might be:

• Roll 1d6-2 for each keyed location to determine how many leads should be there pointing to other locations.
• For each lead, randomize the hex that the clue points to.

Trying to figure out how/why these connections exist will likely enrich your game world in fascinating ways.

(And if not, just ignore it. It’s a fun prompt, not the dice gestapo.)

VISIBLE LANDMARKS

As a final note, I’ll point out a form of hex connection that might not occur to you even though it’s in plain sight. Literally.

Landmarks which can be seen from a great distance — i.e., in another hex — are technically connected to all of those hexes from which they can be seen. (In a very literal, but nonetheless significant, way.)

Conversely, a high vantage point that allows you to spot is also a form of hex connection, allowing PCs to learn information that they can use to guide their navigation and exploration of the wilderness.

Back to 5E Hexcrawls

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 28C: Into the Banewarrens

Elestra, thinking quickly, fished a flask of oil out of her pack and threw it at the vermin-thing Tor was fighting. Agnarr stepped back, pivoted, and landed a blow with his flaming sword. The oil ignited and the vermin-thing was immolated by the wave of flames.

Tee stepped back and, drawing her own flask of oil, hurled it at the one Agnarr had just turned his back on. Agnarr whirled and a moment later there was nothing left of the creatures but two inky patches of burning grease.

The history of burning oil in D&D is something I find really interesting.

If you look back at the 1974 edition of D&D, there are two references to oil. First, you can buy a “flask of oil” for 2 gp. (Most obviously intended to fuel the lantern, which appears immediately above it in the equipment list.) Second, you can use it as part of the Flight/Pursuit mechanics:

“Burning oil will deter many monsters from continuing pursuit.”

Okay, but what should happen if someone — whether monster or PC — should end up in the burning oil? The rulebooks are silent on this issue, but it seems likely that many GMs followed the same train of logic I did when making a ruling on this:

• How much damage should it deal? Well, all attacks deal 1d6 damage in 1974 D&D, so almost certainly 1d6.
• How large of an area does one flask of oil cover? Most of the game defaults to 10 ft. increments, so a single 10-ft. square seems likely. (Enough to block a standard dungeon corridor.)
• How long does it burn for? Hmm. Probably more than just one round, right? 1974 D&D pretty reliably reaches for a six-sided die whenever it needs a randomizer, so let’s say it burns for 1d6 rounds.

This makes burning oil quite useful: It’s an area attack available to anyone willing to pony up the cash for it, and it’s incredibly useful for taking control of a battlefield or, as provided for in the rules, escaping from a fight that’s turned against you.

(Tangentially, in one of my D&D campaigns a PC invented a flash-burn oil specialized for combat: It cost 10 gp per flask and would deal 2d6 (take highest) damage, but only burn for 2d6 (take lowest) rounds. I gave it the name dragon’s milk. But I digress.)

The potential for abuse is, it should be noted, incredibly high if you (a) don’t enforce encumbrance and (b) don’t enforce any other consequences for hauling around huge quantities of highly flammable liquid. People will just throw oil all day with nary a care in the world.

It’s perhaps unsurprising to learn, given the efficacy and, frankly, importance of burning oil in D&D, that AD&D 1^st Edition spends much more time focusing on it. In fact, although the price of a flask of oil has dropped to just 1 gp, burning oil literally becomes a controlled substance on the Armor and Weapons Permitted table:

A number of protections against burning oil (like the resist fire spell) are also explicitly introduced.

And, of course, guidelines are given for many practical aspects of using burning oil:

• If you throw a burning flask of oil, it affects a 3’ diameter area, dealing 1d3 damage to everyone in the area (save vs. poison to negate). If you hurl a lantern, it only affects a 2’ diameter area.
• If it strikes someone directly, it deals 2d6 damage + 1d6 damage on the second round (and then burns out).
• Walking through or standing in an area of burning oil deals 1d6 damage per round and requires a saving throw to avoid being lit on fire.
• A lighted torch can be thrown to light an oil covered area (with guidelines for determining where it goes if you miss).

As with so many things in 1^st Edition, it’s an odd bag of contradictory details. (If you hit someone with oil, it burns out after 2 rounds. Should that rule also apply to “puddles” of oil that are lit? Is the 1d3 splash damage in addition to the 1d6 damage for standing in the burning pool? Or does a thrown flask of oil not create a pool and only creates splash?)

Regardless of the hazy parts here, it does generally appear that oil continues to be an effective method of performing an area attack. Nowhere near as powerful as a fireball, certainly, but far more accessible and flexible.

Let’s briefly detour over to the 1977 Basic Set. Here we find:

• 1 flask of oil can create a 5-foot-wide pool. It will burn for 10 rounds, dealing 2d8 damage per round.
• A creature struck directly with oil suffers 1d8 damage in the first round and 2d8 damage in the second round. (It’s then “assumed that the oil has run off, been wiped off, burned away, etc.) This is accompanied by a truly dizzying system for actually targeting the creatures. (You need to roll 11+, but then you adjust for Dexterity score, and also the height of the target.)
• You have to ignite oil AFTER throwing it. (You apparently can’t light it like a pipe bomb and then throw it.)
• Flaming oil will not harm non-corporeal monsters like wraiths and specters. It deals only half damage to skeletons, zombies, ghouls, wights, and mummies. Monsters that normally use fire weapons (e.g. red dragons, fire giants, hell hounds) are also immune.

We can see here that J. Eric Holmes did, in fact, follow a logic similar to my own (albeit with a smaller area affected and more damage afflicted). This version is more powerful than AD&D’s and would basically persist throughout the later version of Basic D&D (with the addition of a grenade-like, wick-fueled burning oil bomb to the equipment list).

LANTERN OIL DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT!

I don’t care.

Why are lanterns in D&D fueled with such an insanely flammable liquid? I don’t know. Maybe it’s harvested by alchemists from the glands of fire lizards and is absurdly cheap compared to other options, and house fires are a huge problem in this world. Or maybe the characters are carrying a bunch of different types of oil, and we just doesn’t worry about trying to figure out exactly which one is which.

The point is that D&D-style burning oil creates interesting gameplay and has strategic interest.

Although I will note that AD&D 2^nd Edition did make a point of distinguishing between “Greek fire” (10 gp per flask) and “lamp oil” (6 cp per flask; can’t be used offensively, but can sustain existing blazes).

THE BIG SHIFT

The big shift for burning oil in D&D starts with 3^rd Edition, which divided the weapon into alchemist’s fire (1d6 damage per round for two rounds, can’t be used as an area attack) and oil (5 ft. area, 1d3 damage, burns for two rounds; if thrown, only has 50% chance of igniting properly).

You can see how these rules were derived from AD&D, but the efficacy of oil as an area attack has been crippled.

4^th Edition’s treatment of oil is actually hilarious. On page 210 it says:

Here’s an overview of the contents of this chapter:

(…)

Adventuring Gear: The tools of the adventuring trade. Look in this section for everburning torches, flasks of oil, backpacks, and spellbooks.

Emphasis added. But guess what isn’t in the Adventuring Gear section of the Player’s Handbook? Guess what isn’t in the book anywhere at all?

Ah, 4th Edition. Never change.

D&D 4^th Edition Essentials did manage to remember to give a price for lantern oil, but I’m fairly certain there are still no rules for using burning oil as a weapon.

Burning oil makes a comeback in 5^th Edition, but remains quite weak:

• You have to light oil as a separate action or attack.
• It can cover a 5 ft. area, burning for two rounds.
• It deals 5 fire damage.

So… why was burning oil suddenly nerfed to, in some cases, no longer being a part of the game at all?

Partly I think it’s because of the expectation that encumbrance won’t be enforced, allowing PCs to haul around dozens of flasks of oil that can be deployed ceaselessly. Mostly, I think it’s fear of a mundane item “poaching” what spellcasters can do.

The irony is that you can look at a whole plethora of perpetual D&D design discussions:

• Non-spellcasters not being able to compete with the area attacks of spellcasters.
• PCs not being able to reliably retreat from battle, so players always fight to the death.
• A lack of dynamic control over the battlefield, resulting in boring combat.

… and burning oil is just sitting there waiting for somebody to notice it.

Honestly, I’ve had great results from just using my rulings from 1974 D&D:

• 10 ft. area.
• 1d6 damage per round.
• Burns for 1d6 rounds.

I recommend adding that and dragon’s milk to your 3^rd Edition and 5^th Edition campaigns.

Campaign Journal: Session 29A – Running the Campaign: Clever Combat
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index