30 Day OD&D Challenge - Owlbears and Other Oddities -(Part Five) Day Eighteen

Today's Topic is "Owlbears and Other Oddities, Part Five" as we continue our celebration of International Original Dungeons and Dragons Month!

Today we are talking about Druids and Ogre Magi. Please note that this is Druids presented as a monster rather than a PC. Greyhawk presents them this way:

DRUIDS: These men are priests of a neutral-type religion, and as such they differ in armor class and hit dice, as well as in movement capability, and are combination clerics/magic-users. Magic-use ranges from 5th through 7th level, while clericism ranges from 7th through 9th level. Druids may change shape three times per day, once each to any reptile, bird and animal respectively, from size as small as a raven to as large as a
small bear. They will generally (70%) be accompanied by numbers of barbaric followers (fighters), with a few higher-level leaders (2-5 fighters of 2nd-5th levels) and a body of normal men (20-50).

First off, they operate as a 5th to 7th Level Magic-User and as a 7th to 9th Level Cleric with Spells for those Levels. In a later Supplement Druids are introduced with a write up for PCs. We went back and made them consistent with each other, I will return to that point at a later date. Right now I want to focus on what encountering them is like. First they are well equipped with spells from both sides of the aisle which is pretty powerful in and of itself. On top of this 70% of the time they will numbers of barbaric followers (fighters) with the actual numbers left open to the referee, a few high level fighters as leaders(2-5, 2nd to 5th level and 20-50 normal men. And on top of that 1-4 Druids are encountered. So you could encounter one lone Druid or four Druids backed by an army. Now that is a variable encounter. The change I made here was to change that 70% to a 90%. And on the 10% without followers, there would be four Druids present.

OGRE MAGI: These are properly Japanese Ogres, far more powerful than their Western cousins! An Ogre Mage has the following abilities in addition to those of a normal ogre: 1) become invisible; 2) fly, as a Flying spell allows; 3) cause darkness in a 1" radius; 4) polymorph itself into a human form; 5) regenerate at 1 point/melee round; 6) employ a single Charm Person and a single Sleep spell once per day; and 7) use a Cold spell of 8 dice value once per day. These abominations typically lure or raid for human victims to pillage, devour, or enslave.

These are based on the Oni which is a kind of ogre or troll in Japanese folklore. At the time, I did not know that(having not yet read an Japanese folklore), so seeing no reason for the term Japanese Ogres, I rewrote this as an human, ogre and troll hybird created by a long ago wizard and went from there with it. They are a powerful foe with 1-6 appearing at a time. One is bad news, especially if it ambushes you, six is serious. They regenerate quickly, they can polymorph into human form and infiltrate the party striking during a watch in the night or just distract the party while they get hit from behind. There are many, many options when using these guys. One of the options we used was to make them leader types for groups of ogres and/or groups of trolls allied with an orc tribe.

Also of course, sleep spells are deadly against lower level parties, fly and invisible allows for a fast approach to range of the 8d6 cold spell followed by quickly closing to melee or casting of the charm spell or something else.

Tomorrow we will look at Tritons and Lizard Men, these get a fair amount of tweaking.