Monster Monday: Squamatans

RPG monsters

Squamatans are humanoid lizard-folk who have developed a highly advanced culture.

Squamatans

If you stumble across a squamatan in the wild, you'll probably be struck by two things:

Every squamatan wears a sturdy, beautiful loincloth made with colors and marks that communicate the squamatan's roles in society. They remove the loincloth to swim but otherwise have a strong nudity taboo in public, and keep their loincloths scrupulously clean and well-repaired.

Squamatans also carry a staff (sometimes a spear or trident), which they craft for themselves as part of their coming-of-age ritual and augment as they grow older. A squamatan's staff is never out of arm's reach, and according to their tradition the staff contains a portion of their soul. It develops magical properties and abilities as the squamatan grows and experiences more of the world.

Let's use the CR 2 sea hag as the basis for this creature, since it can breathe water and has a swim speed. I'll swap out the horrific appearance, death glare, and illusory appearance abilities for a new staff attack that can have a bunch of different potential effects.

I want to list a variety of different effects for the staff, including different damage types and magical effects.

Looking at the CR 2 silver dragon wyrmling, it deals 9 damage with its claws or 18 damage with its breath weapon (which it can only use a third of the time). Other CR 2 creatures are generally dealing around 10 damage plus an effect, so that's what we'll target.

So, let’s imagine a few possible effects: 3 different damage types (lightning, fire, and cold), and three different conditions: restrained, poisoned, and blinded. Boom! Done.

Let’s stat it up!

Squamatan

Medium humanoid, neutral

  • Armor Class 14
  • Hit Points 50 (7d8 + 19)
  • Speed 30 ft., swim 40 ft.
    STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
    16 (+3) 13 (+1) 16 (+3) 12 (+1) 12 (+1) 13 (+1)
  • Senses Darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 11
  • Languages Aquan, Common
  • Challenge 2 (450 XP)

    Amphibious. The squamatan can breathe air and water.

Actions

Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (2d6 + 3) slashing damage.

Staff. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: Choose below when creating the creature.

  1. 1d6+2 slashing plus 1d10 lightning damage
  2. 1d6+1 slashing plus 2d6 fire damage
  3. 1d6 piercing plus 2d8 cold damage
  4. 1d6+2 bludgeoning damage and restrained
  5. 1d6+2 piercing damage and the target is poisoned (1d10 damage per round; DC 11 Constitution save each round to end)
  6. 1d6+2 bludgeoning damage and blinded (DC 11 Constitution save each round to end)

Image found online without attribution, and sadly even a reverse image search couldn't find its source.

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