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5e

Monster of the Month - Mephits

Kayla Bayens

• 5 min read

It comes time for my favorite post of the month, our dear monster that will receive the TLC it needs to be revitalized and brought back to our games without the resounding sound of groaning players. This month we are tackling a monster that I recently almost TPKed my PCs with totally unintentionally. They come in many different flavors, and by flavors I mean elemental types, and are so much fun to make go into a death burst they are your friend and mine the good old Mephit.

Our delightful Mephits are fun little impish creatures from the Elemental Planes and each one represents a combination of two elements. Now to gear us up for the part you are really here for the elements used for our standard type buddies are: Earth, Water, Air and all was well before the Fire Nation attacked! ...wait wrong fandom. But yeah those are the elements used. These little guys travel in packs and tend to gather in large numbers on the Elemental Planes and in the Elemental Chaos.

Moderately slight detour - the Elemental Planes are the Inner Planes surrounding and wrapping up the Material Plane in all its raw elemental substance goodness that is used to make up the worlds in the Material Plane. All the Elemental Planes touch and are connected via border regions which can at times be planes in their own right. The Elemental Planes are in a ring around the Material Plane but are suspended in a funky gyrating can't stop this moving realm known as the Elemental Chaos. This downright turmoil filled place is where the pure forms of the elements melt, meld and mix together in a never ending fun cake mixer of smashing energies and smushing substances where ancient tales from days long gone talk of hybrid elementals living.

Okay back from that fun fact detour to our house keeping part of this episode. Lets talk already existing Mephits which will happen in a list here in a second. First I want to acknowledge that they all have a variant called the Summoner Variant which we will talk a bit about after we chat out our little elemental buds. So don't be all getting in a fit saying there are twice as many Mephits as I'm listing.

The basic version of the Mephit are all pretty dang similar, which makes sense if they are different elemental manifestations of the same type of being. They all explode on death to do some extra damage and debuffs on the players, they all have a once a day spell they can cast, they can claw you and they have a breath weapon that recharges on a dice roll. The choice on what type of damage they are immune to can be a little interesting but tend to make somewhat sense with the types of elements used to make them. An example would be the Dust Mephit only being immune to Poison, which makes sense on a certain level but I would have liked to see maybe slashing as well since its essentially a dust cloud. Damage Vulnerabilities will take paying attention too as you hit the same problem you do with immunities - again our example being the Dust Mephit it is vulnerable to Fire. I would have thought water and making it heavy and stick together would do more then heating up already crumbly earth particles but that's just me. Most of the ACs fall on 11 with a few 12s in our Smoke and Dust monsters and one at 10 in our Steam bud. HP falls in a tight range too with it being 5d6/5d6 + 5 and 6d6/6d6 + 5. I know a bit more technically crunchy then I normally do but the things I point out we will playing with later on.

Now for our Summoner Variants that I mentioned earlier, which essentially double the number of Mephits available in our WotC products. These little guys can be scary as the ability of chance (25%) to summon 1d4 worth of the same kind of Mephit can quickly overrun the party if you have more then one of these variants facing off with them. A small weak looking group of 3 Steam Mephits on a good roll could suddenly become a max of 15 Steam Mephits to flash cook your brains. This diabolical and very dearly loved by me variant will also see some tweaking to up their deadly anty once we get into fun new ways to do the Mephit.

Which is now, now is when we are going to do that part of the blog post. So you know no more waiting! Now there are 4 elements and Elemental Planes that are cannon in the game, plus their bordering areas, the area they all meld together in closest to the Material Plane, and the mass swirling all togetherness that is the Elemental Chaos. If we take advantage of this in theory there are some fun mashups we can do. There are also some fun additional abilities added with the Summoner Variant, which we can twist up a bit BUT we can also pull in some similar abilities that would make them just as terrifying. Let's get to playing.

Twinning Mephits

What's worse then a Mephit that can summon more Mephits? A Mephit that can make a Simulacrum of itself and both summon Mephits. Giving the Summoner Variant the ability to cast Simulacrum once a day on a roll of 3 on a d6 before summoning more buddies is terrifying. If the Mephit doesn't manage to use Simulacrum before it summons then it automatically triggers after, adding an additional foe to the mix.

Master of Magic

A master of magic Mephit (say that 10 times fast) gets +2 spells of the damage type associated with the type of Mephit it is. So an Ice Mephit gets 2 more spells that can deal cold damage, a Fire Mephit gets 2 more that deal fire damage, etc. This variant also gets 5 spell slots to use between new spells, with a 25% of regaining a single spell slot once pre-day once all are used.

Multi-Mephit

A large mephit with high HP and lower then normal AC that when hit by slashing or bludgeoning OR with magical damage of its type it splits into two. This ability works similar to that of the Black Pudding when activated by slashing or bludgeoning damage. When it is done through a magical attack though the split still happens but both Mephits are the same size and have the same amount of HP rather then being divided.

Chimera Mephit

Now I'm not saying Chimera like the D&D monster but rather the genetic term. Think of it like a two face Mephit of sorts. It is a creature who is split down the middle to be made of two different types of Mephits. It is a product of corruption cause by the Elemental Chaos and retains the characteristics of both of its original types. This creature is also alot harder to kill and has the unpleasant habit of exploding due to its unstable nature.

Chaos Mephits

Extremely corrupted and unstable due to its life in the Elemental Chaos these Mephits are in a constant shift between the elements that make it up. At the top of each round a die roll determines the type of Mephit it is considered for that round. For added shenanigans add in the types above as well.

Well I hope I have thoroughly terrified you as you giggle about the possibilities of inflicting these upon your players. Please balance encounters responsibly DMs, and as always keep an eye out on the DMs Guild for a booklet with stats and art all about our new buddies.

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.