Homebrew Creations: The Bonemire

I run a Sunday D&D group known as A'arden Histories. This group plays in my homebrew world of A'arde, set in the year 1478 (the Monday group plays in the year 1488). This group was set up so that players could explore new ideas and homebrews without concern about "messing up" the story, and could learn or play new things at the same time. It became the perfect place, then, to test out one of my first ever homebrew monsters. And oddly enough, the need for a homebrew monster came out of the need for something interesting and unique for the storyline.

After bereavement, one of my players took some time off to work things through. I promised them that I would keep their space open, and that when they came back, I would do something special for them. That something special was to write them their very own "solo" story, where the other players instead took control of NPCs I provided, and their PC got to go on their own adventure. This explained their PCs absence during the main storyline, but also gave them something to look forward to when they returned.

After creating the storyline, I realised that I needed something very special to act as the final baddie in this. A typical monster just wasn't going to cut it, and I simply couldn't find anything that really fit the vision I had in my mind in the Monster Manual. I spent quite a while thinking about what I wanted to do about this, and in the end, I started playing with crossing monsters with each other!

I've done this kind of thing before, but mostly with switching out damage types and resistances depending on the situation and location. I'd not attempted to literally "mash" two monsters together before. But, without coming up with a wholly new concept, which I didn't have time for, or scouring the internet for the perfect creature, which again I didn't have time for, it made sense to go for a "Monster Mash".

Originally, I had the idea in my head that I wanted something that was part ooze, part undead. I had this vision of a creature that was made up of a skeleton, but was predominantly a viscous substance that could "melt" matter in large amounts. I also knew, because it would have a skeleton, that it would not be able to melt bone. At the time, I wasn't really sure where I had gotten the inspiration for this idea; it was only later that I was re-introduced to the Ooze/Slime from World of Warcraft, though the similarities ended at the fact that they were both ooze-like and featured bones.

In the end, I settled for the aesthetic of a clear ooze enveloping a canid-like torso structure with elongated, clawed hands and thumbs placed more like dewclaws. After this, I began looking into potential stats.

The Bonemire was first encountered in the world of A'arde during Firewane of Y6A 1478...

It was obvious that nothing under the Ooze section of the Monster Manual would cut it, so I first began looking at Undead stats, but nothing suitable seemed to come to mind. I was quite frustrated, and was about to scrap the idea when I suddenly thought of a creature that I had been writing about in my novels. A Bone Devil.

Now, the Bone Devils in my novel are a little different from the ones in the Monster Manual, in that Bone Devil is more of a species of Devil than a creature unto itself, but that wasn't important in the moment. I quickly flicked to the Bone Devil page and I knew I had my base stats!

I used D&DBeyond to help build the creature, as I wanted to be able to import the rolls I made into the VTT quickly, and started with the Bone Devil. I switched up its HP, gave it a swim speed and adjusted the Damage and Condition resistances and immunities. I also changed out some of the languages, renamed the Devil's Sight feature (the Bonemire isn't a Devil, or Fiend at all, it's an Aberration), gave it Spider Climb and switched out the Sting attack to a Pseudopod, more in line with the Ooze. However, it still didn't seem quite nasty enough...

I went back to my Monster Manual and flicked through for some ideas. I took a look at other Aberrations, as well as legendary creatures, in order to gather some ideas. The first thing I ended up doing was to give it Water Camouflage, benefitting the environment that it would be located within. I didn't want it to be immediately obvious where the creature was when they encountered it in order to give the mission a vaguely horror or thriller feel, so this felt like a good addition. I also created a new Feat, Dangerous Grappler, to reflect the fact that the Bonemire's ooze is magically acidic. That thought led me to contemplate acid dragons.

I gave the Bonemire a breath attack; Acidic Lance.

I felt mean.

But it felt right!

Looking over the creature, I felt that it did not have enough of the "aberrant" tone to it. I loved what I had made, but it still didn't feel enough. The Bonemire was supposed to be something that could haunt you in physical silence, hence its invisibility in water, and could play with your mind because of that. I knew there was only one thing for it. I gave it access to a spell, Dissonant Whispers, and I made that spell "At Will". I also gave it a Death Scream, the ability to cast that spell upon death. Finally, I added some "real life physics" in the form of the Cold Repellant reaction. When something is chilled or heated too quickly, it can cause the object to crack or explode. This is called Thermal Shock. So, when the Bonemire is chilled with Cold damage, it explodes shards of its frozen ooze outward as a reaction!

After creating this suitably mean creature, I set it on my players!

There was a lot of "Oh my God!" and "Nope, nope, nope!", as well as the occasional "Oh f*ck" and "Well sh*t", so I think it went down well!

They succeeded in taking out the creature, even though I didn't hold back, so I don't think it was too overpowered, but they did take some big hits. They told me they enjoyed it, and they thought it was a cool monster, so I felt pretty proud of my first attempt! It has ultimately only encouraged me to continue creating new monsters. I almost feel bad for my players...

So far, I have also created the Solifuge and the Echo Wraith. I'm currently working on something new, a "Boss Monster" that doesn't have a name yet, but is hopefully going to be quite a challenge for my Monday group!