Monster of the Week #2

D&D

Another D&D monster this week... One that caught me off guard and was irresistible to add to my game over the weekend.

The Abyssal Chicken 

This week's monster is something that was found completely by accident..... An Abyssal Chicken. While they are far from super dangerous, I couldn't help but squeeze them into a game.

My group had a lot of fun stumbling into a dark, alien chasm. Wandering through the zone, they fell down a funnel that was used as chickens' home. Suddenly surrounded by fleshy chickens, the party fleed from the army of skin-eating chickens and got lost somewhere deeper in the area.

Not boasting a challenging stat block, the chickens offered an entertaining encounter for me to run, and to help use them as a narrative tool for the game - especially emphasizing the body-horror elements of this branch of the story. 

In masses though, these little guys can be a pain for your players - so utilize their numbers wisely if you don't want your players to get chomped to death.

Once my players gained their confidence, they came back to fry these little guys with fireball which blasted a significant portion of them apart. It was a roasted mess in there and the players survived another game.

The chicken has a couple of unique abilities like the Bad Flier attribute - meaning "The abyssal chicken falls at the end of a turn if it's airborne and the only thing holding it aloft is its flying speed." They also have blindsight for 30 ft (and are blind after that) so they can navigate through your players creative attempts to cast darkness.

Between these abilities, it also has a multiattack (x2) and a few resistances and immunities in an attempt tohelp them not die too quickly. Not that the resistances change much considering it has 10 HP.

The Abyssal Chicken can normally be found in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus - but I'll be introducing these (or at least a variant of these) in some other fun wee games. They are great wee creatures to create a spooky vibe if your going for some small, creepy, squishy combatants.