Tuesday 28 November 2017

5e Fallout: Intimidating Insects and Calamitous Cazadores!

Hot on the heels of last fortnight's addition of Mirelurks, the Gatorclaw, and miscellaneous updates, the Fifth Edition Fallout bestiary gets a massive new update today! On top of that, there are some other changes which I'll go over below.

If you missed the last update, perhaps the most exciting thing was the addition of a new character sheet In addition to that, this time round I made some changes to the Races section and I created a new Fifth Edition Fallout character sheet!

Vault Dweller Personal Record
Vault Dweller Personal Record


The updated version of the Fifth Edition Fallout sourcebook, along with the character sheet and additional resources are now available to download from the the Fifth Edition Fallout sourcebook. You can Fifth Edition Fallout hub.

New Monstrous Additions to Fifth Edition Fallout

After releasing the Fifth Edition Fallout sourcebook I've been polling the twitter community to decide which creatures would be added to its bestiary next. After the first poll, Feral Ghouls, Raider Bosses, and Ghost People joined the Raiders, Robots, and a handful on animals already included. The next update included Super Mutants, Nightkin, Centaurs, and Tunnelers. Last time, Mirelurks and the Gatorclaw were added to the game.

The most recent poll indicated people wanted to see Bugs join the Fifth Edition Fallout ranks! This was an expected result, as the insects have been doing well in the polls since they started and a few have been vocal in their wish for Cazadores! Well this update delivers, providing a whopping 62 new statblocks.

Bugs

  • Ants, Large
    • Small Forager Ant (CR 0)
    • Small Soldier Ant (CR 1/8)
    • Small Glowing Ant (CR 1/4)
    • Forager Ant (CR 1/4)
    • Soldier Ant (CR 1/2)
    • Glowing Ant (CR 1)
    • Overgrown Forager Ant (CR 2)
    • Overgrown Soldier Ant (CR 3)
    • Overgrown Glowing Ant (CR 5)
  • Ants, Giant
    • Giant Ant (CR 1/4)
    • Giant Ant Soldier (CR 1/2)
    • Giant Ant Warrior (CR 1/4)
    • Sidebar: Giant Ant Variants, including Fire Ants
    • Giant Ant Queen (CR 8, legendary)
    • Sidebar: Hive Mind
    • Glowing Ant (CR 1)
  • Ants, Swarms
    • Swarm of Forager Ants (CR 1)
    • Swarm of Soldier Ants (CR 3)
    • Swarm of Glowing Ants (CR 5)
  • Bloatflies
    • Bloatfly (CR 1/8)
    • Black Bloatfly (CR 1/2)
    • Festering Bloatfly (CR 1)
    • Glowing Bloatfly (CR 3)
  • Bloodbugs
    • Bloodbug (CR 1)
    • Red Widow Bloodbug (CR 3)
    • Infected Bloodbug (CR 4)
    • Glowing Bloodbug (CR 6)
    • Vampiric Bloodbug (CR 7)
  • Bloodworms
    • Bloodworm Larva (CR 1/8)
    • Venomous Bloodworm Larva (CR 1)
    • Glowing Bloodworm Larva (CR 2)
    • Bloodworm (CR 2)
    • Venomous Bloodworm (CR 5)
    • Glowing Bloodworm (CR 6)
    • Bloodworm Queen (CR 9)
  • Cave Crickets
    • Cave Cricket (CR 1/2)
    • Cave Cricket Hunter (CR 2)
    • Cave Cricket Piercer (CR 4)
    • Glowing Cave Cricket (CR 5)
  • Mantises, Giant
    • Giant Mantis Nymph (CR 1/8)
    • Giant Mantis (CR 3)
    • Giant Mantis Female (CR 5)
  • Radroaches
    • Radroach (CR 1/8)
    • Glowing Radroach (CR 1/2)
    • Midwestern Radroach (CR 2)
    • Midwestern Giant Radroach (CR 4)
  • Radscorpions
    • Bark Scorpion (CR 1/2)
    • Bark Scorpion Hunter (CR 2)
    • Radscorpion (CR 4)
    • Radscorpion Hunter (CR 6)
    • Glowing Radscorpion (CR 7)
    • Radscorpion Stalker (CR 8)
    • Radscorpion Predator (CR 11)
    • Deathskull Radscorpion (CR 12)
    • Radscorpion Queen (CR 17, legendary)
  • Stingwings
    • Stingwing (CR 1/2)
    • Stingwing Darter (CR 2)
    • Stingwing Skimmer (CR 4)
    • Glowing Stingwing (CR 5)
    • Stingwing Chaser (CR 6)

    Cazadores

    • Young Cazador (CR 3)
    • Cazador (CR 6)
    • Giant Cazador (CR 9)
    • Specimen 73 (CR 16, legendary)


Other Updates

  • New Look, new Layout!
    • The PDF has a new look, with a lighter background.
    • It also includes some superb fanart by the following artists (check them out!): rustysteel, maXKennedy, and JefWu. The PDF looks absolutely gorgeous witrh their art included. I've reached out to additional fan artists, and I'm hoping future versions will be even more colourful. If you happen to create Fallout fan art or know anyone who does and who might be willing to allow credited use of their work, I'd love to hear from you.
    • The Terrors of the Wastes section has been better organised: the section is more clearly divided into creature categories, with each type of creature within a category getting their own heading (which also means better bookmarking in the PDF). Advice on how the section is organised and should be navigated has been added.
  • The Races section has been renamed "Species" which is more appropriate for the genre.
  • The Backgrounds section has been moved between the Species and Class sections.
  • Typo fixes throughout text, corrections to Weapons tables, and a handful of minor monster statblock corrections.
  • New GM advice section, containing important considerations for a //Fallout// game that don't count as new rules.
  • Sidebar added to the Super Mutant Suicider regarding when and how to use it in the game.
  • The Deathclaw and Alpha Deathclaw have both had some statblock adjustments to correect an error in CR calculation (the CR of each remains unchanged).
  • A smattering of minor typographical corrections elsewhere in the text.


Next for Fifth Edition Fallout

Fifth Edition Fallout Wiki

Those of you who follow Spilled Ale Studios on twitter may already know that I'm working on getting a wiki version up and running. This project is going well, but there's a lot of monster statblocks still to port over. This is going to take quite a lot of time, and the wiki would be live much quicker with help. If anyone is willing to volunteer a little bit of their time to help move the statblocks over to the wiki, please reach out!

Vault Dweller Personal Record
Fifth Edition Fallout Wiki Preview

Creature Knowledge DCs

As I've been adding creatures to the wiki, I've been figuring out what a character might know about a creature when they encounter it, and what I think are appropriate DCs for that knowledge. I've always felt it was a shame this sort of information wasn't provided in the 5e Monster Manual.

When a new creature is encountered in-game but one or more of the characters might conceivably have either encountered that type of creature before or heard stories about them from other travelers, it's inevitable that players will want to know what if anything their characters have already learned. Set DCs for monster knowledge checks are a helpful tool when this happens. They can also help settle what is player knowledge versus character knowledge if you're concerned that a player is metagaming too much: "your character might have heard stories about that vulnerability—roll and see!"

The reason I'm adding this information to the work-in-progress wiki first is simply that it's a natural fit to think about the knowledge checks as I go through the motions of porting each type of creature in order. I don't want to add this new subsystem to the PDF until its complete; when all creatures in the game have Knowledge DCs, they'll be added to the PDF en masse.

Fall Britannia

Another project I'm slowly working on is a primer for Fifth Edition Fallout gaming in the wastelands of the United Kingdom. This is obviously completely non-canon, and my personal take. Among other things it will include a bit of history, some of the geography (focusing particularly on London - write what you know after all), new pre-War corporations, and of course new wasteland creatures and robots. Even if you're not interested in running a game in this setting, it will be a case study in the sorts of things a GM might wish to consider when homebrewing a new area not explored in the video games.

Content from this will end up on the wiki too (clearly marked non-canon).

I'm not sure when this one will be ready, but definitely don't expect it until next year.

What creatures are next?

If you want to have your say about what gets added to the game next, check out the twitter poll:



Your Thoughts

As usual I'd love to hear your thoughts about any aspect of Fifth Edition Fallout. Please also reach out if you catch any errors so I can fix it asap!

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