Ecology of the Banderhobb
and
Creating the Banderhobb
It's been a year and a half since the gorgeous Howard Lyon illustration of the banderhobb first appeared on the back cover of Monster Manual 3. There are a lot of things I'm proud of in my D&D writing career, and the banderhobb is certainly one of my fondest. I'm convinced that the biggest reason for its success as a popular new creature is the Mike Mearls/Howard Lyon combo. If Mike had kept the book under tight control and dictated every detail of the content, the monster would never have appeared. Mike is a very strong leader. He gave me the freedom to create and trusted that I'd give him something cool. Given that opportunity, I strove to hand him the very best material I could. He had me write the art orders too, so I opened wide the floodgates and let the terrors in. Through some strange alchemy of luck and divine goodwill, Howard Lyon was assigned to it, and Howard just "got" it. I tried to give the monster the most evocative design I could, but Howard is really the one who sold it. Now I need to get him to sell me a print for my wall (and one of the nymphs and of the wandering tower, too!). I love every illustration he does of my work.When I was submitting article pitches for Dragon Magazine around 2001, I had a small list of objectives:
- I wanted to do a Halloween issue
- I wanted to do an April Fools issue
- I wanted to publish some monsters
- More than anything, I wanted to see an illustration of something I'd created
Monster Manual 3 fulfilled half my goals in one fell swoop. I got to do a handful of awesome monsters paired with gorgeous illustrations. The catoblepas picture is another one that rocks my world.
Last year I got to check another goal off my list when my Ecology of the Scarecrow was printed in Dungeon. This year, I get to dance on that ground again with the banderhobb piece. If you haven't checked out Ecology of the Scarecrow, please give it a read this Halloween. I don't think you'll be disappointed.So what's my wish list now?
- I want to see the art order I wrote for Oublivae, Demon Queen of Desolation, realized.
- Miniatures. It's just not fair that I started freelancing for D&D just as the miniatures line stopped.
Speaking as a guy who owns at least one of every D&D Miniatures sculpt from Harbinger to Legendary Evils, you can imagine how tragic that was for me.
2 comments:
This is excellent timing Steve!
I've had a long-running background story going on where children from villages keep being spirited away at night. Nothing but small, crudely made dolls with daisies for eyes are left behind and at night the eyes turn human, shedding tears and staring blindly about.
My PCs are only just now coming across a reason that is central to the plot where they need to pass from the mortal world into the Gloaming (Feywild). Perhaps they will run across a banderhob or two who are in the employ of whatever my child-snatcher ends up being!
Any recommendations for an encounter group featuring banderhobs?
First of all, the dolls/eyes/tears stuff is awesome. Creepy awesome. I absolutely love it.
Off the top of my head, I'd say pair them up with goblins and boggles. Claudio Pozas and I discussed fey goblins several times during Heroes of the Feywild, and I think both of us mentioned them in a few different places in the book. We were thinking of movies like Labyrinth and Legend and the art of Brian Froud. I've linked banderhobbs, goblins, and boggles together in D&D, and boggles are definitely Feywild, so I think they make a good choice. You might have to do some leveling up or down.
If you use the banderhobbs from the ecology article and you want to make them nastier, replace the "aftereffect" in bone-crushing claw with:
First Failed Saving Throw: The target takes a -2 penalty to attacks (save ends all).
Second Failed Saving Throw: The target is slowed until it receives healing or takes a standard action to remove this condition.
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