If you’re a DM, it’s likely that you’ve had a few encounters with difficult monsters who have the ability to ruin the entire party without much effort.
If they’re not immune to damage or can’t be outrun, your best bet is usually to apply some clever tactics and try to take them down quickly. But what if defeating these beasts isn’t an option?
Let me know, can you equip a creature with shroud?
In cases like these, shrouding is usually your best bet for neutralizing said opponent. So, what is shrouding? It’s the process of equipping a creature with a magical item that impairs its combat effectiveness.
Your party can then choose to either fight the creature normally, or attempt to bypass it altogether.
The latter course of action usually involves some kind of skill challenge or puzzle (which I’ll go into more detail on) that lets your party avoid the deadly monster completely.
This article introduces you to some new feats, class abilities, and magic items that can help you design an encounter where your players must solve a problem instead of simply defeating every enemy in their path.
Here are some points discussed about Equipping a creature with a shroud-
1. What can shroud a creature?
As I’ve mentioned before, the most common result of shrouding is that the creature’s weapons are rendered useless.
But aside from weapons, there are other methods for rendering a creature ineffective.
A well-designed shroud protects your party by hampering an attacking monster’s dexterity, wisdom, or constitution scores. This may result in an inability to damage the creature at all!
For example, you could build a shroud that reduces AC by 5 points or hinders movement speed to 10 feet.
Using this method allows your players to avoid combat with monsters that have magical defenses instead of just being destroyed because they’re too powerful for them to defeat.
2. What is a shroud’s weakness?
Shrouds can be rather powerful, if you’re not careful, your players may just go through the entire module without ever encountering any monsters.
If this happens, they’ll probably be pretty bummed out when they find out that there’s nothing for them to do.
3. How can I sneak these in?
As a DM trying to add a shroud to an existing adventure, it may seem difficult to figure out how you can add OGL content without interfering with your player’s experiences.
My advice is to start with the monsters that might be in the module.
Be sure to mention that magic or artifacts can shroud creatures in the backstory section. Make sure you explain what magic items in your setting can shroud creatures in terms of abilities and restrictions they may have when in their shroud.
Also, when mentioning the powers of any magic item, you should mention its restrictions when it’s on a creature. For example, if it’s an artifact, you might say “the Artifact Gauntlets of Fire will shroud any creature striking its wielder with fire damage.”
If you want to shroud one or more monsters, then I recommend giving them some new rules (like shrouding functions like armor does).
4. What shrouds can I use?
Not all shrouds are created equally. If you’re careful, then you can use magic items that don’t feature real benefits that your players would recognize (like increased damage or an ability that lets them escape danger).
For example, magic items like the Ring of Fire Resistance provide a +3 bonus to AC for saving throws involving fire (such as fireball). It’s not terribly useful, but it’s enticing enough to make it worth equipping.
The ring also provides penalties to other saves types (such as acid and electricity) and gives limited protection against the “death” keyword (it reduces necrotic and poison damage by half).
5. Escaping
I’ve already discussed how shrouds can be used to prevent your party from being attacked by powerful monsters.
But if your party still needs to fight them, then there needs to be a way for the players to defeat the monster (or overcome its shroud).
Player’s can attempt to remove or disable the item that shrouds the monster, but only if it’s not cursed (avoid this by adding a free dispel magic spell effect on it).
If they fail at removing the shroud, they may attempt to defeat it using special actions like sunder or disarm.
Just make sure you provide them with an opportunity to use these actions before you force them into combat.
6. What should I do if I have to kill the monster?
Shrouds are designed to make combat against difficult monsters impossible. If your players want to fight a monster, there should always be something they can do other than simply attempting to destroy it.
