Media References of 39: Omens

Worms and Dragons all the way down…

• (0:07:00) Travis: True colors, shining through! (“True Colors” by Cyndi Lauper)
• (0:19:55) Travis: Shamu knows you! (Sea World)
• (0:21:10) Liam: Parkour!
• (0:31:30) Taliesin: …the hentai, make it go away!
• (0:33:26) Laura: Just mostly dead.  Liam: Mostly dead. (The Princess Bride)
• (0:38:50) Taliesin: I can show you the world… (Aladdin)
  
• (1:04:11) Matt: Ok, you’re gonna Dr. Grant this (Jurassic Park)
• (1:05:57) Taliesin: Womb with a view. (A Room With a View) Thanks to Greg V. for this one!
  
• (1:11:50) Taliesin: I want to hold my action until the other worm returns.  Sam: Til the worm turns? (Henry VI, Shakespeare)
• (1:20:46) Laura: Purple worm, purple worm! (“Purple Rain” by Prince)
• (1:33:07) Taliesin: *level up sound*
• (2:08:57) Grog: I’m hurt, I’m offended. (Anchorman)
• (2:34:55) Scanlan: Vax, come in Vax, tune in Tokyo! (Girls Just Want to Have Fun)
• (2:42:00) Marisha: You’re not the Godfather.
• (2:42:01) Taliesin: I will take you to White Castle, though.
• (2:48:36) Percy: You chose poorly, you chose so poorly! (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)
• (2:51:53) Sam: Diplomatic immunity. (Lethal Weapon 2)
  
• (2:52:54) Matt: You manage to catch yourself, land Willy Wonka-style.
• (3:00:51) Vex’ahlia: I shop for everything at Home Goods, so joke’s on them!
• (3:23:50) Sam: It’s the Wizard of Oz! 
  

Monster Analysis: Purple Worm and Frost Worm

Purple Worm

• First Appearance: 39 Omens
  
• Armor Class 18
  
• Speed 50 ft, Burrow 30 ft (15 ft through solid rock)
  
• Blindsight 30 ft, Tremorsense 60 ft, Passive 9
  
• Average, Max HP: 247, 390
  
• 283 taken, 21 HDYWTDT by Percy (with L’il Sparky)
  

The purple worm is a gargantuan monstrosity, a ravenous hunter who detects its prey by the vibrations they generate, chewing through solid rock in pursuit. Smooth tunnels are the result of its travels, often used by denizens of the rocky mountains or Underdark where it lurks. Its toothy maw is large enough to swallow even large creatures whole. Creatures it cannot bite also may be a victim of its poisonous stinger.

Adventurers who are trapped inside the worm take 6d6 of acid damage at the start of the creature’s turn. They can be regurgitated to safety if they deal 30 or more damage on their turn from inside, provided the worm fails its Con Save (DC 21, with a Con mod of +6).

Frost Worm

• First Appearance: 39 Omens
  
• Armor Class 18
  
• Speed 50 ft, Burrow 30 ft
  
• Blindsight 30 ft, Tremorsense 60 ft, Passive 9
  
• Average, Max HP: 168, 240
  
• 324 taken, 87 HDYWTDT by Grog 
  

The frost worm’s roots appear to stem from Pathfinder (at the very least, that’s where the mini came from). However it has been modified to be a significantly easier encounter, much more in line with its purple cousin. The worm’s frost breath dealt a 30-foot cone of cold damage (at 33 and 36, we estimate 8d6). The versions of the frost worm we came across also had an ability to erupt in a blast of cold upon its defeat; we consider Vox Machina very fortunate that this effect was absent.

The Encounter

The most dangerous capability of both worms were their appetite. With the high damage requirement to escape from inside and an even higher constitution in case that requirement is met, the quickest option to escape the extremely acidic innards was magic (e.g., Dimension Door) or killing it outright.

The most notable wrinkle in the fight came from the miscommunication of Wind Walk. (We did confirm during the live stream that both the Android and iPhone spell sheet apps listed the spell as requiring 1 action to cast, while the PHB does specify it takes a full minute. Let that be a warning to confirm consistency with your own resources!) With half the party unable to provide support and the other half quickly becoming a meal, the difficulty of the encounter was notably increased. Fortunately, D&D is a flexible game with a malleable reality, so with a little creative thinking, the battle was evened once more in time for the stranded members to receive appropriate assistance.

Another note to DMs: if, at any point, the party has the opportunity to become richer than sin, keep in mind to always have a better reason for them not to. A collapsing cavern, a bigger version of what just almost killed the party, the threat of losing access to something even more important…

Challenge Rating for the Chroma Conclave

anonymous asks: What would be the estimated CR rating for fighting the 4 ancient dragons of the Chroma Conspiracy? Worse than a Tarrasque? (Consider: the green had an AC one higher than listed in the book.)

Oh, we’re definitely considering the increased AC. On top of that, let’s even, temporarily, consider HP. Rimefang was a mere adult white dragon (compared to the more-powerful-than-ancient Conclave), and his health was approximately three times that of an adult white dragon (about 625, compared to the suggested average of 200). If we give the Ancient White the same treatment… It has over 1000 HP.

But, let’s pretend that their HP was modified only a tiny bit, all their ACs went up by 1, and their individual challenge ratings increased by a mere 1 point each. With these modifications (XP totals indicated by the table on DMG p.275), let’s go with the extremely optimistic set of the following challenge ratings:

• Supreme Ancient White, CR 21 (33,000 XP)
• Supreme Ancient Black, CR 22 (41,000 XP)
• Supreme Ancient Green, CR 23 (50,000 XP)
• Supreme Ancient Red, CR 25 (75,000 XP)

The sum of all together is 199,000 XP. Using the Encounter Calculator on DMG page 82, we know that we have a Large party of 7 facing an encounter of four hostile creatures. This will result in a difficulty modifier of 1.5, which, when applied to the sum of the four dragons, results in a difficulty encounter of 298,500 XP.

For those completely new to D&D, the Tarrasque is the single most powerful creature in the Monster Manual. It has a challenge rating of 30 (155,000 XP), and is only brought out by DMs who are ready to give their capped-out level 20 players an end boss that has a high probability of ending in a TPK. A party of 7 facing a tarrasque will actually bring down difficulty rating to half, or 77,500 XP. Two tarrasques will actually balance the scale, making the experience gained and the difficulty XP rating 310,000 XP.

So. Between fighting one tarrasque, four more-powerful-than-ancient dragons, and two tarrasques, the first is definitely preferred.

Bonus: For a party of six level 12 PCs and one level 11 PC, we can calculate (DMG p.82) that an encounter of difficulty rating 30,600 XP will be deadly for Vox Machina, meaning the Chroma Conclave is 10 times worse than a Deadly Encounter. (For a party of seven level 20 PCs, 88,900 XP is considered deadly; one tarrasque would be somewhere between deadly and hard.)

Obviously, they were not meant to be taken on in a straight fight.

We know, that was a lot of math that relies on the DM side of the screen. We’re working on a series of articles that are a bit more detailed on encounter creation to expand on Matthew Mercer’s excellent first video on Building Encounters and explain where all these ridiculous numbers come from. Stay tuned!