In The Waters Of The Cenotes

The party have continued their adventures in the forests of Veridia, eventually reaching the Mothdust Cenotes - a collection of beautiful deep jungle pools home to the Aquasilvani. These water elves live in the deep caverns within the Cenotes in the city of Aquaesecra, whose king has assigned the party a task - defeat the monstrous Terror Eel that has taken over one of the caverns, in exchange for information they need to continue their quest...

Kyrion peered through the crack in the cavern wall, peeking into the cave beyond. A shimmering mass of scales and fins filled his vision - a cavern packed with eels and other fish, all swirling around a central pile of bones, gold and rusted steel. Through the gaps in the mesmerising horde he could barely make out an enormous bladed fin emerging from the mound, almost as tall as he was. Suddenly, as if by silent command, the shoal parted. An enormous head reared up from the mound, its mouth opening to reveal rows upon rows of sharp pointed teeth...

Today's monster is the Terror Eel! This terrifying eel has sharpened fins and a mouthful of fangs that make it a true menace to face. Usually only found in the deepest caverns where it is brought food and treasure by other aquatic life as tribute, occasionally one will rise to the higher caves and Cenotes around the area to hunt the Aquasilvani or steal their supplies.

The Terror Eel statblock shown here is the Tier 2 version - in the actual encounter I'm running with this monster it was part of the party's level up from level 1 to level 2, so I adjusted it down a tier until they reached the critical moment when they leveled up, at which point it returned to its final form. I combined it with initially 2 Electric Eel swarms and 2 Sharks (reskinned to Biting Fangfish to better fit the cave fish aesthetic), although due to a lucky roll on Summon The Shoal many more appeared later in the combat. (I plan to do a larger write up on the level up process as I thought it made for a great story moment - I'll publish that soon as a part 2 to this blog post!).

Tactics for using the Terror Eel are to use its allies in the shoal to corral the PCs close to the Eel itself, at which point you can unleash the Bladed Fin Maelstrom (well, at least if you roll better for the attacks than I did!). If at any point your allies get reduced in number, you can Summon The Shoal to bring in reinforcements to continue the assault. Grouping the adversaries together in this way also gives players who have area-of-effect abilities to be able to use them with maximum impact, which can make for a satisfying player moment - never be afraid to sacrifice a few adversaries if it makes for satisfying cinematic combats (after all, that's usually what people remember the most from sessions)!

I think this is probably one of the more fun Daggerheart combats I've run so far as a GM. It was a nice change of pace to have a larger number of adversaries than I've been used to using - this is something that coming from D&D has taken me a while to get used to. In the past, having a larger number of foes has slowed down combat, but due to the spotlight system I now find that to be the case less, and more targets means more options and tactics for players to explore. Something to think about as I'm working on future statblocks - so expect to see more combinations rather than just single creatures moving forward! Sign up to the newsletter to catch the latest homebrew as it's released!

Find the homebrew stat block for the Terror Eel on Heart of Daggers here!