Dungeons & Delvers: Vrock

This article is about the vrock. If you want to read a review about a shallow, overpriced ShadowDark add-on, head on over here.

In Dungeons & Dragons, a vrock is a type of demon that looks more or less like a vulture/humanoid hybrid: in 2nd Edition it was basically a vulture with a set of arms, while 3rd Edition tried to make it more…demonic, I suppose.

Here’s the 2E version (which I prefer):

And here’s how the Groomers of the Coast opted to depict it:

2nd Edition specified its Strength as 19, something that TSR only did for some monster entries for some reason. It got a bit buffer in 3E, boasting what I would consider a somewhat more sensible Strength of 23 due to its size and nature.

As with a lot of D&D monsters its powers were seemingly randomly drawn from a hat: it could emit spores every three rounds, which would causes afflicted creatures to sprout vines over time. Five or more could join hands and dance, which if left uninterrupted for 3 entire minutes would result in everyone within 100 feet, including the vrocks, suffering 2d20 points of untyped damage.

You could stop them by dealing a total of 20 damage over time to any one vrock. You could also just run away, though I can’t recall how fast halflings and gnomes were, so it’s possible that they might not be able to cover a 90-foot distance in 3 minutes. Sounds silly but then D&D was burdened by a lot of silliness, such as needing an entire minute to drink a potion and an ogre’s club bouncing harmlessly off cloth armor.

It could also utilize a smattering of equally random spell-like abilities: detect invisibility, detect magic, dispel magic, mass charm (why?), mirror image (huh?), and telekinesis (eh, why not). As with many demons, it could try to summon various other demons with a 50:50 shot at success.

In Dungeons & Delvers we wanted to play up the vulture theme, so changed it to a demon that scours the mortal realm in search of souls to devour. And by demon we don’t mean a D&D demon, but a more…folkloric interpretation, a monster that exists and isn’t inherently associated with or beholden to other demons (or devils, which are fallen angels).

It can see ghosts, spirits, and similar creatures, as well as harm them normally. Additionally, any soul devoured by a vrock cannot be restored to life until it is slain. This we felt provides a few adventure hooks: the characters need a vrock to eat a ghost to remove it, or slay a vrock so that a spirit can pass one, be revived, or otherwise communicated with.

It can also transform into a vulture, which is considerably weaker but helps it blend it. Finally, we gave it an acid-vomit attack, though we’re going to change that so it inflicts necrotic damage instead of acid because that makes more sense.

Anyway, here’s the original art we did:

And here’s the 2nd Edition revamp:

I like the original head for some reason, so kept that the same. The rest though I felt was just too “normal” looking (I was going off of Tony DiTerlizzi’s version), so tried giving it a more monstrous appearance.