Offbeat Beasts: Bathhouse Drake — D&D Monsters With A Unique Twist
Written by the Goblins on September 25, 2018
Editor’s note: This is part of an occasional series exploring cool, weird, or just plain interesting Dungeons and Dragons monsters from both Wizards of the Coast and third-party publishers such as Kobold Press. This week we’re diving back into Kobold’s “Creature Codex.”
Name: Bathhouse Drake
Source: Creature Codex, Published 2018 by Kobold Press, MSRP $49.99
What it does: The Bathhouse Drake upholds the haughtiness of their larger cousins while treating underlings somewhat kinder than one might expect from dragon-kind. They’re CR3 with about 75 hit points but, really, there’s a lot more potential here for a unique NPC rather than a monster to fight. If you go the monster route, though, Bathhouse Drakes have an array of bath-centric attacks and traits.
“Niles, when that party of adventurers sits around the magnificently appointed Waterdhavian villa, they sit AROUND the magnificently appointed Waterdhavian villa!”
Why it’s cool: The Frasier Crane of dragon-kind. These are sophisticated creatures whose lairs take the form of opulent spas rather than dank and musty caves. Instead of sitting watch atop their golden horde, these savvy business-creatures invest their holdings in their lair to create an exceptional customer experience for the bathhouse-goers, with some even making the effort to hire other amenities such as masseurs or chefs to serve the clientele.
Given their lavish, liquid-centric milieu, Bathhouse Drakes have the “soapy” trait which gives them advantage on all grapple-escape rolls. They also have several innate spells which all are, of course, related to water, steam, or mist in some fashion.
When to use it: Use these drakes to represent the epitome of high-living. Their services are expensive but, in exchange, they offer only the best service.
According to the Codex canon, even the Bathhouse Drakes themselves may not aware of their origins, though there are a number of rumors such as migration from a distant jungle or creation somewhere deep within the inner planes. If you’re looking to spice up “Tomb of Annihilation” with something a little different, the jungle origin theory certainly lends itself to Chult. Otherwise, though, the built-in ambiguity for their origin gives you plenty of leeway to fashion something that fits within your campaign universe.
There also is good potential for a down-on-their-luck Bathhouse Drake NPC. They lost everything in a bad business deal or were bilked by shady contractors, so they now operate a ramshackle washhouse while still maintaining the pretense of fabulous service and surroundings. Meanwhile, they try to convince the party to help them get revenge on the crooks who ruined them.
It will be sorely tempting, if I ever use one of these in an adventure, to give it an equally haughty brother and a down-to-earth blue-collar father.
