By Nick Olivo
If you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons for any length of time, you’ve fought countless goblins, kobolds, wolves, orcs, and bugbears. Those are classic, tried-and-true monsters that are staples for fantasy gaming, especially at lower levels. But there’s another low-level monster that doesn’t get nearly enough love, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today. And as stated in the title, I’m talking about mephits.
Not to be confused with their distant cousins, the Meth-Its.
If you’re not familiar with mephits, they’re little winged imps from the elemental planes that have a penchant for trickery and mischief. Each mephit is a mixture of two elements, and they’re drawn to locations where those base elements are plentiful. Those elemental combinations help determine the mephit’s strengths, weaknesses, and immunities, and make for what I consider a very interesting low-level monster.
Here are 5 reasons why you should be using mephitis in your games.
1. Environmental Versatility
Mephits are elemental creatures, and as such, there’s a mephit for each element type. Your adventure takes place in a volcano? Boom, magma mephits. You’re in a forgotten catacomb that’s recently been broken open by an earthquake? Dust mephits. Frozen wasteland? Ice mephits. Hot springs? Steam mephits. Forest fire? Smoke mephits. Underground caverns? Mud mephits. No matter what climate your adventure takes place in, no matter what time of year it is, no matter what screwball environmental conditions are at play, there’s a mephit that will fit in there.
Trailer park? We’ve got you covered!
2. Role-playing possibilities
Each different type of mephit has a distinct personality type. Dust mephits find death morbidly fascinating. Ice mephits are aloof and cruel. Mud mephits beg for attention and treasure. These traits mean that your mephit is more than just a winged sack of hit points for the party to bash on. They can be bargained with, reasoned with, and can deceive and be deceived (assuming you speak their language). The party may open fire on a pair of goblins without trying to talk to them first, but mephits are exotic enough that the PCs may attempt communication before just laying into them. Some mephits are curious, too, and they may try to approach the party. Even just the act of attempting to successfully communicate with them can make for some great role-playing opportunities.
“Donde esta la biblioteca?"
3. They make great minions.
Because of their elemental affinities, you can have mephits working for nearly any type of monster. Servants to a red dragon? Check. Lookouts for a yeti? Check. Attendants for a lich? Yep, that too. While they don’t have particularly high INT or WIS scores, they’re far from mindless creatures, and that means higher-level monsters will know they’re capable of performing basic tasks, and trust them accordingly.
If you can’t trust these little assholes, who can you trust?
4. They make decent low-level bosses.
Let’s say a level 1 party is going up against a small tribe of goblins. Usually, the boss goblin has a slightly better sword, or maybe a few vials of alchemist’s fire to set him apart from the others. Instead of that, have a mephit. Mephits can fly, most of them have access to one spell, have a breath weapon, and yet they’re only a CR ¼. So you’re not risking a TPK by throwing one into the mix, and you’re gaining a monster that will attack on the wing, use magic from a distance, and breathe some sort of elemental madness that’s bound to ruin a PC’s day. What makes them even more fun is their Death Burst ability. When a mephit dies, it explodes and deals some sort of elemental effect, such as shards or ice, fiery explosions, or searing clouds of steam. That makes for a memorable victory, assuming the party survives it.
May the gods have mercy on heroes who slay a shit mephit.
5. They can summon more mephits.
If the Minions movie taught us anything, it’s that moderation can go fuck itself. What could be a better foe for your PCs to encounter than a mephit? The answer, of course, is MORE MEPHITS!
If you use the Variant: Mephit Summoning rules listed in the Monster Manual, a mephit can try to summon additional 1d4 mephits of its kind. While summoned mephits only last for 1 minute, that’s 10 rounds, and a helluva long time in combat if your level 1 or 2 party suddenly finds themselves up against 5 mephits instead of one.
FUCK YOU!
While goblins and kobolds are fun monsters to throw at your players, switch it up every now and then with some mephits. You’ll find they’re adaptable, fun to RP, and give a breath of fresh air to your adventures.
