Blights
Awakened plants gifted with the powers of intelligence and mobility, blights plague lands contaminated by darkness. Drinking that darkness from the soil, a blight carries out the will of ancient evil and attempts to spread that evil wherever it can.
Roots of the Gulthias Tree. Legends tell of a vampire named Gulthias who worked terrible magic and raised up an abominable tower called Nightfang Spire. Gulthias was undone when a hero plunged a wooden stake through his heart, but as the vampire was destroyed, his blood infused the stake with a dreadful power. In time, tendrils of new growth sprouted from the wood, growing into a sapling infused with the vampire's evil essence. It is said that a mad druid discovered the sapling, transplanting it to an underground grotto where it could grow. From this Gulthias tree came the seeds from which the first blights were sown.
Dark Conquest. Wherever a tree or plant is contaminated by a fragment of an evil mind or power, a Gulthias tree can rise to infest and corrupt the surrounding forest. Its evil spreads through root and soil to other plants, which perish or transform into blights. As those blights spread, they poison and uproot healthy plants, replacing them with brambles, toxic weeds, and others of their kind. In time, an infestation of blights can turn any land or forest into a place of corruption.
In forests infested with blights, trees and plants grow with supernatural speed. Vines and undergrowth rapidly spread through buildings and overrun trails and roads. After blights have killed or driven off their inhabitants, whole villages can disappear in the space of days.
Controlled by Evil. Blights are independent creatures, but most act under a Gulthias tree's control, often displaying the habits and traits of the life force or spirit that spawned them. By attacking their progenitor's old foes or seeking out treasures valuable to it, they carry on the legacy of long-lost evil. (MM p 31)
Needle Blight
Medium plant, neutral evil- Armor Class 12 (natural armor)
- Hit Points 11 (2d8 + 2)
- Speed 30'
- Condition Immunities Blinded & Deafened
- Senses Blindsight 60' (blind beyond this radius) & Passive Perception 9
- Languages Understands Common but can't speak
- Challenge 1/4 (50 XP)
Actions
- Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5', one target. Hit: 6 (2d4 + 1) piercing damage.
- Needles. Ranged Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, range 30/60', one target. Hit: 8 (2d6 + 1) piercing damage.
In the shadows of a forest, needle blights might be taken at a distance for shuffling, hunched humanoids. Up close, these creatures reveal themselves as horrid plants whose conifer-like needles grow across their bodies in quivering clumps. A needle blight lashes out with these needles or launches them as an aerial assault that can punch through armor and flesh.
When needle blights detect a threat, they loose a pollen that the wind carries to other needle blights throughout the forest. Alerted to their foes' location, needle blights converge from all sides to drench their roots in blood. (MM p 31-32)
Tree Blight
Huge plant, neutral evil- Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
- Hit Points 149 (13d12 + 65)
- Speed 30'
- Condition Immunities Blinded & Deafened
- Senses Blindsight 60' (blind beyond this radius) & Passive Perception 10
- Languages Understands Common and Druidic but doesn't speak
- Challenge 7 (2,900 XP)
- False Appearance. While the blight remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from a dead tree.
- Siege Monster. The blight deals double damage to objects and structures.
Actions
- Multiattack. The blight makes four attacks: two with its branches and two with its grasping roots. If it has a target grappled, the blight can also make a bite attack against that target as a bonus action.
- Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 5', one target. Hit: 19 (3d8 + 6) piercing damage.
- Branch. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 15', one target. Hit: 16 (3d6 + 6) bludgeoning damage.
- Grasping Root. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 15', one creature not grappled by the blight. Hit: The target is grappled (escape DC 15). Until the grapple ends, the target takes 9 (1d6 + 6) bludgeoning damage at the start of each of its turns. The root has AC 15 and can be severed by dealing 6 slashing damage or more to it at once. Cutting the root doesn't hurt the blight, but ends the grapple.
Blights are evil, ambulatory plant creatures, and a tree blight is a particularly enormous variety. It looks like a dead tree or treant, 30' tall, with spongy wooden flesh, thorny branches, and rubbery roots that trail behind it. It has blood for sap and is so saturated with blood that it doesn't catch fire easily.
Vicious Carnivore. A tree blight feeds on warm-blooded prey and takes perverse delight in causing carnage. It strikes with its heavy branches and crushes prey to death with its roots. It can open its gaping, tooth-filled mouth and bite a creature caught in its roots. The roots of a tree blight can be severed, though cutting them causes the blight no harm.
Blight Animosity. A tree blight will often fight alongside other kinds of blights, but it hates other tree blights and will attack them given the chance. Tree blights also hate treants, and the feeling is mutual. (CoS, p 230)
Twig Blight
Small Plant, Neutral Evil- Armor Class 13 (natural armor)
- Hit Points 4 (1d6 + 1)
- Speed 20'
- Skills Stealth +3
- Damage Vulnerabilities Fire
- Condition Immunities Blinded & Deafened
- Senses Blindsight 60' (blind beyond this radius), Passive Perception 9
- Languages Understands Common but can't speak
- Challenge 1/8 (25 XP)
- False Appearance. While the blight remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from a dead shrub.
Actions
- Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5', one target. Hit: 3 (1d4 + 1) piercing damage.
Twig blights can root in soil, which they do when living prey are scarce. While rooted, they resemble woody shrubs. When it pulls its roots free of the ground to move, a twig blight's branches twist together to form a humanoid-looking body with a head and limbs.
Twig blights seek out campsites and watering holes, rooting there to set up ambushes for potential victims coming to drink or rest. Huddled together in groups, twig blights blend in with an area's natural vegetation or with piles of debris or firewood.
Given how dry they are, twig blights are particularly susceptible to fire. (MM p 32)
Vine Blights
Medium plant, neutral evil- Armor Class 12 (natural armor)
- Speed 10'
- Skills Stealth +1
- Condition Immunities Blinded & Deafened
- Senses Blindsight 60' (blind beyond this radius) & Passive Perception 10
- Languages Common
- Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)
- False Appearance. While the blight remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from a tangle of vines.
Actions
Constrict. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 10', one target. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) bludgeoning damage, and a Large or smaller target is grappled (escape DC 12). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the blight can't constrict another target.- Entangling Plants (Recharge 5–6). Grasping roots and vines sprout in a 15-foot radius centered on the blight, withering away after 1 minute. For the duration, that area is difficult terrain for nonplant creatures. In addition, each creature of the blight's choice in that area when the plants appear must succeed on a DC 12 Strength saving throw or become restrained. A creature can use its action to make a DC 12 Strength check, freeing it self or another entangled creature within reach on a success.
Appearing as masses of slithering creepers, vine blights hide in undergrowth and wait for prey to draw near. By animating the plants around them, vine blights entangle and hinder their foes before attacking. Vine blights are the only blights capable of speech. Through its connection to the evil spirit of the Gulthias tree it serves, a vine blight speaks in a fractured version of its dead master's voice, taunting victims or bargaining with powerful foes.
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