Make Hags Formidable in Your 5e Campaign! | Grim Hollow | D&D | TTRPG | Hag | DnD | Ben Byrne
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2024
- Make a hag a formidable threat in your dark fantasy D&D campaign with these tips and tactics, while drawing inspiration from their horror mythology.
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Topics:
00:00 - Intro
00:35 - Hag mythology
04:27 - Region and lair
06:56 - Types of hags
10:41 - Covens and minions
13:06 - Hag motivation
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Edited by @ZsDante
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Annis Hags are my fav because of something hidden in their lore. The Corruption of children. Example:
The players come across a town which has constantly been biset with issues, it started with animals being lose and doors being stuck shut, but has grown to cases of non fatal poisonings of key people in the town, grain going rotten and houses setting a blaze. But the children are always alright and the town take this is a blessing, but the players hear whispers from the kids when they think no adults are around asking who will be picked next to go to Granny's playground (the hag uses illusions to make something look much nicer than it is to the kids). They hear about how once each night a child is chosen by Granny to go to a playground, but one they are picked they never get to go again. Unless they do something slightly worse than another child in the town and its about to get bloody in the one up manship (or because a kid is about to rat them out and so Granny was informed as is going to pay them a visit for a nice hug) unless the players go into the mountains to take Granny out.
Annis hags love corrupting children and take up goblins and ogres as their own children that they treat, well not so nicely. But one thing they can do which is only said in a side box is shape parts of themselves (such as one of their teeth or nails) into a metal object like a mirror or a smaller items you could hide in a toy such as a teddy that allows the hag to communicate with who ever holds the object telepathically. It is meant to have a limit of 3 but that is BS and no fun.
There is a lot you can do with them imo
In my homebrew campaign, the party fought against a Hag Coven that was working together in an attempt to grow in power and was terrorizing a trade noblemen's logging company. The hags were a Green, An Annis, and a Night Hag, and absolutely hated one another. Eventually, The green hag made a deal with a party member they kidnapped that if the party helped her kill off The Annis and Night, she'd help the party during the fight.
During the fight, that's exactly what happened. The Night and Annis hag were killed and the Green hag took the bodies and left the party alone, but left the party with Eye and the party believed it was a gift or something that would help them.
Far later in the campaign, the party was investigating a Swamp that was expanding dramatically in recent weeks and was taking over a town. It was becoming toxic, and inhabitable, people were missing, and creatures were mutating (A Froghemoth fight happened). Turns out the green hag was to blame and because she was already familiar with the party, she took the opportunity to mock and bring up personal things he knew about them to infuriate them.
Eventually, they got past all her illusions, minions, and tricks and made it to her. Where they found out she consumed the bodies of the Night and Annis Hag, taking their traits into herself and becoming a Legendary Green Hag. Basically a 1 hag coven. It was a super memorable fight because the hag had prepared weird magic items to try and counter the members and knew personal things about them to just insult them throughout the fight.
My players still talk about how much of a pain in their ass "Olga the Black Scab" was and how she almost killed 3 members of the party xD
Fun fact, a real world witch coven can be any odd number of people, rather than just 3.
Imagine a coven of 7 hags able to cast 9th level spells, suddenly they're a much bigger threat
Well even in the lore of DnD if you've ever played Neverwinter Nights 2 there was the Slumbering Coven, which was made up of nine hags bound together in a shared dream which they would entrap others in so they could steal and hoard their knowledge to be preserved for all time in said shared dream.... Of course waking them up would cause the dream to end and the knowledge stored within said dream to go poof.... Which of course results in nine very unhappy hags that want to just murder whoever broke the dream....
Bheur is apparently pronounced Vur, because celtic languages are confusing
Yeah, I knew I was getting that one wrong the whole time. 😅 Thanks!
@@GhostfireGaming Irish is one of those languages where the 'correct' pronunciation of a word changes depending on where you are. Unless I'm much mistaken, both Bur and Vur and valid pronunciations and, no matter which you choose, the people who pronounce it the other way will get mad at you
"Make hags more terrifying"
Ok, hold my beer.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Nana, the night hag. She lives just outside a smallish town, surrounded by heavily forested mountain foot hills. She has lived near this town for as long as anyone can remember, and even appears in town from time to time, in the form of an old human woman, selling cakes at festivals and whatnot. All of the children in town go and visit at Nana's house to play together and eat treats, whenever there is no specific reason to stay nearby. If the players ever ask, none of the adults will display any awareness of Nana, at all. The truth is, Nana would never harm a child, in any way, but she legitimately does not care about adults, and will hurt them if it suits her whims or purposes. All of the adults in town have played at her house when they were children, just as their children do now. Her cottage is just this side of a fey crossing (obviously, not inside the fey wild, since hags are not permitted back in there), and moves around the forest with the crossing. She keeps a band of red caps, an obliviax moss and a few other pets around as guards and servants, but keeps them away from the town and its folk. I use her as a neutral npc, for exposition and as a general tool for my will in the world. She is truly ancient (one of the original hags that was ejected from the fey wild), with complex relationships in the lower planes, and contacts or informants all over the multiverse, so she has ways of knowing all kinds of things. She will inform the pcs of whatever is needed to get (or keep) them on the quest line. He motivation for doing so is to keep the multiverse intact while she works at her plans to reenter fey, or if not, destroy the fey courts. Occasionally, she will help the pcs with spell work or rare magic items, but only for a very high price in the form of favors, to be named and collected at a later time. My advice is not to catch yourself doing Nana's "chores", as she calls them, since her goal for these favors is to slide your alignment toward evil so she can collect and sell your soul in the lower planes. When she's keeping the pcs on track to save the world, she won't require any work in exchange, but try to never ask her for anything
Had a low level game that had a green hag who basically had the townfolk under her thumb. They were terrified of the party interfering.
They had been "paying tribute," to her for generations and in return they had normal harvests, no strange births to their people or animals.
The party's presence endangered the status quo. The players took some time to understand all this, and how involved they got into the RP with the NPC's was one of the best times we all had.
I would also like point out we discuss triggers and the like players have. Anyone can speak up if a scene gets to intense without issue.
My favourite "hag" is Granny Apple. Technically a succubus trapped on the prime. She now feeds on happy marriages, and their first born child. She bewitched travellers and marries them to her descendents. Her primary defence is scores of great-great-great grandchildren who cry if anyone is mean to their granny.
I've yet to have a party be willing to kill her.
I swapped the hag with the cauldron in the Icewind Dale town mission for a Bhuer Hag, she became a recurring foe for the partyfor several sessions. Regularly tormenting them from the darkness and waiting until they were preoccupied and then killing their mounts or destroying their camps before they returned. 3:-)
I'm probably going to do this too!
Great. You made them have to deal with a griefer.
One night while they camped in the Tiny Hut spell, she waited till just before dawn and cast her wall of ice to surround them.
I Love Hags! I have a Hag npc in my homebrew campaign that my characters love (and dread). I love all the creepy things you can discribe in their huts and such.
Me too. It trades strange magic items for favors and curses
One of my players was created by a night hag, who created him from a corrupted soul and put him in the body of a great warrior she had killed.
Oh this is such an awesome character concept! Absolutely gives me the vibes of the gritty sword and sorcery flavor of early Magic the Gathering.
@@dr3dg352 thanks!
Perfect timing I was going to have a hag arc in my new campaign soon! Was going to have an elder hag with three sister witches serving her, one being a green hag, one being a bheur hag, and one being a night hag. They're trying to grow the unnatural fey forest they live in to consume the kingdom
I had a very similar idea with an elder hag, then her 3 daughters are her regents so to speak. She's aiding the BBEG bc she knows the future and fate has deemed it so. She will manipulate the characters so that certain events will unfold. Or at least that's my current working idea lol
I've used Dusk hags as proto-night hags, as their apprentices or daughters, growing in power while serving the Night Hag. Also, Hags in plural, working together can be terrifying for a party to deal with.
Hags are my favorite! 🖤
Cool hag idea for y'all: your party is dungeon diving and come upon the burial site or a shrine to a god that was killed. However your party was just in a town that was worshipping this god and receiving boons from them. Meet the Dawn Hag, a hag capable of decieving mortals into believing they are a dead god, reborn. They can have clerics, commune, all the normal stuff, but they are manipulating the masses for some dark reason the party must uncover. XD
So anyone else think that a "Cauldron Mimic" could be a fun idea? (Just take a mimic, make it immune to fire, and have its main feeding habit be "I eat some of the food being cooked inside of me." (Making it a favorite mimic of Hags who keep it happy by occasionally tossing in something substantial for it to eat so it leaves her brew alone...)
You have no idea how timely this is for me!
Same for me, the direction my group is going they are eventually going to encounter a coven, but I needed to do some research to make it good.
I’m running a coven of hags against my party in a heavily homebrewed Strixhaven campaign. They’re named after the Sanderson sisters. I can’t wait till they get to Sarah. I gave her a face peel ability that takes the pc’s face from them and gains their memories and class abilities. She is a combination of Mombi from Return to Oz and Leatherface.
Great video, had so much fun watching. In my latest campaigns the overarching villains were a coven of ancient hags, whose plans spanned the entirety of the campaign, a curse centuries in the making. Playing up the three sister and the maiden-mother-crone trope I made each of them very unique, with interesting powers and personalities with their own goals. The only thing they shared was their thorny, vine like flourish in their every magic. My favourite had to be the Crawling Mistress, whose domain were making nightmares real. An amalgamation of hag and insect with the lower body of a centipede.
My players even aided them unwittingly and one time even visited one to help bring a character back. I loved their reactions when they stitched together the clues of what they had done.
The rule is knowing your players' triggers and playing safe when trying to convey the monstrous and the morbid.
I also want to suggest Pointy Hat's video on hags, it's also a great inspiration.
I did that too. The hag used to play the PCs into moral dubious quests with a proxy. When they put all the pieces together... memorable!
This is a topic I know and love already, I hope I get better from this video.
My dusk hag keeps a roadside inn. She keeps a small cult of followers who tends the inn. Drugs are easy to administer when a friendly buxom or brawny server are encouraging players to drink and enjoy the hospitality.
Plays to her strengths.
Hags are going to feature heavily in my current campaign, so thanks for personally tailoring this video just for me!
I actually did use the ‘hags gather the party together’ idea you suggested! Except it was one hag that had left her coven which had devoted themselves to a Great Old One. She acts as a distant ally in taking down her old coven (who replaced her with an eladrin woman to regain the coven benefits) and this eldritch entity’s three avatars.
And for extra the hags are the rogue’s aunts, so now there’s some delicious concern that she might secretly be a hag and the two hags don’t want to just kill her, they want to convert her.
Really love Stephen King's "Needful things" - always thinking of the shopkeeper as a hag. :)
I think Matthew Mercer's Sea Fury is a better version of a Sea Hag.
They have the spell "Steeple Fingers' - it curses men to forever have one expression and perpetually sit with their fingers steepled under their chin.
My favorite hag of all time is Styrix, the Night Hag from 2e Ravenloft Campaign Setting. She was imprisoned by Azalin in Darkon. She had constructed the Rift Spanner, which requires 100 HD of sacrificed souls to power the machine. Her plan was to escape Darkon.
Idea: Hag of Holding. A hag who sells you bags of holding...which she then uses to steal your stuff and sell it on the black market.
I keep telling my DM that they also gather souls for the nine hells but he doesn't know his lore! Plus, we have a tiefling in our campaign and I said that's a perfect introduction!
As far as Hags being fey creatures I do like the idea of giving them Pixies of all things as minions.... (Pixies can make good spies with their invisibility, they can potentially poly-morph the players into weaker forms to protect the hag or otherwise cause chaos and set up nasty surprises for the players.... and in the case of flying PCs inflict some fall damage on them as well, since you know frogs and newts aren't known for their aerodynamics....
Kind of fun if the players can't trust that the oddly hostile frog in the road isn't in fact a frog but actually a poly-morphed bear.... (I also had the players save the mayor from a kidnapping attempt where the mayor was turned into a frog so the Pixies could carry him off.... He almost died from the fall when the players killed the pixie but fortunately he had one of the PCs standing under him to split the damage between them...)
Use the slavic mythology fairies for extra effect. None of that Tinkerbell cutesy bollocks
The Venn diagram between devil/demon behavior and hag behavior isn’t sort of a lumpy circle situation ;)
My favorite storytelling trick for a hag is to pull a page from Stephen King’s Needful Things, where a merchant who definitely isn’t the devil begins providing townspeople with their desires in exchange for initially small but escalating acts of cruelty. Maybe your first hit’s free, but once you get used to relying on help from this creature, the asks start getting truly awful.
Your comment on Hags having a long running connection to deities in some form or another is really interesting to me, because the hags I will be running in the foreseeable future have one fragment of the goddess Aureylia captured (Long story short, after Gods End Aureylia was split into 7 sentient fragments and scattered, the 7 forms being the 7 heavenly virtues. In this case they have Justice). So I might think about making a spell list that uses Cleric spells for these hags, and thinking about ways that I can describe these spells in a haggish way as they siphon the energies from the fragment. Like Bless could be this bleeding greenish sickly light that hovers around the hags and connects to them through a thin strand of light. This actually gives me a lot to work with, great video!!
Literally working on a campaign that has a major arc around the resurrection of an ancient extremely powerful hag “god”
Didn't expect to see Pesta show up! Her name is basically plague (pest, same root as pestilence), with the female form "-a" thrown in.
The rake was the merciful one, in the villages where she used the broom, there were no holes to escape in. And thus everyone died.
Love it.
Finally my favourite channel making a video about my favourite dnd monster!
What about the blood hag !?! They are truly terrifying creatures. I can't believe they weren't included in this video! I mean they can literally rip your face off and then use it to taunt you lol. What could be more terrifying than that!
Great video, and great inspiration!
Dang sitting here staring at my copy of Volos guide forgetting their was hag info when I want to use a Hag in the next couple sessions. One to flesh out a town then have the party figure out one is there. Woohoo Hags!
Thank you so much for making this video! I'm about to start a 4e campaign, and a Howling Hag will be a boss encounter when the party reaches Level 2. Can't wait for her to control the battlefield as the party fights her with her corrupt fey minions! ❤But before that she'll be known as the curmudgeonly old lady in town. 😈
I'll also need to watch your Feywild video eventually, as once the party reaches about Level 10 they'll be going to a dungeon in the Feywild to destroy one of the eldritch engines of Acererak.
when i last ran a hag in The Cackle of Raz Nackle (an adventure i wrote a few years ago) i set up Raz Nackle up as a conniving, evil baby eating fey. i went really classic with her true form, an ugly old lady cackling around a cauldron, but it was her scheme, modus operandi and cunning that im proud of.
i set it up that she created a Doppelganger henchman from feywild magic to replace a villiage elder, to poison the leadership from reacting to the danger they were in, gaslighting the villiagers so Nackle could go about paying off her debts to her fey lords with stolen children.
Nackle wanted one thing. to pay for entry into the Fey court of summer as a high Sidhe, and to do that she has stabbed winter sidhe in the back, taken debts and made deals. and these deals three define her actions.
she owes a dozen children, freshly taken,
an enemies blood, gifted freely,
and a heroes heart, beating and open.
so she has been errorising the villiage for 11 months, stealing a child with every moonless night. enticing them away with treats and tricks made of dreamstuff and illusions befor taking them away to their cottage for fattening up.
She has been continuing to use her Dream spell to torment the parents and village Priest of the horrors of her hut of gristle and bone, preparing them for Nackle to offer them a trade. a vial of their blood to be taking them to save their child in the feywild.
and lastly she has her Doppelganger mayer of the village reach out for heroes finally to help the village, and thus the heroes are hooked into the adventure as she plans to test them as heroes so she can eventually take one of their hearts.
as a night hag, i made use of their ability to give them nightmares and mentally probe the characters for their fears so i could create specific enemies and situations for the party to face. i had them harrassed on the journey with minor fey and beast attacks, and when they got to the village i had them face their fears and triumph heroically and face setbacks.
i set it up so the farmer that Nackle was enticing with the offer to save their child met the party and agreed to make the deal so they could get the portal open for the heroes to get to the feywild (the doppelganger gossiping loudly about it in the tavern got the wizards attention).
then is was a gauntlet as fitting a heroic band to get to the Gristle-hut and a showdown with my Night hag, who i gave the most annoying spells, scrolls and magic i could give her for a level 7 party to face. i shifted the map, i had the floor fall through under some of them, i had minions drag them alone in the dark, it was glorious. ill never run a 4 room encounter like that again. it was a nightmare.
but as soon as a character got down to single digits of health, the Imp familiar of the hag used a scoll of sleep to knock them out and the hag dragged them away upstairs and performed the ritual to steal her still-beating heart.
she was alive. after all, if she died of the ordeal the heart would stop beating.
so then they had to rush to stop the hags hobgoblins that were back in the real world stealing the last kid, and the party succeeded, and then had to set a trap for Raz Nackle at a trade, the child for the heart.
everyone knew that She would try to swindle them, they knew that she knew they were setting a trap.
it. was. amazing when the whole coven showed up in hats of disguise to appear as hobgoblins, and the hobgoblins were enchanted to look like a coven of witches.
the heroes carried the day, but my goodness it was close.
as it would have it, the hero whose heart was stolen had given it to someone else, and their love gave her their own so mystically it was never the heroes heart after all. they pulled that gambit right out of their backstory, yelling it at Nackle to distract them from escaping with everything and buying time enough for the fighter to action surge and kill her.
and thus ended the Cackle of Raz Nackle.
i freaking love hags!
I was wondering if maybe you could do a video on how to make Demons, and Devils formidable in a 5E Dark Fantasy campaign
Thanks for the suggestion! Demons and Devils have been on our 'to do' list for an age, the challenge has been encapsulating the entirety of the dark and evil potential in one video!!
My change with hag covens steals something from pathfinder mythic book. So each hag has one mythical spell that the party can learn or face
One of my favourite villains
I created a city that was both a project and point of coflict for three hags. Each had a cover as upstanding citizens whose actions seemed good and upright. Eliminate one or more of them without carefully thinking out the consequences and the city would tear itself apart.
They come together against threats to the city, but otherwise fight and bicker and wage proxy wars.
Maybe you could do an video on how to make angels formidable. Just because they are "good" beings doesn't mean that their goals and desire for order are good for us commonfolk they would play into the greater good because life is chaotic
Celestials are definitely on the list of videos we want to do soon!
My players tramble when I just say the word Hag.... they know whats comming
Lol wish I’d seen this video a week earlier
My favorite trope associated with hags is that they give unwise people what they think they want, with the caveat of not letting them turn from the consequences. They blur the lines between what is natural and supernatural, because their victims do it to themselves.
Excellent article!
Thanks Ben & co for another great video, I'm really enjoying the series. But now I can't sleep (ever again). Would you consider doing a Formidability Assessment on the aboleth next please? 🐟
Y'all over at GFG are just the best/next level when it comes to your creativity. Proud customer/fan.
Nice, I just asked for hags!
For a fun sea hag idea look up old Greg
Wait, is that how bheur hag is pronounced? Because of its Celtic origin, I always assumed the BH made V sound like in Siobhan
That is likely true! I made an attempt but most likely got it wrong. 😅
Can you do a vid on goblins and other lower level encounters? I feel like they aren't given quite the attention they deserve
Could you do fiends next?
They’re definitely on the list! Stay tuned.
Hi ! Anybody knows where the sea hag at 7:47 is from ?
Whats the creepy shot of the hag unfolding from her cauldron from
Where are the hags dolls, what page?
Pg 338-339. They’re listed under the Toymaker which is a gnarly beast in its own right. But the toys make great minions for a Hag, also!
how do you make a goblin/goblinoid army formidable
Can I also buy grimm hollow books in Europen currency, or do I really need to change currency to buy your books
I'm still so angry that sea hags don't have an effective way to use potions or most magic.
I don't know why but I can totally see Karens being Urban Hags.
A hag that traveled around, spreading disease with a broom/rake, is a neutral force of nature? Idk man, sounds a little more intentional lol
First view
Volo isn't retired. No such thing as Monsters of the Multiverse exists, but if it did it would be only fit for starting a fire.
your game ideas are good but your research is lacking. baba yaga (a well known folk person) and the sea hag were in the original AD&D -a sea hag was in the original monster manual and black annis appeared in the 2nd edition, they didn't wait until 5E for them to appear.
I will never forgive WOTC for what they did to Volo’s and Mordenkainen’s 😢…