Monster Deep Dive: Hags

0:20 Hello Adventures, Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jason Portiso him Jim Crocker. No, I'm Joe McCall, and we talk about dm D topics. Near and DearS are role players. Hearts today's episode. We're gonna get to our first deep dive. This is something we've experimented with on past shows and stuff that I love hearing about because even if it's something that I'm already like familiar with, there's some like corner case stuff that I just never knew about it. So this is this episode is not just for new DMS, just for season dms as well. So wherever you lie on that spectrum, buckle up, this one's for you. Joe. This is today's gonna be today's your day. Man, what are we deep dive into? Say, We're going to be talking about hacks nice, the lore behind them, how you can use them in your campaign. And so I've played against Hags here and there in like some short games, and we encountered one of the big game that you're running for us. We kind of skirted that encounter, so we haven't really done much with her, but I've heard some awesome stories from some of the deals that they can make so curious where we're going with this one?

1:23 Do you have your lat chim? I have used them. I find it they're more interesting to be kind of like, I like using them as kind of higher level motivators. I find their most And we'll probably get into this when we start talking about that. I think they're most interesting to use as kind of chaos agents. Not necessarily the monsters that the players are directly engaged with, but like you know, like I always try to present them in such a way that like the players like, off, we can just cut the right deal with her, we can get out of it, like we can get what we want. We'll get what we want, she gets what she wants, and everybody wins, right, And then like that's kind of exactly. That's really that's my favorite way to use them. Jo tell us how that's never going to happen. Yeah, that's the beauty of it.

2:12 Yeah, Yeah, And I think that's really what a hag is betting on. Yeah. So there are Fay powerful Fay creatures, although they really aren't welcome in either of the Sely or Uncily court just because they are old crones with you know, their frail and disgusting green skin at least, you know. To start, we'll talk about green hags, which is probably the most prevalent or the most common type of hag. Yeah, when people imagine liked players, imagine the classic D and D hag. That's that's what you're talking about. Yeah, she's going to be found in the woods or a swamp in our game kind of every time that Yeah, yeah, really, but presented her as a woodswitch sort of character. So super powerful fake creatures.

3:02 They live forever. They can be killed obviously, but they don't die of old age, so that really allows them to play the long game as far as revenge, amassing power, things like that. We talked about deals. A hag does make deals that usually only favor them, and I favor them. I mean that they're really just interested in being a chaos agent and bringing just sadness and to sadness to mortals mainly humans. They don't like deal as much with other powerful creatures, fake creatures, things like that, because again of that timeline, they know they hold the power over humans, so they represent corruption and pretty much ugliness. They see ugliness as beauty to the point that they will actually pick at their scabs and things to make themselves worse looking.

4:03 Today I learned I was a hag from ages twelve to seventeen. So they do make deals with mortals. Again, they're different than devils, who are going to make deals basically for your soul. They want to one just continue to amass power or get powerful artifacts that they collect, but it's never going to work out for the person that makes a deal with a hag. What kind of examples kind a player expects my hag. So a hag is going to set themselves up close enough to a settlement or a town that people will seek them out, but not so close that they're very easily attacked or overrun, if you know, the townspeople revolt or decide that they are a real problem. When inevitably that deal does not work out right right, So they want to be in a position of powers that people come and seek them out because they have a sick child, they are in love with somebody that maybe doesn't love them, or for people in need but like in desperate need of some kind of solution. They pretty much count on that and and count on people thinking that they're going to be able to outsmart them. Yeah, or even just not even necessarily outsmart them, but that they'll deal honestly with them. Yeah, in a way that like you would never expect a devil to to do, right, you know, going into that deal, that that's a bad deal. Yeah. And from a character perspective or from a

5:38 story perspective, like it's it's about the desperation, right, people are so desperate that Yeah, when somebody's real desperate like that, they kind of start answering their own questions, right, Like, yeah, they're going to deal honest with honestly with me. I think like in popular culture recently, I read Stephen King's Dark Tower and Raya of the cou O's or Po's kind of a great representation of a hag. A Maba Yaga would be another representation of a hag. Yeah. If you've read those hell Boy comics, the bpr D comics to Baby Yaga that they represent in that is very very good. Yeah, a lot of that going on. Yeah, And in actual culture, if you want something that is praying on the most desperate people making a deal with them that they can never actually cash in on and never works in their favorite these are payday loans. Yeah, the payday loans people or hags now that that works. Is a hag a witch? What what we would consider in like English culture or like colonial culture as a witch? Would that be the the closest equivalent to a hag somewhat, I guess, which is what really? So the witch that I heard as that was a really good in the very beginning of the movie The Witch. If you see that great movie, I love calling it the vich same, yeah, man, Like I always think of hags as like, you know, know, like like you say, because they're fay creatures, like they crossed the fairy king or

7:08 you know, they they you know, they they sought power somewhere they shouldn't have. And that ugliness is also a reflection of the fact that they're exiled from that society. They're never going to get back into it, you know, and like messing with the humans is is the only form of social power that they're ever going to have because they've been cast out like that. That's that's the thing I like about that, that they're that they're explicitly solitary for the most part. Humans are the last thing that they can interact with exactly, yes, yeah, yeah, And that is I mean that is kind of the long and short of it is they avoid other powerful creatures and fay creatures, Yeah, because they know it's going to be much harder to get an angle where they kind of hold the upper hand. Yeah, And you know it can seem even innocuous. It's one of the things in Volos they talk about is like you might not realize that you're being manipulated by a hag.

8:03 It could. It could be really something simple like drop this package off to this person at this time, at this place, and you don't realize, And it could be years before the payoff happens for the hag because again with their long life spans, like they they can wait around forever, they don't. It's a couple dozen years when you're right right and the payoff comes and you don't realize that when you dropped that thing off to that person at that place in time, like you signed your own death warrant. Maybe, So, can can you give an example of how a plotline like that would play out, like like what kind of things were dropping a package of set up? Sure? It could, it could set up an enemy that the hag sees. How those ripples would play out over years because they've had years to kind of say, okay, this is going to start almost a domino effect to where you know, it sets up an enemy that is going to be so enraged later on because you you know, own you become their landlord or something, and and now they can't afford it and they see you as you know, the issue of their downfall. Something like that. It could be that the examples they use were you have an ailing father who has you know, he can't remember things right, and so the hag is going to give you a potion to give them it's going to regain his memory. But when that happens, he also becomes very violent, goes into fits of rage.

9:33 It's going to be things like or you know, like like I like the quintessential hag bargain Like that would be you go to the hag and say I want to restore my father's memories, and she says, well, you do all this stuff for me, and then I'll give you a potion to will restore your father's memories. And you do that. You do the fetch quest, you do the thing, you go, you know, whatever, you you you kill the thing that is like you know, the harassing her in the swamp and then you come back and she says, here, give this potion to your father, and then you bring back your father and he drinks it and he has only and like he gets back only the memories of all the times you defied him or something like that, like and that's how those hag bargains go. Yeah, so like she follows the letter of it, but there's that like ironic twist to it that you knew was coming but you know, but you did it anyway. So it's a monkey pall with extra steps. Yeah, something like that. Yes, yes, yeah, you do all those things for her, so that you were I love a good monkey paw. Your unrequited love loves you, but it just turns you into the object of their affection. They love to themselves, so you turn into a mirror. You know something like that, right, could I mean it can you can get really fun with it, and it could be that it's a big bad evil BBG, or they can be like in our campaign, it's just kind of somebody you ran into, more of that agent of chaos that might lead to a bigger plot point. I can't talk about that.

10:56 Jason plays and the cool things about that. I was two seconds away from giving her exactly what she wanted, and the rest of the party wanted to walk away. One of the cool things about that long term thinking is that you can retroactively blame things on the Hag as the DM if you're like, oh, this would be cool to have, but I'm not sure how we can fit that into Oh, it's part of that Hag curse from four levels ago. And as long as you're playing, you know, at least reasonably fair with it and not just you know, kind of coming out of the blue and you know whatever tpkying somebody or something like you're And as long as you're not just coming out of the blue and doing anything like that is too unfair. That's that's a way to to take take something that you're not quite sure how to work into the game and make it part of that long term plot. Hello Adventurers, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, the absolute best thing you can do to support us is to subscribe so you'll be notified when new episodes are released. You can also leave us a review five stars. Of course, that will help us get seen by more D and D players, and more than anything else, just tell your friends about us. If you like what we're doing here, that there's a good chance that your DM or your players will enjoy it too, and you don't need to loop gold to do any of that. We appreciate your listening. Now back to the show. The other ways that you can encounter hags is in covents, so there's a grouping of hags and that makes them even more powerful. And now you have a layer if that's usually where you're going to encounter a hag anyway, but you have layer actions that happen.

12:31 And for new dms that don't know what layer actions are, can just give us a quick rundown of that. Sure. So layer actions are exactly that. If you encounter a monster in its layer, those monsters have a in their arsenal have environmental effects that help them. Usually they're always help them. It's usually always they usually always help them that help them. So it could be the hag can pass through solid walls, doors, ceilings, and floors as if the surfaces weren't there until initiative count twenty on the next round, so they can use those layer actions on that. Usually usually it happens on initiative count twenty I think sometimes they'll happen on initiative count one. Okay, I haven't seen much other than twenty, but but mechanically, it's basically an action that gets done automatically, that is done by the environment, not by any particular character. So yeah, to way to deal with one of the problems that we run into with fifth Edition, and we'll talk about this a lot as we're playing, is if you have a group of characters against a solo creature like a hag, and it's a no kidding, knockdown, drag out fight, the characters get so many more actions than the hag does that that can really unbalance it and make it tough for the Hag to hold its own. And those layer actions are a great way to kind of balance that out without having the Hag taking five attacks or whatever. So it's a really club or a thing that they came up with that help balance out that

14:01 action of company. You combine later actions with legendary actions literary resistances, and now you have a one versus many fight that is fair. Yeah, that actually works. Yeah, so covens this is a grouping usually of three hags, so hags don't really get along with each other. If they have a common goal, they might and then they become even more powerful. So that's just another way that you can encounter Hags is in that powerful Usually that's also going to have regional effects, so usually up to a mile you'll see decay. They can have a Hag's eye that is an eye in a tree somewhere that they can see people coming. They can sense somebody coming and get ready, get prepared. A lot of the time, they have a good amount of spells in their arsenal that'll allow them to hide their true self. That's a nod back towards that faye nature that they have where they can and you know, appear to you in maybe the guys that they had when they were young, or take on the role of you know, like you said, if you have that that lost love or something like that, that's a good way for them to put one over on you. And that's just moved from which is lower. Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's that's that's all the fairy tale stuff kind of that they come from. One of the things that I love with Hag covens is that is a place where smart players, if you really engage them, they can maybe figure out ways to appeal to those

15:33 rivalries or egos that the Hag coven has, maybe find out ways to kind of play them against each other or you know, which is an incredibly dangerous game to get into, but it's a you know, it's another way to make them interesting in a way that can go that can have some legs in the campaign beyond just having them be you know, a monster of the week. So again powerful spells in their arsenal and visibility at will, but also illusory appearance so to hide their true self. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, this is the the head that we encountered, right, Kantos has a beautiful young girl and with a quick perception check saw the match coming off or it's like, I don't think that's true. And this is also heggs are a good creature at a reasonable level to introduce the idea that it's okay to have a fight that ends in conclusively where the monster gets away, and that doesn't mean you failed. It means oh, okay, now they're on our radar, we're on her radar. Yeah, and that can become something that becomes a rivalry that can last be ond. Like I said, just just a single fight. That's another thing they're great for. Yeah, And I think it's not only that a fight ends in an inconclusive way, but that like, here's a powerful being that like maybe you don't want, maybe they're not Everything is a fight exactly. And that's like we had in our game.

16:56 We had a player that kind of wanted to fight, but everybody else was kind of like, well, oh yeah, she seems kind of powerful badly. Yeah, and so there was kind of a little bit of back and forth between one of the characters in that hack. And if you've got the right table where that's not just going to cause friction, then yeah, that's another thing there. It gives you a fun role playing opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, So what types of campaigns? And like, I know this is going to depend a lot on the level that you're playing at. Did you have a rough fla like a challenge rating for most hags or do they differ by what type they are? I think it does differ by type. I don't have all of them in front of me. The Green Hag is a three challenge reading three, yeah, but a COVID obviously it's going to have a higher challenge rating, and then you can get into all the different types of hags. Yeah, and it's hags that are going to live in mountains and hills. It's easy for them to navigate these areas, even though for most people it wouldn't be you have war hags. I think this house is pronounced the h e u r pronounced. They are going to live in wintry frozen landscapes. Green hags are going to be mainly in forests, swamps, things areas like that sea hags in the sea. Night hags they left behind the world of Fae to roam the lower planes. The nighthags, I think actually have an abysal nature. Yeah. They're kind of the more like

18:27 devil or demon flavored one, is that yeah, yeah for sure, like haunt your dress. Yeah yeah. So varying challenge ratings, you can have these as the big bad for low level players up to just a minor inconvenience on the way to a bigger bad. Yeah. Yeah, And I just kind of pep bring them in just to cause a little chaos if things are going too well. That can be a lot of fun. One of the things that can be cool for is because of that nature where you know, they'll try to fool people. Certainly, you could have a game that starts with the PC's being advised by the kindly old village, you know, elder woman who lives at the top of the hill, and gradually as you go through the first three levels, you start to find out, oh, wait a minute, you know this is she's not what she seems and stuff like, and again, this is like, as long as you're you're playing fair and it's not going to be a situation where the players feel like, you know, you're bullshitting them the whole time, or like you were unfair about it. But that can be kind of a cool thing to do, you know, where it turns out, and then you know, they get to third level to where they can actually confront her, and then they they take her down. It turns out she's part of a covenant. Her sisters are unhappy, not because they're particularly upset that she's dead, but her death disrupted the plans that they had and now, you know, maybe they don't want to kill the player characters, but they're like, well, you killed our sister, so now you are going to do the job that she was going to do for us. So you're under this obligation, and there's a whole

20:00 know, like plans within plans that you can Yeah, there's a lot of ways. I actually really love that. And that's something that I've I've thought often about is like you think you're helping, yeah, but you're not. I think that's a great hug. Yeah, very campaign. Also, the classic of the quest giver is the Big Bed one of my friend tropes. Right, it's a good trope, like as long as as long as you're not fundamentally going against anybody's kind of character conception, like as long as you're not having like you know, paladins killing us and people or stuff like this. You know, but like the paladin did legitimately go help out that temple, but it's because you know, that temple somehow figures into the Hag's long term plans and so you know, even by doing good, you've you know, helped advance this other creature's goals and stuff. I think that that's a really cool thing to do if you can pull it off. So let's say the players get to a point where they now have to fight this thing.

20:55 Joe, did you do any research into their tactics? What we can expect them to fight against the Hagh. So again, so using Keith Amon as the monsters know, we talk about that website, probably a ton a ton of information there. He in fact revisits it at least one or two other times. Yeah, I'm sorry, two other times. I think I think Hags is in both monsters know what they're doing, hardcover book and more monsters know what they're doing. I think that think haggs for them both. Yeah, so there's a ton, but mainly is the thing I think with Hag tactics is that they always want to have the upper hand, and when they don't, they will leave, They will flee. So they're going to use everything at their disposal to try to kill a party, and they're going to attack the people that are the biggest threats to them first, and then if they are reduced or they know it's a fight they can't win, they are going to get out of dodge. They are going to use invisible passage to make themselves invisible, they super annoying, and any other and any other powerful artifacts they may have that they may have, they're going to use to leave the area so that they can't be harmed and that's another way to kind of like, like if if you need something that's a little better than a challenge rating three, you know, in addition to whatever, juicing their hit points or giving them a couple of extra spells, giving them magic items that they actually use as opposed to just have you know, whatever in a chest or

22:25 sitting in a pile of treasure or something like that is a way to you know, to kind of buff them up a little bit, you know, and then the players know, off, we if we take her out, we're going to have this thing that she's been using against us just particularly satisfying and get your hands on a magic item that was being used against oh yeah. Absolutely, also also showing the players how it works and how devastating it has been for them for the past twenty minutes. Yeah, and or even it could be something that you know, it's too powerful the first time they yep, and that's the thing that says like, oh, we need we need to run. We've got to come up with a countermeasure against it. And that's just something to keep in mind the next time. Yeah, the challenge is not killing her like anybody can stick a sword through her. The challenge is keeping her from running away. You know, that's the tactical puzzle that you got to solve there yet, So what was what kind of tactics can players use? Let's start with at least stoping her from running away, and then we'll focus on actually killing, which I guess killing is not the hard part. No, I don't. I don't think it is. Well, Arma class is seventeen. It's not too bad. Eighty two head points, not too bad, not crazy. This for greenhags yere three green.

23:33 Yeah, So mainly speaking about green hags because that's like your classic has that's me the most common way to run out. This would be a much longer episode if we went into everything, of course, and we're kind of geting towards newer dms and players, so like you're going to see a green haag before you see anything else. I would say green and greenhigs and seah haggs are the ones that I hear about more than anything else. Yeah, seahags are a lot of fun. That's ursulus. Yes, yeah, I mean if you're going up against hags, like, I'm not so worried about my armor cl or the amount of damage I'm dealing. I want to boost my saves in every way that I possibly can get my wisdom saves up. And you know, whatever kind of resistance to illusion or true sight I can bring to bear. There's not like at third level, there's not a ton of that kind of stuff. Sure, but if you know you're going into that, anything that gives you an edge against those illusions, or you know, her ability to move freely around through her layer and stuff like that, Yeah, that's important thing. The layer actions are available if it's a single Green Hag. I mean physically it's a plus sixth a hit damage is like thirteen points on average of slashing damage. She can cast dancing lights, minor illusion, and vicious mockery at will. So I guess if you're it's a single Green Hag, it's it's really probably the claw tact that you're worried about.

24:47 I feel like, if you get into a situation where somebody's to to toe with her and she's doing claw taxs, you've probably won that fight. Yeah, she does never like like she's going to angle to never be in that situation where she has to roll that claw attack against any play. So yeah, in a coven, though, they do have additional spells at their dispose. I Bite is a sustained spell requiring concentration that can impose a debilitating condition such as unconscious, frightened, or sickened on a succession of targets who fail their wisdom saving throws, they can scry, which makes sense again because you're not always going to be close, so they can find out how their plans went. They get a lot of joy out standing around that cauldron looking into it, seeing what you're doing. Yeah, as you make your plans, polymorph so she can turn you into a new bestow curse a sustained spell so she can bestow curse still, Yeah, she's allowed to bestow curses upon you.

25:45 Counter spell is available to hags that are part of a coven, just a flex that they are better at magic than you. Yeah, lightning bolt, old person, locate object and identify Again, it makes sense by ray of sickness is a nice range spell, So coven hag is going to be much more powerful than your course single green. So let's say, for example, we want to write a campaign. It is a underwater campaign. You role playing Tritons, the Murpho people, and one of the characters that is in love with somebody who doesn't love them back, and the Sea Hag makes a deal to take her voice so that she can then go romance to the Prince, and then she uses that voice to then romance the Prince first.

26:33 I think this is a beautiful original story that Disney definitely hasn't done yet. That's incredible. You just came up with that, right now. I did. I did, but I did it by completely ripping off the Little Mermaid, which Hans Christiander is saying basically created the first Sea Hagg. But yeah, and that really just kind of shows that this is not like a new thing in pop culture. This is something that is there's source ma cereal out there that can completely steal from Go steal a Little Mermaid, Go steal, Go steal hocus Pocus. You want to make me a Sanderson's sister hat covering campaign, call me. I will play. Hello Adventures podcast at gmail dot com. Invite me to your game, I will play. I think that that's a good cursory overview for a type of monster that is excellent for low to mid level players as a big bad and even still good for mid and high level players as like a medium bat and also great for kind of introducing the concept, like I said, of sometimes it's not you kick in the door. There's a fight with that monster. You win the fight, you never see that monster again. But that can be you know, that can kind of be an ongoing menace or that somebody you know that Like I said, those fights are inconclusive and frustrating. The first single thread that open, you know, yeah, that when you pull it it opens up other things that may happen. Yeah, and you want to have a lot of fun.

27:55 Take the deal. Make your DM squirm, make them come home, make your d I was really hoping that we have a player that almost made it. I know it wasn't. It wasn't my deal to make, or I probably would have. I could have made that. But make you make your DM listen, listen to but listen. You should have seen the look in Joe's eyes and he was like, like that would have been great. Make your DM happy. Take the deal, like this is the time when we get to the dms get to be creative. Isn't punishing you for doing good things? Yeah? You got to make it appealing enough that they convinced themselves that they can come out on top. Yeah. I think what I told him he had to do, though, was bring me a child, Like bring a child to the tag. As soon as you offer that, we can bring in the guy that just betrayed us. You can bring me Julian's head. I'm like, I get it. I'll go get it right now, Like just wait here, Like you don't think give me anything.

28:45 I was going to I was going to kill them myself. Yeah. Those are the best hag bargains though, when when like she gets paid for doing something you were gonna do anyway, that's fantastic. That's like, you know whatever, that's really problem, that's free magic or whatever. You know, as soon as you made there whatever it is that she wants free power, I always did it for him. Yeah, but that's that's that's our campaign. That's awesome, man. So any parting words on hacks, take the deal. Take the deal. But there are a lot of There are a lot of fun to role playing. You can use them in so many different ways that I think that they belong in some way in every campaign. Like I said, it could be a woodswitch. I really love that. Jim said, it's an agent of chaos. Yeah, they're great fun and you get to do crazy voices and let you get to use your vocal fry and stuff like that when they're talking to the players. That's a lot of fun with your illusory Magically, you get to have multiple voices for them too.

29:47 You get to have your sultry, sexy image voice. And then as soon as the illusion drops you you can get really cartoony with it. Oh yeah, great, I love cartoony voice. That's fun. But yeah, just if things are going a little too for your players, give me a deal. Take the deal. Okay, it's just a character. You'll be okay, you can still try the all master maybe crying over your lost character, but me, no, take the deal. That's all we got today. Yeah, right, with your hag deals, tell us what the best tag deal that you put? What deal with the haggart you're mulling over right now or regretting you're the most creative one you can come up with. I'd love to hear that. Yeah, once you haven't even tried to. Once you're cooking up, I mean waiting for your players to take Hello Adventures podcast at gmail dot com or send us the voicemail podcast dot com slash voice if you use the hag Voice. We might even put it on the air. Oh yeah, that's yeah, we mean Mike, Okay, I'm putting on We're using it. Hello Adventures Podcast at gmail dot com, Helloa Adventures podcast dot com, slash voice write or tell us yourself about your favorite hag deal and I think that's going to wrap it up today. So this has been Hello Adventurers. We are your host, Jason Portiso, Joe McCall and Jim Crocker, producer, engineer and editor Gsportisa. Our music is by Nick spurriyor artwork by Kristen Broderick. I think that's all we've got to say, so, with nothing else to say, good by Adventures