The Galeb Duhr
Rocky Rollie Pollies
Valanche was roused from its slumber. The squat stone elemental had lain dormant within the confines of an ancient stone circle since its construction, its purpose long forgotten by the surrounding forest. As the first rays of dawn touched the ancient stones, a tremor of disturbance in the earth reached Valanche, awakening its senses to an impending threat. Its eyes blinked open, moss crumbled off of the creatures face. Gnolls, ravenous and relentless marauders had started stalking around the circle. Their eyes gleaming with demonic energy from their demon lord.
With a slow, rumbling groan, Valanche emerged from the ground. Their granite body seamlessly blending in with the standing stones that it had been created to defend. The gnolls locked their eyes on the stone creature, they cackled and yipped ready for an easy fight. The hesitation was all Valanche needed. It began to roll, their dense body picking up momentum, crushing the dry grass and kicking up dust. The gnolls snarled and charged, their crude weapons raised high. Arrows pined off Valanche and spears splintered as it rolled into them, the crude gnollish weapons no match for the Galeb Duhr.
One by one, the gnolls were struck down, the bodies crushed like twigs underfoot. The battle was fierce, but brief. The last of the gnolls, realizing the futility of their assault, turned to flee, the yelps of fear echoing in the morning air. Valanche stood resolute, their body warmed by the raising sun. Though chipped and scratched, Valanche knew its duty was far from over. It waddled back to the hole it emerged from. Valanche settled back down in the earth and began to close its eyes. Sleep would come soon for the Galeb Duhr.
Valanche knew it would be needed again, and it would be ready.
Overview
Look at that guy, such a cutie. Stumpy little friend.
I always overlooked the Galeb Duhr as just another alternate elemental. I will admit that I don’t use many elementals in my games, they just don’t normally give me sparks of inspiration. Now that I have taken a better look that his little guy, well I may add them as possible NPCs, cause I love our little Boulder. I’d like to point out that the Monster Manual describes the Galeb Duhr as stumpy, I am only calling them so with love.
Galeb Duhr are stone guardians; impervious to thirst, hunger, and age the stone elemental makes a perfect guardian of a location. Their ability to remain motionless until called upon and to seamlessly blend in to their rocky surroundings only further reinforces that point. Having a higher than average intelligence —for an elemental1— the Galeb Duhr is allowed the ability to assess threats and communicate with creatures entering it’s guarded area. Additionally, this intelligence grants them an excellent memory and are more than happy to share information about its environment to those they don’t deem to be a threat.
The Galeb Duhr is born of the terrain it was drawn from and is permanently tied to the material plane, unlike most elementals who have a connection to their respective elemental plane, meaning they won’t return to the elemental plane of earth if/when they die. This connection to the material plane has it’s own advantages, their closeness to the stones around them allows the Galeb Duhr to animate other boulders. They do this to bolster their numbers when the area they were created to defend comes under threat, using a swarm of rolling angry boulders to frighten off whatever is disturbing the area. I do mean rolling, when they need to move somewhere fast, or desire to close the distance with an enemy, the Galeb Duhr will tuck in its limbs and roll towards their target.
Stat
Let’s keep rollin and see what out little friend can do.
They have a decent armor class and average Hit Points for CR 6, designed to be a guard type creature this AC/HP23 combo seems like a good fit.
I find it truly hilarious that the Galeb Duhr is not fast (look at their stumpy little legs) while walking, but they have the faster alternate of rolling, and even quicker if they are rolling down hill. Truly this is the peak of creature design from WotC.
I don’t usually draw too much focus to the attributes unless there is something that stands out. In this case, the Galeb Duhr has a very strong spread of attributes, two 20s will allow them to stand up to some punishment but since neither are in Dex, Wis, or Cha it doesn’t provide much in the way of saving against spells.
Resistance to non-magical BPS give them that slight longevity advantage.
Poison immunity. The more I go through stat blocks for this journal, the more I realize that WotC may have designed their creatures with the idea that more players would use poisons on their weapons. Only 10 spells between the Players Handbook and Xanathar’s Guide4 deal poison damage, one of which (Chaos Bolt) has randomly determined damage type. It really feels like WotC expected more poison damage in game.
Similarly with the Condition Immunities. Exhaustion tends to be a player specific mechanic with only 2 spells that apply the condition.5 Only 2 spells and 1 poison can apply paralyzed, with only one of the spells being able to target non-humanoid creatures. Three high level spells can apply petrified, and 2 that can apply poisoned. With the prevalence of these Condition Immunities, it really reads as if players were thought to more widely use poisons, but maybe it’s just my groups that don’t frequently use poisons.6
Tremorsense is such a fun idea that doesn’t get enough use. Being able to see through vibrations in the ground, a la Toph, can create such potent story telling moments.
False Appearance with Tremorsense creates the best hidden guard. Dot some of our little rock friends around the lair of an Elementalist or a druid’s grove, only to pop out of the ground surrounding the party ready to charge in with Rolling Charge it a great ambush combat. Alternatively, have the Galeb Duhr retreat out of sight and then remain motionless, and now the ambush can happen again.
Rolling Charge. Like I just said, great for ambushes, but also just a great ability. Not locking the ability to its own action allows for some versatility, with the prerequisites only being movement and hitting with the Slam attack, this definitely acts like an opening move but you can keep our little rock boys rolling around and making their charges. Adding an additional 2d6 won’t necessarily be lethal by the time your players fight Galeb Duhr, but it can quickly rack up, just keep that in mind. Know that your players will inevitably and consistently fall prone from the DC 16 Strength save, for this I would recommend to make charges at the players whose character can make the save and withstand the knockdown. Remember, playing to the player characters strengths will give them the chance to own the spotlight and leaning into a players build will always be more memorable than playing against their weaknesses to make every fight a slog.7
Slam. Nothing too special with the Slam attack on its own; the +8 to hit gives it a better than 50% chance to hit, and without the additional damage from Rolling Charge it’s not very dangerous.
Probably one the of the cutest sounding actions on a statblock, Animate Boulder. Give your little boulder dude, little boulder friends…that all can charge and slam into things at speed. The boulders that get animated have similar stats to the Galeb Duhr, just without the Animate Boulder action. This animation will last for 1 minute or until the Galeb Duhr loses or drop concentration which, if used properly can take a normal fight and turn it up to eleven. Jokes aside, it can make the encounter spin out of control.
Combat Example
Now let’s get a couple of combat examples that include the Galeb Duhr. One of our examples will include the Galeb Duhr as a guard for a lair while the other will have a Galeb Duhr and a few animated boulders. These shouldn’t be too wild of encounters and won’t turn up the difficulty to deadly unless you go overboard with the Animate Boulders.
In our first encounter we will be pitting 1 Galeb Duhr and 3 Animated Boulders against 4 fourth level adventurers. Some housekeeping before we get into the description and first turn of combat, in an attempt to not overwhelm the players with creatures they can’t quickly take care of, we are going to power-scale the Boulders down just so we don’t turn the adventurers into humanoid-jam. Here are the following changes we are making to the Galeb Duhr stat block for the power-scaled Animated Boulder.
Armor Class: 16 reduced to 14
Hit Points: 85 reduced to 45
Attributes: Strength and Constitution scores reduced from 20 to 14
Rolling Charge: Additional 2d6 damage reduced to 1d6 and DC16 reduced to 14
Slam: 2d6+5 damage reduced to 1d6+5
These changes will drop the approximate Challenge Rating of the Animated Boulders from 6 to around 1, if I did my math right. Here is the Stat block for ease of use.8
As our adventurers traverse the Merojo mountain pass their journey comes to a stop, regrouping to plan the next leg of their trek. The slopes of the mountain, while not dangerously steep, do impose a certain threat to anyone who may lose their step. As our adventurers confer with one another, the group notices the ground has begun to shake. With terrified eyes, our adventurers look up to see a small landslide charging down the mountain’s slope towards them. As they scramble to get out of the way, the landslide diverts…seemingly targeting one of the adventurers.
That’s right folks, we have another ambush on our hands. This one, however, does not require any stealth checks or checks against the parties passive perceptions; since False Appearance makes the Galeb Duhr and Animated Boulders indistinguishable from normal boulders, aka perfect camouflage. The party unfortunately gets no actions or reactions, nor movement or reactions, this will bring them at a slight disadvantage at the top of the combat, but they will, more than likely, recover quickly.
On the first turn of combat the Galeb Duhr and each Animated Boulder will target an adventurer independently. I would not recommend doubling up monsters on a player, it will just make a bad situation worse, and this encounter isn’t necessarily meant to put the players on edge. Speaking of edges, the players are on a mountain slope and your creatures are coming down with speed and will definitely be attempting a Rolling Charge. If the Galeb Duhr and Animated Boulders hit the players with their Slam attack keep in mind who falls prone and who resists the prone. For those that fall prone describe them hitting the ground and being rolled over by the elementals, for those who resist mention how they stumble back and a foot slips down the slope but they recover and just in time. Nothing will actually happen, but we want to ratchet the tension that the terrain may cause an adventurer to have a bad time.
Next we will be making a combat encounter where several Galeb Duhr are set around a, possibly evil, Druid grove as natural guardians. We will be pitting 3 Galeb Duhr against 4 eighth level adventurers. For this encounter we will be restricting the Animate Boulder ability to either only one of the Galeb Duhr can use it at a time or they can only animate a specific low number—2 or 3— of the Animated Boulders from above.
Finally at the end of a journey over the Merojo mountains, our adventurers have arrived near their destination. Having been hired by another druid grove to investigate the sudden silence from their sister grove. As the adventurers approach the grove, a sense of dread washes over them. The flora around the grove has wasted away to near nothing, only leaving behind mossy boulders. Before the adventurers can make their way into the grove; the earth, once again, begins to tremble as three familiar looking elementals rise up.
For this encounter we won’t be approaching it with the intent of an ambush9, rather we are going to treat it solely as a standard encounter. Now if the Galeb Duhr get to act first they will use their Rolling Charge, in this instance you can choose to split targeting OR focus on one person, for this combat our Galeb Duhr are protecting the grove so it is understandable if they target the person who is the most threatening. I would hold off on using the Animate Boulder ability until the 2 round of combat, or until the first Boulder dies. This is just to attempt to maintain the balance of the combat being a little in favor of the monsters and not overwhelming the players; Starting with the action economy10 just in favor of the adventurers then shifting the balance to just in favor of the monsters will make the players feel all the better win the win the fight.
Final Thoughts
Let’s be honest with ourselves, we will use this little guy because he is funny, and that is ok. DnD doesn’t have to be super serious all the time, levity makes stories better. I didn’t include an NPC description for the Galeb Duhr, but feel free to make a Galeb Duhr talkative if the party isn’t outwardly hostile to it or the area it is protecting. It could be a good opportunity to allow your player who has Primordial as a language to chat with a creature that no one else can understand, to the rest of the party the Galeb Duhr and the specific character speak in rough, choppy grunts and low rumbling tones, but to the character speaking they hear the Galeb Duhr’s true voice.11
This is only including the Monster Manual and Volo’s Guide to Monsters/Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse
Armor Class and Hit Point
AC/HP is my DnD themed AC/DC tribute band.
6 from the Players Handbook, 4 from Xanathar’s
Both of which come from Xanathar’s, so I don’t see the exhaustion immunities as designed with the intent of future proofing.
Now I’m genuinely curious, if your group uses poisons more than once a campaign tell me in the comments.
This is something I tend to try to do in every campaign. Have an attack happy barbarian, throw a horde of 1 Hit Point minions at them to cleave through. A player goes heavy into tracking and hunting creatures, well now they get a enemy they can track and assist their party in fighting. Did your Wizard put charisma as their second highest stat, well now they need to negotiate their way through a Magocracy or have to bluff their way out of paying so much for the magic item they want by either convincing the clerk it worth less or just lying to them.
Not an ambush??? Boo this man!
Action economy refers to the number of actions, bonus actions, and reactions each side gets per round.
I know that isn’t how language works, but I love this line delivery by Taika Waititi.