Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to find a second-printing copy of Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants; I haven’t even been able to confirm that a second printing exists yet. Occam’s razor suggests that it doesn’t. So off we go back in time to the land of Theros.
Let’s kick it off with tritons, of which Mythic Odysseys of Theros contains two variations: the triton shorestalker and the triton master of waves. I’ve been wishing for a while for stat blocks that bucked the overused Strength-and-Constitution brute pattern, and Theros grants my wish right off the bat with these two. (A minor giggle: Even though “Odysseys” is right there in the title, as far as I can tell, the word is never used in the work itself. There’s one reference to a central myth involving the tortuous journeys of a crafty mariner—an unsubtle Odyssey analogue—but it’s called the Callapheia.)
The triton shorestalker is a Dexterity-first melee attacker with some supplementary spellcasting ability. It’s amphibious, equally at home at sea and on land, and it shares the Nimble Escape trait of the goblin. It’s also proficient in Perception and Stealth, marking it as an ambush attacker (echoed in the name “shorestalker”). This creature is a commando specializing in hard, swift strikes.
Here’s the tricky bit: How to gain the greatest benefit on that first attack when fog cloud suppresses all sources of advantage and disadvantage on attack rolls, since everyone within it is both blinded and invisible. And the answer to that may differ depending on whether you’re using 2014 or 2024 rules.
Under 2014 rules, attacking with surprise gives you a full round of actions with little or no fear of reprisal. Get the drop on your foes in round 1, and they won’t be able to muster a counterattack until round 2. Under 2024 rules, your surprised foes merely have disadvantage on their initiative rolls. You’ll probably be able to attack before they do, but you won’t get any more attacks than they get, so it’s crucial that you pack as much punch as you can into that initial assault.
On average, having advantage on an attack roll is roughly equivalent to an additional +4 attack bonus, or a 20 percentage point increase in the likelihood that you’ll hit. Apply that bonus to the triton shorestalker’s Urchin-Spine Shortsword attack, which deals an average of 17 damage on a hit, and you’re looking at an increase to expected damage of 3.4. Mind you, that’s not an increase to the average of 17, but rather the expected damage, which is 16 times the probability of hitting. Against a typical low-level Armor Class of 15, the chance to hit is 55 percent, so we’re looking at an increase in expected damage from 9.35 to 12.75 on one hit, and from 18.7 to 22.1 on two. (Advantage in this case comes from attacking while unseen, which won’t be the case on the second attack, so the increase is applied only once.)
This increase makes the biggest difference around level 2, at which the CR 2 shorestalker is best considered a solo enemy. However, Nimble Escape gives the triton shorestalker the opportunity to disappear from view in between turns, potentially allowing it to repeat this stunt a second time. The difference is now between 37.4 damage and 44.2 damage, which makes a difference against player characters as high as level 5—even level 6, if they’re squishy. At this level, PCs may find themselves fighting one to two shorestalkers each.
To gain unseen attacker advantage, however, the triton shorestalker has to be able to see its target. Fog cloud, by obscuring everyone, gets in the way of this requirement. So under 2024 rules, if a shorestalker wants to use fog cloud to Hide, that’s fine, but it can’t attack while inside the cloud without forfeiting advantage on the roll—and as soon as it comes out of the cloud, it’s visible again, which also forfeits advantage on the roll. Since it can’t gain tempo under 5E24’s surprise rules, it has to gain advantage in order to maintain its edge, so fog cloud ends up being counterproductive.
Under 2014 rules, there’s a different problem: The sudden appearance of fog might make targets suspicious, and if they’re anticipating danger, there’s no chance of gaining surprise against them. Fog cloud works best when, instead of appearing out of nowhere, it’s used to thicken already existing fog. Since fog most often forms at night and lasts until shortly after sunrise, the early hours of the morning are the best time for a triton shorestalker attack. (Their having 60 feet of darkvision doesn’t hurt, either.)
Even under 2014 rules, however, fog cloud is best used to cover shorestalkers’ stealthy approach to their targets; when they’re ready to strike, they drop the spell and allow visibility to clear slightly, so that their own eyesight is hindered by neither mist nor darkness. Alternatively, they can place the effect of the spell so that it terminates between 10 and 15 feet from their targets, allowing them to dart out and attack; the following round, when their targets come to their senses, they can attack, use Nimble Escape to Disengage as a bonus action, and dart back into the fog. Their targets will know where they are, but they’ll have to either shoot with disadvantage or run in and fight blind.
Laying all that aside, under 2014 rules, it’s helpful to the triton shorestalkers to have favorable visibility conditions granting them advantage on their attack rolls, but it’s not as essential as it is under 2024 rules, because they do get a free round of unanswered attacks. And one thing that’s true under both 2014 and 2024 rules is that, while shorestalkers are comfortable making either melee or ranged attacks, they have two good reasons to favor their swords: Their Multiattack doesn’t apply to their ranged Poisoned Spine attack, and reducing a target to 0 hp with their Urchin-Spine Shortsword attack poisons and paralyzes them. These conditions are handy for kidnapping purposes, but they’re also good for brutally efficient murder: Even if a target gets healed and regains consciousness, they remain poisoned and paralyzed, allowing a shorestalker to land an easy critical hit and possibly kill them on the spot by dealing massive damage.
It’s easy to make a ranged attack without being seen, but it’s harder to do so with a melee attack. Triton shorestalkers rely heavily on darkness, cover and the air-water boundary, along with good Dexterity (Stealth) rolls. Here’s another instance where the ruleset matters: In 5E14, if a shorestalker’s Stealth roll exceeds its intended victim’s passive Perception, it can easily creep close enough to stab them, as long as it’s not trying to do so in plain view. In 5E24, however, the Stealth roll must also be greater than or equal to 15, so no matter how oblivious the target, the shorestalker never has more than a 55 percent chance of hiding well enough to approach unseen—but a success confers the invisible condition until the shorestalker gives itself away.
I’ve talked about fog cloud, but not about triton shorestalkers’ other spell, gust of wind. Sure, gust dispels a fog cloud, but so does simply dropping the spell. A more cunning application of gust of wind is blasting boaters off their skiffs and into the water, where they have to contend with underwater combat rules. Here, shorestalkers have a couple of great advantages: Their landlubber opponents move at half speed in the water while they themselves move at full speed, and those opponents also attack with disadvantage unless they’re using thrusting weapons or crossbows (under 2014 rules) or any weapon that deals piercing damage (under 2024 rules).
Triton shorestalkers have the Wisdom to choose their battles carefully, not attacking unless they’re confident of victory, which under 2014 rules means a Deadly encounter and under 2024 rules means High Difficulty. They’re aggressive enough that it takes being seriously wounded (reduced to 12 hp or fewer) to force them to retreat, but as shock attackers, they don’t particularly care to remain engaged in a drawn-out fight, so regardless of how wounded they or their opponents are, they withdraw after attacking in round 3, Disengaging as a bonus action if necessary to avoid two or more opportunity attacks and beelining toward water.
The triton master of waves is an elite spellcaster-tank, with very high Strength and Constitution but extraordinary Charisma. Unlike the shorestalker, the master of waves has no particular aptitude for ambush; it doesn’t depend on surprise and doesn’t go out of its way to achieve it. Its superpower is hypothermia.
Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons’ underwater combat rules (both the 2014 and 2024 versions) are good as far as they go, but they leave a lot of unanswered questions. What happens, for instance, when you deal thunder damage underwater—how far does the shock wave propagate? The triton master of waves’ Innate Spellcasting trait alone is chock-full of such conundrums. Does fog cloud do anything when you’re already immersed in 100 percent humidity? Does cone of cold immediately freeze a volume of water solid—and does that volume then float to the surface? Does wind wall produce a localized upwelling or a wall of bubbles—or does it not function at all underwater unless cast directly above the “ground,” i.e., the seabed?
These questions are not only unanswered but to a great extent unanswerable, at least in the sense that no two Dungeon Masters can be counted on to answer them the same way. And since we can’t count on the answers to be consistent, we can’t generalize from them to determine tactics. The only practical assumption to reason from is that these powers simply don’t apply underwater, only above the surface. Which is fine; like the triton shorestalker, the master of waves has enough advantages in underwater combat that it doesn’t need to rely on spellcasting.
Regardless of whether it’s fighting foes in the water or above it, the triton master of waves always kicks things off with the Summon Water Weird bonus action. It has absolutely no reason not to: This ability is all upside. As with most summoning abilities, I advise DMs not to roll for how many water weirds appear but rather to predetermine it based on intended encounter difficulty.
Out of water, cone of cold is the big gun, dealing an expected 27 cold damage to each opponent in a 60-foot cone; for best value, the master of waves must position itself where it can strike all its opponents or at least six of them, whichever is less—under 2014 rules. Chapter 3 of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide includes a new Targets in Areas of Effect table that operates from very different assumptions, one of which is that a 60-foot cone can encompass as many as 16 targets. So if the master of waves is up against more than six foes, it really does want to make sure its cone of cold spells hit all of them.
Similarly, wind wall, which deals an expected 10 bludgeoning damage to each target in its area of effect, is a good bet against two or more opponents under 2014 rules. But if you’re following the 2024 Targets in Areas table, you might prefer to hold out for at least three, especially if you’re casting it against front-liners who are more likely to succeed on their Strength saves and thus take less damage. Wind wall is a hard spell to make effective use of in coastal areas anyway, since it assumes the existence of a “ground.” On the beach, sure, but on board a ship? On the surface of the water? Maybe just let this one slide, especially since the master of waves will almost certainly want to spend its first two rounds of combat casting cone of cold, and it can wreck face in round 3 and beyond with its Multiattack.
This Multiattack is a peculiar one, consisting of two melee attacks and a ranged attack. Do you see why it’s peculiar? If you said, “Because if the master of waves has an opponent to attack within melee range, it will have disadvantage on its ranged attack,” you get full points. To avoid this penalty, the master of waves needs to make its Ray of Frost attack first, before moving forward and engaging in melee, or to finish off its melee opponent(s) with Wave Touch before firing off its ranged spell attack. Otherwise, well, an attack with disadvantage is better than no attack at all, so it may as well go ahead and take its Ray of Frost attack even though it’s likely to miss. But it should aim that attack at the least armored enemy within range, in order to minimize the magnitude of the penalty. (Advantage and disadvantage have the most impact, roughly equal to ±5, when the number needed on the d20 is from 8 to 14. Rolling with +7 to hit against AC 10, the master of waves can push the effective penalty down to approximately −2.)
That’s a simple and intuitive enough heuristic that having the triton master of waves follow it is uncontroversial. But with only humanoid-average Intelligence, it’s incapable of tactical reasoning any more sophisticated than that. Contrast its Ray of Frost target selection with the use of its Frigid Shield reaction, whose wording implies a few nonobvious conclusions: that the master of waves should hold off on using it against attacks that aren’t likely to deal at least 10 damage; that the more melee opponents it’s surrounded by, the better; and that it doesn’t work at all in a fog cloud, because the master of waves has to be able to see its attacker. All these fine points are lost on the master of waves. When it’s attacked by an opponent it can see, it throws up Frigid Shield as a reflex, regardless of the power of the attack, what attacks might still be incoming or who’s immediately nearby.
Note that, as the ability is written, if the triggering attack takes away fewer than 10 of the master of waves’ temporary hit points—or misses entirely, and takes away none at all—any subsequent attack doesn’t result in a blast of cold damage, even if it knocks the master of waves’ temp hp down to 0. Only the attack that confers the temp hp in the first place can activate the blast. (If that’s not what the designers intended, it’s not documented anywhere as an erratum.)
As for the master of waves’ other innate spells, fog cloud is an equalizer, but a time-consuming one with an opportunity cost. If it can be cast just before combat begins, that’s the best time to do it, particularly since surprise isn’t of the essence; there probably won’t be any better time to do so. Gust of wind, as for the triton shorestalker, is handy for blasting enemies off the deck of a ship. The master of waves can take the Summon Water Weird action before doing pulling this stunt, ensuring that the water those enemies fall into is populated with unfriendlies.
A triton master of waves isn’t as cautious about getting into a fight as triton shorestalkers are, although it has Wisdom enough to recognize when it’s bitten off more than it can chew and shift from combat to parley—generally one or two rounds into an Easy or Medium (5E14) or Low Difficulty (5E24) encounter. In a more challenging encounter, it withdraws when seriously wounded (reduced to 42 hp or fewer), diving into the water and vanishing beneath the sea, with any remaining water weirds delaying any who might pursue.
Next: leonin iconoclasts.
