Monster of the Week: Basilisks

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Basilisks are, like many D&D creatures, a solid mythological creature. Check the Wikipedia entry, it’s quite good. What’s particularly interesting is, apparently, a Cockatrice is a variant of a Basilisk, with more bird than lizard. Anyway, the important thing is, in D&D, they’re all reptiles. They’ve got eight legs (one of a variety of mythological descriptions), and can kill with a gaze. Specifically, D&D Basilisks turn you to stone, a technique known to us gamers as petrification. Basically, think of a crocodile with 8 legs that can look at you and you die.

Basilisks are pretty easy monster to use. They fit the role of a random monster perfectly: they aren’t intelligent, they don’t have any desires or motivations, and they exist only to kill or be killed. Thus, the player characters either walk randomly into one, or are sent to hunt one that has been causing problems. It’s a no brainer.

Basilisks can also be domesticated, or, at least, captured. One interesting fact is their gaze has a very limited range. This range is 30 feet in 3.5, and 15 feet in 4E. So, what some enterprising young monsters can do is put it in a spot where it can’t hurt them… but can be released if some silly adventurers come in. For example, consider this diagram on the right. Chain the Basilisk to something, and you can release it to terrorise intruders, but you can reel it back in if you need to walk past it. Yay! Keep it fed and you’ve got yourself a guard dog.

A Basilisk, however, is not all fun and games. With the removal of the 2^nd Edition spell, Protection from Petrification, they can easily wipe out the party, even in 4E where you have to fail a couple of saves. Whilst players can try to fight with their eyes closed, they can still take a fair bashing from the bite attacks. When I tried running a 3.5 Basilisk, it Petrified 2 people, then a third when he thought “it’s okay, I’m a Dwarven Fighter with a high Fort save”. Oops. Fortunately, the last fellow finished it off, eyes closed, and ran and got some scrolls to reverse the change.

Scrolls of Stone to Flesh really are something that the players will like you for giving them, or selling cheap. Oh, and skip the system shock rules. Honestly. Way to make things worse. Okay, sure, if you want a gritty hardcore game where level 20 barbarians with 30 Con can die from a single bad roll, go ahead, but forgive me if I hit you with a PHB.

Anyway, there’s not much more to say. On to the edition-specific stuff.

3.5 Edition

Pretty simple. Save-or-Petrified if you’re in 30ft.

The normal Basilisk doesn’t fit very well. It’s CR5, but level 5 characters have no hope of killing one unless they close their eyes and cross their fingers. The improved one (Abyssal, because, for some reason, they applied the fiendish creature template) is a bit more useful: the CR of 12 is up to the level where the characters can resist the gaze more reliably (even with the increased DC), and they can protect the party with spells, and cast Stone to Flesh themselves (it’s a level 6 spell, so a level 11 Wizard can cast it). Evaluate how well your players can handle the encounter before randomly throwing the monster at them.

4^th Edition

Interestingly, they’ve dug into mythology and realised Basilisks are also known for their poison. Thus, 4E has both a regular Basilisk, and a poison-gaze one. I think this is fantastic. Half the time 4E’s addition of more monster types doesn’t work, but in this case, it does.

If you want a “classic” Basilisk experience, you use the Stone-Eye Basilisk. Like all 4E Save-or-Die effects, the petrification takes a couple of failed saves to work. However, with the Close Blast 3 attack, the Basilisk can theoretically affect several people, and is pretty likely to end up petrifying one. This type of encounter will reward those who have taken Powers giving bonuses against or helping others with Save Ends effects.

The Venom-Eye Basilisk is a pretty cool monster. It allows you to have all the fun of a Basilisk, without the risk of petrifying people. This one probably works better with other creatures than the normal Basilisk. Interestingly, the gaze is Area Burst 1, rather than Close Blast 3.

Suffice to say, whichever edition you’re playing, Basilisks are pretty simple to use. Just make sure the player characters can handle the challenge, and everything should be fine.

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