CACODEMON
Welcome back to Monster of the Week! This week we are changing the pace a bit as one of our Keepers has recently started playing a beloved action FPS series for the first time. It resembles a familiar creture in D&D but is quite a different creature. This week, we look at the Cacodemon from the DOOM series! There are some amazinfg homebrews out there, and after spending a good chunk of time inside the DOOM universe over the last few weeks, we thought selecting a D&D Homebrew for this week was only fitting (especially as DOOM was partly inspired by a D&D game!)
Hiding in the realm of demons and bloodshed the Cacodemon is a recurring enemy in the DOOM series – you probably reognise it form it’s appearance alone. The Cacodemon floats around the battlefield shooting projectiles at the Doomslayer and pressuring him by flying right up to him and biting him for hefty damage. If you knew how the Cacodemon looked but didn’t recognise it’s name – you probably know it better by it’s more affectionate name in the community – the “Meatball”! (Which will be how we refer to it for the rest of this entry to Monster of the Week!)
It’s appearance:
Visually, the Cacodemon is meatball-y in appearance. Spherical with jaggy teeth and one large eye. It’s not too dissimilar to the beholder in D&D other than it doesn’t have many eyes. The meatball is also sometimes represented with horns so feel free to customise to your hearts content if you opt to include it in your game!
Now – what about the STATS?
D&D Wiki have a great stat block we can use for the Meatball which we will be talking about in this post. If you’re interested, lease use this link to access the page directly to find the stat block and MUCH more curtesy of the D&D Wiki folks.
Abilities and Attacks
So the basics – the stat array this Meatball has is:
- STR 12 (+1)
- DEX 14 (+2)
- CON 18 (+4)
- INT 8 (-1)
- WIS 16 (+3)
- CHA 14 (+2)
It’s movement speed is 25 ft hovering and only contains an AC of 15. Pretty reasonable for a CR4 creature.
In addition to those, it is also proficient with CON and WIS saving throws resulting in a +7 and +6 respectively. THis means it is particulary hardy – which is also supported by it’s76 HP pool. Bare in mind, this particular build is CR4. We’d like to see a ‘tougher’ variant – we’ll maybe even homebrew a stat block for a unique variant of the Meatball (or a boss version!).
As far as damage resistances go, it is reistance to: cold; fire; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons
And for immunities, the Meatball is immune to poison damage and the poisoned condition.
Lastly for it’s senses and langauage(s) – the Meatball has 120 ft of Darkvision, a Passive Perception of 16 and can speak Abyssal.
So this seems like some decent abilities for a CR4 monster.
As far as it’s actions go, there’s not too much to this one but you could easily augment it’s base abilities or add a few additional ones to your hearts content! We have some suggestions, but starting with it’s base abilities:
- It can Bite targets which is a melee weapon attack – +6, one target and deals 1d10+1 piercing damage.
- The Meatball’s most common move in DOOM is it’s projectile attack – which here is dubbed as Necrotic Bile. This is a ranged attack with 90 ft reach, +4 to hit one target. Now, if this hits – it does an average of 22 necrotic damage (or 5d8 damage), the target’s speed is reduced by 10ft, and they have disabdvantage on Percepton checks until the Meatball’s next turn.
These abilities are quite standard, but I love the Necrotic Bile. It really hurts when it hits, but also inflicts some additional effects which can effective act as some pressure to a single target.
My only real change to the stat block as is would be to slightly reduce the Necrotic Bile damage, but increase the bite as in the DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal games, the Meatball bites seem to actually be much stronger than the projectile. As a pressure monster ,I like the strategy the Meatball should need to employ where it slows down it’s prey with ranged attacks only to come up and take a chomp out of your players. That to me seems a little more intimidating and on-brand, but that is a small nitpick.
Otherwise I really like this stat block for a CR4 monster. It captures the main gimmicks the Meatball uses in it’s source material in a recognisable way.
How about some modifications? There’s a few suggestions I would recommend, but stay tuned if you would like to see a custom Kosmic Keeper’s Stat Block for the Meatball!
Once again – thanks for stopping by at Kosmic Keepers! We’d love to hear your thoughts on the info above and hope to see you stopping by again in the future. Thanks again, and until next time, good gaming!
-KJ