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One More Thing: Hellsmith
🕑 Added 2023-02-23 16:01:02 +0000 UTCGreetings adventurers!
Deep within the bowels of the hells as fighting rages eternally, a new creature was born to feed the lust for weapons in the armies of devils below. The Hellsmith is a creature that brings the heat to the battlefield, able to forge weapons for its allies around it and keep the pressure of the march onward. You’ll often heard the dreaded tink of hammer on steel long before you see a Hellsmith. Possessed with a spark of creativity, these beasts are far more than dumb brutes and often lead their units with terrifying tenacity.
Design Notes By Matthew:
This is one of those creatures that kind of came out of nowhere for me. I wasn’t really sure about it to start with as I wanted to make something that could buff its allies and really take command of the battlefield. As I spent more time mulling the idea, I realized that there were plenty of tactician style enemies out there and my thoughts shifted more towards making sure that I could provide something that really benefited the allies around it.
One of the things I had in mind from the very start of this is a creature that brought versatility to combat. I wanted it to be able to craft its own weapons and give itself something special with each of them. Initially when I created it, the three amorphous alloy formations were just way too similar to one another. I eventually separated them by 3 possible uses; sword for damage, axe for AoE, and glaive for distance. That gave a more individual feel to each of the forms and created a more interesting choice for DMs to allow the monster to adapt.
Forge was probably one of the toughest abilities I’ve written. It took a lot of passes to get it feeling and sounding right. That ability for the creature to get into the fray and then spread the battlefield with this intense heat was something that I really loved the concept of. The levels of exhaustion were a somewhat late addition, but I wanted to give even druids a reason to get away from it. It’s basically a protection aura for the creature while it works and I found that really fun.
Illustration Notes By Fernando:
I love illustrating our creatures, it’s a great opportunity to flex a different art muscle than the one I use for most of the items. They require worrying about composition, readability, negative space, background, the layout requirements are different, etc.
For humanoid creatures like this one the pose is really important, I want to avoid more stereotypical or boring “pin-up” type poses, a lot of people go with those and they’re fine but they’re not exciting. I always try to go for an action-pose, drawing a lot of inspiration from Riot and the way they illustrate their League of Legends heroes. I’ve never played the game but I love their illustrations and art style.
Since this creature is meant to be a demon I didn’t want it to be too humanoid so I gave it more animalistic legs, I didn’t want to give him just hooves because that’s pretty typical and since he has a headpiece with a rhino-like horn sticking out of it I gave him rhino feet which I think look really cool and evoke a sense of strength and stability perfect for stampeding (or tackling). The headpiece hides his eyes and nose to also take away some of his humanity and make him creepier and scarier.
Originally the idea was to have the forge on his stomach so I drew inspiration from the Diablo 3 Butcher boss, but when Matthew told me that he wanted the creature to be more muscular/athletic I switched the forge to his chest in order to make it look cooler, more heroic, etc.
One of the poses I explored earlier on was to have him kneeling down forging on his knee, but it looked too peaceful, he just looked like a demon that stays behind the battle lines forging weapons for those that are going to fight, not a fighter himself; since he is indeed an aggressive creature I wanted to show him in fight mode with smoke and embers surrounding him.
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Is it hot in here, or is it just the fire devil?
- Fernando & Matthew
