#dnd 5e vrock

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

On the left, the vrock, 8 ft (2.4 m) aggressive vulture demons. Sometimes they can even summon a friend!

On the left, the Umber Hulk, 8 ft (2.4 m), about as smart as your average person, and can confuse and disorient people with thier gaze! Beneath a hide covered in chitinous plates is a very muscular body. One strong enough to tear through 10 ft (3 m) of solid rock in 6 seconds. Apparently the eldest of them can grow to 16 ft (4.9 m) and become very good at reading people.

[adndmonsteraday]

Vrocks (pronounced: /vrɑːkz/ vrahkz), or type I demons were tanar'ri with a taste for carnage and human flesh that appeared to be humanoid vultures. They were known among Abyssal denizens as untrustworthy and flighty creatures ruled by greed, but their selfishness and fractious natures were paradoxically paired with uncanny synchronization.

“Vrocks are fighters, and they work together with other vrocks with uncommon grace and ability. That is a big thing for the tanar'ri!” — Xanxost the blue slaad

Vrocks stood 8 feet (240 centimeters) tall and weighed 500 pounds (230 kilograms), appearing as a cross between a vulture and a human. Their bodies were twisted and gnarly with a long neck and limbs all covered in sinew. The rest of their body, especially their broad wings, were coated with small gray feathers, and their body stunk of offal and carrion. Their bestial appearance was magnified by their long talons and vulture heads, but burning in their terrifying eyes could be seen a keen, predatory intelligence.

Once thought to be loyal only to their own kind, vrocks turned out to be treacherous even towards each other, betraying their fellows for simple, cheap jewels. They were capricious in the extreme, only working together due to their ability to coordinate, and were well-known for abandoning their jobs and joining with new masters they believed to be more powerful.

Vrocks were dull-witted demons, but smart enough to keep an eye out for targets. Trying to bribe them was normally a mistake, as they also harbored a strong, demonic bloodlust, relishing the screams of their victims and the taste of humanoid flesh. They saw no reason to accept a bargain when they could simply kill the diplomat, take his treasure, and then have the added benefit of sating their need for carnage and having a fresh meal.

A gathering of vrocks was known as a "murder", and the size of the group could vary wildly. Typically they moved in groups of under eight members, but they were known to organize into squadrons of ten and perhaps greater numbers in times of war.

Vrocks were employed as guards, elite assault troops, infiltrators, and covert operatives due to their quality skills in these tasks. This was despite the fact that they were known to scheme against their superiors, as they were not so intellectual as to be likely to succeed. They were still carefully watched for disloyalty however, as they were likely to switch sides without any notice.

Although they made excellent bodyguards and enforcers for stronger and smarter demons, vrocks truly came into their own during massed battles as aerial strike teams. They flew above enemy forces with various debris in tow, raining rocks and the like down upon their foes before plunging into the fray.

Relations Among other demons, vrocks had a poor relationship with chasmes, another group of flying tanar'ri. The two mutually hated one another, the chasme seeing the vrocks as rivals. Vrocks also had a bitter feud with bulezaus, who they rivaled as the toughest front-line troops of the tanar'ri. The bulezaus lacked the magic and mobility of a vrock band, but compensated with sheer stubbornness and fury that led them to never stop fighting. The two bloodthirsty demon breeds would almost inevitably fight upon meeting, unless baatezu were present for them to attack instead.

Besides demons themselves, vrocks would associate with demonic cults, as well as evil fey and wicked giants. Magic Vrocks followed a peculiar system when it came to learning magic. No matter how intelligent, individual vrocks couldn't become wizards, but a collective of five or more could. The downside of this was that all vrocks had to study a spell before any of them could cast it, but this was compensated for by their increased group adeptness, since a murder of vrocks had the spellcasting strength of some of the most powerful mages.

Source: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Vrock

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Forgot to add this to my previous post, but the start of the Vrock Saga is over here. I need to go through and make sure all the posts are connected properly, I'll probably make a master post eventually as well once I get more things on this blog.

But anyway. Last post was about my basic process in deciding how to redesign the vrock in my own style. This post is a little more fun because it's just a look at my sketches before the final redesign.

(Image description: several sketches of the vrock, titled "fun with poses". At the top left corner, there is a sketch labeled "original vrock pose", where I used the same crouching pose the official dnd art of the vrock did. My sketched design of the vrock looks like a very large vulture with a long fan tail, smaller dinosaur-like arms below its wings, a crest like a cassowary, and a fleshy lump on its nose like a turkey. The other poses shown here are one vrock perched on a rock and turning its head to look behind, and two vrocks posturing menacingly at each other over a large lump of carrion.)

One important factor in designing a creature is knowing how it moves. So I've made these sketches to get a feel for the vrock in motion, which helps it look more like a real creature instead of just a fantasy monster. I'm especially happy with the two that are trying to intimidate each other in a competition for food. Most animals will not fight except as a last resort, so these vrocks are simply trying to make themselves look big and scary and make loud noises at each other until one of them gives up.

And these next two images are tests for a final redesign. First a sketch, then a colored version. I used a similar pose to the monster manual vrock, standing on its hind legs with its arms in a vaguely threatening pose.

I'm mostly happy with the colors here. I leaned heavily on the colors of the king vulture with a beige body, dark blue flight feathers and neck ruff. The neck is a very vibrant orange and red, which I love because it can act as a display for intimidation, surprise, warning, and courtship.

But I felt this pose wasn't very dynamic and didn't give the vrock enough of an intimidation factor. It's just kind of slouching and not looking at anything in particular. I also wasn't sure about the placement of teeth in the beak or the head spikes I tried to keep from the original design.

So I made some revisions and many more sketches before I settled on the final design I will post next.

[dianeramic]

Today's bird monster is a Vrock from Dungeons and Dragons!

[painted-thumbs]

Vrocks! 👿

I love the reaper bones brand a lot, very durable and high detail!

[desertdruidcrafts]

New orcs and updated fiends for your D&D paper mini needs. I’m really happy with the new devils especially, and I’m probably gonna update the pit fiend, imp, and Zariel in anticipation for the new adventure book.

[ghostduck]

Dull-witted bird fiend Shaking loose toxins from wings Vrocks love shiney things. #monstermanuel Monday is here again and I didn't mean for that haiku to rhyme but hey, it's neat that it did right? Drawn in blue pencil and black ink with my left hand (with a little help from my right) #art #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #5e #lefthanddrawing #ambidextrous #nondominanthand #vrock #monster https://www.instagram.com/p/B9QFKTXlK4F/?igshid=qtcq0d5l3gzj

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

On the left, the vrock, 8 ft (2.4 m) aggressive vulture demons. Sometimes they can even summon a friend!

And on the right we have the smoke mephit! 4 ft (1.2 m) tall tricksters that can summon friends and lights! These ones are also compulsive liars, likely as a play on the phrase "blowing smoke."

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

On the left, the vrock, 8 ft (2.4 m) aggressive vulture demons. Sometimes they can even summon a friend! On the right, Quadrone! Law incarnate, can handle 4 thoughts at once, biomechanical, and basically just the Duodrone with an eyepatch and wings.

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

8 ft (2.4 m) aggressive vulture demons. Sometimes they can even summon a friend!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Alright time to start the posts about my total redesign process for the Vrock! I went to the full description of the Vrock in the D&D 5e monter manual and found that it is described as resembling a cross between a humanoid and a vulture. It smells bad, it likes shiny things, and its main attacks are its claws and its bite. But it also has a toxic spore cloud attack that it activates by shaking its wings.

The spores are the thing I really had to think over because no bird I know has toxic spore clouds at its disposal. But honestly that is a fascinating ability for what essentially amounts to a very large demonic vulture.

I've decided to go with a symbiotic fungus to explain the spores. As for the vulture aesthetics, I specifically picked the king vulture as a reference because it is incredibly colorful and I think the naked pink neck with dark grey feathers vulture aesthetic gets overused for bland evil creature designs. If I was getting paid to design a freaky vulture demon, I think it's just more fun to make it colorful.

From a worldbuilding standpoint, considering how such a creature could have actually evolved, the Vrock lives in a place full of incredibly powerful and often very large demonic creatures, most of which are above it on the demon ladder. So toxic spores from a symbiotic fungus coupled with some vibrant colors is a very good way for the Vrock to say "hey! Leave me alone! I'm to toxic to eat!" as they go about picking off the leftovers from more powerful creatures.

I'm sure my friend @bonnettbee could write a whole essay concerning the place of the Vrock in a possible demon ecosystem.

So with all that in mind here is a sample of how I begin my design process:

(Going from the top of the image to the bottom:)

Now I dont have saved images for the entire process, but the very first thing I do is find some real pictures to use as inspiration. I looked up king vultures, and dinosaurs such as the velociraptor and the archaeopteryx. I knew I wanted to maintain that dinosaur appearance along with the vulture aesthetic. I trace several images until I have the feel of the shapes down, and then as seen here in the image above, I draw them in my own style. I've drawn the long feather fan tail of an archaeopteryx and the arms and leg shapes of a velociraptor but keeping closer to the appearance of vulture feet. I also drew and colored a king vulture head. King vultures are so fun. Their body feathers are beige and dark blue, and their necks and heads are dark blue with flashes of bright red, orange, yellow, and even a little pink. They have similar fleshy nose lumps to turkeys as well, which I like.

After I've gathered all my references, I sketch out some tests for how I want the Vrock to look. There are only two head sketch samples here but trust me I sketched a lot more. I mainly stuck to the look of a king vulture but i added a bony crest like a cassowary because why not. Made the nose lump more pinkish blue and played with the idea of beak teeth. I liked this a lot more than my other concept of sticking closer to the original Vrock colors of blue and grey with the funky head spikes all along the sides of the skull.

So that's the design I kept to moving forward as I made more sketches of the full body. Which I will talk about in the next post because this got long haha.

Previous post and first post on the vrock

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

And here is the original DnD 5e monster manual design of the vrock vs my finalized redesign.

First vrock post is over Here and my previous post is Here

(Image description: two different pictures of a vrock, a DnD monster which is supposed to be a demon that resembles a humanoid/vulture hybrid. On the left is the original design. It's very very scrawy with long limbs ending in bird-like claws. Its color scheme is blue and mildewy grey, with the blue skin being exposed along the limbs, neck, and chest. The mildewy grey feathers along its back, long tail, and horribly designed wings look liek a matted shag carpet. The design is creepy but lacks space for a ribcage and has entirely useless crescent shaped wings designed for looks rather than function even though its supposed to be able to fly. It is crouching like it's sneaking around.

On the right is my redesign, which bears a lot more resemblance to an actual vulture instead of a nonspecific outdated dinosaur. I used the king vulture color scheme of dark blue, beige, and vibrant red and orange. My vrock is rearing up on its bird-like back legs, flaring the long feather fan of its tail and flapping its wings so the primary feathers seem to curl with the motion. There is an orange crest on its head liek a cassowary, and its dark blue neck also has a bright red-orange wattle like a turkey. Its large eyes are a very pale blue so they stand out. It has its beak open in a screech, and instead of teeth along the edge of the beak I gave it freaky tongue teeth like many birds have. Its arms are small and held close to the body, but are still ready to lash out. The spore attack mentioned in the monster manual is here depicted with a patch of bare skin on its chest that is covered in a symbiotic fungus so the spores are spread when it flaps.)

I realized after I was done that the primary feathers on the far wing are not entirely proportional at the end, but let's just say it lost those feathers in a fight once and is still regrowing them. It was also really hard to get the arms to look the same length and be held in an interesting pose that wouldn't get in the way of the fungus patch. But I am not getting paid for this so I can forgive myself a few small proportion flubs. So anyway, that's the vrock all done and totally redesigned! Wow that was a lengthy project.

My next post will be a smaller project. Instead of a redesign I'm just going to discuss the prevalent issue of shredded wing membranes on fantasy creatures that have beak-like wings.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my process as I critiqued and redesigned the vrock!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Previous post over here. Now it's time to use the references from before to alter the vrock to have a more anatomically correct skeleton and musculature. First I sketch out how i think the skeleton should look:

Image description: the first altered picture of the vrock with better wings, faded out so I could draw the skeleton over it. I have corrected the length of the leg that's further back, because it looked pretty long compared to the other one. But where no ribcage really fit before I have now draw a much larger ribcage with a large keel bone so it has somewhere for flight muscles to anchor. And since it has both wings and arms, I've given it an extended shoulder blade. Part of it drops down to cup the arm shoulder while the rest is long and thin like a bird shoulder blade to create the wing joint.

Is that a realistic way to draw this shoulder? Well frankly there are no real animals with wings and arms so this is the type of fantasy anatomy that has to be fudged a little. It's perfectly okay to fudge some anatomy when designing a creature that doesn't exist! But my purpose with this blog is to point out creature designs that just straight up ignore all anatomy for the sake of Aesthetics like making the vrock incredibly scrawny and lanky just because it looks creepier.

So now I add the Beef.

Image description: same image as before but the skeleton is faded out a little so I can draw muscles over it. I'm no professional expert in how to draw muscles but I can at least get some nice basic shapes down as a guide. It's important to think about where muscles anchor and how they overlap, as well as considering that there still needs to be space for internal organs and that adding skin and such will obscure the muscle shapes somewhat.

I've put the wing pectorals in a position to overlap the arm shoulder muscle. Since they're so close together, one kinda has to take precedence over the other or there will just be too much muscle bulk. So the arm muscles stay kinda scrawny and the wing muscles take up more space.

So the final result of these alterations!

Image description: the vrock with better wings and a bigger barrel shaped chest. To give it that look, I just selected parts of the base image of the vrock and reshaped them into the new beefier figure. It still has its long scrawny arms, but I've fixed the shoulder position a little. I also added feathers to the chest and upper arms to help them blend into the body (and to cover up the weird shrink wrapped muscle texture the original had.)

And that's that! The original design of the vrock has been altered into something that looks like it can actually fly now.

And my next posts will detail my own process to totally redesign the vrock in my own style. Next

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Alright so for my first post let's look at the one fantasy creature design that just angers me more than anything else. It's the Vrock from D&D 5th edition. This is official art from the monster manual, and it is absolutely the worst design for a winged creature that I can think of right now.

(Image description: handwritten title "The DnD 5e Vrock". Below is the official art of the Vrock, a scrawny creature with long limbs that doesnt appear to have any room for internal organs or a ribcage. Its partly covered in pale greenish brown hairy feathers like a balding emu, exposing its blue skin. The claws of the hands and feet are very large and bird like. It has a skinny tail. The face looks like a vulture with a ring of small horns at the back of its head. It has very large wings that look more like matted shag rugs draped over curved poles than actual wings.)

What is wrong here? Well a lot. But for now I just want to focus on the structure of the wings, particularly the feathers.

(Image description: same as above but this time I have written some critiques on it. An arrow pointing to a weird ridge of spikes on the edge of a wing is labeled "what are those?!?". A remark near the top corner asks "feathers or scales?" in reference to the bizarre wing texture. Another arrow points at the wings to label them "ugly drapery" while a major gap between the wing and body is also labeled with a bracket. At the bottom corner I ask "no wing muscles?")

So let's see why this is all bad for wings. First off and most obvious is the way the feathers are structured. They are just a total mess, looking more like poorly organized reptilian scales than feathers, except on the front edge of the wing where there is a clear indication of soft feathers that would be rather useless in flight. There are too many layers of feathers, no thought has been given to the way actual feathered wings look and move. It's impossible to tell where the bones and muscles might be, and the weirdly large gap at the wing base would prevent this creature from getting much lift, especially since the primary flight feathers part of the wing looks so much bigger than any other part.

These are common problems I see in fantasy wing design. Ignoring the size balance between the primary and secondary flight feathers, draping feathers over the bone like weird cloth, misunderstanding how wing bones and muscles work, and a lack of basic research into how feathers are actually structured on the wing.

So now that I've pointed out the flaws, the next post will give a bit more specific analysis on feather structure in this image. Part 2 here

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

So since I pointed out in my previous post that the vrock definitely does not have a functional skeleton or muscle structure, lets look at some references for how it can be rebuilt.

In the vrock's description it claims to look like a cross between a vulture and a humanoid. And it's pretty clear just looking at it that the design takes some inspiration from (inaccurate) dinosaurs like the velociraptor. So in the image above I have used references to draw simplified vulture and velociraptor skeletons, with a basic body outline on the velociraptor and a wing outline plus pectoral muscle placement on the vulture skeleton. It's really easy to find these types of diagrams with a simple google search, and I always grab a huge pile of references when I'm designing any creature.

The main thing of importance on the velociraptor skeleton is the way the arms are positioned. Creatures with arms and wings as separate limbs dont exist in reality (at least in the vertebrate world) so you gotta improvise. But we can see here that the velociraptor's arms start much further towards the chest, with shoulders right on the side, leaving a nice space between the shoulders and back that could hold extended shoulder blades for wings. This is a good way to build a creature with wings and arms. Keeping in mind also that while it's common for dinosaur hands to be drawn facing the ground, they should actually face each other, like its trying to clap.

And the really important part on the vulture skeleton is the extended sternum, called the keel bone, that sticks out far beyond the ribs and acts as an anchor for the large wing muscles required for flight. These are probably the biggest muscles on a bird's body! So any creature that can fly with bird like wings should have a keel bone, or their wing muscles will have nowhere to attach to.

These two diagrams above show how the wing muscles attach to the keel bone and the wing bone. I mistakenly called the ligament between the wing shoulder and wrist a tendon before I think, but it is actually a ligament. That ligament creates the edge of the wing, so its sturdy in flight and bends properly.

One very interesting fact about bird wing muscles is that the muscle pulling the wing back up is not a back muscle. Instead, the muscle for the "up" motion attaches behind the "forearm" of the wing and then wraps around and attaches to the keel bone underneath the pectoral muscle that pulls the wing down. So a bird actually kinda has two layers of pectoral muscles. I'm not sure why, but its probably for energy efficiency.

So really any creature design that includes wings, especially bird wings and especially if it also has separate arms, ought to have a massive barrel chest, which I will alter in the vrock art in my next post. The skinny chest the vrock currently has with barely any space for a normal ribcage is simply not gonna let it fly (and it definitely has a flight speed listed in its stat block, so that's a problem)

Next Post

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Vrock redesign series, chapter 2: the skeletal and muscular structures.

So let's look at the vrock again in its base design.

(The chapter on the vrock's awful wings starts over here and has a more detailed image description of the vrock itself: wings part 1)

(I'm making image descriptions slightly more integrated into the explanations, apologies if its confusing as I try to find the best way to convey all these visual details)

The vrock is a scrawny lanky creature, its arms are extremely long and its torso is way too thin even if it didn’t have wings to consider. It doesn’t appear to have space for many internal organs and it certainly doesn’t have the extra muscles that should be necessary for both wings and arms. It definitely does not have the huge keel bone most birds have to attach their flight muscles, and I'm skeptical about whether it even has room for a normal ribcage anyway. Here I've attempted to draw a skeleton over the top of the vrock to figure out exactly what's going on with this tiny torso while it's mostly hidden behind the skinny front arm:

(Same picture as above but faded. A blue skeleton is drawn over it and labeled: "I couldn't fit a functional skeleton under this body." And "no space for a keel bone". The skeleton outline is barely contained within the vrock's body, which is not great for any living creature as there’s usually more muscle, fat, and skin between the bones and the outside air.) 

I know the gangly form is visually creepy and therefore a common design choice for evil monsters like this freaky bird demon. But I think it's important to actually consider a creature's anatomy and how it should move when you're designing it. So I'm going to focus these next few posts on the skeleton and muscles of the vrock and give it some bulk in the torso.

Next post explains how this skeleton can be fixed.