Banshees are spirits, in D&D of dead elves, always female. They are created at death when they lament something that have not completed, generally this is some sort of guilt or vengeance, but it drives their spirit to remain. Known for their cries or wailing, a Banshees cry can cause the strongest of adventurers to grow faint.

In D&D terms they are a fair challenging creature to deal with but not that high a challenge rating. For a group of four third level characters, this is a hard encounter just as a solo monster. Now, if it isn’t able to use it’s wail effectively, it won’t be nearly as difficult. The ability isn’t the toughest to avoid, but it’s a good one for hitting the whole part, the banshee wails and everyone who can hear it makes a constitution saving throw, of 13, so not that high. But if they fail, they immediately drop to 0 health, otherwise 3D6 damage. At third level, there’s a chance that a banshee could take down a whole party if they roll poorly.

But let’s talk about how to use them in a game and if they could be a BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy).

For me, they are probably the catalyst for characters becoming adventurers at the start of a campaign, at least one of the ways. You have the players face off against a Banshee that is haunting their town and defeat it and that’s how they start getting jobs. This works especially well since it’s third level and that’s when players generally get their specialization for their class. So simplest would be they are all from the same town, they team up to save the town.

But, I think a more interesting thing to do would be to create a coven of banshee. Like it was a coven of hags who were killed and now have become a coven of banshee. I’m not giving them magical powers, but four banshee for a group of level 10 is considered a hard encounter. And a wail can be used by each of the banshee once per day. That’s 4 chances for failed saving throws and if they do that all in round one, you got a slight chance of a party wipe, but it’s also possible, if the party is fast enough they can get out ahead of it.

Now, finally, I think you could homebrew banshee’s some if you wanted to build off of my coven idea above. Have the players first take down a group of hags, seems like that solves the problem, and while the hags were a problem, they also were warning of a potential larger disaster. That’d be the main BBEG or event for the story that you’re playing. Then, because they can’t be at rest, the hags are back as banshee, and you give them some innate casting abilities. Grab some spells, not all, but maybe one higher level spell from the hags as another once per day ability. Now, not only is there the banshee wail that the players need to worry about and the flaws that do necrotic damage, but there can be some impressive spells being flung around, or at least something else that the players might not be prepared for.

Those are just some ways that I think you could use a banshee to make it interesting, and the first one is a good way to kick off a game, and the last one can really heavily tie into a story.

Have you used a Banshee in your game? How have you used them if you have?

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I personally don’t think we need the main group of X-Men again, in particular, I think we need to not see Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine again that quickly, and possibly even Magneto for a villain again that quickly. The main reason is that Hugh Jackman was obviously iconic as Wolverine, so it would be hard to recast him. Plus Jean Grey and Cyclops are two expected names. I think that the MCU would be better served bringing along the X-Men slowly. With that, I think that skipping or not having Charles Xavier as a main character is important as well for keeping it that lesser known feel.

Now, that might be a big of a harder sell, because the X-Men movies have generally be fairly successful and it would be easy to lean into the main characters again. It would likely mean that you are getting a decent amount of money from them, but Kevin Feige has led the charge of taking lesser known characters and making them well known in the public eye. I had been reading comics for a while, but I didn’t really know how the Guardians of the Galaxy were. I knew Ant-Man and Dr. Strange from the Avengers comics, but not as a stand alone, and all of those work well in the MCU. So I trust that lesser known characters would work well, though, I’m thinking, keep the Disco Dazzler sidelined for a while, that might be smart.

So then who do you put together as a team? You would still have Charles Xavier in the background, but you wouldn’t really bring him in, kind of like Thanos, until you needed it for the big event as a good guy. That way you keep it separated from the characters that have been previously used in the X-Men world. But Xavier is an important enough character that you probably need to tease him, at least, early on.

But let’s meet the main roster:

Gambit – I just want Gambit done well, but he was barely in the previous movies, so he would be someone new, and I could see him “leading” a team of X-Men, though probably fairly poorly, which would be an interesting part of a story.

Nightcrawler – So I break my own rule here. He’s had a pretty large part in the previous films, but he’s a character a lot of fans like. I’m also going for misunderstood characters, and I think you play with that with Nightcrawler.

Rogue – You can see the thread, misunderstood characters. Ones who don’t stand out as the heroes as much as the others, because when you get down to it, Rogue’s powers to leach the powers and life from people are terrifying, especially if she’s not careful. She and Gambit have also been a fun flirting couple in the comics.

Bishop – Bishop is an interesting character with his powers to absorb energy, so kind of the opposite of Gambit. But he’s also interesting if they wanted to play around with timelines more since he’s supposed to be from the future and putting him out of place would work pretty well. But if you don’t want to do that part, you can ignore it as well for him. And he’s someone that people aren’t familiar with.

Syrin – She could also be the new Banshee, but I think keeping that character away is fine now. She’d round out the team with sonic powers. I like her because she has a pretty tragic backstory, but more so for her criminal background. So that’s something that would make a lot of sense to have her pair up with Gambit who has some troubles in his backstory and with Nightcrawler who can bamf around.

That’s the team that I’d start with for the X-Men. We’ll come back at a later time and do some casting for those characters. If you were to create an X-Men team without using the likes of Beast, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm and Wolverine, who would you go with? And do you like an idea of a more misunderstood team versus the boy scout team you can end up with when Cyclops is around?

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Here’s the newest Thursday video that I’ve been doing. Because of March Madness happening now I came up with the idea of Monster Madness. This is where I tackle a monster and try and create a story/campaign arc around them that people could use instead of getting away from cultists, drow, goblins and dragons.

Let me know if there is a monster you want me to use?