Once a month or so, we’ll do a Random Monster Mashup! This could take many forms – maybe see what happens when the monsters fight or team up, think about what kinds of circumstances might result in this situation, and even, if we’re feeling really creative, think about what happens if we stick these two monsters in a teleporter together and hit “SEND.”

This month, our randomizer gave us an interesting combination – the Warriors and the Jackalweres!

There are a lot of ways we can put these together, but I think the most interesting would to see where they most connect and where they most clash.

A Jackalwere Warrior has to exist in D&D. Any community of people, even in the inhospitable places that the Jackalweres call home, needs defenders. Jackalweres come with their own innate advantages, including Pack Tactics – gaining advantage on an attack if they have an ally nearby – and their Sleep Gaze, which can control a fight with relative ease. Combine that with a Warrior Veteran’s weapons skills and ability to parry, or even a Commander’s ability to maneuver their allies, and you can set up a very dangerous combat scenario for your players. if they have come seeking the Jackalweres for information or goods, and they do not intend to deal honestly with them, a small troop of Jackalwere Warriors might surprise even your more experienced players. Especially if they walk in expecting snarling scavengers and meet coordinated, steel-wielding nightmare fuel instead.

How do Jackalweres and Warriors play together, though? Well, it rather depends on how you play your Warriors. You see, Jackalweres, lore-wise, are tricksters. They’re fiends, not humanoids, and they take pleasure in misdirection, theft and chaos.

If you have Warriors that are well-disciplined members of a proper military, they would bristle at the thought of having to work with Jackalweres. As a storyteller, you would need to build a convincing reason for this seasoned group of fighters to throw their lot in with a pack of small chaos gremlins from the far reaches. The Jackalweres might be scouts or spies, paid handsomely by the people the Warriors answer to. Two rival nations are at constant odds, battling for years, if not generations, and they will use every advantage they can create or buy in order to get one over on their hated rivals. And it just so happens that, somewhere between them, a community of Jackalweres has decided that they have a very reasonable price they can settle on to act as scouts, spies, or informants.

And if those Jackalweres just happen to be playing both sides against each other? Even better!

On the other hand, your Warriors might be a group of rough-and-tumble Mercenaries, looking to get paid no matter what the job is. They’re not interested in discipline and order and making the world better, no – they just want that sweet, sweet gold and they’ll do whatever it takes to get it. These Warriors would undoubtedly be more at ease with joining up with some Jackalweres and taking advantage of their chaotic nature. They may even bring them into the Company as full members, taking advantage of their very specific set of skills to finish the job. It would even be interesting to see a Jackalwere as the Captain of a mercenary company – this scrappy little canine bossing around a bunch of hulking brutes, moving them from battle to battle to settle his scores. Your players may be expecting that giant, scarred Goliath slab of muscle to be the one everyone answers to, but that’ll only last until the short furry guy opens his mouth.

Deep down, though, I suspect that no matter what their relationship to Warriors, the Jackalweres will always, ultimately, look out for their own. They may play nice if it suits them, and it may even work for a while. But in the end, they’re perfectly happy to stab their Warrior allies in the back – literally or otherwise – and vanish back into the wastes from which they came.

In your game, Warriors and Jackalweres can represent two very different outlooks on how a violent life should be led. This can offer your players a mirror for their Characters’ life of violence, which is pretty much the kind of life that a game system like Dungeons & Dragons encourages. How much is loyalty worth? How do you balance your own desires with those of the greater good? Are there any unbreakable rules in this life? Should there be?

Warriors and Jackalweres will answer those questions very differently, and that should give your players plenty to think on while they’re being cut down or having everything they own stolen from them.

Or both. You decide.