Roggwart
TR 5Beast · Huge·Recommended levels: 8-13
Abilities
Saves
- STR +12
- CON +9
- WIS +7
Skills
- Athletics +12
- Perception +12
- Survival +7
Languages
- —
Traits
As a Bonus Action, the roggwart designates one creature it can see within 60 ft as its quarry; it can have only one quarry at a time. The roggwart has Advantage on attack rolls against its quarry and Disadvantage on attack rolls against every other creature. While it has a quarry, the roggwart cannot take the Dodge action. Vendaxan evolution built it to fight one enemy at a time — it almost never met two acklay at once, and it never learned how.
The roggwart cannot be Surprised while conscious. Captivity dulls neither its senses nor its instincts, and handlers who mistook a caged roggwart for a tame one rarely got to make the mistake twice.
The roggwart cannot be knocked Prone and has advantage on saving throws against effects that would push, pull, restrain, or move it against its will.
If the roggwart moves at least 20 ft in a straight line toward a creature and hits it with a Horns attack on the same turn, the attack deals an extra 11 (2d10) piercing damage.
The roggwart smells blood at 100 ft and has Advantage on Survival checks made to track a wounded creature. While its quarry is at or below half its hit point maximum, the roggwart's Bite deals an extra 7 (2d6) kinetic damage against that quarry.
Actions
The roggwart makes two attacks: one with its Bite and one with its Claws.
Lore
Roggwarts are horned predators from Vendaxa, a humid, high-gravity world they share with their oldest enemy: the acklay. A roggwart stands on its hind legs, and everything about it is built for closing a fight — sharp fangs, heavy claws, a thick tail it uses like a club, and a pair of blunt horns it drives forward at a run. Gor, the only roggwart most of the galaxy has ever heard of, was roughly the size of a rancor.
What makes a roggwart unusual is not its size but its narrowness. Vendaxa never asked one to fight a crowd. Acklay are territorial and solitary, so a roggwart that met one met exactly one, and the species evolved into something close to a specialist duelist: devastating against a single opponent, clumsy and distractible against several. It is not a clever animal, but it is a very difficult one to sneak up on, and it keeps its hunting instincts intact no matter how long it has been in a cage.
That last detail is why Gor is remembered. General Grievous kept him in the lair beneath his castle on the third moon of Vassek, fitted with a chest plate, a helmet and cybernetic grafts along his back — a trophy predator turned into a bodyguard. When a Jedi team came for Grievous, Gor killed clone Commander Fil before Jedi Master Kit Fisto put the beast down. (Assumption: sources disagree on where Gor himself was captured — Vendaxa is the species homeworld, but at least one account places his origin on Guiteica. The stat block describes the wild animal, not Grievous's modified one; Gor's armour and cybernetics are not represented here.)
In Play
Run the roggwart as a duel that the party has to break up. Singular Focus means it picks one character and commits — Advantage on everything it throws at that one target, Disadvantage on everything else — so the fight it wants is a one-on-one and the fight it loses is a brawl. Open by marking the toughest-looking character, not the squishiest; a roggwart reads threat, not opportunity.
The pressure comes from focus, not volume. It attacks once a turn, but against its quarry that attack lands far more often than it should, and once the quarry drops below half, Blood Scent turns its Bite into a 30-point hit. A character who tries to tank it alone will lose. The counter is obvious and worth letting players discover: spread out, let someone else draw the mark, and the beast's Disadvantage does more damage to it than the party does. Tail Sweep is its answer to being swarmed, and it deliberately spares the quarry — the roggwart is clearing the room to get back to its duel.
It cannot be Surprised, so an ambush opening will not work. It also cannot be knocked Prone and shrugs off most forced movement, which closes off the usual ways of controlling a big melee threat. What it has no answer to is range and patience: it has no ranged attack at all, and a party that keeps moving and keeps changing who is closest can bleed it out over a long fight. Pair it with something that punishes spreading out — a handler, a second beast, a confined space — if the duel is resolving too easily.
Adventure Hooks
- The Collector's Pit — A Hutt-adjacent fight promoter has a roggwart and a problem: the beast refuses to attack a crowd, so the usual mass-execution spectacle falls flat. He wants the party to go into the pit one at a time for an enormous purse. The crowd is the real danger — walking out together is a breach of contract.
- Vendaxan Survey — A biological survey team went quiet in Vendaxa's lowland forest. They are alive, treed, and have been there two days: a roggwart has marked their xenobiologist and will not leave. Killing it is the easy answer and the one that ends the survey's permit.
- Somebody Else's Trophy — A warlord copying Grievous has bought a roggwart and is having it fitted with plating and cybernetic grafts. The surgery is half done. The party can free it, kill it, or steal it — and a half-converted roggwart loose in a fortress does not distinguish between its owner's people and theirs.