The other option I’m considering is a 4E conversion of the old WotC 3E adventure path that started with The Sunless Citadel. My first step in preparing to do a conversion was to review the monsters. I wanted to identify any that have not appeared to-date as official 4E content. The twig blight immediately came to mind. (The thoqqua came next.)

An attempt has been made to recreate the twig blight according to 4E guidelines, but I decided to go with my own interpretation for a couple reasons. First, I didn’t feel like skirmisher was an appropriate role for the twig blight. It is not a mobile monster, which is the defining characteristic of the role.

Second, the twig blight appears in several encounters, some as the only monster. I wanted to follow the 4E guidelines for building encounters with monsters of varying roles, so I thought it would be helpful to have a couple different types of twig blights that could fill different roles. A twig blight minion seemed obvious, and I had a good idea for an artillery twig blight.

I also wanted a twig blight that would be a good melee threat. Skirmisher was already ruled out, so I toyed with the idea of a lurker twig blight, but none of my ideas panned out. Soldier was a possibility, but a twig blight with high defense and the ability to mark didn’t sit right with me. That left brute, and after looking at the other level 1 brutes in the Monster Manual, it felt like a good choice.

Most of the statistics for the minion came straight from the stat block in the back of module. I used the tables on page 184 and 185 of the DMG for the twig blight thornsprayer and the twig blight brute.