Hag covens aren't scary. Let's fix that.

Fighting with my family.

For years, witches gave me nightmares.

Something about the strange, cruel nature of their magic always scared me more than any other monster. As a fully grown games master, it’s time my players shared my dread.

A couple of weeks ago I ran a hag coven for my Curse of Strahd campaign and while my plans worked fairly well, I’m not sure I fully delivered the experience I hoped for. So when I was booked to run another session at my local games store next week, I decided to revisit the encounter and turn the screw. But how?

The brief is that I want to turn these monsters from individual witches to a coven, that feels like one collective the players have to deal with.

Fortunately, I have my own Coven to call on - right here on Substack. I put the call out for ideas on Notes and Bluesky and you didn’t disappoint. Below are a few of my favourites, and how I’ll be implementing next week.

If you’d like to hear how I get on, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss my post session notes!

Tactics

Making sure each coven member has their own role to fill is an easy start. I’ll be mixing and matching my hags to create a range of battle roles: Annis Hag (tank), Green Hag (Support) and Sea Hag (Artillery).

The Green and Sea Hag are being pulled from Flee Mortals by MCDM. Their monsters offer specialised roles and a little more punch than the vanilla hags in the Monster Manual. The Annis Hag from Mordenkainen’s is plenty scary enough as a bruiser.

Communal health

A fantastic idea from

NoizyDragon

(and lots of people agreed with him). I’ll be giving all of my coven hags the following trait to create this.

Shared Pain:

Whenever a coven member takes damage, the amount of damage is divided equally between every remaining coven member, rounded down.

If any coven member takes psychic damage this effect backfires, with each coven member taking the full amount of damage.

Initiative swapping

I really liked this idea from

Johnny

. It removes the need for legendary actions or resistance and gives the feeling of the hags sharing responsibility for combat. Here’s a simplified version I’ll be giving to every coven member:

Action: Your turn sister

The hag issues a command to another coven member. They can then move up to their movement speed and take an action. The original hag can make this action, even if they are prevented from taking normal actions by another condition.

Group castings and unbreakable spirit

In his thread on Bluesky, Gahtao raised two ideas I loved. They touch on group casting above (more on that next) and then suggested the idea of each hag remaining in the fight as a spirit after defeat. That offered a useful mechanic to help with one of my other ideas - so I’ll be applying this to all members:

Trait: No death do us part

When a coven member is reduced to 0hp their spirit remains in the space where they died for 1d4 rounds. They cannot move, take actions, bonus actions or reactions. Any spell to restore them to life requires no material components.

If all coven members are reduced to 0hp, all spirits are destroyed.

Flavour

Mylon Pruett

raises an important point on flavour and this added another idea about coven spells. What about casting with rhyming triplets, with each Hag speaking a line each?

Speaking of coven spells, the ideas presented in the monster manual is essentially an expanded spell list - giving each hag a new spell to cast and not necessarily creating the feeling of a group.

Gahtao’s idea of each hag contributing to the spell seems more fitting, but could put the action economy at risk. Unless - each member gains a new, special action: The Coven action.

They can use this to begin casting a spell, then passing concentration on the ritual around the group until it releases a single, devastating effect.

These coven spells are inspired by the death coven spell list published in Volos, and the rhymes and spell names are inspired by the maiden, mother, crone symbology often associated with witchcraft. I have inverted their positive symbology as I suspect Hags would:

Coven Action

On their turn, each coven member gains this additional special action which they use to begin casting one of the spells below.

They recite one line of the spell and must maintain concentration on it until another coven member recites the next line, or the spell is cast. If any member loses concentration, the spell is lost.

On initiative count 1 (losing ties) the spell is cast and remains in effect until another coven spell is cast, or until the coven is destroyed.

The coven must be within 60ft of each other member and the spells area of effect is determined by the perimeter created by the three.

Coven Spells:

Maiden’s Dismay:

• Hopeful Maiden, full of life

• Give our foes a taste of strife

• Break their will, dull each knife

Each target is filled with despair and has disadvantage on their first attack roll of each round.

Mother’s Ruin:

• Caring mother, who tends the cot

• Guardian of plague and rot

• Open wounds time hath forgot

Each target is covered in painful welts and sores. Whenever they take damage they receive an additional 2d6 necrotic damage.

Crone’s Greeting

• Wise Crone, the final friend

• Turn bones to dust and spirits rend

• Drag these fools unto their end

The area is filled with a zone of life-stealing essence. Whenever a creature ends their turn within the area of effect they take 4d6 necrotic damage.

Are Hags scary now?

Enjoyed this piece of group problem solving? I wrote a follow up piece with some updates after the first playtest of our new coven.