Budding Baba’s Growing Hut by Lydia Van Hoy is a role playing game supplement published by Wizards of the Coast through the DMs Guild Community Content Programme for use with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. This has rules for growing a hut just like Baba Yaga.
The supplement is available as a six-page PDF from DriveThruRPG for $1.95 but was received at a reduced price thanks to a special offer. One page is the front cover and one legal and links.
The opening paragraph asks if you’ve ever wanted to be like Baba Yaga when you grew up. It follows with some introductory text about growing the huts.
Following this are the hut’s stats, including special abilities. Next are details on how much a hut can carry – this increases as the hut grows in size – and what the interior is like. This can be customised once the hut reaches a certain maturity. Details are given on travelling and behaviour, which has a d6 table of personality traits and another of quirks.
Following this is a page of floor plans, with two different examples for Large and Gargantuan sizes.
Growing Your Hut explains that the hut is powerful, and removes the need for other forms of transport, when first born, so it’s not advised to use regular sidekick rules for levelling up. Two alternate methods are given; staggered levels, where it gains 1/2 a level for every level the character gains, or gaining a level instead of a feat.
Hit points and new features gained at higher levels are the last section. The hut can be told to stay, which means it pretends to be a normal hut, sit, which is an attack whereby it leaps into the air and lands on something, size increase, which is self-explanatory, redecorate, whereby the interior can be changed, and immortal structure, which means the hut cannot be killed, only temporarily reduce to 0 hp.
Budding Baba’s Growing Hut in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, though short, these would have been appreciated. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be mostly free of errors. There are a couple of what appear to be stock illustrations of Baba Yaga’s Hut, as well as the maps. Presentation is decent, though having the maps available as separate image files would have been nice.
The hut is a rather powerful item, albeit not as powerful as the genuine artefact, for characters to own, especially at higher levels when it’s also impossible to kill. DMs may want to think twice before allowing characters their own hut, especially when starting off. The hut won’t be a huge help inside – it is, after all, a building, and won’t fit into many other buildings – but outdoors it can easily prove decisive in combat. Budding Baba’s Growing Hut covers an interesting, but perhaps too powerful, companion and it can be found by clicking here.
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