Since discussions of it are cropping up out of Tabletop Games, here's an all-purpose thread for players and GM's.
I'm working on the stats for the final boss of my campaign, Helvete the Iron Maiden.
I'm gonna be making her a fighter class, basically. When she breaks out some combat maneuvers that'll be fun, lol. She'll be tough but not unbeatable.
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Or with those saves, any cleric can make it timeout of the battle for everybody to catch a breather and throw some heals around.
TBH compared to shit our GM throws at us and says is CR 10, this is tame.
He took a Bodak, boosted its HP&AC and let it use the withering gaze as legendary actions. Save or half vs 3d10 damage. Three times per turn. On top of 5 per turn unavoidable, and also saving vs more damage if you look at it directly.
edited 15th Sep '17 9:09:36 PM by Adannor
Pretentious Git
Okay, so taking you guys' feedback into consideration, here's a revised version of the gothic monster templates I'm planning to have my players use for the Legacy of Strahd campaign. Changes are in blue:
- Aversion to Fire. Whenever you take fire damage, you must succeed a on DC 10 Wisdom save or use your reaction to enter a rage for 1 minute as described in the barbarian class section of the PHB (page 48). You may choose to fail this save intentionally, but can only end your rage early if a friendly creature succeeds a Charisma (Persuasion) check against your passive Wisdom (Insight). Your damage bonus while raging is +2. Once you have become enraged using this trait you cannot do so again until you complete a long rest.
- Toughened Flesh. Your hit point maximum increases by 1, and it increases by 1 every time you gain a level. Additionally, you have advantage on Constitution saving throws.
- Lightning Absorption. Whenever you are subjected to lightning damage, you take no damage and instead regain a number of hit points equal to the lightning damage dealt.
- Immutable Form. You have advantage on saving throws to resist spells and effects which would alter your form, such as the polymorph spell, and are immune to exhaustion, paralysis, petrification, and poison.
- Living Construct. Even though you were constructed, you are a living, intelligent creature. You do not need to eat or breathe, but you can ingest food and drink if you wish. Additionally, you can be affected by spells such as cure wounds that normally have no effect on constructs.
- Levitation. Your movement speed is 0. You have a flying speed equal to your race's normal speed. You can hover, but cannot ascend more than 10 feet above a solid surface. If you move over an empty space such as a pit or the edge of a cliff, you fall gently at a rate of 60 feet per round until you are 10 feet above a solid surface and take no falling damage.
- Incorporeal Movement. You can move through other creatures and non-magical objects as if they were difficult terrain. You take force damage equal to 5 x your character level if you end your turn inside an object. Objects or creatures you are carrying cannot pass through with you.
- Intangibility. Your armor class is equal to 13 + your Dexterity modifier, but you cannot wear armor and you count as one size smaller when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
- Phantasmal Equipment. You know a ritual which can be performed during a rest period to bind an object to yourself with the same ethereal qualities as yourself, allowing you to carry it with you during incorporeal movement, and to wear it in the case of armor. The object must be within your reach for the full duration of the ritual, at the end of which you touch the object to form the bond. You can can have up to three objects bound to you in this way, and can release any or all of them to their original state as a bonus action. An eldritch knight's bound weapons and a warlock's pact weapon automatically gain this property once bound to you, and do not count against this limit.
- Withering Touch. Your unarmed strikes deal necrotic damage instead of bludgeoning.
- Undead Nature. You do not require air, food, drink, or sleep, but still gain the benefits of resting.
- Resistance and Vulnerabilities. You are vulnerable to fire damage, but are immune to necrotic and poison damage. You also have advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws against magic.
- Darkvision. You have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
- Dreadful Glare. You can use your action to target one creature you can see within 60 feet. If the target can see you, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened until the end of your next turn. If the target fails its save by 5 or more, it is also paralyzed for the same duration. Once you use this trait you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this trait.
- Voice of the Crypt (Recharge 5-6). You know the command spell and can cast it once, regaining the ability to do so on a roll of 5 or 6 on a d6 at the start of each of your subsequent turns. You may choose your spellcasting ability for this trait from Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma when you first become a mummy.
- Undead Nature. You do not require air, food, drink, or sleep, but still gain the benefits of resting.
- Spider Climb. You have a climbing speed equal to your regular movement speed, and have advantage when climbing difficult surfaces such as hanging upside down on ceilings.
- Bite. Your fangs are a natural weapon with which you can make unarmed strikes. If you hit with them, you deal 1d4 + your Strength modifier piercing damage instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
- Drain Life. If your target is willing, grappled, incapacitated, or restrained when you use your action to make a bite attack against them, you can use a bonus action to drain the target's life force, dealing an additional 1d6 necrotic damage and regaining hit points equal to the damage dealt. The damage increases to 2d6 at 6th level, 3d6 at 11th level, and 4d6 and 16th level. After you drain life from a victim, you can't use this trait again until you complete a short or long rest.
- Darkvision. You have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
- Vampire Weaknesses. You have the following flaws:
- Forbiddance. You can't enter a residence without an invitation from one of the occupants.
- Harmed by Running Water. You take acid damage equal to 5 x your character level when you end your turn in running water.
- Sunlight Hypersensitivity. You take radiant damage equal to 5 x your character level when you start your turn in sunlight.
- Undead Nature. You do not require air. You do not cast a shadow or reflection.
- Shapechanger. You can use your action to polymorph yourself into one of three forms: humanoid, wolf, or hybrid. Your statistics are the same in each form, except that your speed increases to 40 ft. in wolf form. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying isn't transformed. You revert to your true form if you die. You are automatically polymorphed into either your hybrid or wolf form and cannot polymorph into your humanoid form during a full moon.
- Keen Hearing and Smell. You have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on hearing or smell.
- Natural Weapons (Wolf or Hybrid Form Only). Your jaws in your wolf and hybrid forms are a natural weapon with which you can make unarmed strikes. If you hit with them, you deal 1d4 + your Strength modifier piercing damage instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. Additionally, when in hybrid form your unarmed strikes with your claws deal slashing damage instead of bludgeoning.
- Forest Sense. You are adapted to life in the forest, and gain the benefits of the Natural Explorer feature as described in the Ranger class section of the PHB (page 91) for forest environments.
- Damage Resistance. While in hybrid form you have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks not made with silvered weapons.
- Walk Among Them. While in humanoid or wolf form you are indistinguishable from a normal humanoid of the same race or a normal wolf, respectively.
Ghost: Phantasmal Equipment is a great, flavourful way of giving the character some physical equipment.
Mummy: To note, in the official first party 5E products only monsters have abilities that recharge on a dice roll, to offset their otherwise weak long-term survivability. These abilities don't exist on any player races, classes or magic items, where the smallest recharge period is a short rest.
Vampire: The leveling damage is a good way of keeping the damage significant on later levels without unfairly punishing low level players. Good.
Otherwise, I would just copy-paste the effects of Rage and Natural Explorer in these builds rather than make my players to look up things elsewhere. This way you can also bring the builds some extra flavour.
But overall I think these are definite improvements.
Pretentious Git
Mummy: To note, in the official first party 5E products only monsters have abilities that recharge on a dice roll, to offset their otherwise weak long-term survivability. These abilities don't exist on any player races, classes or magic items, where the smallest recharge period is a short rest.
Yeah, but I feel like 1/rest is awfully weak for Command. Maybe 3/rest instead? That's still not something that any player races have, but it'd be closer to the normal rules for racial spellcasting.
The write ups on the handouts will have the full text of the class-like abilities. I'm just shortening them here for convenience.
What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.
Cape Malleum Majorem
Flesh Golem: "Meh! Fire bad!"
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
Pretentious Git
I mean, flesh golems in the first place are basically Captain Ersatz Frankenstein's monsters, and given this setting I'm deliberately playing that up, so... yes. :P
What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.
Which immediately puts me in mind of Phil Hartman
Pretentious Git
So now that I've got the templates a little more polished, let me share a couple of the generic NPC enemies I'll be throwing at my players:
- Vampire Hunter
- Medium humanoid (human), any non-evil alignment
- Armor Class: 15 (studded leather armor)
- Hit Points: 32 (5d8 + 10)
- Speed: 30 ft.
- Str 12 (+1), Dex 16 (+3), Con 14 (+2), Int 14 (+2), Wis 12 (+1), Cha 10 (+0)
- Saving Throws: Dex +5, Int +4, Wis +3
- Skills: Insight +3, Perception +3, Religion +4, Stealth +5, Survival +3
- Senses: passive Perception 13
- Languages: Common
- Challenge: 2
- Mental Conditioning: The vampire hunter has advantage on saving throws to resist being charmed or frightened.
- Monster Hunter: The vampire hunter has advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track undead and shapeshifters, and on Wisdom (Insight) checks to recognize undead and shapeshifters as such.
- Special Equipment: In addition to their weapons, a vampire hunter carries two bottles of holy water and two wooden stakes.
- Actions
- Multiattack: The vampire hunter makes two melee weapon attacks and one attack with their silvered dagger, or makes two ranged weapon attacks.
- Silvered Rapier: +5 to hit, 5ft. reach, one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage.
- Silvered Dagger: +5 to hit, 5ft. reach or 20/60ft. range, one target. Hit: 5 (1d4 + 3) piercing damage.
- Light Crossbow: +5 to hit, 80/320ft. range, one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage.
- Holy Water: +3 to hit, 20/60ft. range, one target. Hit: 3 (1d4 + 1) bludgeoning damage. Deals an additional 7 (2d6) radiant damage to undead.
- Paladin
- Medium humanoid (human), lawful good
- Armor Class: 16 (chain mail), 18 with shield
- Hit Points: 52 (8d8 + 16)
- Speed: 30 ft.
- Str 16 (+3), Dex 11 (+0), Con 14 (+2), Int 11 (+0), Wis 11 (+0), Cha 15 (+2)
- Saves: Cha +4, Wis +2
- Skills: Athletics +5, Insight +2, Religion +2
- Senses: passive Perception 10
- Languages: Common
- Challenge: 3
- Aura of Protection: The paladin and their allies within 10 ft. gain a +2 bonus to thier saving throws.
- Divine Sense (3/day): The paladin can sense the location and type of celestials, fiends, and undead within 30 ft. They also detect areas of consecration and desecration.
- Divine Smite: The paladin may expend a spell slot to deal an additional 8 (2d8) + 4 (1d8) per level of spell slot expended above 1st radiant damage to a successful melee attack. Deals an additional 4 (1d8) radiant damage if the target is a fiend or undead.
- Lay on Hands: The paladin has a pool of 30 hit points which they can use to restore hit points to any friendly creature they touch, or can use 5 hit points to remove one harmful condition, such as poison.
- Spellcasting: The paladin is a 6th level spellcaster. Charisma is their spellcasting ability (save DC 12, +4 to hit with spell attacks).
- 1st level (4 slots): Bless, Compelled Duel, Divine Favor, Protection from Evil and Good
- 2nd level (2 slots): Lesser Restoration, Zone of Truth
- Actions
- Multiattack: The paladin makes two melee weapon attacks.
- Greatsword: +5 to hit, 5ft. reach, one target. Hit: 10 (2d6 + 3) slashing damage.
- or Longsword: +5 to hit, 5ft. reach, one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) slashing damage.
- Turn the Unholy: Fiends and undead within 30 feet of the paladin must succeed a DC 12 or be turned for 1 minute or until damaged. While turned, the creatures must use their turn to move as far away from the paladin as possible without putting itself in harm's way, and can only take the Dash or Dodge actions.
At low levels, my players shouldn't expect to encounter more than one of either of these enemies at a time. If they are encountered as part of a group, they'll be leading a group of more typical low CR NPC enemies. As they reach higher levels, they will begin to encounter these enemies in groups comprised of multiple hunters or paladins.
What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.
Perpetually Confused
Those are far better indeed.
Some observations
A) Recognizing disguises as such is a Intelligence (Investigation) check in 5e, not a Wisdom (Insight)
B) The Vampire hunter resists charm effect, which is a bit oddly specific when it's not something your vampires can actually do.
C) Zone of Truth seems like an... odd spell for Paladins (Whom I assume you want to be combat fodder) to have prepared. Especially as opposed to any of the Smite Spells.
D) Even for CR 3 creatures, your Paladins hit like a fucking truck, a Greatsword using Paladin who lands a hit and smites does 18 or 22 dmg (Assuming you don't roll dmg, if you do, it can easily be higher), depending on the slot. And he still gets a second attack. Like, compare to the CR 3 knight in the MM, and your Paladin is WAY overkill, having smites, save bonuses, and a fuck ton of paladin goodies. I know that the MM says 1 level of a class is equal to one monster hitdie, but you need to remember that the damage values players do aren't really meant to be turned on P Cs. Remember that your Paladin, as an NPC, is expected to use his smites basically any time he hits, coz frankly, he's not gonna live more than 2 / 3 rounds. He has no "future encounter" to save his spell slots for.
edited 17th Sep '17 7:14:21 PM by Ghilz
Pretentious Git
Hmm, good points.
I'll probably drop the Divine Smite feature and swap in a 2nd level smite spell in place of Zone, then. May even drop the caster level so they only get 1 2nd level slot in that case.
What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.
hey i dunno, why don't you tell me
If one or more of your players manages to get captured, Zone of Truth could definitely be an interesting spell for one of the paladins to have.
i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby
Any suggestions for monsters I can base Diablo's black knights on? These would be fairly tough enemies that make up the bulk of encounters near the end game, when the party will be around level 15 and up.
Pretentious Git
I suppose the obvious one would be the Cr 17 Death Knight, with the grain of salt that I'm not terribly familiar with the original Diablo.
What matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too. - F. Rogers.
That would be perfect for flavor, but it's too strong to use more than one at a time; in the lower levels of Hell, Diablo's dark knights are about as common as Skeletons in the early game.
Perpetually Confused
What level CR and in what quantities? Since in 5e, even a low level monster can still threaten players in large number, helmed horrors could maybe act as a good template. If you want, bump up their HP and their attack/damage (And improve their resistances?) to make them a higher level monsters. Or just use a fuck ton of them.
Wights could also be another template you can bump up a few level.
Ice Devils, if you reflavor their attack, and remove the wall of ice. Maybe give it the Erinyes' Parry reaction.
edited 19th Sep '17 8:36:21 PM by Ghilz
Volo's Guide includes a lot of human enemy units. Consider reskinning them and then throwing traits from skeletons et al on top. Lets you have throwaway enemy units for any CR!
Volo's NPC section also contains stats for a Blackguard, often also known as an anti-paladin.Could work.
Helmed Horrors look just about perfect. The Volo's Guide stuff sounds good too but I don't have Volo's Guide >.>
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
Could one shove a dead body into a Bag of Holding?
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
Lost in Space
Of course, assuming it has enough remaining weight capacity and/or space. Won't stop it from decaying and stuff, though, so you'd better remember to take it out at some point.
It's worth noting that stuffing corpses in a bag of holding and then putting the bag into a portable hole is a nearly perfect way to dispose of them without trace, although it's absurdly expensive.
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I don't have access to the tables for size and weight capacity, but it should be a relatively simple arithmetic problem.
edited 22nd Sep '17 11:45:54 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
Alright, what kind of bag? A I or a IV? And what if the body's, oh, a ordinary Drow?
If you're playing 5e and have a cleric, they have a ritual to prevent decay so apply that every week.
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
I'm thinking of doing a High Hunt but this time, it'll be in an urban area like Silverymoon or Waterdeep.
Does it sound like a good idea?
edited 22nd Sep '17 2:07:14 PM by fredhot16
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
No Legendary Resistance? Looks like a job for a control wizard!