What do you all think? I started with the coven night hag, bumped up her ability scores, gave her level 7, 8, and 9 spell slots, and some legendary resistances and actions. Thoughts?
I likey. My only suggestion would be to add some lair actions and regional effects. The last - for my campaign - will be the proclivity for the depths of the Dreadwood to overlap with the Shadowfell, as this has been established already for my players.
Thanks for taking a look. Good point on the lair actions. I thought about it, but was having trouble coming up with some reasonable ones. Any suggestions?
Regional effects I didn't include out of laziness, since they're basically covered in the description of what's going on in the Dreadwood in GoSM.
I also thought of giving her two attacks (one with claws, one with staff).
I stink at figuring out CRs - do you think 18 is about right?
Thanks for taking a look. Good point on the lair actions. I thought about it, but was having trouble coming up with some reasonable ones. Any suggestions?
Regional effects I didn't include out of laziness, since they're basically covered in the description of what's going on in the Dreadwood in GoSM.
I also thought of giving her two attacks (one with claws, one with staff).
I stink at figuring out CRs - do you think 18 is about right?
I'm at work at the moment, but I'll have a good look tonight when I get home. I think definitely the Multiattack ability - it's almost mandatory for bosses, if not for flavour, but to simply try to mitigate the action economy with a large group. I only have two PCs in my group for GoS, and they tend to curb-stomp most of the bosses I've been sending against them! Mind you, this is my first 5E D&D campaign (I've only recently switched over from Pathfinder), so I'm still getting used to the ins-and-outs of the 5E mechanics.
Action economy/encounter balancing is hard to get hold of in 5E. I've been DMing for 3 years with it now, and I'm still not great at it.
For lair actions, modifying a lich's lair actions slightly would seem to work:
Lair Actions
When encountered in Castle Spiral, Granny Nightshade may take lair actions. When encountered there, she has a challenge rating of 19. On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the Granny Nightshade can take a lair action to cause one of the following magical effects; she can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:
Granny Nightshade rolls a d6 and regains a spell slot of that level or lower. If she has no spent spell slots of that level or lower, nothing happens.
Granny Nightshade targets one creature she can see within 30 feet of her. A crackling cord of negative energy tethers Granny Nightshade to the target. Whenever she takes damage, the target must make a DC 18 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, Granny Nightshade takes half the damage (rounded down), and the target takes the remaining damage. This tether lasts until initiative count 20 on the next round or until Granny Nightshade or the target is no longer in Castle Spiral.
Granny Midnight calls forth shadows from the Shadowfell. These shadows materialize and attack one creature within 60 feet of Granny Nightshade that she can see within 60 feet. The target must succeed on a DC 18 Constitution saving throw, taking 52 (15d6) necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a success. The apparitions then disappear.
You are a life saver (or at least a significant amount of time saver) this stat block looks pretty wicked and those lair actions look good at first glance. Only question I have is whether spell ward is powerful enough to be worth 2 legendary actions to use but can't say im an expert in these things. Thanks a lot, will be using this nasty old lady soon.
[edit] first of all, thank you for your hard work in your design of Granny Nightshade. It really is awesome! It will save a lot of people time for their campaigns. When I started GoSM, one of the first things that I noticed was that Granny Nightshade and the Castle Spiral were not defined pretty much anywhere on the internet (let alone this module). For a module that had two sets of NPC's at sea sending the adventurers to go clear her out of her castle, I thought that was a pretty strange oversight. So, I appreciate your work. I began putting together a plan as follows:[/edit]
I'm running GoSM for our group (my husband is one of the players). I borrowed a storyline from a previous campaign we ran in 1E/2E in which provided the backstory for a meglomanic professor (of an expedition gone terribly wrong) who turned themselves into a power-hungry near god-like monster. Fast-forward 30 years, they've built themselves a cult following, a temple, the whole nine yards. One of the members of the damned expedition planted what amounts to a self-destruct mechanism (via a set of runes) and left a note in hopes one day, someone finds it. The adventurers stumble on the note (at low level, and easily stumble across the runes, and easily solve the puzzle as it basically lights up for them as they are taking rapid necrotic damage). It takes someone who speaks dwarven (theoretically ancient dwarven) to read the scrambled dwarven runes to the dwarven god (it's 12 runes long, calling for Dumathoin to destroy the temple). when the adventurers get out. as it's been converted to 5e, the adventurers find out when they get out of the mine (and crushed secret monastery) that roughly a 5 mile radius suffered the same necrotic damage and take a day to recover. at this point, they only know the meglomaniac professor by her name, Maaike Lensen, and she haunts their nightmares with burning eyes for the rest of the campaign (or until they resolve things). it's not until later chapters, when they capture and interrogate cultists near the lizardfolk lair, that they discover her name is also known as Granny Nightshade. a plan to poison the water supply of Saltmarsh leads to a merry chase only to have a changling up and vanish among the civilians in the crowd. guards report that other poisonings that day yielded a few samples. analysis (somehow they get it analysed) leads to needing an antidote with active ingredient on an island in the middle of the ocean. Aubreck Drallion might have clues about that island as he had a ship near there. I'm going to insert rick and morty's (and modify the hell out of it) as a nightmare sequence on the bottom of the emperor of the waves, as the ship is being thrashed about and the adventurers are unconscious...(again, it's a granny nightshade nightmare) …. they wake to the octopus attack..... i plan to take this past granny nightshade and castle spiral, into planar travel and all the fun stuff out there (level 20 and beyond) if i can avoid burnout lol
as you can guess, I've homebrewed a lot of stuff to make this all happen. plus borrowing content from wherever i can get it.
so, i may use this version of granny nightshade and modify the heck out of it. i was planning on making her something akin to a super lich; but, i haven't thought that far ahead. i'm still new to 5e and this is taking all my time nearly 24/7 to do a weekly campaign.
The party i am running at the moment, have headed to the Dreadwood on a side quest. I had initially used the default Night Hag stat block for the encounter i made for them.
However, with this, i am going to make Granny Nightshade plane shift to get away and have them re-encounter her at a later date - depending what my Players decide to do.. For all i know, they might want to head on deeper to try and pursue. Should they decide to retreat and head back to Town .. i will have an Oni follow them and attack them back in town.
This would be at a later time as to try and coerce them back to the Dreadwood, as an attempt to set up a future side quest in a later Session (with this new stat block, Granny would decimate my Party! Lol)
So nice to have found this!. Thanks to all of you who poured your ideas and effort in designing and balancing Granny Nightshade!
In our campaign, she is the BBEG, trying to summon the Wand of Orcus for her... and maybe something else ;) Needless to say, with this a lot of work is already done, so thanks again!
That is an awesome state block Im currently running WBTW I was thinking of trying to make a continuation adventure. imagine my surprise when I found out she is part of Ghost of saltmarsh in case granny night side escapes prismaar I may make a homebrew adventure unless there is an official one or homebrew already made I haven't found yet.
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Saltmarsh has a number of great adventure hooks, like Granny Nightshade in the Dreadwood. I attempted to create a block for her here:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/homebrew/monsters?filter-type=0&filter-search=granny nightshade&filter-cr-min=&filter-cr-max=&filter-armor-class-min=&filter-armor-class-max=&filter-average-hp-min=&filter-average-hp-max=&filter-is-legendary=&filter-has-lair=&filter-author=&filter-author-previous=&filter-author-symbol=&filter-rating=-8
What do you all think? I started with the coven night hag, bumped up her ability scores, gave her level 7, 8, and 9 spell slots, and some legendary resistances and actions. Thoughts?
I likey. My only suggestion would be to add some lair actions and regional effects. The last - for my campaign - will be the proclivity for the depths of the Dreadwood to overlap with the Shadowfell, as this has been established already for my players.
Thanks for taking a look. Good point on the lair actions. I thought about it, but was having trouble coming up with some reasonable ones. Any suggestions?
Regional effects I didn't include out of laziness, since they're basically covered in the description of what's going on in the Dreadwood in GoSM.
I also thought of giving her two attacks (one with claws, one with staff).
I stink at figuring out CRs - do you think 18 is about right?
I'm at work at the moment, but I'll have a good look tonight when I get home. I think definitely the Multiattack ability - it's almost mandatory for bosses, if not for flavour, but to simply try to mitigate the action economy with a large group. I only have two PCs in my group for GoS, and they tend to curb-stomp most of the bosses I've been sending against them! Mind you, this is my first 5E D&D campaign (I've only recently switched over from Pathfinder), so I'm still getting used to the ins-and-outs of the 5E mechanics.
Action economy/encounter balancing is hard to get hold of in 5E. I've been DMing for 3 years with it now, and I'm still not great at it.
For lair actions, modifying a lich's lair actions slightly would seem to work:
Lair Actions
When encountered in Castle Spiral, Granny Nightshade may take lair actions. When encountered there, she has a challenge rating of 19. On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the Granny Nightshade can take a lair action to cause one of the following magical effects; she can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:
You are a life saver (or at least a significant amount of time saver) this stat block looks pretty wicked and those lair actions look good at first glance. Only question I have is whether spell ward is powerful enough to be worth 2 legendary actions to use but can't say im an expert in these things. Thanks a lot, will be using this nasty old lady soon.
Great! Note that I think I set the DC way too low - she is very easily equal to a lich (DC 21), so she should probably DC 21, 22 in her lair.
As to the legendary action, I stole that from Halaster Blackcloak stat block. I'm not sure that it's worth 2 either.
[edit] first of all, thank you for your hard work in your design of Granny Nightshade. It really is awesome! It will save a lot of people time for their campaigns. When I started GoSM, one of the first things that I noticed was that Granny Nightshade and the Castle Spiral were not defined pretty much anywhere on the internet (let alone this module). For a module that had two sets of NPC's at sea sending the adventurers to go clear her out of her castle, I thought that was a pretty strange oversight. So, I appreciate your work. I began putting together a plan as follows:[/edit]
I'm running GoSM for our group (my husband is one of the players). I borrowed a storyline from a previous campaign we ran in 1E/2E in which provided the backstory for a meglomanic professor (of an expedition gone terribly wrong) who turned themselves into a power-hungry near god-like monster. Fast-forward 30 years, they've built themselves a cult following, a temple, the whole nine yards. One of the members of the damned expedition planted what amounts to a self-destruct mechanism (via a set of runes) and left a note in hopes one day, someone finds it. The adventurers stumble on the note (at low level, and easily stumble across the runes, and easily solve the puzzle as it basically lights up for them as they are taking rapid necrotic damage). It takes someone who speaks dwarven (theoretically ancient dwarven) to read the scrambled dwarven runes to the dwarven god (it's 12 runes long, calling for Dumathoin to destroy the temple). when the adventurers get out. as it's been converted to 5e, the adventurers find out when they get out of the mine (and crushed secret monastery) that roughly a 5 mile radius suffered the same necrotic damage and take a day to recover. at this point, they only know the meglomaniac professor by her name, Maaike Lensen, and she haunts their nightmares with burning eyes for the rest of the campaign (or until they resolve things). it's not until later chapters, when they capture and interrogate cultists near the lizardfolk lair, that they discover her name is also known as Granny Nightshade. a plan to poison the water supply of Saltmarsh leads to a merry chase only to have a changling up and vanish among the civilians in the crowd. guards report that other poisonings that day yielded a few samples. analysis (somehow they get it analysed) leads to needing an antidote with active ingredient on an island in the middle of the ocean. Aubreck Drallion might have clues about that island as he had a ship near there. I'm going to insert rick and morty's (and modify the hell out of it) as a nightmare sequence on the bottom of the emperor of the waves, as the ship is being thrashed about and the adventurers are unconscious...(again, it's a granny nightshade nightmare) …. they wake to the octopus attack..... i plan to take this past granny nightshade and castle spiral, into planar travel and all the fun stuff out there (level 20 and beyond) if i can avoid burnout lol
as you can guess, I've homebrewed a lot of stuff to make this all happen. plus borrowing content from wherever i can get it.
so, i may use this version of granny nightshade and modify the heck out of it. i was planning on making her something akin to a super lich; but, i haven't thought that far ahead. i'm still new to 5e and this is taking all my time nearly 24/7 to do a weekly campaign.
Stephanie & Bob
Holy Hell!
Thanks so much for the time and effort on this!
The party i am running at the moment, have headed to the Dreadwood on a side quest. I had initially used the default Night Hag stat block for the encounter i made for them.
However, with this, i am going to make Granny Nightshade plane shift to get away and have them re-encounter her at a later date - depending what my Players decide to do.. For all i know, they might want to head on deeper to try and pursue. Should they decide to retreat and head back to Town .. i will have an Oni follow them and attack them back in town.
This would be at a later time as to try and coerce them back to the Dreadwood, as an attempt to set up a future side quest in a later Session (with this new stat block, Granny would decimate my Party! Lol)
Again, thanks for this!
Excellent! Glad it's useful.
So nice to have found this!. Thanks to all of you who poured your ideas and effort in designing and balancing Granny Nightshade!
In our campaign, she is the BBEG, trying to summon the Wand of Orcus for her... and maybe something else ;) Needless to say, with this a lot of work is already done, so thanks again!
That is an awesome state block Im currently running WBTW I was thinking of trying to make a continuation adventure. imagine my surprise when I found out she is part of Ghost of saltmarsh in case granny night side escapes prismaar I may make a homebrew adventure unless there is an official one or homebrew already made I haven't found yet.