I'm running prince of apocalypse with a more elemental theme than it's designed and as part of a greater story where the cults are just playing a part. And so I replaced demon encounters with different elemental creatures themed to each cult. And replaced some other ememies with elemental monsters and even added a couple elemental encounters in places where there were none. The players are a party of four level 5 characters, cleric, sorcerer, rogue, and fighter. With that said here is what I had in mind and would like feedback on any changes to make.
Elemental golem like monster. Physical appearance: head of fire, torso of earth, arms of air, legs of water.
AC :14 HP: 102(12d10+36) Speed: 30ft CR: 6
STR 16, DEX 16, CON 16, INT 6, WIS 10, CHA 6
Damage resistances: Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing from non magical attacks, lighting, thunder, cold, fire, force
Which resistances would you remove? Or if they were all left intact would the CR of 6 be low. I basically just mashed into it all the elemental damage types the 4 elemental (CR5) monsters had individually. So this one has 3 more than each individual one and one more attack. A little more details I probably should have previously included, please do continue to provide feedback as I want to make sure the enemy is correctly set in CR and/or adjusted if overly powerful. My intention is to offer them a nice challenge in a single enemy fight. Previously (one at level 3 and one at 4) they have had boss encounters that were more of an outnumbered scenario and rated deadly that they all survived by the skin of their teeth. But the average damage individually that they are capable of at level 5 minimizes having similar mobs of low CR enemies even with max HP on them as a single fireball could easily nearly and possibly one shot the whole encounter. I anticipate the following: Average damage for the rogue is 20, fighter average 18, sorcerer not counting fireball average 15. Assuming all attacks they make do only half damage they would hit for average 26 damage. They have about 60% chance to hit with the AC of 14. I figure the cleric mostly healing so I didn't include any damage for that player. The monster has about 50% chance to hit the players.
I mean, with those immunities and resistances, all they have to go on is attacks with magical weapons (melee or ranged) and radiant damage. Basically your party has to hope the cleric stays up and doesn't need to heal anyone else unless everyone else has magic weapons already... The sorcerer spell list is pretty light on radiant damage.
It *might* be different if you had a druid that could upcast moonbeam at 3rd level. But even then, you're looking at 3 to 4 rounds for the party to take it down.
What does its melee attack look like? If it can make 3 attacks, depending on what the damage is there, this could be pretty brutal.
It's attack options consist of those I listed, so it can take any three of them. Comparatively quite a lot of CR 6 official monsters have 3 attacks and appear to do even more average damage. I know they can handle a fight with the nonmagical resistances. As they have done quite well against CR 5 elementals which have them plus one or two of the others. Perhaps just have two of those that seem most appropriate, fire and cold? A typical fight against a single CR 5 elemental took them 5 rounds with a single casualty at round 5.
I didn't design it to have a melee attack. If all the attacks with a recharge are recharging then it would use either or both the blast and bolt a total of three times (ex. bolt twice and blast once). Should I adjust the damage dice? or to hit and save? or all? I anticipate the encounter to last about 8 rounds.
Hmmm. Something seems off about it - the AC is the same as a clay golem at CR 9. At the same time, the only significant weapons the PCs have against it are magical weapons, the cleric's radiant damage, and psychic or necrotic damage? (The sorcerer might have chaos bolt, but that only has a 1 in 4 chance to do psychic damage...)
PLUS it can't be grappled, restrained, or knocked prone? But - oddly for a golem - it's NOT immune to mental conditions like charm/fear and has really low INT/WIS/CHA...
On the other hand, with to-hit bonuses of only +5 and relatively modest saves it will probably hit the PCs about, what, 40% of the time? And if it has no melee attack, the PCs can close to melee range and then ice blast and shocking bolt are both attacks at disadvantage.
I don't know. It seems like this will be really tough for them to kill. The sorcerer's best options are chill touch (4 damage per round if they hit) and shadow blade (7 damage per round if they hit) or maybe trying something like blindness. Your rogue needs magic weapons or they're irrelevant. Same for the fighter.
The cleric has guiding bolt, but they can only cast it a few times. They'll do average of 14 damage when they hit (18 with their 2nd-level slots, 21 with their 3rd-level slots. Assuming they hit even half the time, they can do maybe 70 points of radiant damage, but it will take the cleric 9 rounds to do it.
Unlike the other golems this one is an unnatural blending of elementals in some sort of Frankenstein like experiment. It is also controlled by one task to stop any thing from proceeding past the room its in. So it's INT etc is reflective of the elemental creatures it is composed of. Same with the resistances. Which brings us back to the original follow up. Which ones should I eliminate? Lightning, thunder and force? And yes at least 40% chance to hit the players. In that regard if I get lucky on rolls I can always fudge the numbers. But not too much so that it's not obvious. If the AC is lowered to 13 the players would go up from 60% chance to hit to close to 70%.
In the end I think the encounter went well. It lasted 10 rounds. In the 10th round the elemental storm attack downed two of the players. The success of their attacks was spot on at 3 or 4 out of 10 rounds each failed their attack. About 20% of their attacks were of types it wasn't resistant to. They surprised me and used new tactics as a group. The result is the two players that survived weren't as close to being downed as I had anticipated. As for the monster, it's success rate at attacks was maybe just shy of it's 50% as all players successfully saved at two different rounds.
Good that it seemed to go well. I think with any homebrew creature, you need to be willing to adjust it on the fly, mainly because the creature hasn't been thoroughly play tested.
In general though, about that particular monster - The resistances and immunities dont' make a lot of sense to me.
Why is it resistant to force? force is almost never resisted, for a game balance reason.
Why's it resistant to thunder? Earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder and this thing is 1/4th earth elemental. Cast shatter on the things legs... and logically, it's legs would explode and then it'd be prone.
And why can't it be grappled, restrained, knocked prone. It is just an amorphous blob? It doesn't sound like one the way you described it.
etc.
Instead of resistances that don't really make all that much sense, why not just jack up it's HP if you want it to be hard to kill.
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I'm running prince of apocalypse with a more elemental theme than it's designed and as part of a greater story where the cults are just playing a part. And so I replaced demon encounters with different elemental creatures themed to each cult. And replaced some other ememies with elemental monsters and even added a couple elemental encounters in places where there were none. The players are a party of four level 5 characters, cleric, sorcerer, rogue, and fighter. With that said here is what I had in mind and would like feedback on any changes to make.
Elemental golem like monster. Physical appearance: head of fire, torso of earth, arms of air, legs of water.
AC :14 HP: 102(12d10+36) Speed: 30ft CR: 6
STR 16, DEX 16, CON 16, INT 6, WIS 10, CHA 6
Damage resistances: Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing from non magical attacks, lighting, thunder, cold, fire, force
Damage immunities: acid, poison
Condition immunities Exhaustion, Grappled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained, Unconscious
Senses: darkvision, passive perception 14
Attacks: makes 3 attacks
Fire breath: 30ft cone DEX save 14 for half damage, 2d4+2 fire damage (recharge 2 rounds)
Ice blast: ranged attack (30ft) +5 to hit single target, 1d8+1 cold damage
Shocking bolt: ranged attack (30ft) +5 to hit single target, 1d8+1 lightning damage
Rock shower: ranged AoE (range 60ft area 10ft) STR save 15 for no damage, 2d6+2 force damage (recharge 2 rounds)
Elemental storm: range 90ft 20ft radius DEX save 14 for half damage, 1d6 fire, 1d6 cold, 1d6 lightning, 1d6 force damage (recharge 4 rounds)
Too many resistances in my opinion. I'm in two different games with 5th level characters and I'm sure this would nuke us.
Maybe your group is decked out enough for it.
Which resistances would you remove? Or if they were all left intact would the CR of 6 be low. I basically just mashed into it all the elemental damage types the 4 elemental (CR5) monsters had individually. So this one has 3 more than each individual one and one more attack. A little more details I probably should have previously included, please do continue to provide feedback as I want to make sure the enemy is correctly set in CR and/or adjusted if overly powerful. My intention is to offer them a nice challenge in a single enemy fight. Previously (one at level 3 and one at 4) they have had boss encounters that were more of an outnumbered scenario and rated deadly that they all survived by the skin of their teeth. But the average damage individually that they are capable of at level 5 minimizes having similar mobs of low CR enemies even with max HP on them as a single fireball could easily nearly and possibly one shot the whole encounter. I anticipate the following: Average damage for the rogue is 20, fighter average 18, sorcerer not counting fireball average 15. Assuming all attacks they make do only half damage they would hit for average 26 damage. They have about 60% chance to hit with the AC of 14. I figure the cleric mostly healing so I didn't include any damage for that player. The monster has about 50% chance to hit the players.
Really hard to just guess work it. Play test it yourself against the characters and see what the results are for 3 to 5 matches.
I mean, with those immunities and resistances, all they have to go on is attacks with magical weapons (melee or ranged) and radiant damage. Basically your party has to hope the cleric stays up and doesn't need to heal anyone else unless everyone else has magic weapons already... The sorcerer spell list is pretty light on radiant damage.
It *might* be different if you had a druid that could upcast moonbeam at 3rd level. But even then, you're looking at 3 to 4 rounds for the party to take it down.
What does its melee attack look like? If it can make 3 attacks, depending on what the damage is there, this could be pretty brutal.
It's attack options consist of those I listed, so it can take any three of them. Comparatively quite a lot of CR 6 official monsters have 3 attacks and appear to do even more average damage. I know they can handle a fight with the nonmagical resistances. As they have done quite well against CR 5 elementals which have them plus one or two of the others. Perhaps just have two of those that seem most appropriate, fire and cold? A typical fight against a single CR 5 elemental took them 5 rounds with a single casualty at round 5.
I meant it has four ranged attack options and a breath weapon. What damage does it do if it moves in and makes three melee attacks?
A flesh golem at CR 5 can make two slam attacks doing 2d8+4 damage on each hit.
I didn't design it to have a melee attack. If all the attacks with a recharge are recharging then it would use either or both the blast and bolt a total of three times (ex. bolt twice and blast once). Should I adjust the damage dice? or to hit and save? or all? I anticipate the encounter to last about 8 rounds.
Hmmm. Something seems off about it - the AC is the same as a clay golem at CR 9. At the same time, the only significant weapons the PCs have against it are magical weapons, the cleric's radiant damage, and psychic or necrotic damage? (The sorcerer might have chaos bolt, but that only has a 1 in 4 chance to do psychic damage...)
PLUS it can't be grappled, restrained, or knocked prone? But - oddly for a golem - it's NOT immune to mental conditions like charm/fear and has really low INT/WIS/CHA...
On the other hand, with to-hit bonuses of only +5 and relatively modest saves it will probably hit the PCs about, what, 40% of the time? And if it has no melee attack, the PCs can close to melee range and then ice blast and shocking bolt are both attacks at disadvantage.
I don't know. It seems like this will be really tough for them to kill. The sorcerer's best options are chill touch (4 damage per round if they hit) and shadow blade (7 damage per round if they hit) or maybe trying something like blindness. Your rogue needs magic weapons or they're irrelevant. Same for the fighter.
The cleric has guiding bolt, but they can only cast it a few times. They'll do average of 14 damage when they hit (18 with their 2nd-level slots, 21 with their 3rd-level slots. Assuming they hit even half the time, they can do maybe 70 points of radiant damage, but it will take the cleric 9 rounds to do it.
Unlike the other golems this one is an unnatural blending of elementals in some sort of Frankenstein like experiment. It is also controlled by one task to stop any thing from proceeding past the room its in. So it's INT etc is reflective of the elemental creatures it is composed of. Same with the resistances. Which brings us back to the original follow up. Which ones should I eliminate? Lightning, thunder and force? And yes at least 40% chance to hit the players. In that regard if I get lucky on rolls I can always fudge the numbers. But not too much so that it's not obvious. If the AC is lowered to 13 the players would go up from 60% chance to hit to close to 70%.
In the end I think the encounter went well. It lasted 10 rounds. In the 10th round the elemental storm attack downed two of the players. The success of their attacks was spot on at 3 or 4 out of 10 rounds each failed their attack. About 20% of their attacks were of types it wasn't resistant to. They surprised me and used new tactics as a group. The result is the two players that survived weren't as close to being downed as I had anticipated. As for the monster, it's success rate at attacks was maybe just shy of it's 50% as all players successfully saved at two different rounds.
Good that it seemed to go well. I think with any homebrew creature, you need to be willing to adjust it on the fly, mainly because the creature hasn't been thoroughly play tested.
In general though, about that particular monster - The resistances and immunities dont' make a lot of sense to me.
Why is it resistant to force? force is almost never resisted, for a game balance reason.
Why's it resistant to thunder? Earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder and this thing is 1/4th earth elemental. Cast shatter on the things legs... and logically, it's legs would explode and then it'd be prone.
And why can't it be grappled, restrained, knocked prone. It is just an amorphous blob? It doesn't sound like one the way you described it.
etc.
Instead of resistances that don't really make all that much sense, why not just jack up it's HP if you want it to be hard to kill.