So i have a time travel campaign coming up and i made a creature that is inspired by the Creatures that work for time in the movie adaptation of though the looking glass. Now i want to send waves of these at my enemies though out the campaign and i figured id reskin and adjust the Red caps for this but im not experienced in monster creature making. do you guys think this will work and if you think that 4 or 5 of these may be to tough for a 3 man group of 5th lvl characters. any ideas to tone it down or make it interesting.
Seconds
Moments in time are measured in seconds. These creatures are the surveyors of time and the scouts of space. They normally keep to places of importance in the great time stream of the Universe. When many seconds encounter an anomaly in space-time they attack it furiously and they may join together to make larger constructs.
Levatating. While moving Seconds are not affected by rough terrain or though creature squares.
Joining. When many Seconds are in one place they may choose to bond together with other living or dead seconds. 3 Seconds make a Minute. Once a Second decides to bond with others it and any other seconds that are part of the process sacrifice its action to join. The new creature called a Minute starts its turn with fresh health (see Minute Creature sheet) and it replaces the original second in initiative order
Hi Apocalexx! After reading your idea I think you might really have an interesting idea. If you want any inspiration to help develop your concept I would recommend doing some research on Inevitables, a creature from 3.5. Inevitables are creatures that are very similar in many ways to your idea. Additionally, you would probably have an easier time repurposing the modrons stats as they have a similar hierarchy you seem to allude to in your creatures ability Joining.
Mechanically the concept is very creative. That said, I do see a couple of problems with it. Firstly, I noticed you have only given your Seconds a ranged attack. This could make the creature clunky in close quarters as it has no recourse for such situations. Secondly, your Joining Mechanic could use more detail. How much of the Seconds turn does it take to use Joining? Where does the new Minute fall in the initiative order? You also haven't given the attack modifier for the rotary cannon.
As for your worries about about the challenge of these creatures to your party I be a little worried about their damage output. Perhaps you would be better served throwing two or three at them and if your party makes easy work of them throw in a few more halfway through.
You have a very interesting idea! I hope I hear more about this idea from you in the future.
Hi Apocalexx! After reading your idea I think you might really have an interesting idea. If you want any inspiration to help develop your concept I would recommend doing some research on Inevitables, a creature from 3.5. Inevitables are creatures that are very similar in many ways to your idea. Additionally, you would probably have an easier time repurposing the modrons stats as they have a similar hierarchy you seem to allude to in your creatures ability Joining.
Mechanically the concept is very creative. That said, I do see a couple of problems with it. Firstly, I noticed you have only given your Seconds a ranged attack. This could make the creature clunky in close quarters as it has no recourse for such situations. Secondly, your Joining Mechanic could use more detail. How much of the Seconds turn does it take to use Joining? Where does the new Minute fall in the initiative order? You also haven't given the attack modifier for the rotary cannon.
As for your worries about about the challenge of these creatures to your party I be a little worried about their damage output. Perhaps you would be better served throwing two or three at them and if your party makes easy work of them throw in a few more halfway through.
Please review the creature again im sure i made changes the way it needed to be. I even lowered the damage abit to make it easier to send waves of these in to attack. the Modrons are close to what im going for but many of them are way tooo week. I was thinking of using the Quadrones for this and i may do that but im not sure what i will do or the Minutes, Hours and Century that i wanna make also. tell me what you think
These are really cool. I like the idea behind them very much (I'll probably check out the book series they're from). Let's see how they stack up to my understanding of the monster creation calculus in the DMG (pg 274).
I'm pegging their Defensive CR at 2. They have pretty low HP (45 on average. You should note that on their stats for ease of use) and low AC. Because they have one damage immunity and two damage resistances, I'm going to eyeball their "effective HP" at double their actual HP (DMG pg 277). I don't think the Levitation trait appreciatbly impacts their offensive or defensive capabilities. The Joining? More on that later.
Their Rotary Canon damage is actually only 7, not 9. The static number is equal to the average of the dice rolled plus the ability bonus. The average of any dice is, due to probability, half the number of faces on the dice plus 1/2. This means the cannon's 2d4 + 2, looks like 2.5 + 2.5 + 2 = 7. And because they can make 3 Rotary Canon attacks, their total Damage/Round is 21. With an attack bonus of +6 this bumps their Offensive CR up to 4.
If you take the average of their Defensive CR and their Offensive CR, it equals a final CR of.... 3! Which is what you have it at. So great job, we agree there.
The Joining ability is nifty, but it doesn't impact the CR of an individual Second. Rather, in impacts your encounter design.
Lets move onto that.
Here are the thresholds for encounter design and a group of 3 5th-level PCs: Easy: 750, Medium: 1,500, Hard: 2,250, Deadly 3,300 (DMG pg 82). The total "encounter xp" of all monsters must meet the minimum number to be that difficulty level. Meaning anything less than 750 XP worth of monsters isn't even a fight for these PCs. It's afternoon tea. XD
So, how will 3 Seconds stack up to this group of PCs? Well 3 x 700 xp for all the Seconds = 2,100 xp, between Hard and Deadly. You might think this means the encounter is Hard but doable, but wait! We're not done yet! Because an encounter gets exponentially more difficult the more monsters are in the fight, we apply a total "encounter xp" modifier of x 2 for the 3 Seconds (DMG pg 82). Note that this does not change the actual XP AWARDED to the PCs for the fight. It's only a modifier to judge how difficult a fight is. So 2,100 x 2 = 4,200. That is way beyond Deadly for a group of 3 5th level PCs.
The Joining ability is essentially a note to the DM that any fight with 3 or more Seconds may be a Multipart Encounter (DMG pg 83). In terms of "Encounter XP" and difficulty thresholds, each part of the Multipart Encounter is tallied as a separate encounter. So the Minute, when it shows up, its just a new fight. What you have to take into account, however, is that the party won't have the time or ability to take a short rest between encounters. That's fine, parties aren't meant to take a short rest after EVERY fight anyway. The only thing to keep in mind, however, is that a party shouldn't attempt more than 1/3rd their "expected adventuring XP per day" value (DMG pg 84) before taking a short or long rest. Doing so means they are taking on wave after wave of enemies without resting and their resources are being sorely tested. So you want to make sure your "3 Seconds And Then 1 Minute" Multipart encounter does not exceed 1/3rd of the day's total adventuring xp budget. What is that budget? For a 5th level party, it's 3,500 xp per character. So for a party of 3 PCs, the total Adventuring XP Budget for the day is 10,500. And a 3rd of that, is, of course, 3,500 worth of "encounter xp" before resting.
And as we saw before, just the 3 Seconds exceeds this (not surprising, since it alone is a deadly encounter). So how do we fix this? Well, nerfing your Seconds down to CR 2 somehow (less HP, even less damage) will make them worth 450 xp each. Factoring all the encounter difficulty math for a group of 3 CR 2 monsters against 3 PCs, they would be worth 2,700 "encounter xp", and would be a Hard but doable fight. Assuming your Minute is fought as a single enemy alone in the encounter vs your 3 PCs, you could make the Minute up to CR 3 without sorely testing the party. At CR 4 or higher, your PCs' resources will be dwindling after fighting the Seconds , and they may not have enough remaining to handle the Minute encounter.
Honestly since last nigh and after looking in both volo's guide and the MM i made a completely new second i think i made it considerably easier here is both the second and the minute. ignore the walking speed
Looks pretty awesome! I like the professional formatting a bunch. Are those Convergence of Cyriss minis from Warmachine?
So lets see. I did the CR calculation for your new Seconds over and I agree with the CR of 1. However, your Seconds don't need Levitate any more if they have a flight speed. You can just omit it. Also, I'm not sure if you intended this, but the Seconds can just hover like 80 feet above the battlefield and only be threatened by mages and ranged attackers. Initially it seemed like they only floated along the ground. Is that what you intended? I'm not familiar with the source material you were inspired by (yet) so I'm not sure if sniping away from on-high is modus operandi for Seconds. If they only ever hovered within reach of land-bound characters in the books, you can change the Levitate trait to be a limitation instead of an ability like:
Levitate. A second can't fly higher than 10 feet above a solid surface.
Onto the Minutes. Pretty interesting but might need a little work, in my opinion. I peg them at CR 6 in my CR calculation. Let me break it down:
Lets find their initial Defensive CR by looking at their effective HP. Their ACTUAL HP is 92, but because they're expected to be CR 4 and they have reistance to physical damage and two damage immunities, we double that for an effective HP of 182. That puts them at an initial DCR of 8. Then we compare their AC, which is 16, and that's spot on for a CR 8 creature. So their Defensive CR is calculated at 8. I did not include Mechanical Guard in this calculation because the creature must give up its action to do that, and if it does so, it's doing 0 damage. That's not expected monster behavior, so it's ignored when seeing how difficult the monster would be in a "standard" fight. I also did not factor in Standing Leap, as it isn't flight and flight is the only movement method that factors into CR.
For its Offensive CR, we start with their Damage/Round. When determining this, you always pick the most damaging option the monster can do, which is 3 Hand Turret attacks at 30 Damage/Round. This puts their initial Offensive CR at 4, which does not change when factoring in their attack bonus of +5 (for their most damaging attack) because that matches the expected attack at CR 4. So their final Offensive CR is 4. I did not include Static Discharge's damage in their Damage/Round calculation because it's situational and you can't rely that it'll ever use it. If you want it to apply more often and actually impact its expected Damage/Round, look at the Azer's Heated Body ability (Monster Manual pg 22) and model Static Discharge off that. (I'm not sure how often Minutes were throwing off arcs of lightning in the books they're from).
So with a Defensive CR of 8 and an Offensive CR of 4, they're averaging out to CR 6, not CR 4. So there's some more balancing work to be done there.
Finally, some design notes on the Minute. There is almost no reason whatsoever for Up Close and Personal to exist if it has a Retractable Blade in its current form. There is also almost not reason for it to have Retractable Blade if it has Up Close and Personal. Hand Turret is far and away the better attack option. it's more versatile, it deals more damage, and it deals it of a type less likely to be negated by, say, barbarian rage or other common class features. While the blade has +1 better attack bonus (from where I can't tell), that isn't enough to make it attractive over Hand Turret. I think you should reverse their damage values and get rid of Up Close and Personal. If Retractable Blade does 10 (2d6 + 3) damage, then it will have a reason to choose that attack, and not Hand Turret. And if you think that makes Hand Turret obsolete, Hand Turret still has range and will HAVE to be used when it wants to make a ranged attack.
If there's some lore reason why Hand Turret has to be usable inside striking range of a sword, you can change up Up Close and Personal to give them an incentive to use it, but not always over the Blade. Perhaps something like this:
Point-Blank Discharge (1/Turn). The first time a Minute makes a Hand Turret attack against a target within 5 feet of it, it does not have disadvantage on the attack, and the attack [Some benefit].
Maybe 10 (3d6) extra damage. Maybe a Con save to resist being paralyzed from the lightning. I dunno. whatever makes sense for the source material.
However, the simplier method is just to get rid of Up Close and Personal, without changing any attacks or damage values. Everything balances out that way. The Minute can choose between a reliable 3 Blade attacks at 18 damage/round in melee, or it can gamble and make 3 Turret attacks at 30 damage/round in melee with disadvantage on the attack roll. If you did this, I'd actually put their Offensive CR down to a 3. If you did that and reduced their total Hit Points to 68 (8d8 + 32), making their Defensive CR 5, their final CR would be 4.
One more thing. For the Minute's Advanced Joining, it requires a total of 4 Minutes (the initiator, plus 3 other Mintues) but only 6 other Seconds, to make an Hour? Shouldn't it be 9? Otherwise there'd be a huge difference in mass between an Hour made of 4 Minutes or 1 Minute and 6 seconds.
Wow you are a crazy amount of help. Thank you so much. to answer some questions.
In truth the inspiration for these creatures is minor. basically the name and the combining feature is from the Alice in wonderland though the looking glass movie. the rest is basically what ever sound cool. You are right to think that the seconds only hover over the ground. they may be able to go up and over people but they are not meant to continuously float in the air.
Now when it comes to the Minutes here is all the info. The reason i designed them this way is cuz i wanted to give them a super agile assassin droid type feel kinda like the robots from I robot. ill probably be using a lot of the changes you suggested. one of the things you mentioned is the unmonster like conduct they have in using a completely defensive ability i at one point was gonna use it as a ally shield like if it is in an adjacent square to an ally it can take hits for the ally with resistance but now its more of a shield that it can use to survive a few extra rounds till it gets some back up or gets combined with other minutes to become an hour. the reason i had in mind to do the gun and sword attacks is so he can do things like stab then shoot someone else or flavor wise do things like stabbing someone and the shooting them. lastly it is always intended that 3 of one creature will make the next. so it would be 1 minute + 6 seconds cuz it adds up to 3 minutes. always 3s, 1 to initiate the joining and 2 of the same creature to join with it. In the event of a missing 3 of a kind then what ever that is around to add up to the final creature will do
No problem! I'm a sucker for cool robots and time travel, so these guys speak to me. :)
For the Minute, the mechanical guard ability is perfectly fine as-is, I just mentioned it because I wanted to explain why I didn't factor it into the Minute's defensive CR. When calculating CR, you're essentially seeing what challenge the monster is when it's doing as much damage as it can in 3 rounds. I think a creatures defensive CR should only takes into account defenses that don't detract from its ability to deal damage, because if the creature is going all-out, it won't be using them. That doesn't mean the ability is useless or shouldn't be there, just that it doesn't factor into it's CR.
If you just want it to appear like an agile combatant, you can designate a combo of attacks for multiattack. Like "the Minute makes two attacks with its retractable blade and one attack with its hand turret". Then you can determine how much damage you want that combo to deal (I would probably up the Blade damage to 10).
For the Advanced Joining, I think you may have a typo then. I mentions 3 Minutes joining with the initiator, so that would be 4 total Minutes.
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So i have a time travel campaign coming up and i made a creature that is inspired by the Creatures that work for time in the movie adaptation of though the looking glass. Now i want to send waves of these at my enemies though out the campaign and i figured id reskin and adjust the Red caps for this but im not experienced in monster creature making. do you guys think this will work and if you think that 4 or 5 of these may be to tough for a 3 man group of 5th lvl characters. any ideas to tone it down or make it interesting.
Seconds
Moments in time are measured in seconds. These creatures are the surveyors of time and the scouts of space. They normally keep to places of importance in the great time stream of the Universe. When many seconds encounter an anomaly in space-time they attack it furiously and they may join together to make larger constructs.
Small Celestial, Lawful Good
Armorclass: 13
Hit Points: (6d6+24)
Speed: 30 Feet
STR: 13 (+1) DEX: 18 (+4) CON: 18 (+4) INT: 10 (+0) WIS: 12 (+1) CHA: 9 (-1)
Skills: Perception +6 Acrobatics +3 Senses: 60ft Darkvision, Passive Per 13
Language: Common, Binary Challenge: 3 (700xp)
Levatating. While moving Seconds are not affected by rough terrain or though creature squares.
Joining. When many Seconds are in one place they may choose to bond together with other living or dead seconds. 3 Seconds make a Minute. Once a Second decides to bond with others it and any other seconds that are part of the process sacrifice its action to join. The new creature called a Minute starts its turn with fresh health (see Minute Creature sheet) and it replaces the original second in initiative order
Damage Resistance. Slashing Resistance, Lightning Resistance
Damage Immunity. Psychic Immunity
Action
Multiattack. Seconds make 3 attacks with their Rotary Cannon
Rotary Cannon. Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit Range 80/320, one target. Hit: 9 (2d4+2) Lightning damage.
Headbutt. Melee Weapon Attack: + 3 to hit Range 5ft, one target. Hit: 3 (1d4+1) Bludgeoning damage.
Hi Apocalexx! After reading your idea I think you might really have an interesting idea. If you want any inspiration to help develop your concept I would recommend doing some research on Inevitables, a creature from 3.5. Inevitables are creatures that are very similar in many ways to your idea. Additionally, you would probably have an easier time repurposing the modrons stats as they have a similar hierarchy you seem to allude to in your creatures ability Joining.
Mechanically the concept is very creative. That said, I do see a couple of problems with it. Firstly, I noticed you have only given your Seconds a ranged attack. This could make the creature clunky in close quarters as it has no recourse for such situations. Secondly, your Joining Mechanic could use more detail. How much of the Seconds turn does it take to use Joining? Where does the new Minute fall in the initiative order? You also haven't given the attack modifier for the rotary cannon.
As for your worries about about the challenge of these creatures to your party I be a little worried about their damage output. Perhaps you would be better served throwing two or three at them and if your party makes easy work of them throw in a few more halfway through.
You have a very interesting idea! I hope I hear more about this idea from you in the future.
Hi Apocalexx!
These are really cool. I like the idea behind them very much (I'll probably check out the book series they're from). Let's see how they stack up to my understanding of the monster creation calculus in the DMG (pg 274).
I'm pegging their Defensive CR at 2. They have pretty low HP (45 on average. You should note that on their stats for ease of use) and low AC. Because they have one damage immunity and two damage resistances, I'm going to eyeball their "effective HP" at double their actual HP (DMG pg 277). I don't think the Levitation trait appreciatbly impacts their offensive or defensive capabilities. The Joining? More on that later.
Their Rotary Canon damage is actually only 7, not 9. The static number is equal to the average of the dice rolled plus the ability bonus. The average of any dice is, due to probability, half the number of faces on the dice plus 1/2. This means the cannon's 2d4 + 2, looks like 2.5 + 2.5 + 2 = 7. And because they can make 3 Rotary Canon attacks, their total Damage/Round is 21. With an attack bonus of +6 this bumps their Offensive CR up to 4.
If you take the average of their Defensive CR and their Offensive CR, it equals a final CR of.... 3! Which is what you have it at. So great job, we agree there.
The Joining ability is nifty, but it doesn't impact the CR of an individual Second. Rather, in impacts your encounter design.
Lets move onto that.
Here are the thresholds for encounter design and a group of 3 5th-level PCs: Easy: 750, Medium: 1,500, Hard: 2,250, Deadly 3,300 (DMG pg 82). The total "encounter xp" of all monsters must meet the minimum number to be that difficulty level. Meaning anything less than 750 XP worth of monsters isn't even a fight for these PCs. It's afternoon tea. XD
So, how will 3 Seconds stack up to this group of PCs? Well 3 x 700 xp for all the Seconds = 2,100 xp, between Hard and Deadly. You might think this means the encounter is Hard but doable, but wait! We're not done yet! Because an encounter gets exponentially more difficult the more monsters are in the fight, we apply a total "encounter xp" modifier of x 2 for the 3 Seconds (DMG pg 82). Note that this does not change the actual XP AWARDED to the PCs for the fight. It's only a modifier to judge how difficult a fight is. So 2,100 x 2 = 4,200. That is way beyond Deadly for a group of 3 5th level PCs.
The Joining ability is essentially a note to the DM that any fight with 3 or more Seconds may be a Multipart Encounter (DMG pg 83). In terms of "Encounter XP" and difficulty thresholds, each part of the Multipart Encounter is tallied as a separate encounter. So the Minute, when it shows up, its just a new fight. What you have to take into account, however, is that the party won't have the time or ability to take a short rest between encounters. That's fine, parties aren't meant to take a short rest after EVERY fight anyway. The only thing to keep in mind, however, is that a party shouldn't attempt more than 1/3rd their "expected adventuring XP per day" value (DMG pg 84) before taking a short or long rest. Doing so means they are taking on wave after wave of enemies without resting and their resources are being sorely tested. So you want to make sure your "3 Seconds And Then 1 Minute" Multipart encounter does not exceed 1/3rd of the day's total adventuring xp budget. What is that budget? For a 5th level party, it's 3,500 xp per character. So for a party of 3 PCs, the total Adventuring XP Budget for the day is 10,500. And a 3rd of that, is, of course, 3,500 worth of "encounter xp" before resting.
And as we saw before, just the 3 Seconds exceeds this (not surprising, since it alone is a deadly encounter). So how do we fix this? Well, nerfing your Seconds down to CR 2 somehow (less HP, even less damage) will make them worth 450 xp each. Factoring all the encounter difficulty math for a group of 3 CR 2 monsters against 3 PCs, they would be worth 2,700 "encounter xp", and would be a Hard but doable fight. Assuming your Minute is fought as a single enemy alone in the encounter vs your 3 PCs, you could make the Minute up to CR 3 without sorely testing the party. At CR 4 or higher, your PCs' resources will be dwindling after fighting the Seconds , and they may not have enough remaining to handle the Minute encounter.
What CR did you have in mind for the Minute?
Honestly since last nigh and after looking in both volo's guide and the MM i made a completely new second i think i made it considerably easier here is both the second and the minute. ignore the walking speed
Looks pretty awesome! I like the professional formatting a bunch. Are those Convergence of Cyriss minis from Warmachine?
So lets see. I did the CR calculation for your new Seconds over and I agree with the CR of 1. However, your Seconds don't need Levitate any more if they have a flight speed. You can just omit it. Also, I'm not sure if you intended this, but the Seconds can just hover like 80 feet above the battlefield and only be threatened by mages and ranged attackers. Initially it seemed like they only floated along the ground. Is that what you intended? I'm not familiar with the source material you were inspired by (yet) so I'm not sure if sniping away from on-high is modus operandi for Seconds. If they only ever hovered within reach of land-bound characters in the books, you can change the Levitate trait to be a limitation instead of an ability like:
Levitate. A second can't fly higher than 10 feet above a solid surface.
Onto the Minutes. Pretty interesting but might need a little work, in my opinion. I peg them at CR 6 in my CR calculation. Let me break it down:
Lets find their initial Defensive CR by looking at their effective HP. Their ACTUAL HP is 92, but because they're expected to be CR 4 and they have reistance to physical damage and two damage immunities, we double that for an effective HP of 182. That puts them at an initial DCR of 8. Then we compare their AC, which is 16, and that's spot on for a CR 8 creature. So their Defensive CR is calculated at 8. I did not include Mechanical Guard in this calculation because the creature must give up its action to do that, and if it does so, it's doing 0 damage. That's not expected monster behavior, so it's ignored when seeing how difficult the monster would be in a "standard" fight. I also did not factor in Standing Leap, as it isn't flight and flight is the only movement method that factors into CR.
For its Offensive CR, we start with their Damage/Round. When determining this, you always pick the most damaging option the monster can do, which is 3 Hand Turret attacks at 30 Damage/Round. This puts their initial Offensive CR at 4, which does not change when factoring in their attack bonus of +5 (for their most damaging attack) because that matches the expected attack at CR 4. So their final Offensive CR is 4. I did not include Static Discharge's damage in their Damage/Round calculation because it's situational and you can't rely that it'll ever use it. If you want it to apply more often and actually impact its expected Damage/Round, look at the Azer's Heated Body ability (Monster Manual pg 22) and model Static Discharge off that. (I'm not sure how often Minutes were throwing off arcs of lightning in the books they're from).
So with a Defensive CR of 8 and an Offensive CR of 4, they're averaging out to CR 6, not CR 4. So there's some more balancing work to be done there.
Finally, some design notes on the Minute. There is almost no reason whatsoever for Up Close and Personal to exist if it has a Retractable Blade in its current form. There is also almost not reason for it to have Retractable Blade if it has Up Close and Personal. Hand Turret is far and away the better attack option. it's more versatile, it deals more damage, and it deals it of a type less likely to be negated by, say, barbarian rage or other common class features. While the blade has +1 better attack bonus (from where I can't tell), that isn't enough to make it attractive over Hand Turret. I think you should reverse their damage values and get rid of Up Close and Personal. If Retractable Blade does 10 (2d6 + 3) damage, then it will have a reason to choose that attack, and not Hand Turret. And if you think that makes Hand Turret obsolete, Hand Turret still has range and will HAVE to be used when it wants to make a ranged attack.
If there's some lore reason why Hand Turret has to be usable inside striking range of a sword, you can change up Up Close and Personal to give them an incentive to use it, but not always over the Blade. Perhaps something like this:
Point-Blank Discharge (1/Turn). The first time a Minute makes a Hand Turret attack against a target within 5 feet of it, it does not have disadvantage on the attack, and the attack [Some benefit].
Maybe 10 (3d6) extra damage. Maybe a Con save to resist being paralyzed from the lightning. I dunno. whatever makes sense for the source material.
However, the simplier method is just to get rid of Up Close and Personal, without changing any attacks or damage values. Everything balances out that way. The Minute can choose between a reliable 3 Blade attacks at 18 damage/round in melee, or it can gamble and make 3 Turret attacks at 30 damage/round in melee with disadvantage on the attack roll. If you did this, I'd actually put their Offensive CR down to a 3. If you did that and reduced their total Hit Points to 68 (8d8 + 32), making their Defensive CR 5, their final CR would be 4.
One more thing. For the Minute's Advanced Joining, it requires a total of 4 Minutes (the initiator, plus 3 other Mintues) but only 6 other Seconds, to make an Hour? Shouldn't it be 9? Otherwise there'd be a huge difference in mass between an Hour made of 4 Minutes or 1 Minute and 6 seconds.
Wow you are a crazy amount of help. Thank you so much. to answer some questions.
In truth the inspiration for these creatures is minor. basically the name and the combining feature is from the Alice in wonderland though the looking glass movie. the rest is basically what ever sound cool. You are right to think that the seconds only hover over the ground. they may be able to go up and over people but they are not meant to continuously float in the air.
Now when it comes to the Minutes here is all the info. The reason i designed them this way is cuz i wanted to give them a super agile assassin droid type feel kinda like the robots from I robot. ill probably be using a lot of the changes you suggested. one of the things you mentioned is the unmonster like conduct they have in using a completely defensive ability i at one point was gonna use it as a ally shield like if it is in an adjacent square to an ally it can take hits for the ally with resistance but now its more of a shield that it can use to survive a few extra rounds till it gets some back up or gets combined with other minutes to become an hour. the reason i had in mind to do the gun and sword attacks is so he can do things like stab then shoot someone else or flavor wise do things like stabbing someone and the shooting them. lastly it is always intended that 3 of one creature will make the next. so it would be 1 minute + 6 seconds cuz it adds up to 3 minutes. always 3s, 1 to initiate the joining and 2 of the same creature to join with it. In the event of a missing 3 of a kind then what ever that is around to add up to the final creature will do
Again thank you for all your help
No problem! I'm a sucker for cool robots and time travel, so these guys speak to me. :)
For the Minute, the mechanical guard ability is perfectly fine as-is, I just mentioned it because I wanted to explain why I didn't factor it into the Minute's defensive CR. When calculating CR, you're essentially seeing what challenge the monster is when it's doing as much damage as it can in 3 rounds. I think a creatures defensive CR should only takes into account defenses that don't detract from its ability to deal damage, because if the creature is going all-out, it won't be using them. That doesn't mean the ability is useless or shouldn't be there, just that it doesn't factor into it's CR.
If you just want it to appear like an agile combatant, you can designate a combo of attacks for multiattack. Like "the Minute makes two attacks with its retractable blade and one attack with its hand turret". Then you can determine how much damage you want that combo to deal (I would probably up the Blade damage to 10).
For the Advanced Joining, I think you may have a typo then. I mentions 3 Minutes joining with the initiator, so that would be 4 total Minutes.