Hi, I'm running Descent into Avernus and at some point will likely run a Narzugon Combat encounter. When I do so I'm almost certain my fairly powerful players are going to target the mount and leave the Narzugon on foot. As such I had a question about how it would fight based on the weapon rules vs the monster stat block rules.
Specifically, there are a couple tactics guides that state something along the lines of "The Narzugon is wielding a lance so has disadvantage against any combatants within 5ft. When on foot he needs to wield it in 2 hands so will drop his shield". This follows the player rules for the lance weapon, but I see no reason why this would apply to a monster stat block? Considering we often have things like 2d12 greataxes etc. I don't believe there is any rule stating you must follow the weapon table rules unless those features are specifically stated in the creature's stat block. Is there any rule for this one way or another?
+ Also, assuming it doesn't have the lance weapon properties, there's nothing stopping someone from using an unmodified* Narzugon stat block for something like a 8ft tall Hell Knight with a >6ft long flaming greatsword or greataxe (Either 1 handed with a shield, or 2 handed with +2 Plate) which sounds pretty cool. It's also precisely how Haruman is depicted in the DiA art.
*may be an edge case where it matters whether you're doing piercing vs slashing, but that's fairly rare
Hi, I'm running Descent into Avernus and at some point will likely run a Narzugon Combat encounter. When I do so I'm almost certain my fairly powerful players are going to target the mount and leave the Narzugon on foot. As such I had a question about how it would fight based on the weapon rules vs the monster stat block rules.
Specifically, there are a couple tactics guides that state something along the lines of "The Narzugon is wielding a lance so has disadvantage against any combatants within 5ft. When on foot he needs to wield it in 2 hands so will drop his shield". This follows the player rules for the lance weapon, but I see no reason why this would apply to a monster stat block? Considering we often have things like 2d12 greataxes etc. I don't believe there is any rule stating you must follow the weapon table rules unless those features are specifically stated in the creature's stat block. Is there any rule for this one way or another?
+ Also, assuming it doesn't have the lance weapon properties, there's nothing stopping someone from using an unmodified* Narzugon stat block for something like a 8ft tall Hell Knight with a >6ft long flaming greatsword or greataxe (Either 1 handed with a shield, or 2 handed with +2 Plate) which sounds pretty cool. It's also precisely how Haruman is depicted in the DiA art.
*may be an edge case where it matters whether you're doing piercing vs slashing, but that's fairly rare
The rules on weapons and such are consistently written in a very strange way - the overall "vibe" I get is that weapons and armor follow the same rules for NPCs and PCs, except NPC stat blocks leave out info like when the NPC has a feat. I was just skimming Rime of the Frostmaiden, and many NPCs in it have Expertise in various skills, but their stat blocks just list their bonus - you have to backsolve their Expertise. Another thing worthy of note is that many stat blocks contain simple errors that have never been fixed, like how the weretiger's pounce should be DC 13, not DC 14 (which we know from a rules entry for them on a completely different page).
So you can upgrade your devil as you see fit with any abilities you like - just be aware they may impact his CR in unforeseen ways. For example, it's well within reason for a devil to have a feat on it letting it wield a lance better than mere mortals can. That can be an excellent way to make a combat more difficult if your players are having too easy a time in combat. On the other hand, you can also just give him the mounted combatant feat, for example.
2d12 greataxes are like ballistas - 5E appears to have rules we've never been allowed to actually read for scaling weapon damage with size. I think you'll find 2d12 greataxes are routinely intended for Large or larger wielders.
Indeed it'd be nice if 5e actually made some sort of vague guidance on weapon scaling outside of what regular PC's have access to, however I feel like the general trend is that while PC's have to follow certain rules, monster / NPC stat blocks essentially have free reign to work however they'd like, with the condition that they are only able to use what it says on their sheet (for example, some NPCs with daggers have them listed as melee only. Others list both a melee and ranged attack. It seems like the general "thrown" property of player's daggers is only applicable to *some* NPC's by RAW).
This does lead to some jank when it comes to edge cases such as "My enlarged barbarian wants to pick up this giant's club and hit something with it" resulting in DMs just kinda scratching our heads and ruling on the fly because there isn't really any official rules support for it. That's equally true when you have the opposite case which is supported by rules, such as "How come my medium player minotaur does 1d12 with a greataxe, however if I cast reduce on a NPC minotaur to make it medium size it does 2d12-1d4?". I guess you've just gotta say the reduced size greataxe still weighs what it used to or something, idk.
And yes I'm heavily considering giving the Narzugon the line from mounted combatant that allows it to redirect attacks from it's mount to itself. Especially because I have an Echo Knight with sentinel which *will* immediately attempt to reduce the Nightmare's speed from 90ft fly to zero if he gets the chance, which while I understand you shouldn't nerf players abilities too often, it kinda makes that encounter both trivial mechanically & have way less story impact which just isn't fun for me or the players. I would say I definitely wouldn't give him the full player feat though, as that'd give almost all of the Narzugon's attacks advantage, which is similarly un-fun since he'll just never miss, and deal the full 3d12 + 9d10 +15 damage per round minus resistances (Ouch!).
Either that or I'll just ensure the Nightmare always kicks his echo first, that way I don't have to modify anything. Kinda makes me sad since it prevents it from then using it's attack on a player or to dash/disengage, but it'll probably make my players less suspicious that I'm directly countering their abilities.
The thing about monster stat blocks is that they're intended to be streamlined, self-contained cheat sheets for a typical encounter with that creature. They only contain the bare minimum information. It's unusual for a Narzugon to fight without its mount so including all of the lance's properties in its stat block would clutter it with little payoff. Since the priority for stat blocks is ease of use (as opposed to ease of customization), they only present the net results of those equipment choices within the boundaries of what that monster will normally choose to do with it.
When a monster stat block references standard equipment from the Player's Handbook it usually abides by those rules: they'll use the AC calculations listed for their armor, versatile weapons will have both one-handed and two-handed action variants listed, loading weapons don't get to shoot more than once. You usually don't find weapons with damage dice that arbitrarily differ from the equipment table. Monsters larger than Medium do deviate from the listed dice, but that's because the equipment tables are designed for Medium creatures. Even then, they usually do use the listed dice as a base and simply multiply the amount of dice according to the size difference. That's why a Large minotaur has a 2d12 greataxe and a Huge Hill Giant has a 3d8 greatclub.
The game's designers avoid Large playable races at all costs so there's little point in having player-facing weapon scaling rules. And a temporarily enlarged barbarian won't be able to wield a weapon for a Huge giant without suffering disadvantage so the weird discrepancy in how monster stat blocks handle weapon scaling and how Enlarge/Reduce handles it usually isn't an issue.
Well this is the thing, monster stat blocks *usually* conform to player gear in the case of medium npc's, and they also *usually* list those weapon properties in the stat block in the case of versatile or thrown weapons.
But equally, it's not a general rule that they have to conform, and *sometimes* they just don't as I've mentioned above. As such in the case of the Narzugon, there's no indication the hellfire lance should conform to the rules of a players lance because none of its weapon properties are listed.
And yeah obviously in that specific example a large creature can't wield a huge creature weapon without disadvantage (if atall), but logic dictates they'd still be able to wield one for a large creature, so it would be nice to at least have some guidance on this.
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[Spoiler Warning: Descent Into Avernus]
Hi, I'm running Descent into Avernus and at some point will likely run a Narzugon Combat encounter. When I do so I'm almost certain my fairly powerful players are going to target the mount and leave the Narzugon on foot. As such I had a question about how it would fight based on the weapon rules vs the monster stat block rules.
Specifically, there are a couple tactics guides that state something along the lines of "The Narzugon is wielding a lance so has disadvantage against any combatants within 5ft. When on foot he needs to wield it in 2 hands so will drop his shield". This follows the player rules for the lance weapon, but I see no reason why this would apply to a monster stat block? Considering we often have things like 2d12 greataxes etc. I don't believe there is any rule stating you must follow the weapon table rules unless those features are specifically stated in the creature's stat block. Is there any rule for this one way or another?
+ Also, assuming it doesn't have the lance weapon properties, there's nothing stopping someone from using an unmodified* Narzugon stat block for something like a 8ft tall Hell Knight with a >6ft long flaming greatsword or greataxe (Either 1 handed with a shield, or 2 handed with +2 Plate) which sounds pretty cool. It's also precisely how Haruman is depicted in the DiA art.
*may be an edge case where it matters whether you're doing piercing vs slashing, but that's fairly rare
The rules on weapons and such are consistently written in a very strange way - the overall "vibe" I get is that weapons and armor follow the same rules for NPCs and PCs, except NPC stat blocks leave out info like when the NPC has a feat. I was just skimming Rime of the Frostmaiden, and many NPCs in it have Expertise in various skills, but their stat blocks just list their bonus - you have to backsolve their Expertise. Another thing worthy of note is that many stat blocks contain simple errors that have never been fixed, like how the weretiger's pounce should be DC 13, not DC 14 (which we know from a rules entry for them on a completely different page).
So you can upgrade your devil as you see fit with any abilities you like - just be aware they may impact his CR in unforeseen ways. For example, it's well within reason for a devil to have a feat on it letting it wield a lance better than mere mortals can. That can be an excellent way to make a combat more difficult if your players are having too easy a time in combat. On the other hand, you can also just give him the mounted combatant feat, for example.
2d12 greataxes are like ballistas - 5E appears to have rules we've never been allowed to actually read for scaling weapon damage with size. I think you'll find 2d12 greataxes are routinely intended for Large or larger wielders.
Indeed it'd be nice if 5e actually made some sort of vague guidance on weapon scaling outside of what regular PC's have access to, however I feel like the general trend is that while PC's have to follow certain rules, monster / NPC stat blocks essentially have free reign to work however they'd like, with the condition that they are only able to use what it says on their sheet (for example, some NPCs with daggers have them listed as melee only. Others list both a melee and ranged attack. It seems like the general "thrown" property of player's daggers is only applicable to *some* NPC's by RAW).
This does lead to some jank when it comes to edge cases such as "My enlarged barbarian wants to pick up this giant's club and hit something with it" resulting in DMs just kinda scratching our heads and ruling on the fly because there isn't really any official rules support for it. That's equally true when you have the opposite case which is supported by rules, such as "How come my medium player minotaur does 1d12 with a greataxe, however if I cast reduce on a NPC minotaur to make it medium size it does 2d12-1d4?". I guess you've just gotta say the reduced size greataxe still weighs what it used to or something, idk.
And yes I'm heavily considering giving the Narzugon the line from mounted combatant that allows it to redirect attacks from it's mount to itself. Especially because I have an Echo Knight with sentinel which *will* immediately attempt to reduce the Nightmare's speed from 90ft fly to zero if he gets the chance, which while I understand you shouldn't nerf players abilities too often, it kinda makes that encounter both trivial mechanically & have way less story impact which just isn't fun for me or the players. I would say I definitely wouldn't give him the full player feat though, as that'd give almost all of the Narzugon's attacks advantage, which is similarly un-fun since he'll just never miss, and deal the full 3d12 + 9d10 +15 damage per round minus resistances (Ouch!).
Either that or I'll just ensure the Nightmare always kicks his echo first, that way I don't have to modify anything. Kinda makes me sad since it prevents it from then using it's attack on a player or to dash/disengage, but it'll probably make my players less suspicious that I'm directly countering their abilities.
The thing about monster stat blocks is that they're intended to be streamlined, self-contained cheat sheets for a typical encounter with that creature. They only contain the bare minimum information. It's unusual for a Narzugon to fight without its mount so including all of the lance's properties in its stat block would clutter it with little payoff. Since the priority for stat blocks is ease of use (as opposed to ease of customization), they only present the net results of those equipment choices within the boundaries of what that monster will normally choose to do with it.
When a monster stat block references standard equipment from the Player's Handbook it usually abides by those rules: they'll use the AC calculations listed for their armor, versatile weapons will have both one-handed and two-handed action variants listed, loading weapons don't get to shoot more than once. You usually don't find weapons with damage dice that arbitrarily differ from the equipment table. Monsters larger than Medium do deviate from the listed dice, but that's because the equipment tables are designed for Medium creatures. Even then, they usually do use the listed dice as a base and simply multiply the amount of dice according to the size difference. That's why a Large minotaur has a 2d12 greataxe and a Huge Hill Giant has a 3d8 greatclub.
The game's designers avoid Large playable races at all costs so there's little point in having player-facing weapon scaling rules. And a temporarily enlarged barbarian won't be able to wield a weapon for a Huge giant without suffering disadvantage so the weird discrepancy in how monster stat blocks handle weapon scaling and how Enlarge/Reduce handles it usually isn't an issue.
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Well this is the thing, monster stat blocks *usually* conform to player gear in the case of medium npc's, and they also *usually* list those weapon properties in the stat block in the case of versatile or thrown weapons.
But equally, it's not a general rule that they have to conform, and *sometimes* they just don't as I've mentioned above. As such in the case of the Narzugon, there's no indication the hellfire lance should conform to the rules of a players lance because none of its weapon properties are listed.
And yeah obviously in that specific example a large creature can't wield a huge creature weapon without disadvantage (if atall), but logic dictates they'd still be able to wield one for a large creature, so it would be nice to at least have some guidance on this.