"Coven Magic: While within 30 feet of at least two hag allies, the hag can cast one of the following spells, requiring no Material components, using the spell's normal casting time, and using Intelligence as the spellcasting ability (spell save DC 11): Augury, Find Familiar, Identify, Locate Object, Scrying, or Unseen Servant. The hag must finish a Long Rest before using this trait to cast that spell again."
Hi everyone! This is the new coven magic spell list for hags. I understand what they are trying to do, these are all very story driving spells (you serch for a quest, you go for the hags, they ask you a price...) but i feel this is a bit underwhelming...they used to cast lightning bolt now they need 3 of them for find familiar? Of course as a DM you can alter the stat all you want, still... coven used to be very scary! what do you think?
Given that you're clearly supposed to already tack on utility spells as needed to monster blocks given that otherwise an Archmage has a smaller spell repertoire than a 10th level full caster PC, the feature is a best pointless and at worst muddles the aforementioned point by suddenly backtracking and saying NPCs should only cast the spells listed in their blocks, even when that makes them pretty unable to do any non combat type magic.
As I've been acclimating to the new monster manual, it appears the philosophy has shifted far more quickly than they could playtest their creation, or that they made it in isolation of the PHB 2024 and previous products. They really needed to give us an appendices for adding covens, resistances, and the like back into the game at their original strength. "Curse of Strahd" in particular is effected by changes to every gothic horror monster. I'm running that campaign right now and can say that its definitely lost that special something. Although, ironically, the 1-3 starter adventure that comes with it is now even more likely to lead to a TPK.
I think for a lot of monsters you have to combined 2014 and 2024 to get something worthwhile. 2024 have much nicer mechanics, like grapple of hit, simpler poison damage etc.
But you need 2014 to get all the content that is interesting - dragon lair actions, dragon fear aura on red dragons, really nasty coven magic (eyebite anyone). of course you need to up the CR of that encounter to reflect it.
Definitely a lot of monsters were nerfed.
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"Coven Magic: While within 30 feet of at least two hag allies, the hag can cast one of the following spells, requiring no Material components, using the spell's normal casting time, and using Intelligence as the spellcasting ability (spell save DC 11): Augury, Find Familiar, Identify, Locate Object, Scrying, or Unseen Servant. The hag must finish a Long Rest before using this trait to cast that spell again."
Hi everyone! This is the new coven magic spell list for hags. I understand what they are trying to do, these are all very story driving spells (you serch for a quest, you go for the hags, they ask you a price...) but i feel this is a bit underwhelming...they used to cast lightning bolt now they need 3 of them for find familiar? Of course as a DM you can alter the stat all you want, still... coven used to be very scary! what do you think?
Given that you're clearly supposed to already tack on utility spells as needed to monster blocks given that otherwise an Archmage has a smaller spell repertoire than a 10th level full caster PC, the feature is a best pointless and at worst muddles the aforementioned point by suddenly backtracking and saying NPCs should only cast the spells listed in their blocks, even when that makes them pretty unable to do any non combat type magic.
As I've been acclimating to the new monster manual, it appears the philosophy has shifted far more quickly than they could playtest their creation, or that they made it in isolation of the PHB 2024 and previous products. They really needed to give us an appendices for adding covens, resistances, and the like back into the game at their original strength. "Curse of Strahd" in particular is effected by changes to every gothic horror monster. I'm running that campaign right now and can say that its definitely lost that special something. Although, ironically, the 1-3 starter adventure that comes with it is now even more likely to lead to a TPK.
I think for a lot of monsters you have to combined 2014 and 2024 to get something worthwhile. 2024 have much nicer mechanics, like grapple of hit, simpler poison damage etc.
But you need 2014 to get all the content that is interesting - dragon lair actions, dragon fear aura on red dragons, really nasty coven magic (eyebite anyone). of course you need to up the CR of that encounter to reflect it.
Definitely a lot of monsters were nerfed.