I am a D&D cosmology buff who just started playing 5e. After 4e’s shuffling I am sad to say that guardinals got lost. I am running a cosmology-based campaign and need the guardinals again. Can anyone help me breathe some life into the older stat blocks to make them 5e?
Just a reminder, but here’s a link to an article about guardinals:
I am a D&D cosmology buff who just started playing 5e. After 4e’s shuffling I am sad to say that guardinals got lost. I am running a cosmology-based campaign and need the guardinals again. Can anyone help me breathe some life into the older stat blocks to make them 5e?
Just a reminder, but here’s a link to an article about guardinals:
Most of the homebrews I make are ports from older editions. Is there any guardinal you're looking for specifically? Also, from the recent Unearthed Arcana playtest material, I get the impression that WotC is working on some sort of supplement relating to the planes, so they may appear soon.
If you could go in reverse order of power (So Talsid and the Five Companions first and Mustevals last) that’d be most appreciated. This is meant to be a LV20 campaign so don’t put too much pressure on the little guys. Thanks for your help!
If you could go in reverse order of power (So Talsid and the Five Companions first and Mustevals last) that’d be most appreciated. This is meant to be a LV20 campaign so don’t put too much pressure on the little guys. Thanks for your help!
I'll give it a shot. Monsters with high CRs generally take me longer to work out since they're harder to balance. Were there ever official stats for the Talisid and the five?
Nevermind! 3e Book of Exalted Deeds. That's plenty to work with. Talisid is pegged as a CR 30 NPC in the 3e book, which puts him on par with Demogorgon and Orcus in 3e. In 5e, those two have a CR of 26, so that's where I'll aim.
How's this for a first go? I basically read the stat block from BoED, then mashed together bits of the solar, lion, and archdruid. My numbers may be off, and I can't swear that it is an appropriate challenge for a CR 26, but I followed the DMG monster creation rules, roughly. The main discomfort I have is the overwhelming amount of spells lining the stat block. Most 5e stat blocks cut down heavily on the number of spells relative to their 3e counterparts. I would have stripped away the spellcasting ability and just added a few more innate spells, but it seemed like Talisid is an actual druid, rather than just a nature spirit. Anyways, let me know what you think.
Amazing!!!!! Thank you for your help - I don’t have the earlier statblocks to use, and I’m terrible at making monsters. If you need any help making the others let me know.
And using the table from DMG this almost exactly matches a CR 26 monster. You’re really good at this.
Thanks! It's still not very easy to gauge power, what with all those spells. The DMG guide gets less precise when we move to higher levels. I've had a lot of fun making monsters and subclasses over the past few years. I'll try my hand at the other paragons soon.
Edit: I'm working on Sathia today, and she should be easier to cook up. Only the bear paragon may take soem time. It's the damned spells!
Sathia is done as a draft! Sorry that took me so long. I also recalibrated Talisid, reducing the bonus from Angelic Weapons, and beefing up his base damage. I doubt I'm done with Sathia. She's probably a tad underpowered. On the one hand, her damage output is constrained by her talon capacity. But her defensive capabilities are high. Magic + legendary resistance, a fast fly speed, and the ability to move 45 feet as a legendary action without provoking AoOs are important. Her damage output is also heavily dependent on how she's used. If I were DM, I'd have her pick up two players with a dive attack, lift them 90 feet into the air, and drop them each turn until dead. That's boost her damage per round by 9d6 * 2 which is 63 on average, and put her out of range of most attacks.
As a note, her stats in the 3e BoED include wing attacks, but I stripped those away and included them as a legendary action because that seems to be the treatment given to dragons from 3e -> 5e. I may decide to revise that and include them as actual actions, but I can't see any precedent for that in 5e RAW. She also has elements from the Roc, Aarakocra, and Vrock.
Next is the horned duke, Manath. I'm traveling for the next two weeks, so I'll probably be slow to pump out the rest, but who knows! Manath is the baby of the bunch, so I'll probably bump his CR down to 19 or 20. His CR was that of an Ancient Brass Dragon in 3e, which got bumped from 20 to 19 between 3e and 3.5e. I'll probably draw heavily from minotaurs for this one.
Also, if I were planning to run an encounter with more than one of the companions, I'd drop the legendary actions and resistance, and constrain their healing touch abilities to 1-3/day.
One last thing! I deliberately chose not to give the companions lair abilities. Their flavor suggests that they wander, and don't really have a permanent residence in Elysium.
I haven't forgotten about this project! I just got back from a trip abroad and am nearly done with Manath. The most difficult part about porting monsters from 3.x is translating the primary stats, since 3e stats are essentially unbounded (eg. Talisid's Str in 3e is 43!). I'm attempting a side project to make this easier by comparing existing 5e monsters with 3e-3.5e counterparts, and forming a model which can generate 5e stats for me given an existing 3.x build. It's a relatively simple statistical process, but I'm asking some friends of mine to scrape the DDB monster listings to collect the data for me. It's a bit embarrasing that, given my field, I can't already do this.
Anyway, once this is done, it should be a lot quicker to port things.
One Manath made to order. I'm not 100% confident about the math here because I wrote his stats down a million different ways. He takes from the goristro with not a lot of bells and whistles. Next up is Vhara, the horse lady. She's likely to be quick as well, and I estimate a CR of 20, between Manath and Saathia. She doesn't have many abilities in 3e, just some spell-like abilities, a roar ability, and a few hoof attacks. If we're lucky I can crank her out tonight.
Done with Vhara. I'm not as happy with this one. It's a bit too simple, although maybe that's a feature. Her Whinny ability was difficult for me to place. In 3e it was a free action she could do once every hour. I made it a legendary action, but I may switch it to an action with a recharge. The main reason I'm uncertain is that in the BoED, Vhara is said to use her whinny, then jump in with a whirlwind attack. I can't give her that many attacks (her damage output would be too high), but as an action or legendary action she can't use it and attack on the same round. If I allow her unrestricted use of the ability, ie. as part of multiattack, that may be too powerful as well.
Edit: The Orc Blade of Ilneval gives RAW precedent to allowing a recharge ability as part of multiattack. I feel better now.
Anyway, expect me to tinker with this one for a bit. In the meantime, Kharash is next. He'll be more interesting, with a slew of rogue abilities. I estimate him as a CR 19, between Manath and Vhara in power.
The companions are all done! Please let me know if there are any mistakes or weird stylistic glitches. I'll get started on the generic guardinals soon.
Okay, by "soon" I meant "almost a month" =D. Anyway, here are my leonal and avoral builds (or here they will be shortly). I spent a lot of time revising the companions, btw. I'm about to strip away some of their spells, as the transition from 3e-5e involved creating simplified monsters with fewer spell-like abilities, and more flavorful attacks. Suffice it to say that all previous versions are still online. Just be warned, there are a LOT of previous versions.
Hello,
I am a D&D cosmology buff who just started playing 5e. After 4e’s shuffling I am sad to say that guardinals got lost. I am running a cosmology-based campaign and need the guardinals again. Can anyone help me breathe some life into the older stat blocks to make them 5e?
Just a reminder, but here’s a link to an article about guardinals:
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Guardinal
Stats for Talsid and the Five Companions would also be insanely useful.
Most of the homebrews I make are ports from older editions. Is there any guardinal you're looking for specifically? Also, from the recent Unearthed Arcana playtest material, I get the impression that WotC is working on some sort of supplement relating to the planes, so they may appear soon.
If you could go in reverse order of power (So Talsid and the Five Companions first and Mustevals last) that’d be most appreciated. This is meant to be a LV20 campaign so don’t put too much pressure on the little guys. Thanks for your help!
I'll give it a shot. Monsters with high CRs generally take me longer to work out since they're harder to balance. Were there ever official stats for the Talisid and the five?
Nevermind! 3e Book of Exalted Deeds. That's plenty to work with. Talisid is pegged as a CR 30 NPC in the 3e book, which puts him on par with Demogorgon and Orcus in 3e. In 5e, those two have a CR of 26, so that's where I'll aim.
How's this for a first go? I basically read the stat block from BoED, then mashed together bits of the solar, lion, and archdruid. My numbers may be off, and I can't swear that it is an appropriate challenge for a CR 26, but I followed the DMG monster creation rules, roughly. The main discomfort I have is the overwhelming amount of spells lining the stat block. Most 5e stat blocks cut down heavily on the number of spells relative to their 3e counterparts. I would have stripped away the spellcasting ability and just added a few more innate spells, but it seemed like Talisid is an actual druid, rather than just a nature spirit. Anyways, let me know what you think.
Talisid, the Celestial Lion
Amazing!!!!! Thank you for your help - I don’t have the earlier statblocks to use, and I’m terrible at making monsters. If you need any help making the others let me know.
And using the table from DMG this almost exactly matches a CR 26 monster. You’re really good at this.
Thanks! It's still not very easy to gauge power, what with all those spells. The DMG guide gets less precise when we move to higher levels. I've had a lot of fun making monsters and subclasses over the past few years. I'll try my hand at the other paragons soon.
Edit: I'm working on Sathia today, and she should be easier to cook up. Only the bear paragon may take soem time. It's the damned spells!
Sathia is done as a draft! Sorry that took me so long. I also recalibrated Talisid, reducing the bonus from Angelic Weapons, and beefing up his base damage. I doubt I'm done with Sathia. She's probably a tad underpowered. On the one hand, her damage output is constrained by her talon capacity. But her defensive capabilities are high. Magic + legendary resistance, a fast fly speed, and the ability to move 45 feet as a legendary action without provoking AoOs are important. Her damage output is also heavily dependent on how she's used. If I were DM, I'd have her pick up two players with a dive attack, lift them 90 feet into the air, and drop them each turn until dead. That's boost her damage per round by 9d6 * 2 which is 63 on average, and put her out of range of most attacks.
As a note, her stats in the 3e BoED include wing attacks, but I stripped those away and included them as a legendary action because that seems to be the treatment given to dragons from 3e -> 5e. I may decide to revise that and include them as actual actions, but I can't see any precedent for that in 5e RAW. She also has elements from the Roc, Aarakocra, and Vrock.
Next is the horned duke, Manath. I'm traveling for the next two weeks, so I'll probably be slow to pump out the rest, but who knows! Manath is the baby of the bunch, so I'll probably bump his CR down to 19 or 20. His CR was that of an Ancient Brass Dragon in 3e, which got bumped from 20 to 19 between 3e and 3.5e. I'll probably draw heavily from minotaurs for this one.
Also, if I were planning to run an encounter with more than one of the companions, I'd drop the legendary actions and resistance, and constrain their healing touch abilities to 1-3/day.
One last thing! I deliberately chose not to give the companions lair abilities. Their flavor suggests that they wander, and don't really have a permanent residence in Elysium.
Thanks so much for your help! You’ve really put a lot of thought into these and I appreciate it.
Hey AM,
I haven't forgotten about this project! I just got back from a trip abroad and am nearly done with Manath. The most difficult part about porting monsters from 3.x is translating the primary stats, since 3e stats are essentially unbounded (eg. Talisid's Str in 3e is 43!). I'm attempting a side project to make this easier by comparing existing 5e monsters with 3e-3.5e counterparts, and forming a model which can generate 5e stats for me given an existing 3.x build. It's a relatively simple statistical process, but I'm asking some friends of mine to scrape the DDB monster listings to collect the data for me. It's a bit embarrasing that, given my field, I can't already do this.
Anyway, once this is done, it should be a lot quicker to port things.
Awesome, thank you!
One Manath made to order. I'm not 100% confident about the math here because I wrote his stats down a million different ways. He takes from the goristro with not a lot of bells and whistles. Next up is Vhara, the horse lady. She's likely to be quick as well, and I estimate a CR of 20, between Manath and Saathia. She doesn't have many abilities in 3e, just some spell-like abilities, a roar ability, and a few hoof attacks. If we're lucky I can crank her out tonight.
Done with Vhara. I'm not as happy with this one. It's a bit too simple, although maybe that's a feature. Her Whinny ability was difficult for me to place. In 3e it was a free action she could do once every hour. I made it a legendary action, but I may switch it to an action with a recharge. The main reason I'm uncertain is that in the BoED, Vhara is said to use her whinny, then jump in with a whirlwind attack. I can't give her that many attacks (her damage output would be too high), but as an action or legendary action she can't use it and attack on the same round. If I allow her unrestricted use of the ability, ie. as part of multiattack, that may be too powerful as well.
Edit: The Orc Blade of Ilneval gives RAW precedent to allowing a recharge ability as part of multiattack. I feel better now.
Anyway, expect me to tinker with this one for a bit. In the meantime, Kharash is next. He'll be more interesting, with a slew of rogue abilities. I estimate him as a CR 19, between Manath and Vhara in power.
The companions are all done! Please let me know if there are any mistakes or weird stylistic glitches. I'll get started on the generic guardinals soon.
Talisid, the Celestial Lion
Sathia, the Sky Duchess
Manath, the Horned Duke
Vhara, Duchess of the Fields
Kharash, the Stalker
Bharrai, the Great Bear
These are awesome, thank you!
Okay, by "soon" I meant "almost a month" =D. Anyway, here are my leonal and avoral builds (or here they will be shortly). I spent a lot of time revising the companions, btw. I'm about to strip away some of their spells, as the transition from 3e-5e involved creating simplified monsters with fewer spell-like abilities, and more flavorful attacks. Suffice it to say that all previous versions are still online. Just be warned, there are a LOT of previous versions.
Thank you!
I forgot to post these:
Ursinal
Equinal
Lupinal
Cervidal
Musteval
I tried to make them as solid as possible, but with all the revisions I make, I wouldn't be surprised if I got a number or two off.