The Magnificent Guild of Homebrew

The fact that it's tougher on melee martials than casters isn't really a bad thing. It's bad when there are systemic disadvantages to certain classes, but when it's on a monster-by-monster basis, it's just called variety. It would be ridiculous to say all undead are poorly designed just because they advantage Cleric, an already strong class, on account of the fact that sometimes it should feel especially rewarding to play the class you're playing. Monsters that are stronger against martials are just the natural corollary to all the monsters with Magic Resistance and similar features.

Quote from Quar1on >>

The fact that it's tougher on melee martials than casters isn't really a bad thing. It's bad when there are systemic disadvantages to certain classes, but when it's on a monster-by-monster basis, it's just called variety. It would be ridiculous to say all undead are poorly designed just because they advantage Cleric, an already strong class, on account of the fact that sometimes it should feel especially rewarding to play the class you're playing. Monsters that are stronger against martials are just the natural corollary to all the monsters with Magic Resistance and similar features.

 If it weren't such a pervasive thing in this game, or such an intense and defining trait for this monster, I would agree entirely. The difference between a melee character and literally any other character here is 6 AC, a multiattack or the strongest attack this guy has to offer, an inability to retreat, and an average of 6 free damage against you per round assuming you succeed every save (which it is a CON save, which melee characters should be passing consistently).

If this wasn't clearly designed to be a boss, or melee characters could avoid it, then I think it would be okay. Melee martials could leave other characters to deal with it. But this is a boss, and it has abilities to force players to engage with it in melee if they get too close.

I don't care if it's balanced, which it may or may not be, the idea of having to fight something like this as a melee martial is very upsetting. Imagine being in that situation. You'd have to just sit there, missing far more attacks than the guy who is barely taking any damage, while you can't run away, are suffering 3 huge attacks per round, and have the possibility of being disarmed anyway.

I wouldn't wish that experience on any player. There are just so many abilities here that either don't come into play or just absolutely destroy you depending on whether you chose to play a fighter or a wizard. You can't change your class mid-combat.

And for the record, I think it's cool to throw things at your players that make one or more players feel cool because of their specific abilities that the others don't have (thus your undead example). The other way around, screwing over a player for something they can't really do anything about, is not really any fun, especially if the monster doesn't actually have a defined weakness or anything like that. Magic Resistance is okay because spellcasters are already way stronger than martials in pretty much every facet.

In a vaccum, I think this monster is poorly designed. Nothing on Thoruk, it just needs to be less hyperfocused on destroying melee characters and doing virtually nothing else.

Against 5 level 12 characters, an encounter with a CR 20 creature is just above the Deadly threshold, and that's based on the 6-ish encounter adventuring day, which isn't necessarily accurate for Thoruk's group. I don't see what makes you think this is "clearly designed to be a boss." It makes perfect sense for inferior swordsmen to feel dwarfed by a master of the craft who also happens to be a giant. I get what you're saying in that I wouldn't want the whole campaign to revolve around fighting this monster ('cause yeah, that'd suck for some classes), but I didn't get the impression that that's the aim.

Hey all!

Thanks for the feedback and discussion!

I designed this monster because my party have two key things which I want to mesh together:

1. They are a Monk, a Fighter/paladin or Armorer/paladin (1 player with 2 characters in the story), a Barbarian, a Hexblade Warlock, and a Cleric.
2.  They have a lot of magical weapons which they seem to rely on very heavily (so can drop one and still have another!)
3. They have a clear pattern to their fights, of rushing in and swinging hard.
4. They love solving puzzles.

I 100% agree that this monster is going to wreck people in Melee, but I by no means think it will be too much for them. the Monk, Warlock, and Fighter can all Fly. The barbarian has 2 magical ranged weapons and a circlet of blasting. The Monk's an Ascendant Dragon monk so can use ranged breath attacks. 

I will absolutely telegraph it's prowess, hopefully by starting it off at ranged distances so they can get a hit or two at ranged, and then when they close to melee, suddenly that 18 doesn't hit, and they realise then that they need to keep away from this thing!

So far as having no obvious weaknesses, anything non-melee would qualify, I think. Flying definitely will cause this guy issues. 

I am curious on the concern over this screwing martials, as martials include ranged weapons, and things like Ghosts and Werewolves exist who are immune to nonmagical damage, which Martials rely on the DM to get for the most part!

As for balance, the encounter is meant to be dangerous. It is intended as the transition from "you are a nuisance" to "the giants want you dead, right now".

Quote from ThorukDuckSlayer >>

Hey all!

Thanks for the feedback and discussion!

I designed this monster because my party have two key things which I want to mesh together:

1. They are a Monk, a Fighter/paladin or Armorer/paladin (1 player with 2 characters in the story), a Barbarian, a Hexblade Warlock, and a Cleric.
2.  They have a lot of magical weapons which they seem to rely on very heavily (so can drop one and still have another!)
3. They have a clear pattern to their fights, of rushing in and swinging hard.
4. They love solving puzzles.

I 100% agree that this monster is going to wreck people in Melee, but I by no means think it will be too much for them. the Monk, Warlock, and Fighter can all Fly. The barbarian has 2 magical ranged weapons and a circlet of blasting. The Monk's an Ascendant Dragon monk so can use ranged breath attacks. 

I will absolutely telegraph it's prowess, hopefully by starting it off at ranged distances so they can get a hit or two at ranged, and then when they close to melee, suddenly that 18 doesn't hit, and they realise then that they need to keep away from this thing!

So far as having no obvious weaknesses, anything non-melee would qualify, I think. Flying definitely will cause this guy issues. 

I am curious on the concern over this screwing martials, as martials include ranged weapons, and things like Ghosts and Werewolves exist who are immune to nonmagical damage, which Martials rely on the DM to get for the most part. 

As for balance, the encounter is meant to be dangerous. It is intended as the transition from "you are a nuisance" to "the giants want you dead, right now".

 I apologize. I had no idea what the party was like, and thus I couldn't gauge how well it would work against your group.

Most melee martials aren't really effective outside of melee range, so I was going off the assumption that this was the case with your party.

Quote from Quar1on >>

Against 5 level 12 characters, an encounter with a CR 20 creature is just above the Deadly threshold, and that's based on the 6-ish encounter adventuring day, which isn't necessarily accurate for Thoruk's group. I don't see what makes you think this is "clearly designed to be a boss." It makes perfect sense for inferior swordsmen to feel dwarfed by a master of the craft who also happens to be a giant. I get what you're saying in that I wouldn't want the whole campaign to revolve around fighting this monster ('cause yeah, that'd suck for some classes), but I didn't get the impression that that's the aim.

 I don't really feel about arguing about this anymore, but I will say that it has legendary actions, resistances, and Thoruk openly said he was intending to use it as a boss.

Quote from Baalzeboop >>

Quote from ThorukDuckSlayer >>

Hey all!

Thanks for the feedback and discussion!

I designed this monster because my party have two key things which I want to mesh together:

1. They are a Monk, a Fighter/paladin or Armorer/paladin (1 player with 2 characters in the story), a Barbarian, a Hexblade Warlock, and a Cleric.
2.  They have a lot of magical weapons which they seem to rely on very heavily (so can drop one and still have another!)
3. They have a clear pattern to their fights, of rushing in and swinging hard.
4. They love solving puzzles.

I 100% agree that this monster is going to wreck people in Melee, but I by no means think it will be too much for them. the Monk, Warlock, and Fighter can all Fly. The barbarian has 2 magical ranged weapons and a circlet of blasting. The Monk's an Ascendant Dragon monk so can use ranged breath attacks. 

I will absolutely telegraph it's prowess, hopefully by starting it off at ranged distances so they can get a hit or two at ranged, and then when they close to melee, suddenly that 18 doesn't hit, and they realise then that they need to keep away from this thing!

So far as having no obvious weaknesses, anything non-melee would qualify, I think. Flying definitely will cause this guy issues. 

I am curious on the concern over this screwing martials, as martials include ranged weapons, and things like Ghosts and Werewolves exist who are immune to nonmagical damage, which Martials rely on the DM to get for the most part. 

As for balance, the encounter is meant to be dangerous. It is intended as the transition from "you are a nuisance" to "the giants want you dead, right now".

 I apologize. I had no idea what the party was like, and thus I couldn't gauge how well it would work against your group.

Most melee martials aren't really effective outside of melee range, so I was going off the assumption that this was the case with your party.

Apology not needed, your advice was good for if I wanted to use this for more generic oneshots where the party would be unknown! I will definitely be minfdul of this if I ever do so - likely giving them environmental stuff to use if they are otherwise scuppered!

Quote from Baalzeboop >>

Quote from Quar1on >>

Against 5 level 12 characters, an encounter with a CR 20 creature is just above the Deadly threshold, and that's based on the 6-ish encounter adventuring day, which isn't necessarily accurate for Thoruk's group. I don't see what makes you think this is "clearly designed to be a boss." It makes perfect sense for inferior swordsmen to feel dwarfed by a master of the craft who also happens to be a giant. I get what you're saying in that I wouldn't want the whole campaign to revolve around fighting this monster ('cause yeah, that'd suck for some classes), but I didn't get the impression that that's the aim.

 I don't really feel about arguing about this anymore, but I will say that it has legendary actions, resistances, and Thoruk openly said he was intending to use it as a boss.

 The monster is the main enemy of the encounter, yes, but it's just one encounter, and it's not the most important one of the game or anything. I don't see why some characters having an advantage in a single encounter would be so horrible.

my homebrew is unstoppable

Quote from god_of_death212 >>

my homebrew is unstoppable

 ...if you want him to be this powerful, you shouldn't try to give him a statblock.

But can you stop him?

Your DM can stop you.

Quote from god_of_death212 >>

my homebrew is unstoppable

 There is literally no point to this monster existing.

It is actually unusable, has inconsistent flavor, and is both derivative and fails to capture what made the original interesting. Putting every number in the statblock as "infinity" doesn't make it fun or interesting, it just makes it pointless to even include. This is genuinely worse than anything I've made, and that's saying something.

I can foresee no situation where this monster should exist in a campaign. If you really want to screw over your players this much, talk to them out of game.

the dm cannot stop it, as it IS the dm

That doesn’t really make sense, though.

I don't give a

****

...then why are you here?

https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/7486821-war-hammer-of-the-devout

Would you plead se review this and give me feedback?

Quote from Valhalla654321 >>

https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/7486821-war-hammer-of-the-devout

Would you plead se review this and give me feedback?

Looks very powerful, big list of spells it can cast, recharges very fast with lots of charges, +2 to basically everything - I would say it's Legendary.

Also looks like you've mistyped in saying it's a Quarterstaff in the writeup!

I would add something about whether the "drops to just a +2 weapon" stops it from ever regaining charges again - [resently it's ambiguous. Either "It drops to +2 until it regains charges" or "it becomes a simple +2 magic weapon and cannot regain charges".