Armor Class
12
Hit Points
16
(3d8 + 3)
Speed
40 ft.
STR
6
(-2)
DEX
14
(+2)
CON
13
(+1)
INT
6
(-2)
WIS
10
(+0)
CHA
8
(-1)
Skills
Stealth +4
Damage Vulnerabilities
Radiant
Damage Resistances
Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder; Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks
Damage Immunities
Necrotic, Poison
Condition Immunities
Exhaustion, Frightened, Grappled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained
Senses
Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 10
Languages
--
Challenge
1/2 (100 XP)
Proficiency Bonus
+2
Amorphous. The shadow can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch wide without squeezing.
Shadow Stealth. While in dim light or darkness, the shadow can take the Hide action as a bonus action.
Sunlight Weakness. While in sunlight, the shadow has disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws.
Actions
Strength Drain. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) necrotic damage, and the target's Strength score is reduced by 1d4. The target dies if this reduces its Strength to 0. Otherwise, the reduction lasts until the target finishes a short or long rest.
If a non-evil humanoid dies from this attack, a new shadow rises from the corpse 1d4 hours later.
Your mother was backlit by a candle! lol nice one dude.
This monster isn't OP at all. it's only OP if you have zero casters in your party. Radiant Damage is probably the most abundant type of damage a cleric can produce using a cantrip (Sacred Flame) this things savings throw versus that spell of what +2? Depending on you clerics Spell save DC this thig is burned down in in two maybe three rounds. magic missile also burns these down pretty easy. A (guiding bolt) will demolish it that's first level cleric spell. It's deadly to the meat heads, but casters can deal with it pretty easily.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm me gusta
I think something that people are forgetting in the ‘is this OP’ debate is that not every low CR monster is meant to be fought at a low level.
These are meant as minor encounters against mid level parties: They sneak attack, hit the tanks with a strength drain, then get nuked to oblivion because of their low hit points.
and then the party has to chose wether to rest or continue on and attack the boss while weakened.
they also make for good minions in a boss fight. The strength drain poses an immediate priority that would take fire off of a boss, but their low hit points mean they’ll be taken out before they can kill anyone.
against low level parties, these should only be used if you know the party have counters (especially radiant damage).
basiacally: CR is cumulative, so some weaker monsters get powerful abilities so you can give your high level bosses minions.
another reason why I always have 8 rings of these.
Shadow Stealth. While in dim light or darkness, the shadow can take the Hide action as a bonus action.
Can it take the Hide action even when in full view of the party? I believe in RAW you have to be obscured from sight before it becomes possible to hide. But a shadow hiding in the shadows would be pretty hard to spot. What do you think?
instead of removing the strength drain why don't we add it to something like a wraith instead of life drain, or a night walker
I suppose that's true if said high-level player was unconscious. Then again, so could a goblin. It has 16 HP, so, assuming the party has no resistance breaking abilities, it functionally has 32 HP. That's what, 1 round of massed damage by a party of 4-5 1st level characters? Yeah, not terrified.
You win.
So how does the strength drain affect a druid in wild shape? We played it that as long as the Druid held the shape the drain was on the wild shape. When he dropped the shape, the drain was not applied to his character.
Would be funny to kill one shadow with another's Strength Drain ability score reduction using the Drunken Master's Redirect Attack a couple times. Immune to the necrotic damage, but not death by 0 Strength!
IF they roll the4 on a d4. If both, with their humble +4 to hit, manage to hit both attacks. If the 20th level character rolls badly on initiative enough for the two shadows to act first. These circumstances are incredibly specific.
Because a Shadows can't be burnt. Which is the kind of damage fire attacks realistically do.
Both Magical and Physical resistance applyto the resistant types. For example, trying to throw a molotov cocktail at it will only trigger the resistance of FIRE, but casting a fireball spell will do the same thing.
that's because they typically don't appear in groups or, for most DMs, are meant for steering their players away from a clearly more dangerous route. By default they dont carry any loot and as long as you stay within some sort of bright light they won't be able to do much to an entire party. Clerics and paladins can pretty much bully this creature.
Paladins and clerics can clear shadows pretty easily. they have radiant magic or their divine weapon.
@Nurminax "How do you burn shadow?"
Excellent question!
But, from a science standpoint, "burn" may not be the fitting verb here. It cannot be a 'shadow' if it can touch and inflict physical damage. To do so, it requires some kind of physical form. Shadows have no measurable mass and are made up of the absence of light and the fact it can slip through a crack not much smaller than 1 inch, it does render it to physical matter. For argument's sake, let us assume it is in the form of a dense gas.
Heat makes inert and toxic gas disperse and weakens the intermolecular forces and in some cases makes it change state, but will not always combust. In other words, it has 'resistance' to heat/ignition.
Bottom line: science supports the stat sheet.
Disclaimer: I am not not a qualified scientist in any way. This is simply an ad hoc recollection of 7th grade chemistry class.
Critique is welcome.
Bear in mind it's totally acceptable to just use these guys without the strength drain, if you just want some mooks and think these guys are cool. Fun to use them as minions to a shadow demon.
Which can be a smidge odd considering how bright lightning is. I wouldn't be surprised if these took normal damage from fire or lightning.
If a non-evil humanoid dies from this attack, a new shadow rises from the corpse 1d4 hours later.
This is makes it one of my favorite monster because a whole town can be destroyed by just one replicating. This creates the possibility for a high-level encounter with a towns-worth of these, though the strength drain needs a nerf. The way I did it is that you make a con save at the end every turn to regain your by however much you got over the dc. If you construct an encounter with a lot of them, maybe it would take multiple shadows to drain you at once.