Quote from howhardisittomateausername >>

The book legit only gives him a free dominate monster, and some of the major benefit artifact abilities, why is that super strong?

Because the DM chooses what the artefact properties are; they only randomise if they want to.

The book of vile darkness has three minor benefits, which could be three extra damage resistances, +3 to AC, or some mixture of the two. One major benefit includes +2 to an ability score, or extra weapon damage.

Meanwhile the detriments aren't problems for a BBEG. Among minor detriments there's destroying holy water within 10 feet, or preventing creatures from taking a short or long rest within 300 feet, both of which are thematic and potentially useful, otherwise everything is pretty negligible (can easily pick things that have no drawback to Vecna). Meanwhile there are a couple of good major detriments, like nullifying potions and/or scrolls within 10 feet.

If you want to sprinkle on a bit more, give him the eye and hand of vecna; he obviously already has a bunch of this reflected in his profile already, but they still give some neat boosts, along with another two minor and major benefits, and two minor detriments to ignore.

Quote from howhardisittomateausername >>

Quote from Cezmi >>

Quote from howhardisittomateausername >>

Why is Vecna so weak?

Because DMs are totally clueless that the Book of Vile Darkness has 3 minor and 1 major beneficial properties they can use to re-tune Vecna with various immunities, AC or HP boosts or access to additional spells and are pretending every party that would run this encounter is just as amazingly optimized as their party is at cheesing 5e mechanics.

99% of the complaints here seem clueless that the Book literally allows these DMs to do whatever they want to make Vecna specifically more difficult for their party. No homebrewing required, lol.

 

 The book legit only gives him a free dominate monster, and some of the major benefit artifact abilities, why is that super strong?

Because 1 Major Beneficial Property is amazing. Its a free 7th (or as low as 4th level) spell, movement or the rest of the status immunities Vecna doesn't have.

With 3 Minor Beneficial Properties you could re-tool Vecna between the additional AC or damage resistances to make him that much more tailored to your party.

And Haravikk highlights how even the Detrimental Properties can be used against the party.

Artifacts are great. Though I think the Eye and Hand are over-kill and I understand why those aren't included with Vecna for the same reason the Book was optional.

One of the coolest villans in D&D

AC 18 and less than 300 HP? My party of 14th-level characters will demolish him in the 2nd round! No Legendary Actions? Most of my party will make saves against his abilities about half the time. Although his 'teleport and regain HP' thing is cool.

Haravikk, no idea if you'll see this, but I just wanted to thank you for fighting back against the poisonous people in this comment section. However, I also think you should allow yourself the peace of mind that comes from ignoring their endless complaining. They don't like the direction D&D is going and no amount of breakdown of this statbock is going to change that because the problem is much more fundamental: they don't like change. The people willing to whine about this Vecna statblock will whine for eternity about anything new, so thank you for being a voice for new people, like myself, and advocating for changes which promote inclusion.

Quote from Haravikk >>

You seem to be assuming that he's starting within melee range of the melee attacker rather than the attacker having to move to him; in reality he should be going for the weakest links first, which means separation from any melee threats. If a melee attacker moves up and attacks, he can teleport as a reaction meaning they need to make another 30 foot move to keep attacking him. While there are melee attackers that can do this, it means that he's now even further away from any others.

In his own turn he can simply walk away from any melee threat that starts next to him, because if they hit him with an opportunity attack he can use his own reaction to teleport, which on top of his Vile Teleport will give him 90-feet of movement in the turn, while if they miss he doesn't need to so has the reaction for later, and that's assuming he doesn't hit them with a Flight of the Damned, Rotten Fate or dominate monster. He also has dimension door if he really needs to create distance.

He wants to be in melee to make use of his multiattack and Vile Teleport bonus action; note that he needs to end the teleport within 15 feet of a character to receive the healing. Assuming the party works together and is prepared, melees should be able to keep up with Vecna. Not opportunity-attacking might actually be advantageous - and you are not forced to take the opportunity attack if Vecna moves away.

His counterspell can be played around. Ironically, providing cover within his lair works against him as players can break line of sight to him to cast spells without getting countered. Also, his counterspell of course is defeated by subtle spell and by casting from items.

Using cover to block his line of sight won't allow you cast a spell directly at him, and he should still have globe of invulnerability active to start with, as well as legendary resistances for anything that you can clip with in an area of effect. The purpose of his counterspell is not to shut down all casting, it's to make it harder to harm him with spells.

It still allows you to cast a multitude of useful spells - heals, buffs, summons and more. And if he dispels something, he has to waste basicially his whole turn for that - whereas other spellcasting monsters can do that as a legendary action.

And Rotten Fate is a great way to break a Sorcerer's concentration.

The damage dealt by his reactions and his Vile Teleport just feels meaningless, it is nothing more than a tickle. His Rotten Fate deals impressive damage, but only to one creature, and Flight of the Damned is pitifully weak compared to other recharge abilities - you need to take into account that at levels where you will face someone as powerful as Vecna most characters will be immune to fear or have ways to deal with it.

The damage may not be much on their own, but if you're assuming 1-3 targets hit by the teleport and three reactions used each round then that's an extra 40-60 automatic damage (no hit rolls or saving throws involved).

You also seem to be over-stating immunity to being frightened, the main ones would be a Berserker Barbarian's Mindless Rage (needs to remain Raging to ignore it), a Monk's Stillness of Mind (costs an action counter it), heroes' feast (cleric/druid only spell that must be used in advance) or a Paladin's aura of courage (only works if the paladin remains within 30-feet, which with Vecna teleporting is easier said than done), otherwise the options are mostly just resistance (advantage on the saves). If there is a linchpin, like the Paladin, to any of these then that only encourages focusing Rotten Fate or other options on them to eliminate it.

You seem to be under-stating how common these things are at high-level play. Any good adventuring party with a cleric, druid or Divine Soul sorcerer will have a heroes' feast before confronting the BBEG, and there are so many other ways to deal with fear. Some characters also just do not care about fear and can do their stuff regardless.

Legendary Resistances and Globe of Involnerability are meaningless when the party just does not attempt to CC him with spells that require saving throws and instead focuses their effort on buffing the damage dealers and on no-save CC (Conjure Animals -> giant octopuses or giant constrictors for example).

Buffing that he can aim to counterspell or dispel and other melee he can attempt to avoid.

The spells are fairly common, Chill Touch is a mere cantrip. Also as I just explained, you cannot rely on being able to counterspell anything. And yes, he might be able to break concentration on Spirit Shroud or dispel it, but... it can just be cast again, and one hit while it is active is enough to stop Vecna's healing for the round.

Except that he can fairly reliably counterspell both; chill touch can't be cast without line of sight to the target, and if he went after a target to break its spirit shroud then he should be able to see them.

Buffing that can be made while out of line of sight to avoid counterspell. A counterspell  that can still be defeated by subtle spell. A counterspell that cannot be upcast and thus has a decent chance of failing against high-level magic. I would not call that "reliably". Also, as I already said due to a lack of legendary actions, he has to use dispel magic as an action, which hurts for a BBEG who has much better stuff to do - and again, he cannot upcast, and dispel magic at 3rd level has a decent chance to simply fail against more powerful spells, causing his turn to be completely wasted.

that does not work for statblocks that are created to be shared. They need to be complete, they need to have every ability and every spell the monster can cast listed in them.

Err… no they don't? Literally everything in D&D is open for customisation by the DM, there is a giant section of the Dungeon Master's Guide on that subject alone. A giant, over-complicated stat-block is overwhelming and requires the DM to pare it down just to use it, a simplified stat block can be run as-is shortly after giving it a decent read, and only requires additions if you need them.

The book of vile darkness is a specific invitation to do this; it has a bunch of attached benefits that the DM can choose for Vecna to tailor him however they want, and it can allow casting any spells they want. But most DMs won't need to do this, or won't need to change much to tailor for their players.

If you want your Vecna to raise an army of undead before a fight, you don't need the stat block to tell you what spells he'd use, you just decide how many undead you want him to have and that happens, if you want him to have traps or tricks in his lair, then he simply has them and so-on. You don't need a list of spells to dig through. You also seem determined to assume that Vecna should be run without any chaff being thrown at the players? Everybody knows if you want a fight to be challenging it's about the adds, not the big bad, as they're the ones that threaten the player party's action economy; and you don't face Vecna alone because Vecna is never alone. You can't assume perfect positioning of your every attack, or that your melee fighters can close the distance, because he's going to be teleporting around while you're bogged down dealing with other threats, or trying to get clear of them.

You've put enough effort into overpowering your stat-block that you should be able to see how you're supposed to run the original.

Why so toxic? If you do not want to use my statblock, fine, but that does not mean that it is bad or others do not like it. There are enough people out there who prefer the old design approach for spellcasters and thus are glad that there are homebrew statblocks with a proper spell list available, who appreciate the effort put into such a statblock.

Also, you can buff up any boss fight with minions, but the point is, that Vecna on his own is rated as a CR 26 (!) creature, so he alone should be an appropriate challenge, without having to add minions to the fight. And he completely and utterly fails at that. Again, a party of four between level 12 and 16 with a bit of preparation and competently built and played characters can not just easily defeat Vecna, they actually can defeat two Vecnas at once. A monster with 18 AC and ~270 HP and no other way to improve its defenses is paper-thin, regardless of that teleport reaction, and it does not have enough other stuff to make up for that. For comparison, CR 23 Acererak has slightly more HP, sits at 21 AC and at-will shield; and if you modify his spell list, he can use a legendary action to cast at-will mirror image.

The book of vile darkness may help if you hand-pick the minor/major benefits and detriments to counter your party as best as possible, but I do not think a boss should depend on random properties gained from attuning to an artifact to be a challenge for the party appropriate to its CR.

I am also not a fan of these new "not a spell-spells" like Dread Counterspell, as these screw over characters that specifically are good at dealing with spells like Abjuration wizards and anyone with the mage slayer feat and simply feel unfair and cheap. This is why I changed Dread Counterspell in my statblock to a regular counterspell that still has an added effect when it succeeds.

Quote from Darkaiser>>

AC 18 and less than 300 HP? My party of 14th-level characters will demolish him in the 2nd round! No Legendary Actions? Most of my party will make saves against his abilities about half the time. Although his 'teleport and regain HP' thing is cool.

Probably don't  put this against a level 14 part. Even if you assume he misses all his attacks and the party succeeds on all saving throws, his per round damage is 98 on average enough to kill a level 14 wizard, by missing. He also has several abilities that will kill players without death saves and prevent resurrection so a healer probably won't save them.  Finally the stat block is allot less vulnerable than it looks. He has abilities which make him potentially quite tricky to hit including, fly, frequent teleportation, an above average number of legendary resists, good saves and  a decent amount of resistances and immunities. 

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

We were right, this statblock is a pushover.
https://youtu.be/4Gytd9FDtiQ

This is so good 🤣

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

We were right, this statblock is a pushover.
https://youtu.be/4Gytd9FDtiQ

Wow, look people can abuse 5e mechanics between feats and abilities to augment 2 characters from doing 0 damage to Vecna, to doing 298 - ignoring the Book of Vile Darkness exists and assuming everyone gets the chance to hit Vecna first.

Folks, wake the !@#$ up. Not every group is going to be able to curbstomp Vecna, book or no book and the pretense that everyone's group can easily curbstomp him is obnoxiously dumb. 5e isn't a perfect system, Vecna isn't built to be the most difficult encounter for every class in the game and its OKAY! 

Quote from Cezmi >>

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

We were right, this statblock is a pushover.
https://youtu.be/4Gytd9FDtiQ

Wow, look people can abuse 5e mechanics between feats and abilities to augment 2 characters from doing 0 damage to Vecna, to doing 298 - ignoring the Book of Vile Darkness exists and assuming everyone gets the chance to hit Vecna first.

Folks, wake the !@#$ up. Not every group is going to be able to curbstomp Vecna, book or no book and the pretense that everyone's group can easily curbstomp him is obnoxiously dumb. 5e isn't a perfect system, Vecna isn't built to be the most difficult encounter for every class in the game and its OKAY! 

 Wow you are in Denial.

Quote from Quras >>

Quote from Cezmi >>

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

We were right, this statblock is a pushover.
https://youtu.be/4Gytd9FDtiQ

Wow, look people can abuse 5e mechanics between feats and abilities to augment 2 characters from doing 0 damage to Vecna, to doing 298 - ignoring the Book of Vile Darkness exists and assuming everyone gets the chance to hit Vecna first.

Folks, wake the !@#$ up. Not every group is going to be able to curbstomp Vecna, book or no book and the pretense that everyone's group can easily curbstomp him is obnoxiously dumb. 5e isn't a perfect system, Vecna isn't built to be the most difficult encounter for every class in the game and its OKAY! 

 Wow you are in Denial.

 Why did you capitalize denial? 

Quote from Cezmi >>

Quote from Quras >>

 Wow you are in Denial.

 Why did you capitalize denial? 

 It's a river in Egypt.

Quote from DepressiveOgre >>

Quote from Cezmi >>

Quote from Quras >>

 Wow you are in Denial.

 Why did you capitalize denial? 

 It's a river in Egypt.

I think we're talking about the 2016 film with Rachel Weisz. Which i did enjoy, but wasn't casted in.

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

All I'm seeing here is you have to majorly buff him to make him survive more than one round with an unoptimized group of two fighters with zero magic items, which still means the statblock is still a pushover for a cr26 monster, if you have to add onto it then it's no longer this statblock.

All I'm seeing is the same bad arguments from the "hurr durr" stat block crowd and the laughable premise that your 20th level one-shot is going to be an assortment of arcane archers specifically designed to exploit Vecna at a range - because he's more difficult for melee and spellcaster parties - at least if you don't use the Book of Vile Darkness to buff him.

5e is filled with mechanics that break the game as is - if someone is using a feat, spell or subclass feature undermining the fun of an encounter - either adjust the encounter around it or ban it. And the stat-block tells you to use the BoVD and unsurprisingly its being totally slept on by the "hurr durr" crowd because it requires more than the 2 brain cells they're applying to mewl here about Vecna's free stat-block / adventure, as if as GM's they've never altered an encounter or built one around their players before in their life. 

Its just so unbelievable to keep reading this nonsense.

Strahd is a powerful adversary, but as you surmised, he is basically an appetizer to the main course. 

I've not read the stats on him, it sounds disappointing. Maybe there are other features that compensate for these missing/expected abilities.

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

I just heard again that you have to buff him and now you actually have to balance two fighters with no magic items to make them even weaker just so this statblock can stand a chance, I'm just hearing a lot of bitter apologism when's there's clear evidence that this statblock is subpar at best and not worth it's CR.

That's because you're being disingenuous and being intentionally obtuse. Vecna can't be hurt by non-magical attacks - the whole bit about "hurr durr" no magic items is mute when they're still dealing magical damage. If you're a GM and you're players are building their characters to exploit an encounter, then either you do something to change that or you let them exploit it.

Otherwise, you've got a time-traveling Lich who can't die and is sporting the Book of Vile Darkness in-tow. If you can't make a challenging encounter around that it ain't Vecna's fault, lol. Have some grace and figure out what you actually want out of an encounter like this, what your players want out of encounter like this - worse case scenario you don't run it and just continue with other 5e materials, best case scenario you and your players actually decide to do something fun with this.

!@#$ing online about how mad you are at a free stat-block is just annoying.

Quote from Cezmi >>

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

All I'm seeing here is you have to majorly buff him to make him survive more than one round with an unoptimized group of two fighters with zero magic items, which still means the statblock is still a pushover for a cr26 monster, if you have to add onto it then it's no longer this statblock.

All I'm seeing is the same bad arguments from the "hurr durr" stat block crowd and the laughable premise that your 20th level one-shot is going to be an assortment of arcane archers specifically designed to exploit Vecna at a range - because he's more difficult for melee and spellcaster parties - at least if you don't use the Book of Vile Darkness to buff him.

 

 It is probably just a little bit too easy to exploit and it does kind of show how certain parts of the cr calculation assume certain things about the encounter.  For example regen assumes he gets 3 rounds to heal, resistances, immunities assume about a quarter of player damage is lost and ect...

Realistically you cannot always make those assumptions and they maybe need to be tweaked at high levels. At the very least you need to be aware of them and make adjustments for the party.

Now I actually like this vecna stat block I think its more interesting than just redoing lich but more powerful. Acererak already is that and it is easily made yourself by tweaking the base lich stat block, adding class abilities ect.  This stat block gives us a new a gish, assassin melee Lich archetype to play with and has a completely different attack pattern.  I would probably tweak it to play into either melee or assassination more if I were to run it but I can definitely do allot more with it than a lich 2.0.

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

I see, so what your saying is, this statblock is subpar and should be changed because two arcane archer fighters with basic equipment fighting it could beat it in one round, at that is exploiting the game somehow, so what we should do is use a different altered statblock and change everything, nerf arcane archers and fighters and buff this Vecna, ect, so it is challenging, and that proves why we should NOT object to WOTC's new take on monster design, got it, very well spoken.

You never fail to always disappoint. There's an entire tower before you even get to Vecna at the top.

The atmosphere outside the tower attacks the players, the door entering the tower attacks the players, the entrance is under the effect of magical darkness and has a Bone Devil, to guess what, attack the blind players.

The door after that is cursed. Then some wraiths, various cursed books, an eye that consumes your eye to open the next door. What, more monsters, ability checks, and a fun paper you've got to read that casts dominate monster with a DC 22 wisdom save (that +1 WIS save Treantmonk's Arcane Archers is gonna be really useful)? Neat. Then the floor in the next room tries to kill them. Don't worry, you're at the next gate. Oh, it attacks you too. Don't bother trying to pick the lock, its a bad idea. Well, up to the sanctum, avoid the walls, they will attack you too.

Oh, you've finally made it to Vecna. What, the guy under dominate monster is still alive? Well, roll that initiative. Oh, he rolled higher? Well, have fun trying to solo both Vecna and the other arcane archer (whose in range!)

Treantmonk just has his 2 "unoptomized" fighters, who just so happen to be ranged archers who shoot magical arrows, appear out of range from Vecna, full-rest, all skills, actions and feats ready to go, while Vecna whose been completely aware these 2 clowns are in his tower, is facing a wall totally unprepared to fight them. I mean, they literally can't even say his name without taking damage, but you know, Vecna is so enamored with the room he's in.

But, that's the caveat. Treantmonk's archers don't even run the tower. They're just there with Vecna the punching bag who they've out rolled the initiative on.

And, I want to stress this one final time to ignore, Treantmonk ignores the dossier telling him to use the Book of Vile Darkness too. Its weird to call an official item that the dossier, again, tells you to use if your players are doing this kinda nonsense, homebrew - but whatever man, this ain't about Vecna. You've got an axe to grind with the way 5e is going with spellcasting statblocks and have decided being toxic here to a completely irrelevant nobody (such as my darling self) is worth pestering with the gospel of Treantmonk.

Quote from Bigbossduckman >>

that proves why we should NOT object to WOTC's new take on monster design, got it, very well spoken.

 Yeah I really object to this because the problem not the new monster design elements its the old ones. Allot of the new elements actually make him stronger, for example being able to move and deal damage as a reaction is leagues more powerful than the typical move and deal damage legendary action.  The issue in regards to  fighters is low hp and ac which is typical of lich design.  The rules that lead to that are the rules regarding legendary resistances, damage  resistances ect... from the DMG which suggest that you treat his hp and AC as allot higher than it is in CR calculations due to him being expected to reduce damage significantly with them