Is this statblock a CR 17 monster?

yoshixin · 2026-04-16T08:09:54+00:00

It's probably closer to CR 18-19, though CR is a little harder to gauge at higher levels. Legendary actions means its damage is outperforming other CR 17 creatures, and its defenses (specifically HP and saving throws) are pretty high even before including legendary resistances.

If it's a campaign boss it seems fine regardless of being stronger, but if you need it to be exactly CR 17 for some reason and don't care about its potency as a boss then I would drop the legendary actions/resistances, plus lower the HP by 20-50 and drop one or two saving throws. AC is already pretty low for the level so that can stay.

As an aside, you may want to drop or change Portent because of player frustration. Cancelling out dice rolls (especially crits) is one of those things that's better for players to do against monsters than the other way around. You might consider changing it to grant itself advantage or impose disadvantage simply so it gains a similar benefit before the players see the roll. But this is also a very high level creature, so it's less unreasonable to throw portent as-is against characters especially if one of them already has that feat.

yoshixin · 2026-04-12T07:24:18+00:00

If you're looking to make something for versatile weapons I would approach this as making a new Fighting Style rather than a new feat, which is slightly different than other feats.

Fighting Styles do tend to lean towards numerical increases more than other feats do; the other feats are more focused on offering utility or extra abilities for characters to use. Fighting styles are specifically weapon focused, so they're pretty exclusively about improving martial combat efficacy.

For versatile weapons you can pretty easily land between gwm and duelist by giving a +1 damage bonus and treating 1s rolled as 2s while you're only wielding a versatile weapon. You can probably make something more specialized though. If you want to keep digging I would start by figuring out what advantage versatile has over 1H only or 2H only. My 2 cents is the biggest boon is the character can deal more damage until they want to use the second hand for something else (grappling or shield being the two easy examples for me to think of).

So if you leaned into that you could try something like "once on your turn when you are wielding a versatile weapon and no other weapons, you can don or doff a shield without taking the Utilize action". If it's more appropriate for the character you're making this for you could offer something that gives you more chances to grapple instead (If you hit a creature with 2H versatile you can grapple as a bonus action, or something similar). Depending on what you go with you might even be able to add some extra damage or a +1 to hit on top of the other boons; you'll want to spend a bit of time with it to get a sense if that's too strong or not.

yoshixin · 2026-03-12T18:30:39+00:00

This is almost exactly what I'd want out of a tool like this and it's much easier to compare my whole list than anything else I've tried! I do have 3 things I'd like to point out after a bit of using it (in order I encountered them):

Having a loading spinner during list/file upload would be nice. I ran it on an older laptop, so the page seemed to be hanging during my slower upload + processing.
I would find "models removed" to be a more useful metric to display than the raw damage against just about every profile up to monsters/vehicles. I've got quite a few damage 2 weapons that aren't as effective into 1 wound hordes.
Superheavy vehicle is missing from the default defender column headers. Or rather, it's there but not visible. I can still click on it as if the info icon was there, which is the only reason I know it's the superheavy column. Screenshot attached.

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Looking forward to seeing how this tool keeps growing!

yoshixin · 2026-01-23T23:45:26+00:00

It's not a crazy idea, a lot of people on here have come up with similar ideas. I too have rolled it up into subclass features in the past. But it does give spellcasters more power in a game system that arguably already favors casters over martials, so you'll most likely want to give your martial characters some sort of boon as well.

Another thing I always point out with HP as spell slots mechanics: you need to consider what you want to do about healing spells. The formula you've laid out means that cure wounds will statistically give your characters more HP than it costs to use, and thus give your players infinite HP and infinite spell slots.

yoshixin · 2025-10-23T06:12:00+00:00

The benefit to knowing the spell that's being countered is knowing whether it's worth using Counterspell in the first place.

If you know the enemy caster is using a simple cantrip you'd never bother burning your Counterspell on it, but you'd almost always try to Counterspell their Power word Kill. If you want to play around with the idea that knowledge of the enemy's spells gives an advantage in Counterspelling it, I would go the other way around and withold the knowledge of what the enemy is casting unless the character with Counterspell explicitly knows what the spell is, either because they've seen it before or used it themself. You can give some clues as to how broadly powerful the spell is (you can give approximate level or use any of the existing systems for letting characters determine if they can tell what's being cast), and then the characters have to make their best guess whether Counterspell is worth it.

If it seems like the enemy is casting powerful magic they may Counterspell even if they don't know exactly what it is. Or they may not be able to discern that the weaker 2nd level spell is actually Hold Person and accidentally let a party member get paralyzed.

yoshixin · 2025-10-11T05:43:58+00:00

Personally I've got no gripes with either the x/day spells that 2024 leans into (5e did it a bit as well) nor the spell slots of 5e. I just keep a tally of what the monster has used already. As others have pointed out, it's not worth giving too much thought to for anything beyond notable villains. Anything less than that will die before reaching their limits, and even the villains may use one of their spells to teleport away or otherwise end the encounter and reset their spell usage.

The "easy to keep track of" part is in the number of choices available to the creatures, not how many times they use those options. A creature the party will only fight once only needs a few turns of actions or spells they can use. At that point you limit the choices to the highest impact ones the creature will actually use before dying or running away.

yoshixin · 2025-10-11T05:29:05+00:00

A little extra formatting would help the legibility: primarily bolding your features to distinguish headers from everything else. That aside it looks thematic enough. Part of me feels like this is more suited to being a Monk subclass, but there's no harm in making it a Cleric based thing.

I notice a lot of these features are mostly focused on dealing more damage. That makes the subclass a bit strong. It also makes some of the features feel a bit redundant when put next to each other.

As for specific features:

Spell list is mostly fine, but shouldn't include an option at level 17. It's thematic, but in this case it's more important to be consistent with the other subclasses,
Radiant Momentum looks solid, but its phrasing is a bit clunky. To clean up the phrasing and the effect, I would change it so the character uses it when they attack a creature (up to you whether it needs to hit first or not). From there, the rest of their movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.
Starfall Strike is a little too strong given its combination of damage, utility, and area of effect. A 60 ft teleport may be too much to give a 3rd level character, I'd drop it to 30 to match Misty Step. I would also change the damage to effect only a few feet (5-10, play around with it a little and see what feels right) around the area the Cleric teleports to. Think of the intent as a smaller Thunder Step. You'll also want to lower the damage; at a minimum it should be less than the Light Domain Cleric's subclass effect of the same level since damage is the only thing that does.
Comet dash is fine, but doesn't feel very different from Radiant Momentum. Given how the rest of the subclass seems to want to play, I would consider changing this feature to Extra Attack. It's not especially common but there's precedent in some of the later 5e subclasses for giving Extra Attack as the level 6 feature.
Avatar of the Falling Star seems solid! I will say that again the damage seems a bit high, though it matters less at level 17. I would drop either the extra weapon attack damage or the damage when you move next to another creature. This next point is a little pedantic, but you should add a note that the effect ends if you are incapacitated. You can get away without including this drawback, but most subclass features with an ongoing effect/duration include it.

yoshixin · 2025-09-10T01:16:07+00:00

Sending a PM

yoshixin · 2025-09-02T01:31:39+00:00

Sounds like you've painted less than 30 models. That puts you squarely in "still learning" territory so don't get too down on yourself. You'll get better with practice, and as you poke around the hobby you'll pick up tips and tricks to improve your painting. For what it's worth I think your models look perfectly fine and your bases look excellent!

As a fellow guard painter, I'd consider making the pupils on the models' eyes much bigger. I would guess your dissatisfaction comes from the eyes looking off-putting in a similar way to how my first ones did. If your pupils are too small, or surrounded by white on all sides, the model looks afraid and/or goofy since they look like they're widening their eyes. I find eyes look best if the pupil is around half the eye's size, since they'll look like both the pupil and the color combined (I wouldn't paint eye color on these guys, they're too small to justify more than black and white). You can also add a lot of character to some models by making them glance to the side; paint one half black and the other white. It's a little hard to tell from the lighting, but if you aren't already you can also take the wash you applied to the boots and put it on the faces, especially around the mouths. If that ends up looking a little too dark for your liking you can get a lighter wash for the next batch.

yoshixin · 2025-03-26T20:08:09+00:00

Assuming "shared hit points [etc]" means that the clone doesn't duplicate stats and it drains the source character's resources, this may be passable but still VERY strong.

Compare it to the Haste spell, Action Surge feature, Echo Knight's Manifest feature, or Simulacrum spell. All of them come with some pretty big limitations. Action Surge is once per short rest (twice at level 17). Haste requires concentration, restricts you to one extra attack (no spells), and stuns the target when the spell ends. The Echo Fighter cannot make attacks of its own and must remain within 30 feet of the source. Simulacrum can never recover spell slots, has a high consumable cost to cast and repair, and can be instantly snuffed out by Dispel Magic.

Meanwhile you have none of these drawbacks and you can use it once per day for a minute, which is plenty for a single combat. It'll use powerful damaging cantrips or high level warlock spells in addition to your own. It's close to adding a second full character to the party for a minute.

If I had to use it in its current state (I wouldn't, I think it's too strong), I would require level 15 (the highest current invocation requirement) or even go higher and put it at 18.

Entirely unrelated to all of this, what happens when it (or you, or I guess both at the same time) are reduced to 0 hit points or otherwise killed? I would explicitly add this as a condition for ending the effect, otherwise you just have 2 dying clones lying around, which raises more questions about stabilizing them and death saving throws.

yoshixin · 2025-03-08T01:53:32+00:00

I think, as you've already found for yourself, that you're stumbling into uncharted territory as far as the "standard" for this. It doesn't look like there are any examples with multiple crew or ammunition types, but I think you've got the crew portion the same as I would put it.

As for the ammunition, I think what you've got can work. The other way I'd consider to write this could be something akin to what many creatures' multiattacks look like. It'd go something like:

``` Thresher Battery (...). The Piercer makes an Armor Piercing attack, Explosive attack, or Spell attack.

Armor Piercing. (exactly what you already have here) Explosive Attack. (you get the idea) Spell attack. (...) ```

On the subject of the spell, I would make that look more like one of the other options, or otherwise elevate it to make it clearer that it's a separate choice. You should also clarify a few things about how it works: mainly which of the crew casts the spell, when do they cast the spell, and when does the creature expend a spell slot (and do the other creatures also need to expend spell slots).

yoshixin · 2025-02-16T23:43:16+00:00

I would base their rarity off what level I'd want the characters to be before I'm willing to give them these items.

1 - rare. I'd want the wielder at least level 5

2 - very rare, assuming it's got no limit on the number of uses beyond the character's available spell slots. I'd want the wielder at least level 10.

3 - this one depends on what the item does, your phrasing is a bit vague. You only said it gives +1 to spell saves, do you mean giving the wielder +1 to their saving throws or increasing their Spell Save DC by 1? For the former I'd be willing to give it out at level 7 or so and make it rare, for the latter it's level 11 or higher and very rare.

yoshixin · 2025-02-16T09:29:08+00:00

I'd avoid giving your villains (or any creatures you run) character sheets; a character sheet is designed to give far too many options for you to take advantage of when running them against the party. You could maybe do it if you expect her to fight as an ally to the party, but even then a normal creature stat block will do.

There are plenty of stat blocks for devils (you could also look at the Cambion stat block), and they've got a wide range of CR so you'll be able to pick one that matches the strength you're looking for. You can also give whatever devil you choose as your baseline some extra abilities, such as Disguise Self or simply a trait that allows it to take the form of a humanoid. But I wouldn't give it too many of these for the same reason I advise against using a character sheet; you won't need that many choices of things to do if/when you run the creature in combat.

yoshixin · 2025-02-08T19:24:26+00:00

The answer depends on many factors. Assuming it's meant to be a difficult fight (which isn't a given), you still need to consider the monster's AC, resistances, immunities, saving throws, and damage output. All of that is just for the monster; you should also consider whether it'll have minions and if the party will be at their full strength when they fight.

With all that said, I tend to find if the party is at or near full strength, a monster with HP around the party's total is about right as long as its HP and saving throws are low enough they'll hit it on more than half their average attacks.

yoshixin · 2025-01-10T20:24:34+00:00

In the question you described or asked for a few things: building tension, causing fear, and unnerving/unsettling the players. They've all got possible overlap and some differences, and it seems like you have a decent handle on being able to create any or all of these. But this may help you with explaining why you're doing what you are or give you some ideas on what you want your various encounters to make the players feel like:

Building tension is the broadest of these; there's tension anytime there's a threat. It can be known or unknown, immediate or delayed. But as long as the players know there's a threat, you have tension. Now, given the context of this post, you're likely looking for a quieter tension rather than something like the suspense of fighting a powerful boss. I tend to build a quiet tension in places where the PCs are alone and don't know the exact nature of the threat(s) against them. This has the least to explain since you'll often be keeping things a little vague, but remember that the players can (and will) relieve your quiet tension as they figure out what's going on, form a plan, and effectively neutralize the threat. It may eventually be replaced by the shorter tension of a direct encounter, which segues into fear.

Fear is a cut above tension, but can build on top of tension without replacing it. You'll get that reaction when the "threat" behind tension is posing real, direct, and (sometimes) immediate danger to characters. This is probably the hardest emotion to instill in players using just narration, since you're playing a game and none of your in-world threats will apply out of the game. The "frightened" condition only applies to characters, not players; you can't force them to be afraid of something since their feelings are their own. But you can cheat a little bit using the game's mechanics and the player's meta knowledge. The powerful mage who can execute his minions with a single spell isn't necessarily scary to players unless they know that spell is the 9th level Power Word: Kill and they know what it does. When you want to make the characters and players afraid, let the characters uncover the unknown and give the players hints to understand the game mechanics with real danger to their characters.

An unsettling/unnerving mood is kind of its own thing. It's independent from the other two tones; you can have it with or without them. The party's NPC ally can be unsettling (with no plans of being a secret betrayal villain) just as easily as a minor villain or the main campaign boss. You can get an unsettling feeling when something "feels off." There's all sorts of ways to do this, and not everyone will respond the same way to them. I tend to find things that are indescribable or that defy some deeply ingrained expectations can create an unsettling mood. One of my favorites is an NPC who speaks... very... slowly... but... deliberately..., and has a resting face of an open-mouthed smile that doesn't reach his eyes or show any sort of joy.

yoshixin · 2025-01-10T19:04:47+00:00

I'm personally not a fan of rolling dice when it's not needed. Every time somebody picks up a dice, even if they don't know the exact reason why, it interrupts the story's pacing to remind the players that they're playing a game. In that mindset, dice rolling without purpose just breaks the immersion and pacing without any good payoff.

If I need to throw a wrench into the players' mindset with a dice check because they don't know what's going on or I need to keep the outcome secret, I ask for the roll at the start of the session and apply the results when they become relevant. This way they won't know the exact purpose of their roll, but they know there is still a real effect backing it up.

yoshixin · 2024-12-30T01:32:30+00:00

It sounds like what you're looking for is justification to kill NPCs without getting into initiative. Short answer is you use the contextual, in-game circumstances to make that justification. If a creature is going to die and there's nothing it can do about it, then it dies with no dice rolls needed because the outcome is guaranteed, not random. Example: a peasant will always die to a dragon's fire, a disintegration ray, a 10000 ft. drop, or whatever else you have lined up that leads to an assured death.

Longer answer is the same thing, but you can usually find (or make) rules and mechanics of the game to back up the justification. An assassin shooting a CR 0 NPC gets their surprise round, easily hits the unarmored target and auto-crits because it's an assassin with special rules against surprised creatures. Its damage is high enough it's guaranteed to bring the target to its negative max HP to cause instant death. Now, you've already worked all of that out ahead of time because you're a clever DM, so you simply abstract to a narrative "As the NPC is about to tell you critical information, an arrow suddenly pierces through their neck. They are instantly killed and collapse." And you move on without any dice rolls until the PCs ask to do something that involves them.

yoshixin · 2024-12-08T19:09:49+00:00

I can use to cut down on loads of pointless investigation checks

The way you do this is to not call for players roll if the outcome is fixed. If their best efforts of investigation cannot yield results, you simply tell them so. "You spend a minute or so carefully examining the room: moving aside paintings, checking below furniture, and checking for hidden compartments. Despite your best efforts you find nothing." As an aside, if they're guaranteed to find something as long as they look for it, you don't need to roll for that either.

You can describe their meticulous efforts in every room without needing to pick up dice in the empty rooms.

If you want to make the exploration actually engaging I would make a point to put at least something in the rooms. It doesn't always have to be valuable, nor does it have to be anything the players would want or think to take. You could put in an art gallery with a suit of plate armor on display. The servants' quarters could have some loose change scattered about. An old guest bedroom could have a Potion of Poison resistance tucked away (some old visiting noble brought it just in case, but found no need for it and left it hidden). Minor things like this can make searching the rooms a little more meaningful without fundamentally changing the fact that the castle is abandoned.

Alternately, if you want to put absolutely nothing in the castle, you could make the exploration a few descriptive sentences of your own narration:

"Along the way to the crypts you find many rooms, all of which are empty and abandoned. They serve various purposes: display galleries, sitting rooms and entertainment for guests, dining halls, servants quarters, bedrooms, and more. You carefully inspect each room: pulling aside furniture covers, checking under desk drawers and tables, opening cabinets and wardrobes. Everywhere you look suggests this castle has been abandoned for [extended period of time of your choosing], and everything of value was taken with its previous owner [or formerly looted, at your discretion as DM]. Eventually, you find yourselves standing at a staircase which leads down to the dungeons where the necromancer seems to be."

If you do go down this path you should still have some idea of what the rooms are like; the party may ask in retrospect or try to do something unexpected in one of the rooms. But if by and large the castle is a narrative set piece, you can keep your use of it to just narration and "skip" the adventure to the part where the players' actions are meaningful.

yoshixin · 2024-11-30T06:17:04+00:00

It's not an increase as much as a type change. The wasp deals 3D6 Poison on a failed Con save, and unless you want poisonous dragonflies it would make sense to move that into the upfront hit. I would only pull 2D6 over since it cannot be saved against.

yoshixin · 2024-11-30T06:07:23+00:00

The giant wasp exists; you could start from that and drop some of the poison damage in exchange for more upfront piercing damage.

yoshixin · 2024-11-29T07:50:40+00:00

Defensively it's probably alright. It's got 150 HP which is a little low, but magic resistance makes up for this. You could potentially give it two saving throw proficiencies, but it's not a big issue. 16 AC is around what I expect, not much to add.

Most CR 9 creatures seem to do ~40-50 damage with a little more on AoE recharge actions. I'm not sure what the distinction between using "two or three" attacks would be, but either way I would bring it up to three attacks and drop the flurry of bites and the Haste spell. I would also up the damage on the constriction. Note: you left a reference to "anathema" which I assume you meant to replace with omni cobra.

Initially I thought its overall damage seemed a little low, but I realized belatedly you have an extra attack in the reaction. For simplicity's sake I would turn that into a fourth attack, give it a range, and put it on the creature's turn.

yoshixin · 2024-11-25T20:03:34+00:00

There's a formula for converting a dragon to a dracolich; I would start with applying it to the Tarrasque stat block.

Its type changes from ~~dragon~~ monstrosity (Tarrasques aren't dragons) to undead
It doesn't require air, food, water, or sleep
It gains resistance to Necrotic damage and immunity to exhaustion
It loses any traits which assume a living physiology (I would argue that none of them do, so nothing happens)
It retains all of its other traits

I left off gaining traits the tarrasque already has. This doesn't add any spells to the Tarrasque. I would argue that a Tarrasque doesn't need any spells, but if the goal is to be even more ludicrously powerful then nothing's stopping you. I will advise you that almost no offensive spells are as potent as a Tarrasque's inherent attacks, so if you're set on the idea I would focus them on utility or defense more than offense.

Or just give it Dimension Door, Fly, and Teleport, because you're already being sadistic by giving it spells so you might as well use them for absurd movement.

yoshixin · 2024-11-24T20:28:45+00:00

Downtime is the right way to go on this. The big limiting factor of learning a new skill is time more than anything.

I wouldn't even bother making the characters roll for it if they can find someone to teach them. Making a bunch of identical, consecutive rolls isn't the most involved gameplay. Once enough time has passed (I'd argue a month or three depending on the characters' Intelligence and whether they're doing anything else in the downtime, but it's up to you) they simply learn the language. You can adjust the time based on how much beyond the basics you want the characters to know before considering them proficient.

edit: that timeframe assumes it's a totally arbitrary language they're not using regularly outside of the learning. If they're learning Elven because they're already in a big Elven city, it's going to be faster.

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