Check out the Astral Deadnought from Mordenkainen's Tome

WotC's Nathan Stewart celebrated hitting 5,000 Twitter followers by sharing a page from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, the upcoming D&D book due for release next month. The art gloriously evokes Jeff Easley's art from the cover of 1987's Manual of the Planes (a monster originally called an "ethereal dreadnought" and changed to "astral dreadnought" in D&D 2E).

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[dave2008]

One fundamental houserule I've made a long time ago is that any time a MM stat block says "3 legendary actions" it means "[number of players - 1] legendary actions".

With six PCs, five legendary actions is a bare minimum to sustain any form of danger, IMHO.

That is a good adjustment. It doesn't work for me personally, but it is a good idea.

PS. I don't know what to say to "at the end of round"... unless you mean "just before its next turn"? The end of a round from its vantage point, that is.

The end of the round (the point where you cycle back from lowest initiative to highest) - and indeed the round itself - carry almost no significance in a cyclic initiative system. To me it's obvious the BBEG can keep using legendary actions after the turns of heroes with higher initiative - if the RAI meant anything else, they damn well had to say that outright.

Maybe it just the way I play/ understand things. To me the end of the round is: after everyone has taken their turn. So after all parties have taken their turn, before the cyclic initiative starts again, the Legendary can take all of its remaining legendary actions.

 

[CapnZapp]

Maybe it just the way I play/ understand things. To me the end of the round is: after everyone has taken their turn. So after all parties have taken their turn, before the cyclic initiative starts again, the Legendary can take all of its remaining legendary actions.

Does this mean your Legendary monsters can't take legendary actions after the turns of heroes faster than the monster... or does this mean you renew legendary actions at the start of next round?

Just to dispel any uncertainty (not implying you don't already know this):

A
legendary creature regains spent legendary actions at
the start of its turn.

 

[BMaC]

Nice. I hope this means that the next adventure will be 1) planar and 2) higher level.

 

[dave2008]

Does this mean your Legendary monsters can't take legendary actions after the turns of heroes faster than the monster... or does this mean you renew legendary actions at the start of next round?

Just to dispel any uncertainty (not implying you don't already know this):

No. If the Legendary Monster (LM) has any actions available, it can take them after another's actions before its turn. However, if the LM used them all at the end of the previous round, they will not have any available. They don't have to use all of them at the end of the round, but they can.

I just don't like the idea that the monster has more or less actions available depending on how many targets it has. I can see a design where that makes sense, but not a standard for every monster.

 

[generic]

It seems like a monster that could either be incredibly nasty or extremely easy. The antimagic cone and Donjon abilities are frightening, but that hp is far too low.

 

[CapnZapp]

No. If the Legendary Monster (LM) has any actions available, it can take them after another's actions before its turn. However, if the LM used them all at the end of the previous round, they will not have any available. They don't have to use all of them at the end of the round, but they can.

I just don't like the idea that the monster has more or less actions available depending on how many targets it has. I can see a design where that makes sense, but not a standard for every monster.

I understand you don't like the variable Legendary Actions, but to return to your rule:

Do you mean you're giving the LM an extra opportunity to "unload" its LAs?

At the end of each player turn plus at the end of the round?

Furthermore, just so we understand each other, do you acknowledge this to be your house rule or are you arguing that "end of round" carries any RAW significance?

Either way it's your game - I'm just curious as to what you mean

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I don't use the Astral Sea much, and I find that the good parts fit Archeron pretty well (two so-so realms can become one really good one). I tend to use the AD as living battle ships used by Grummish's orcs traveling between cubes. It wouldn't take too many orcs with crossbows (and maybe an orc tempest cleric) to complicate a PC vs. AD fight.....

If anyone is interested, in my setting Archeron came about when an army of devils invaded Mechanus, and the modrons fearing cultural contamination (devils aren't completely respectable), blew up the section that the devils had invaded. Archeron is the debris-filled space between the 9 Hells and Mechanus. The modrons stocked the section closest to Mechanus with things like steel predators and archeria to discourage less respectable beings from trying to enter their territory, there is a large space full of gobliniods vs. orcs, part of the destroyed territory was a museum that had statues of dead gods and primordial--the space where the museum's debris floats is where the githyanki settled, and the shrapnel-filled section closest to the 9 Hells is full clockwork abominations (from Tome of Beasts), spirits of lesser devils fused into metal, and automata devils (from Fifth Edition Foes), spirits of greater devils fused into the metal. All of these devils were mentally messed up by the fusion, and they tend to attack any nondevils as potential "invaders" of the 9 Hells.

 

[MarkB]

So, just to revisit a contentious subject, if a wild shaped druid's beast form is chewed down to 0 hp, do they immediately get a one way trip to the Donjon?

 

[Shadow Demon]

I am always amazed how CR is still so frequently misunderstood. The Challenge Rating is a baseline for four basic characters (cleric, fighter, wizard, rogue) without magic items. If the party has magic items that increase their CR and uses the advanced choices of class, feats, and multiclassing then the CR has to move DOWN from this baseline. How much down from the baseline is determined by the tier and the composition of the advanced choices listed above but still more art than science. The CR guideline works particularly well in Tier 1 where the advanced choices have little impact.

For the baseline, the astral dreadnought is exactly where it should be for its CR. A well-optimized party with all available options is looking at being at Tier 3 max for this creature to be an appropriate challenge. Otherwise, as written, this monster is going to have to be modified for a specific party composition.

Honestly, when I read some of these comments, it seems like some people have been playing this game too long to actually have fun with it anymore. The wonder of youth has been replaced with cynicism of age.

 

[kenmarable]

Looks like a lot of fun to me. Personally, when I DM, hit points are more of a guideline than written in stone. I'll lower or raise them as necessary to make it fun. What is far more interesting to me is that the Donjon abilities aren't just "take out the threatening PC" abilities - they are plot hooks! It wouldn't be the first time I've had PCs trying to intentionally get swallowed in order to get something they needed. Given how long these things probably live, there's got to be plenty of interesting things (or beings!) in their stomach planes.

With a low intelligence, I can also see PCs trying to lead a major attack on a githyanki fortress and having the githyanki herd one of these to rip through the incoming forces.

Actually, considering that when it dies, everything from inside the Donjon appears around it, if you could have some control over where it goes, it makes a nasty Trojan Horse - either used by the PCs or against them. (The barbarian re-appears covered in numerous claw and bite marks, and says "I was just teleported into some cave -" The wizard interrupts, "It's the beast's donjon - basically a demiplane in place of its stomach." The barbarian continues, annoyed, "Whatever it was, I couldn't see what was in there, but there were a lot of them, and they were NOT nice!")

Toe-to-toe high level battles of just reducing hit points as fast as possible always seem boring to me. I really like the astral dreadnought because it's so much more than a bag of hit points, and can be used in some really creative ways. For really high CR battles, it's best to have some other goal than just getting it's hit points to zero, and this creature has some nice hooks for that.