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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[Stalker0]

Not really. According to calculations it's offences are stronger then average for a CR 21.

Your correct, and i did not clarify my point.

I am in the camp that says in general high level monsters are too weak for their CR. I was hoping some of the new monster books would correct, similar to how MM3 for 4e fixed a lot of the general design issues there.

So your right that by the math the monster is correct. My point is that against a real 20th level party I think it’s physically weak

 

[CapnZapp]

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.

And you are conveniently ignoring how exceedingly few enemies have been offered that poses a relevant threat to advanced characters.

I am always amazed when someone thinks it's completely alright for WotC to ignore players that use the optional subsystems of the PHB.

Honestly, the idea "you're on your own" just because you dare to use what the PHB offers baffles me. The healthy skepticism has been replaced with unquestioning acceptance.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Holy crap, Batman! I cannot believe there is actually a discussion about the mechanics of the Astral Plane. It is a big void that any intelligent creature can move through by thinking. It has been that way in every edition except 4e, where it was apparently different. Does the 5e DMG describe the 4e Astral Sea? No. Does it describe something that doesn't make sense in light of the traditional Astral? No. Then we shouldn't assume they have invisibly completely changed 30+ years of a consistent planar nature without telling us.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Your correct, and i did not clarify my point.

I am in the camp that says in general high level monsters are too weak for their CR. I was hoping some of the new monster books would correct, similar to how MM3 for 4e fixed a lot of the general design issues there.

So your right that by the math the monster is correct. My point is that against a real 20th level party I think it’s physically weak

According to solo encounter guidelines it should not fight a 20th level party on it's own. It's more on the level of a 17th level party.

 

[Shadow Demon]

And you are conveniently ignoring how exceedingly few enemies have been offered that poses a relevant threat to advanced characters.

I am always amazed when someone thinks it's completely alright for WotC to ignore players that use the optional subsystems of the PHB.

Honestly, the idea "you're on your own" just because you dare to use what the PHB offers baffles me. The healthy skepticism has been replaced with unquestioning acceptance.

Yep, that is why the options are advanced. WoTC figured that it was far too difficult to make that part turn-key vs. do-it-yourself so they didn’t. There are too many variables to reconcile. As an old-school player who dislikes 3e and 4e, I am happily in the realm of unquestioning acceptance with regard to 5e.

 

[Gradine]

According to solo encounter guidelines it should not fight a 20th level party on it's own. It's more on the level of a 17th level party.

"Hard" for a solo monster usually isn't enough to cut it. I'd drop them down to 16th at least.

And if it's the only thing they're fighting that day? You could afford to dip quite a bit lower, honestly.

 

[MarkB]

It's stated to be impossible to tame. Any attempt to communicate or reason with a Dreadnought has been met with death.

Sounds like a challenge.

 

[Gradine]

And you are conveniently ignoring how exceedingly few enemies have been offered that poses a relevant threat to advanced characters.

I am always amazed when someone thinks it's completely alright for WotC to ignore players that use the optional subsystems of the PHB.

Honestly, the idea "you're on your own" just because you dare to use what the PHB offers baffles me. The healthy skepticism has been replaced with unquestioning acceptance.

D&D is a big game. The range of player skill between the absolute worst D&D player and the absolutely best is vast. Any monster design that is wholly appropriate for the top 10% of players (and to be honest, I think that's an overexaggeration of the ratio of pure optimizers to everyone else) would be wholly inappropriate for literally everyone else playing the game, who, among other things, are busy spending half of their 4th level ASI to bump their Con up from 9 to 10, or the ones choosing feats such Athlete and Linguist (all done by players in my current game). That extreme level of difficulty might have flown in the highly niche early days of the game, and certainly does in the OSR, but it sure as hell won't in a modern game, especially not with the broad player base that D&D 5e has.

I'd have thought by now that most DMs finding themselves in the situation of their players being too good for the baseline encounter design would have figured out what tweaks they have to make to their encounters to actually challenge their players. It's been almost four years now.

Edit: It occurs to me that you're more referring to the idea that monster design is based on PCs without feats. And yeah, the decision to make Feats optional (which I've always been kind of on the fence on) did hamstring them a little bit in that regard. Of course, it's not nearly the magnitutde as some are making it out to be. WotC had to choose a baseline somewhere, and why shouldn't they land on the line where the vast majority of the players (low-to-average skill, no feats) are going to fall?

Again, making adjustments to challenges to account for outlier player skill (whether too low or too high) is a basic necessity in all but the most basic or story-driven TTRPGs that exist. Thread-crapping anything even remotely related to 5e monster design to publicly shame WotC (and any who would dare defend them, it seems) strikes me as thunderously unhelpful and utterly unnecessary.

 

[dave2008]

Well, sorta. The astral dreadnought wasn't published until 1995, and Doom was released in 1993. However, the art which inspired both of them (the cover of the 1E Manual of the Planes, which you can see in the first post in this thread) came out in 1987.

Not completely accurate. It was named in the 1e Manual of the Planes, just no stats.

 

[dave2008]

And you are conveniently ignoring how exceedingly few enemies have been offered that poses a relevant threat to advanced characters.

They have offered none. I think that is @Shadow Demon's point.

I am always amazed when someone thinks it's completely alright for WotC to ignore players that use the optional subsystems of the PHB.

Despite my love for hardcore monsters, I have no issue with WotC designing monsters for the lowest common denominator. I don't think you can design for both sets and they went with what they think the majority is. That makes sense to me as a good business decision. I do, however, think there should be / should have been some guidelines for modifying monsters for more advanced groups.