Converting Forgotten Realms monsters

[freyar]

That looks good, except these aren't mindless. Int 6, Wis 11, Cha 10?

 

[Shade]

Indeed! That looks reasonable.

The vault guardian is also extremely fast, and imposes a -3 penalty to all surprise rolls when defending its charges.

Perhaps a Dex boost as well?

 

[Cleon]

Perhaps a Dex boost as well?

Certainly. It's 18" move translates to a speed of 50 ft. or so, so it deserves a higher Dex. Maybe 15?

So far that's:

Medium Construct
Hit Dice: 8d10+20 (64 hit points)
Speed: 50 ft. (10 squares)
Vault Guardian: Str 23, Dex 15, Con —, Int 6, Wis 11, Cha 10, NA +18?

What else do we have. The weapon vulnerability would translate to DR X/bludgeoning and magic. How many points do you fancy?

DR 10/bludgeoning and magic ?

Ghost touch attacks to affect incorporeal & ethereal creatures.

Some spell-like abilities: at-will detect magic, detect invisible and true seeing. The detect invisible is redundant since it has true sight, so I would cut that out.

SLAs - at-will detect magic, true seeing, CL X.

Immunity to fire and cold, some electricity resistance.

 

[freyar]

Shouldn't the NA be +8 to match the original AC? I'd go with DR 5, since the rest of the stats suggest a CR around 5 or 6.

 

[Shade]

Added to Homebrews.

Rather than SLAs, let's just give it a continuous "super vision". We can expand this...

True Seeing (Su): Glabrezu continuously use true seeing as the spell (caster level 14th).

...to this...

Detect Intruders (Su): Vault guardians continuously use detect magic and true seeing as the spells (caster level xth).

The attacks of the guardian can reach into the Astral and Ethereal Planes and can injure those struck only by magical, silver, or iron weapons.

Besides the ghost touch, should we also treat their attacks as magic, silver, and cold iron for purposes of overcoming DR?

A vault guardian takes no damage from normal fire, magical fire, or cold-based attacks, and electrical attacks cause only one-quarter damage to the construct. Charm and sleep spells have no effect on the vault guardian, nor do other mind-affecting spells or any poisons.

Because of its construction, the vault guardian is vulnerable to earth magic. A rock to mud spell inflicts 2d10 points of damage on the creature and stops it from moving for one round, and earthquake or stone shape instantly kills the construct (no saving throw allowed).

Should we go with the nontraditional (for a golem) immunity to cold and fire, resistance to electricity, and vulnerability to earth magic, or pigeonhole it into the more traditional immunity to magic?

 

[freyar]

Detect Intruders seems good, and I'm agreed to the overcoming DR bit.

I think immunity to magic works better for those specific "earthy" spells.

 

[Cleon]

Detect Intruders (Su): Vault guardians continuously use detect magic and true seeing as the spells (caster level xth).

Besides the ghost touch, should we also treat their attacks as magic, silver, and cold iron for purposes of overcoming DR?

I like both of the above.

Should we go with the nontraditional (for a golem) immunity to cold and fire, resistance to electricity, and vulnerability to earth magic, or pigeonhole it into the more traditional immunity to magic?

I'd like to give them the nontraditional ones, just to give them something different from regular golems.

 

[Cleon]

Shouldn't the NA be +8 to match the original AC? I'd go with DR 5, since the rest of the stats suggest a CR around 5 or 6.

I'd be OK dropping the NA but bringing it down to +8 seems too low to me. The original monster does have a better AC than an AD&D Iron Golem, after all, and we do need to consider the stat-inflation of 3E.

I'd be OK with a NA of +12 to +16 to bring it more in line with the CR.

EDIT: We could also reduce the DR from 15/adamantine to 10/adamantine to go along with its lower HD and CR.

 

[Shade]

I'd be OK with a NA of +12 to +16 to bring it more in line with the CR.

EDIT: We could also reduce the DR from 15/adamantine to 10/adamantine to go along with its lower HD and CR.

That seems a reasonable compromise. How about +14 for the NA?

 

[freyar]

+14 NA and DR 10 is good.