Dread Fiend Murdaw 5e Monster

[MonsterEnvy]

An adaption of the Dragon Quest villain Dread Fiend Murdaw for D&D 5e that I did for fun. He's the weakest DQ Demon Lord so I felt he was a good starting point. He's a monster with a lot of a abilities that are recharge, meaning he will act fairly differently each round.

I plan on doing a few others in the future. Would like feedback if you feel like it.

Edit: Inspired by the villain of the computer game Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (1995). Just to give a source.
Edit 2: Murdaw now has a Phase 1 and 2.

 

[Cleon]

An adaption of the Dragon Quest villain Dread Fiend Murdaw for D&D 5e that I did for fun. He's the weakest DQ Demon Lord so I felt he was a good starting point. He's a monster with a lot of a abilities that are recharge, meaning he will act fairly differently each round.

I plan on doing a few others in the future. Would like feedback if you feel like it.

Well I haven't tackled a high-level 5E monster conversion yet so it'll take me even longer than usual to comment.

It'd help if you included an original source, especially as I was temporarily confused as to whether this guy came from the DragonQuest RPG's College of Greater Summonings or the Dragon Quest computer game.

Something like "Inspired by the villain of the computer game Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (1995) by Heartbeat."

My first impressions are he's too weak for a high-level boss monster. He's roughly analogous to a Demon Lord or Arch Devil right? So his Challenge Rating should be in the 20s surely. There are multiple rank-and-file fiends above Challenge 15 in the Monster Manual (i.e. Balor, Goristro, Marilith and Pit Fiend) who aren't unique threats like a Dragon Quest Dread Fiend.

He may be the weakest of them, as there's three other Dread Fiends above him and their boss Mortamor at the top, but that sounds like he's about par with, say, the Arch-Devils Bel or Dispater compared to their boss Asmodeus. In 3E's Fiendish Codex II Bel is CR 20 and Dis is CR 21 while Asmodeus is CR 27.

I couldn't find official or non-official 5E stats for those Archfiends with a brief rummage around the internet, but Kostchtchie is CR 21 in 3E according to Fiendish Codex I and he at least has an 5E SRD writeup in Tome of Horrors as a Challenge 22 menace (see Demon Lord, Kostchtchie, Demon Lord of Wrath).

Guess you could say these stats represent a lower-power Avatar of Murdaw rather than the full strength version. I believe he powers-up between encounters in the CRPG, which could be interpreted as different-strength avatars.

Although even at Challenge 15 Armour Class 12 is way too low for a respectable fiend. By contrast, a CR 14 Ice Devil and CR 16 Marilith both have AC 18.

 

[Cleon]

Let's see what the dragonquest.org has on Murdaw…

…hmm, I have little idea what some of those numbers in the Abilities mean since they're for a computer game.

It'd help if we had a monster with a clear 5E equivalent. It's inconvenient that dragonquest.org's DQVI page doesn't have a table of monsters that appear in the game!

Let's try the Dragon Quest wiki… ah, that's more like it:

List of monsters in Dragon Quest VI Bestiary​

Many of these seem to be "inspired" by D&D monsters - the Porker is clearly some sort of Orc, for example. Oh, and we'll want the wiki's Murdaw entry for comparison.

I'm seeing some common D&D monster names there: Shadow, Troll, Mimic, Gryphon.

Like most CRPG they come in various strength - a Man-Eating Box being a weak version of a Mimic, for example.

Let's see, DQVI gives a Mimic 304 hp (and the Cannibox 144 hp), a Troll 280 hp and a Gryphon 200 hp.

In 5E, a Mimic has 58 hp, a Troll has 84 hp, and a Griffon has 59 hp, so they aren't that far apart comparatively.

If we average the DQ Mimic/Cannibox's hp we get 224, pretty close to the DQ Gryphon's 200.

The ratio of geometric means of the two sets of hp (i.e. the cube-root of 280×224×200 divided by cube-root of 84×59×58) gives a ratio of 3.52, suggesting that one 5E D&D hit point is roughly equivalent to 3½ DragonQuestVI hit points.

Murdaw has 900 hp in his first and second DQVI encounter, so if that ratio applies (a BIG if!) he'd have about 257 hp in 5E, about the same as a Balor but less than a Pit Fiend.

That suggests he might be equivalent to the weakest Demon Princes such as Juiblex, who is CR 19 in the 3E Fiendish Codex I and CR 20 in the 3E Book of Vile Darkness.

However, the 5E Juiblex is a more impressive Challenge 23 in Mordenkainen's Book of Foes with 350 hp.

If you want to aim a little higher, the Challenge 24 5E Yeenoghu from the same source could also be used as a model for Murdaw's stats.

Anyhow, the first thing to do is decide on what Challenge you want this Dread Fiend to be, while leaving room for the more powerful fiends above Murdaw.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Well I haven't tackled a high-level 5E monster conversion yet so it'll take me even longer than usual to comment.

It'd help if you included an original source, especially as I was temporarily confused as to whether this guy came from the DragonQuest RPG's College of Greater Summonings or the Dragon Quest computer game.

Something like "Inspired by the villain of the computer game Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (1995) by Heartbeat."

My first impressions are he's too weak for a high-level boss monster. He's roughly analogous to a Demon Lord or Arch Devil right? So his Challenge Rating should be in the 20s surely. There are multiple rank-and-file fiends above Challenge 15 in the Monster Manual (i.e. Balor, Goristro, Marilith and Pit Fiend) who aren't unique threats like a Dragon Quest Dread Fiend.

He may be the weakest of them, as there's three other Dread Fiends above him and their boss Mortamor at the top, but that sounds like he's about par with, say, the Arch-Devils Bel or Dispater compared to their boss Asmodeus. In 3E's Fiendish Codex II Bel is CR 20 and Dis is CR 21 while Asmodeus is CR 27.

I couldn't find official or non-official 5E stats for those Archfiends with a brief rummage around the internet, but Kostchtchie is CR 21 in 3E according to Fiendish Codex I and he at least has an 5E SRD writeup in Tome of Horrors as a Challenge 22 menace (see Demon Lord, Kostchtchie, Demon Lord of Wrath).

Guess you could say these stats represent a lower-power Avatar of Murdaw rather than the full strength version. I believe he powers-up between encounters in the CRPG, which could be interpreted as different-strength avatars.

Although even at Challenge 15 Armour Class 12 is way too low for a respectable fiend. By contrast, a CR 14 Ice Devil and CR 16 Marilith both have AC 18.

Yeah I should have mentioned the original source, which I have fixed. Thanks for that.

He's a fairly early game boss so I actually planned for him to be CR 12. But I could not get him to hit as hard as I wanted, or have enough HP at that level so I buffed it to 15. The Encounter is overall based on his final encounter, but I may do a second version representing his phase 1.

The reason for his Low AC is that I wanted him to be fairly easy to hit, but have a lot of HP to fall back on.

Let's see what the dragonquest.org has on Murdaw…

…hmm, I have little idea what some of those numbers in the Abilities mean since they're for a computer game.

It'd help if we had a monster with a clear 5E equivalent. It's inconvenient that dragonquest.org's DQVI page doesn't have a table of monsters that appear in the game!

Let's try the Dragon Quest wiki… ah, that's more like it:

List of monsters in Dragon Quest VI Bestiary​

Many of these seem to be "inspired" by D&D monsters - the Porker is clearly some sort of Orc, for example. Oh, and we'll want the wiki's Murdaw entry for comparison.

I'm seeing some common D&D monster names there: Shadow, Troll, Mimic, Gryphon.

Like most CRPG they come in various strength - a Man-Eating Box being a weak version of a Mimic, for example.

Let's see, DQVI gives a Mimic 304 hp (and the Cannibox 144 hp), a Troll 280 hp and a Gryphon 200 hp.

In 5E, a Mimic has 58 hp, a Troll has 84 hp, and a Griffon has 59 hp, so they aren't that far apart comparatively.

If we average the DQ Mimic/Cannibox's hp we get 224, pretty close to the DQ Gryphon's 200.

The ratio of geometric means of the two sets of hp (i.e. the cube-root of 280×224×200 divided by cube-root of 84×59×58) gives a ratio of 3.52, suggesting that one 5E D&D hit point is roughly equivalent to 3½ DragonQuestVI hit points.

Murdaw has 900 hp in his first and second DQVI encounter, so if that ratio applies (a BIG if!) he'd have about 257 hp in 5E, about the same as a Balor but less than a Pit Fiend.

That suggests he might be equivalent to the weakest Demon Princes such as Juiblex, who is CR 19 in the 3E Fiendish Codex I and CR 20 in the 3E Book of Vile Darkness.

However, the 5E Juiblex is a more impressive Challenge 23 in Mordenkainen's Book of Foes with 350 hp.

If you want to aim a little higher, the Challenge 24 5E Yeenoghu from the same source could also be used as a model for Murdaw's stats.

Anyhow, the first thing to do is decide on what Challenge you want this Dread Fiend to be, while leaving room for the more powerful fiends above Murdaw.

I had the same thoughts about Murdaw's 900 HP. And just narrowed it down to 250, while keeping him with a low AC.
I think 15 or even a bit lower is still good for him, I might tweak his offensive stats down a bit even so I can give him more HP. As I plan on using this guy in a future encounter against some level 10s.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Updated Murdaw. Gave him more HP while weakening his damage a bit, though I made his basic melee stronger.

 

[Casimir Liber]

I gotta say I love the name "cannibox" - I just noticed, in 1e, fiends had the ability to summon other fiends, which seems to have disappeared from 5e.

Regarding Murdaw, does he have a theme or portfolio? Or is he just a big critter? Maybe another lair action connected to a theme...is it cold (as he can fire an icy blast?) or amphibians? (as he looks like a toad thing?)......

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I gotta say I love the name "cannibox" - I just noticed, in 1e, fiends had the ability to summon other fiends, which seems to have disappeared from 5e.

Regarding Murdaw, does he have a theme or portfolio? Or is he just a big critter? Maybe another lair action connected to a theme...is it cold (as he can fire an icy blast?) or amphibians? (as he looks like a toad thing?)......

Quite a few fiends can summon others in 5e it just tends to be a variant ability. But I instend to later make a Murdaw phase 1 who is an enemy summoner (he summons evil armours which are basically helmed horrors, and creatures called Chop Clowns which I think a similar creature exists in 5e.)

On themes, In the game itself Murdaw is known to be tricky and deceitful, with powerful illusions at his control. With dangerous traps around his lair. His invasion of the land is also an invasion of the Dream World. Having Cursed the King and Queen of the primary Kingdom he is invading with a magical sleep, and then he transformed the Dream World version of the King into a copy of himself to invade the Dream World. There are some other details like turning the heroes into stone, that I can go over later when I get off work.

 

[Casimir Liber]

They all sound like really good ideas for embellishing him! So maybe a "summon helmed horror" - recharge on a 6 or something?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Updated Murdaw now with Phase 1 and Phase 2.

His stone ability is based on what he does to the heroes at the start of the game, though it does not work the second time once they have a mirror that can see the truth of things, which is why I added that creatures immune to charm are immune to it. His first phase also has Fire Resistance his second phase lacks.

 

[Cleon]

The reason for his Low AC is that I wanted him to be fairly easy to hit, but have a lot of HP to fall back on.

Well it's your conversion so you can do what you like, but AC 12 definitely feels too low to me.

For comparison, in Dragon Quest VI Murdaw has Defence 105 (or 102 in his first form) while a Mimic has Defence 99 (Canniboxes have 60), a Gryphon Defence 83, and a Troll Defence 64.

I'm not sure how Defence works in DQ - presumably it's either a "makes harder to hit" deal or "absorbs points of damage" thing - but in any case, Murdaw's number is higher than those other monsters!

Going by those samples, DQVI Defence doesn't appear to map well to 5E Armour Classes unfortunately. A Troll has the lowest Defence of the three (if you exclude the Cannibox) but Trolls are AC 15 in 5E, better than the AC 12 of Griffins and Mimics have in that 5E.