King of Feathers - CR10

[SubDude]

I searched and didn't come across anyone else's computation, so I ran one myself.

In Tomb of Annihilation, I make the King of Feathers to be a CR 10 monster worth 5,900 XP.

If anyone has come up with a different CR, please share it. Thanks!!

 

[CapnZapp]

In my game, I latched onto how the tabaxi hunter came to Omu to best it in single combat.

So I had the "powers that be" insist on exactly that; a prophecy or mythal that forces anyone approaching the amphitheater to face it alone.

I described how your companions in the party start to fade away as you get closer to the area where the dinosaur roams. Essentially, from your hero's perspective, everybody else is going ethereal, entering the "ghost plane". Sounds get dimmed, and a strange fog rolls in (much like the rules for the ethereal plane).

If you backtrack, these effects are reversed, until you're far enough from the King, where everything is back to normal.

If you press on, however, you will find that each hunter is it its own plane, complete with its own King of Feathers. And per its statistics, it will probably have spotted you, and suddenly it's all over you!

---

I made it this way since my heroes arrived to Omu relatively high level, and I wanted to explain why no ordinary group of hunters had managed to fell the beast.

As you can imagine, some characters had a much harder time. Some classes are simply more suited to unleashing a maximal nova to bring down the beast before it can kill them than others.

In our case, the Paladin fared the best. The Sorcerer also defeated her King, but it was a very close call.

The Monk and Rogue stood no chance, and would have had to run away or hide, hadn't the mythal effect and their battles ended once someone killed their beast.

The players loved the encounter though - it's always super scary in D&D to be on your own!

 

[CapnZapp]

PS. Your calculations seem okay.

PPS. In theory, two or more characters can help each other to gang up on a single Dino. What you need is magic that transcends the ethereal barrier. Perhaps the simplest example is Magic Missile.

(I had every other PC and King appear as ghostly apparitions, rather than outright invisible as the regular rules for ethereal characters suggest. I obviously didn't want them to "manifest".

Just explaining you didn't need See Invisible to follow a different fight than your own)

 

[Eltab]

In my game, I latched onto how the tabaxi hunter came to Omu to best it in single combat.

That is an awesome extrapolation from a single data point. Well done.

(Somewhat reminiscent of the movie effect when putting on Sauron's Ring.)

 

[Nebulous]

In my game, I latched onto how the tabaxi hunter came to Omu to best it in single combat.

So I had the "powers that be" insist on exactly that; a prophecy or mythal that forces anyone approaching the amphitheater to face it alone.

I described how your companions in the party start to fade away as you get closer to the area where the dinosaur roams. Essentially, from your hero's perspective, everybody else is going ethereal, entering the "ghost plane". Sounds get dimmed, and a strange fog rolls in (much like the rules for the ethereal plane).

If you backtrack, these effects are reversed, until you're far enough from the King, where everything is back to normal.

If you press on, however, you will find that each hunter is it its own plane, complete with its own King of Feathers. And per its statistics, it will probably have spotted you, and suddenly it's all over you!

---

I made it this way since my heroes arrived to Omu relatively high level, and I wanted to explain why no ordinary group of hunters had managed to fell the beast.

As you can imagine, some characters had a much harder time. Some classes are simply more suited to unleashing a maximal nova to bring down the beast before it can kill them than others.

In our case, the Paladin fared the best. The Sorcerer also defeated her King, but it was a very close call.

The Monk and Rogue stood no chance, and would have had to run away or hide, hadn't the mythal effect and their battles ended once someone killed their beast.

The players loved the encounter though - it's always super scary in D&D to be on your own!

That's a wonderful idea. What level were your guys when they got there?

 

[Yes]

I ran the King of Feathers encounter this way:

As advised in the book, I teased the presence of the King of Feathers in Omu with stomps and roars. The players avoided it carefully. Then I decided than one of the red mages, desperate to fight the advance of the players for the cubes and the tomb of the nine gods, would try to lure the T-Rx to their camp. The mage used the fly spell to stay out of reach of the beast, and fired cantrips on it until it reached their camp.

The players knew that mage had a cube on her. And the mage had no idea that the King of Feathers was able to teleport. The dices determined that the King of Feathers successfully teleported mid-air and gobbled the mage right in front of the players. I wanted to have them confronted with a dilemna : flee, or kill the best to get the cube.

I was pretty proud of the way the situation turned out. Until the sorcerer successfully changed the beast into a chicken with a polymorph spell. I reminded them that if the chicken gets killed it will revert back to it's dinosaur state. Then the monk suggested they throw it in the lava pit.

At that point, I had two choices, let them safely cover the distance between their camp and the lava pit, and enact their absurd plan. Or have them ambushed by red mages/ yuan-ti, or whatever else would be susceptible to accidentally deal 1 point of damage to the chicken during the fight... I just let them do it in the end. They were so proud, they forgot about the cube.

 

[DM_Jeff]

I used the stats for the feathered T-REX "Gishath, Sun’s Avatar" from the Plane Shift Ixalan PDF from WotC.

https://media.wizards.com/2018/downloads/magic/plane-shift_ixalan.pdfhttp://