5E: Converting Monsters from White Dwarf Magazine for Fifth Edition

[Cleon]

Just thought of a slight tweak to my proposal for its illusion resistance.

Monocular Illusion Resistance?. The amiraspian cyclops has advantage on saving throws against illusions that include visual elements it can see.​

A strict interpretation of the previous wording would mean that, if there was a major illusion of a dragon hiding behind the curtain in a room with locked solid iron doors, the cyclops would get advantage on its saves just from hearing the illusory dragon (because the spell has a visual element) without even being in the room!

 

[Cleon]

Updating the Dragon Warriors.

Done, and just updated the White Dwarf Conversion Index.

Haven't added them to the Completed Fifth Edition Creatures Index yet, since we don't have the completed versions on D&D Beyond.

I believe D&D Beyond has a separate section for magic items and the like, so would the dragon tooth section of the collected entry go there?

Presumably @Casimir Liber would only be able to upload the individual versions to D&DBeyond. I doubt that website would be very cooperate about the formatting in the Dragon Warriors Collection!

Hmm, "The Dragon Warriors Collection" sounds like a very strange fashion show to me…

"And Hsrekh the Resplendent is modelling the latest in scale balm from the House of Medrinia and a platinum tiara by Gnomasterie."​

 

[ilgatto]

Even with Proficiency it's only a +1 skill.

Besides, being viciously aggressive hardly forbids a monster from noticing things well.

By Wisdom proficiency, I meant in Saving Throws. So it adds its proficiency bonus to its Wisdom saves. A creature's saves only use its ability scores in 5E unless it's specifically listed as improving them with its proficiency bonus. They don't automatically improve their saves as its Hit Dice increase like in earlier editions. Creatures with character classes will get Saving Throws improvements at certain levels (e.g. a Rogue starts with Dexterity & Intelligence and adds Wisdom at 15th-level when it gets Slippery Mind and "you have acquired greater mental strength. You gain proficiency in Wisdom saving throws.").

Monsters usually don't have class levels in 5E, even NPCs tend to be treated as normal monsters (i.e. the human bandit Captain in the SRD is a humanoid with d8 HD because it's Medium sized, rather than a 10th-level fighter or whatever). Nor do they have to slavishly follow class level abilities, so an NPC "Master Burglar" might have Saving Throws STR, DEX, WIS rather than the DEX, INT, WIS a high-level rogue gets. Oh, and they wouldn't have a "Slippery Mind" trait since there's no point, as the save proficiency would be listed in the stat block and the DM doesn't need to know where it came from (or have justification for it having one, for that matter).

Hmm..., the more I learn about 5E... anyway, that's not really the point here.

My main reason for giving the cyclops a Wisdom save is a –1 is pretty piddly, so even with its advantage from a trait it wouldn't be very likely to save against a sight-based Illusion without proficiency added.

I see. That is a bit of a thing, I agree. So Wisdom proficiency OK.

In the immortal words of Battery Sergeant-Major Williams, "Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind."

 

[ilgatto]

Wouldn't bother, as it isn't in the original.

There's plenty of creatures with the Fey type that aren't resistant to sleep or charm in 5E. In the Monster Manual, the dryad, green hag and blink dog don't have any special resistance to magic, while the night hag, pixie, satyr and sprite have standard Magic Resistance so it'd be redundant for them to have a separate resistance that only applied to a specific sort of magic.

Purist agrees.

 

[ilgatto]

Just thought of a slight tweak to my proposal for its illusion resistance.

Monocular Illusion Resistance?. The amiraspian cyclops has advantage on saving throws against illusions that include visual elements it can see.​

A strict interpretation of the previous wording would mean that, if there was a major illusion of a dragon hiding behind the curtain in a room with locked solid iron doors, the cyclops would get advantage on its saves just from hearing the illusory dragon (because the spell has a visual element) without even being in the room!

Absolutely true.
Hmm..., Monocular Illusion Resistance sounds... construed.
Haven't thought of anything else, though.

 

[Cleon]

Absolutely true.
Hmm..., Monocular Illusion Resistance sounds... construed.
Haven't thought of anything else, though.

Er, what am I supposed to construe? That it's derived from an entity with one eye?

Did you mean contrived, as in "invented" or "schemed"?

 

[ilgatto]

Er, what do am I supposed to construe? That it's derived from an entity with one eye?

Did you mean contrived, as in "invented" or "schemed"?

Blast, lamp, and dang! Cretin, construed ... Now, I sort of knew where I'd used "cretin", so that's been fixed. But "construed"? Oh dear...

 

[Cleon]

Er, what do am I supposed to construe?

Yes, it's as annoying as posting something and a few hours later noticing you'd left in a typo from an earlier draft.

Oh dear, what would "what do am I" even mean!

Never mind, 'tis fixed now.

 

[Casimir Liber]

I can live with Monocular Illusion Resistance ...

6/day seems frequent enough to maybe just leave "at will" so one less thing for DM to count...?

now for description?

 

[Cleon]

I can live with Monocular Illusion Resistance ...

What about the "it can see" addition to the wording?

6/day seems frequent enough to maybe just leave "at will" so one less thing for DM to count...?

now for description?

That's weird. I only put in 6/day because I remembered the original monster had limited usage on its hypnotic eye, but rereading White Dwarf #21 it's clearly At-Will.

Also it consistently uses "stare" to refer to the ability. Its Attack line even says "plus hypnotic stare."

A minor tweak seems in order…

Updating the Cyclops.