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


log in or register to remove this ad

Cleon

Legend

All of the Dragon Warriors have DEX, CON, WIS & CHA save proficiencies, but by some glitch the Red has STR, DEX, CON & CHA in D&D Beyond.

The Red Dragon Warrior should have Saving Throws DEX +3, CON +6, WIS +5, CHA +5.

The Brass, Bronze, Copper and White look fine.


The Gold is fine, but the Silver Dragon Warrior has a 1d4 mastery dice, not the 1d6 of a Gold so its damage is one less, like so:

Dragonscale Weapon Master. The silver dragon warrior deals 2 (1d4) extra damage when it hits with a dragonscale weapon (included in the attack).

Actions

Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (1d8 + 1d4 + 4) slashing damage, or 12 (1d10 + 1d4 + 4) slashing damage if used with two hands.​
 



Cleon

Legend
Updated the Completed Fifth Edition Creatures Index and White Dwarf Conversion Index with the Dragon Warriors.

So back to the Weresnake Working Draft?

The last post was this one:

I was thinking it can simultaneously bite and tail in snake form, making it nastier than a regular constrictor.

The Werebear seems a better model for that than a Wererat, which only gets a single attack in animal form.

To avoid further confusion, I'll better spell out all the options…

Multiattack. The weresnake makes two attacks. In snake form, it makes one bite attack and one tail attack. In humanoid form, it makes two scimitar attacks or has one blowgun attack and one scimitar attack. In hybrid form, the weresnake's first attack is with its bite, blowgun or scimitar, and its second attack is with its tail or scimitar.​

That ought to do.
 


Cleon

Legend
Ok yes happy with the multiattack.

Updating the Weresnake Working Draft.

Musing on whether 22hp (4d8 + 4) is too weak but can always make leader types/alphas later.

The original monster had Hit Dice 2d8 + 3, which might suggest it has few HD but a high Constitution bonus.

Snakes have rather mediocre CON scores in 5E though. Even a Giant Constrictor is only CON 12 (+1).

It'd feel a bit iffy to give it more than the current CON 13 (+1) which matches a Yuan-ti Malison or a Giant Poisonous Snake, both of which seem salient comparisons.

Shall we leave it at 4d8+4 and figure out whether we want to tweak it later?
 


Cleon

Legend
Yeah sure

The only thing left to figure out is the poison and lycanthropy effects.

According to the CR Calculator, we need a DPR from 15 to 32 for Challenge 2, which seems rather high. A Wererat only has DPR 11.

Hmm, plugged a Wererat's numbers into the CR Calculator and it came out Challenge 1 so maybe that's were the problem lies?

If there's some arbitrary +1 CR for being a Lycanthrope the Weresnake can have a DPR of 6 to 14.

Think I'll run the other standard Lycanthropes through the calculator and see how they come out.

Werebear (Challenge 5) CR Calculator says CR 8.
Wereboar (Challenge 4) CR Calculator says CR 4.
Wererat (Challenge 2) CR Calculator says CR 1.
Weretiger (Challenge 4) CR Calculator says CR 7.
Werewolf (Challenge 3) CR Calculator says CR 2.​

Yeesh! They're all over the place. Either the 5e Tools CR Calculator is screwy or the official SRD Challenge Ratings are.

Might need to mull this over a bit.
 

Casimir Liber

Adventurer
I suspect the latter - Mike Shea talks about this often (official dnd monsters doing too low damage for their CR) - but clearly some are the other way. Maybe they rushed them...who knows
 

Remove ads

Top