5e Familiar thread (both warlock and animal/spirit thingies)

[Cleon]

Okay...am warming to devadragon..aligns well with pseudodragon....I forgot to recalculate its CR...does it look strong enough for CR 1/2?

Let's see, considering a Cockatrice is CR 1/2… Well, frankly, no!

Other standard CR 1/2 are the Black Bear and Worg.

Why does it have all-encompassing damage resistance to Bludgeoning? Wouldn't it make more sense to give it "bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks that aren’t [special substance]" like an Imp?

If we're looking to a Deva for inspiration, they have "Damage Resistances radiant; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks" so you could go for that I suppose.

What inspired the damage resistance to cold by the way? Is it self-heating!

I think I prefer it with the previous CON 13 (+1) to match an Imp or Pseudodragon. Giving it a +2 Con modifier is entering the field of the smaller true dragon's - i.e. a White Dragon Wyrmling has CON 14 (+2).

If it had similar damage resistances to an Imp then the previous Hit Points of 7 (2d4 + 2) would be appropriate for CR 1/2 as its resistance to nonmagical weapons and magic attacks would make it especially tough.

I'd also suggest giving it similar Condition Immunities to a Deva, which has:

Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened

Hmm, what else?

Guess you could give it a Damage Vulnerability (maybe necrotic) but with so few HP it'd be extremely delicate to such attacks which argues against that.

Oh, how about giving it either full Telepathy or Limited Telepathy like a Pseudodragon? Telepathic abilities are common among outsiders like angels/devils etc in 5E. Devas have Telepathy after all.

Still thinking the damage output could be improved a bit. Maybe give them a bite and claws Multiattack instead of just a bite? Incidentally, older editions gave Pseudodragons the equivalent of 5E Multiattack as they could bite and sting in the same round.

An Imp's poisonous sting does 5.5 piercing plus 10.5 or 5.25 poison, which is about 13 average damage if the target saves 50% of the time. If we're aiming for CR 1/2 I'd eyeball the Devadragon should be doing about 7 average damage. Maybe a d4+2 bite attack plus a d4 claws attack?

Breath Weapon could do with some clarification too, but that'll have to wait.

 

[Casimir Liber]

OK - all good points. The cold as I was reminded in 1e that Bahamut had cold breath weapon and I was thinking of silver and white dragons. I like devadragonet as a name. Will adjust and post soon...

 

[Casimir Liber]

Right...went with the claws though did muse on bite doing additional Radiant damage....

 

[Cleon]

Right...went with the claws though did muse on bite doing additional Radiant damage....

OK, going through in order:

Hit Points 11 (2d4 + 6) CON 16 (+3)​

As previously mentioned such a high CON bonus seems iffy.

I think I prefer it with the previous CON 13 (+1) to match an Imp or Pseudodragon. Giving it a +2 Con modifier is entering the field of the smaller true dragon's - i.e. a White Dragon Wyrmling has CON 14 (+2).

If it had similar damage resistances to an Imp then the previous Hit Points of 7 (2d4 + 2) would be appropriate for CR 1/2 as its resistance to nonmagical weapons and magic attacks would make it especially tough.

Since most CR 1/2 critters have around 20-25 HP but lack damage resistance against weapons, giving it 10 or so HP seems fine for a CR 1/2 critter with damage resistance as it effectively doubles its HPs against nonmagical weapons.

However, I'd rather give it an extra HD and CON 13 like an Imp to achieve that, which'd make its Hit Points 11 (3d4 + 3).

If it comes out a bit too powerful or weak we can just tweak the damage output a bit to adjust that.

The current draft averages 7 damage, which is less than a Black Bear (12.5) or Worg (10) but it has way better defenses, flight and a breath weapon to compensate. If we feel a need to increase it a bit, we can simply increase the bite and/or claw damage. Say, make the claws 1d6 for an 8 average or 1d4 + 2 for a 9 average. We can decide on that later.

Languages telepathy 120 ft.​

Rather than swapping out the languages in the earlier draft I was proposing keeping the Celestial, Common and Draconic and adding telepathy on top, e.g. "Languages Celestial, Common, Draconic, telepathy ## ft."

Was wondering about making the telepathic range a bit shorter than a Deva since it's so much less powerful. Maybe 100 feet like the Limited Telepathy of a Pseudodragon? Then again, 120 feet is tempting too. All Monster Manual Angels have telepathy 120 ft. in 5E, so the devadragonet could easily follow suit.

So in short, either Celestial, Common, Draconic, telepathy 120 ft. or Celestial, Common, Draconic, telepathy 100 ft. for the Languages.

Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 2 (1d4) piercing damage.​

Would rather the claws do slashing damage, like a dragon. Although it's allowable for claw attacks to do piercing (as in a Twig Blight) I prefer a mix of damage types.

Breath Weapons (Recharge 5-6). The devadragon uses one of the following breath weapons.​

You're missing an "et" after the "dragon" here.

 

[Cleon]

The current draft averages 7 damage, which is less than a Black Bear (12.5) or Worg (10) but it has way better defenses, flight and a breath weapon to compensate. If we feel a need to increase it a bit, we can simply increase the bite and/or claw damage. Say, make the claws 1d6 for an 8 average or 1d4 + 2 for a 9 average. We can decide on that later.

though did muse on bite doing additional Radiant damage....

That'd work too, for example:

Multiattack. The devadragonet makes two attacks: one with its bite and one with its claws.​

​

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 3 (1d4 + 1) piercing damage plus 1d3 radiant damage.​

​

Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 3 (1d6) slashing damage.​

That'd be 9 average damage, which seems OK for Challenge 1/2.

 

[Casimir Liber]

Ok - tweaked (had forgotten about the CON before - busy day yesterday) - CR twaeked to 1/2 after I posted image

 

[Cleon]

Ok - tweaked (had forgotten about the CON before - busy day yesterday) - CR twaeked to 1/2 after I posted image

Updated the Devadragonet.

Upon reflection, the bite should have "plus 2 (1d3) radiant damage" rather than "1d3 radiant damage" so I amended that.

Don't know how I miscalculated 3d4+3 as being 11 rather than 10 in an earlier post, but the Working Draft's HP are correct which is the main thing.

Now for the breath weapon! Let's do them one at a time.

For the "Healing Breath" what is the "for 1 minute, the target can't take reactions and must roll a d6 at the start of each of its turns to determine its behavior" about?

It sounds very much like it's causing confusion which seems a bit odd, plus there's no explanation at to how to determine the result of the d6 roll.

If it does have a brief deleterious effect on the target I would think Healing Breath should be able to apply said effect every time it hits a target. It's just the healing wounds that only works once per subject.

For the deleterious effect, rather than a confusion style effect how about it puts the target into a brief "healing sleep" and/or disorientates them with divine visions, causing disadvantage on attacks and skill checks for a few rounds?

Also, as written its breath can heal undead. Shouldn't it either be unable to heal an unliving creature like the cure wounds spell or be harmful to undead? Maybe have it damage fiends too?

If we go that route, I'd call it something different like, say, Purifying Breath and have it heal most creature types but cause respectable damage to fiends and undead.

 

[Casimir Liber]

Heh, I like this idea of a strange eldritch breath that heals but makes the subject drowsy (like morphine? opium?) and can do seirous damage to fiends and undead - unify as one action. drowsiness means it is risky to cast on an ally in combat (and hence nerfs it somewhat, which makes up for the fact that it is quite a lot of healing for a large party). Yeah...so ..? "heavenly breath"? "Heaven-scent Breath"? (pun intended)?

 

[Cleon]

Heh, I like this idea of a strange eldritch breath that heals but makes the subject drowsy (like morphine? opium?) and can do seirous damage to fiends and undead - unify as one action. drowsiness means it is risky to cast on an ally in combat (and hence nerfs it somewhat, which makes up for the fact that it is quite a lot of healing for a large party). Yeah...so ..? "heavenly breath"? "Heaven-scent Breath"? (pun intended)?

One idea I had is the "Heavenscent Breath" could have a save mechanism. If the target failed the save (which they could choose to do) they go into a healing sleep for a minute (either normal sleep or disorientation/drowsiness that causes disadvantage on attacks & skill checks?) but receive the full healing effect. If they resist and make the save (or if they're awakened prematurely) they only get half healing but can either act normally or only suffer a round of sleep/disorientation/drowsiness.

The damage effect to fiends and undead will be instantaneous like the inflict wounds spell, of course.

What think you?

 

[Casimir Liber]

I like - wanna wordsmith it or shall I?