5E: Fifth Edition Monsters Inspired by Third Edition Sources

[Casimir Liber]

Hit Points 104 (16d8 + 32) sounds good to me...must have been distracted while calculating,,,

 

[Cleon]

Hit Points 104 (16d8 + 32) sounds good to me...must have been distracted while calculating,,,

Updated the Exalted Thrall of Pazuzu.

So first question: are you giving it Flyby or not?

Next is Skills.

For some reason, the Anointed only has Arcana & History, while the regular Thrall of Pazuzu has Deception, Insight & Persuasion. That's more in line with the original prestige class's focus on tricking saps into surrendering their souls to Pazuzu.

So maybe add one of the Anointed's proposed skills to the basic Thrall's selection.

How does "Arcana, Deception, Insight, Persuasion" strike you?

 

[Casimir Liber]

yes to flyby

"Arcana, Deception, Insight, Persuasion" sounds fine

 

[Cleon]

yes to flyby

"Arcana, Deception, Insight, Persuasion" sounds fine

Updated the Exalted Thrall of Pazuzu.

 

[Casimir Liber]

Ok so spells I had these...but some like magic missle could be swapped out pretty easily.

Cantrips (at will): friends, light, poison spray, prestidigitation, vicious mockery

1st level (4 slots): command, inflict wounds, magic missile, shield of faith

2nd level (3 slots): dust devil, hold person

3rd level (3 slots): counterspell, stinking cloud, wind wall

4th level (3 slots): dominate beast (flying only), giant insect (flying only)

5th level (1 slot): infernal calling (but summons a vrock)

Then attacks - do we give it 3 attacks or is that a bit Fighter-y when it's a spellcaster....?

 

[Cleon]

Ok so spells I had these...but some like magic missle could be swapped out pretty easily.

Cantrips (at will): friends, light, poison spray, prestidigitation, vicious mockery

1st level (4 slots): command, inflict wounds, magic missile, shield of faith

2nd level (3 slots): dust devil, hold person

3rd level (3 slots): counterspell, stinking cloud, wind wall

4th level (3 slots): dominate beast (flying only), giant insect (flying only)

5th level (1 slot): infernal calling (but summons a vrock)

The spells up to 3rd-level look fine to me, but the higher level ones are problematic.

Firstly, dominate beast (flying only) overlaps with its Enslave Aerial Creature" ability, which does the same thing except it affects any type of flying creature rather than just flying beasts.

That seems redundant.

Secondly, I don't believe infernal calling is an SRD spell and, even if it was, I would be against having the Exalted Thrall summon a Vrock unless you want to seriously boost the Challenge Rating.

If the thrall's Challenge incorporates a CR 6 Vrock and three to nine CR 1 Demon Locust Swarms it's going to end up at a CR higher than the +3 Proficiency Bonus band we're currently aiming at.

Thirdly, I'm fine with giant insect, since it summons roughly CR 3 worth of creatures. That's basically the same as the three CR 1 demonic locust swarms its Breath of Pazreal conjures so should be more-or-less balanced.

That said, I would rather use "(wasp only)" instead of (flying only) since they're the only flying insect option for the SRD giant insect.

Come to think of it, we statted up a giant horsefly for 5E. How about adding that as an alternative giant insect?

Something like "giant insect (wasps or flies*)" with the asterisk linking to a note saying "The exalted thrall's giant insect spell can transform up to five wasps or three flies. A fly becomes a giant horsefly (see Giant Tabanid for statistics)."

Now I'm tempted to add "ten giant locusts" as an option, but we'd have to stat those up.

As far as I know there isn't an official 5E Giant Locust, although they do exist in earlier editions of D&D.

 

[Cleon]

I've been thinking over how to upgrade (or should that be "exalt"?) the thrall's various powers, and realized that to keep things balanced the thrall's Breath of Pazreal really needs to require Concentration and preferably have a rule restricting how many swarms can attack the same target.

If not, the Exalted Thrall will be able to have nine demonic locust swarms attacking at the same time as it makes its own attacks. Plus the Swarm trait as written does not put any limit on how many swarms you can have in the same space ("The swarm can occupy another creature's space and vice versa") meaning all nine swarms would be able to attack the same opponent.

Nine swarms each doing 4d6 damage is 126 (36d6) damage, which is a bit too nasty for the Challenge 7 or 8 creature we're aiming for!

While I suppose we could make it so it only requires Concentration for MULTIPLE demonic locust swarms to spare me from having to reedit the regular Thrall of Pazuzu, I'd rather do so for the sake of consistency and simplicity.

So I propose changing the Thrall of Pazuzu so its Breath of Pazreal is "The swarm vanishes back to the lower aerial kingdoms after 6 rounds or if the thrall loses concentration."

 

[Casimir Liber]

ok fair points all....ditching dominate beast and infernal calling and amending giant insect, and adopting pink text above

 

[Cleon]

ok fair points all....ditching dominate beast and infernal calling and amending giant insect,

Will add the spells to the Exalted Thrall of Pazuzu in the next update.

Except for shield of faith as I'm replacing that with mage armor.

We've still got one 4th-level and one 5th-level spell to assign. Any ideas?

and adopting pink text above

After further consideration, I now prefer:

The swarm vanishes back to the lower aerial kingdoms after 6 rounds. If a thrall of pazuzu stops concentration on Pazrael's Breath, the swarm vanishes at the start of the thrall's next turn."
​

The reason being that phrasing means that the thrall can use Pazrael's Breath when it already has a Concentration ability active and get one round's worth of combat from the swarm. As written, it'll have to drop anything it's concentrating on to get any work out of its Demonic Locust Swarm.

For the improved Exalted version of the Pazrael's Breath, I'm thinking the multiple uses could also have Recharge 5-6 so on average they go off every three rounds. Also toying with the idea of having a missing round of concentration only causing one of the Exalted Thrall's three swarms to vanish, so it can go 3/2/1 swarms without Concentration.

Have to think about how that'd balance out.

 

[Cleon]

Also, remember I was tempted to stat up a giant locust?