Dodkong minions

[Cleon]

(NB: rather than make a new nightcrawler from scratch, do any of the existing ones look internally coherent/interesting according to 5e rules.

Will have to get back to you on that. There's an awful lot of them to consider!

What Challenge Rating of Nightcrawler are you aiming for?

 

[Cleon]

In the meantime I have the wraith to polish

Okay, I see this is different from the version in the first post on this thread.

Let's see… STR 10 looks awful low. It may be a wraith but it's still a giant!

It feels a bit odd for the Wraith to have a few more hit points than the Wight, considering a wight is a lot more physically substantial than a wraith. Still, it's in keeping with the AD&D monsters (wraiths have had more HD and HP since they were first statted) so it's appropriate. It just seems… odd?

Well I guess undead are so unnatural it doesn't matter!

Its attacks would be +8 to hit not +7, with DEX +3 and a +5 Proficiency Bonus.

Shouldn't its Rend the Veil summon spectres rather than shadows? It has no way to create shadows.

Incidentally, do you have any idea why Spectres are so weedy in 5E? In earlier editions they were MORE powerful than Wraiths, not less.

Will have to play around with the CR Calculator to see if those numbers check out.

It's those blinking Ring Wraiths spreading disinformation if you ask me.

 

[Casimir Liber]

Wight rejigged to here

Re nightcrawler, I can be flexible. CR will be high (aiming for higher than nightwalker but not strongly). If any one of the existing homebrew 'works' and has all internally consistent numbers then that is a big plus.

With wraith, have buffed the ST to 16, adjusted the to hit bonus...and pondering the rend the veil - my initial rationale was that the wraith creates spectres but (like the wight), when it makes a hole, the first responders are shadows....? Could make them spectres though - like auto-coalescing of lost souls on the shadowfell...?

Update: actually changed to spectres as this simplifies how many critters it might get to control.

 

[Casimir Liber]

How about this as a wraith special ability

Shadowy Dodge. The stone giant wraith can dodge in unforeseen ways, with wisps of supernatural shadow around it. Whenever a creature makes an attack roll against it and doesn’t have advantage on the roll, it can use his reaction to impose disadvantage on it. It must use this feature before knowing the outcome of the attack roll.

 

[Cleon]

Apart from those errors I noticed a few differences in the wording of the D&D Beyond version above to the Enworld Stone Giant Wight, which I've just edited to match.

Nothing important. The Camouflage and Rock Catching has "stone giant wight" rather than "giant."

Wight rejigged to here

OK, I just re-rejigged the Stone Giant Wight's Camouflage & Catching abilities. I'd already edited the "stone giant wight" to "giant" and now they're back to ""stone giant wight" again!

Never mind, they both match now!

Re nightcrawler, I can be flexible. CR will be high (aiming for higher than nightwalker but not strongly). If any one of the existing homebrew 'works' and has all internally consistent numbers then that is a big plus.

Well I've glanced through all the ones on the link you sent. Two of them aren't the Nightshade Nightcrawler so can be excluded (the Faerunian Nightcrawler and the Ooze One). Of the rest, I noticed inconsistent numbers for all of them just from checking the save DCs and CRs and seeing if they matched up.

Didn't care for the interpretations by SadHorizon (no special vision, too low AC, skills & mental stats, bit simplistic) and Brock1990 (wouldn't make it a regular spellcaster, shouldn't speak).

As for the rest:

The Lyxen Nightcrawler has too low an AC, but is overall pretty true to the original. Perhaps too true. The Limited Magic Immunity trait doesn't seem right for a 5E conversion. Why not just give it the Fifth Edition version of globe of invulnerability? I like that it's got the Reduction Curse like the original monster, since none of the other ones do.

The Nick_Sykas Nightcrawler seems to have a Challenge Rating way higher than I eyeball it at but the other numbers appear to match up.

The Sundragon2660 Nightcrawler has the benefit of simplicity and I think covers the basic abilities you'd expect a 5E Nightcrawler to have, although it's missing some abilities of the BECMI version and some of its numbers are wonky (for example: how can its Bite have a DC 19 Dex save? Its STR +8 and Proficiency +7 should make it DC 23 or 25 depending on base; why is its spell save DC 18 when it has CHA 24 (+7)? It'd need a +4 CHA bonus to get that DC. I think Sundragon used its WIS 19 (+4) for spellcasting despite writing "The nightcrawler's innate spellcasting ability is Charisma"!).

If forced to pick, I'd probably go for Nick Skyas's version after reevaluations its CR. I'm guesstimating it as being around CR 25, but 27 is likely a bit too high.

Or we can stat one up from scratch!

 

[Casimir Liber]

Ok, in that case doing one from scratch...aiming for a CR of around 25 as a ballpark place to start...

 

[Cleon]

How about this as a wraith special ability

Shadowy Dodge. The stone giant wraith can dodge in unforeseen ways, with wisps of supernatural shadow around it. Whenever a creature makes an attack roll against it and doesn’t have advantage on the roll, it can use his reaction to impose disadvantage on it. It must use this feature before knowing the outcome of the attack roll.

Is this intended to be a Special Trait that it can apply every time it's attacked? Some of the wording suggests a Reaction, which means it'll only apply to one attack per turn sequence.

The "It must use this feature before knowing the outcome of the attack roll" suggests there's some cost or limit to its usage.

If it's free to use then why wouldn't the wraith try to dodge EVERYTHING, since it'd always either reduce the chance of an attack hitting it or make no difference.

 

[Casimir Liber]

As a reaction, it'd be like a parry so can only do once per round. Is taken from gloomwalker ranger trait - could drop the "It must use this feature before knowing the outcome of the attack roll" as it makes it less versatile than parry

 

[Cleon]

A Wraith's Life Drain DC is CON-based with a base of 10.

An SRD Wraith has CHA (+2), CON (+3), Proficiency +3, so the likely possibilities are:

Base 10 CON +3 Prof +1 => save DC 14
Base 10 CHA +2 Prof +1 => save DC 13
Base 8 CON +3 Prof +1 => save DC 12
Base 8 CHA +2 Prof +1 => save DC 11

Since its Life Drain DC is 14, only the first option makes sense.

If the Stone Giant Wraith is the same, its CON +3, Proficiency +5 makes DC 18 for its Life Drain, not 17.

It should probably have "Languages Giant" like the Stone Giant Wight.

Speaking of which, I'd suggest giving it darkvision 120 ft. like the wight. It would seem inconsistent to have the wraith only see half as far in the dark, especially considering it has explicitly "shadowy" powers.

 

[Cleon]

As a reaction, it'd be like a parry so can only do once per round. Is taken from gloomwalker ranger trait - could drop the "It must use this feature before knowing the outcome of the attack roll" as it makes it less versatile than parry

Yeah, making it a Reaction that it can use when an attack would hit it is way more useful. It's not that overpowering really, since it's likely to be ganged up on by PCs and having to deal with more than one attack in a round.

It could certainly do with something to improve its defenses. That AC is pretty abyssmal for its CR.