D&D 5E Enworld Vecna Battles, Commentary

[MonsterEnvy]

His AoE feature (flight of the damned) is pretty weak. @MonsterEnvy used in the first scenario to limited effect and I've never bothered with it. It is great for dealing with a lot of peons, but against high level PCs it is sort of sad IMO.

If he can hit the whole party and they are not Paladin immune to fear it can be pretty helpful.

 

[DND_Reborn]

But in theory one way Vecna counters is with his invisibility.

Another is with a simple shield spell. Boosting his AC by 5 makes a HUGE difference in the potential damage output of those two fighters. Couple that with invisibility or better yet improved invisibility and they are in a world of hurt.

 

[Stalker0]

Another is with a simple shield spell. Boosting his AC by 5 makes a HUGE difference in the potential damage output of those two fighters. Couple that with invisibility or better yet improved invisibility and they are in a world of hurt.

sure but I was going back to the "standard vecna" just to discuss what he can do.

 

[Sulicius]

Another is with a simple shield spell. Boosting his AC by 5 makes a HUGE difference in the potential damage output of those two fighters. Couple that with invisibility or better yet improved invisibility and they are in a world of hurt.

I really wished you could make a “squishy” boss like the published Vecna work without giving him spells that are obviously good on anything. I would rather give him some more HP and the Book of Vile Darkness (as a DM you can get up to +3 ac out of it, if you want).

I very much dislike the shield spell, and that it is the best spell in the game because it’s relevant from level 1 to level 20 in any game that involves getting hit with attack rolls. It is so centralizing to the game that every character picks it up, or even goes to great lengths to acquire it through multiclassing. I rather ban or nerf the spell that giving ALL monsters the shield spell because it is the only way to have spellcasters make sense.

For Vecna specifically, he already has a reaction that should work against martials, the teleport. Sadly the original adventure just tosses Vecna in a white room to get blasted down. Isn’t it more interesting to have Vecna do something different?

 

[MarkB]

• I think the key to Vecna is in giving him time to let his teleport heal go to work, and there are many ways to craft a lair to do that. For example, vecna could teleport himself behind a wall (with a small hole for sight) with some prisoners chained to the wall. You kill the prisoners and heal up, now behind almost complete cover. Suddenly Vecna becomes insanely scary, he can move to places in his lair that is hard for a party without a heavy amount of teleportation to get to, and with proper minions and prisoners around, can recover from anything short of a major party offensive nuke.

It's worth noting that the healing teleport doesn't require a living target, so if you want to get really cheesy Vecna could target one of his own Shadows to trigger the healing effect.

 

[Greg Benage]

Good write up. Other than the fact that they've pulled all the rules support out from under these stat blocks, my main criticism is that he plays more like Kas than Vecna, flitting around, denying magic-use, and stabbing people to death. The second fight was cooler because he got to use his one control spell.

 

[Charlaquin]

Good write up. Other than the fact that they've pulled all the rules support out from under these stat blocks, my main criticism is that he plays more like Kas than Vecna, flitting around, denying magic-use, and stabbing people to death. The second fight was cooler because he got to use his one control spell.

Now that you mention it… change “Afterthought” to “Sword of Kas,” change the weapon damage to 1d8 slashing and the necrotic damage to 1d12 (same max, same average, 1 lower minimum, and slightly more weighted towards physical damage) and you’ve got a pretty solid Kas stat block.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Good write up. Other than the fact that they've pulled all the rules support out from under these stat blocks, my main criticism is that he plays more like Kas than Vecna, flitting around, denying magic-use, and stabbing people to death. The second fight was cooler because he got to use his one control spell.

Ehh Kas strikes me as more of an in your face warrior, no big blastly stuff like Vecna has.

And what do you mean pulled out rules support.

 

[Greg Benage]

And what do you mean pulled out rules support.

Just what @Stalker0 said. D&D has special abilities with a whole body of rules about how they work. They're called spells. They've now discarded those rules by making these not-spells and the result is a lot of confusion about how they should work in play. I think they could rectify this in 5.5 or 6 by creating a new set of rules for them...but why? If the goal is to simplify and streamline, it ain't doing that IMO.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I really wished you could make a “squishy” boss like the published Vecna work without giving him spells that are obviously good on anything. I would rather give him some more HP and the Book of Vile Darkness (as a DM you can get up to +3 ac out of it, if you want).

I very much dislike the shield spell, and that it is the best spell in the game because it’s relevant from level 1 to level 20 in any game that involves getting hit with attack rolls. It is so centralizing to the game that every character picks it up, or even goes to great lengths to acquire it through multiclassing. I rather ban or nerf the spell that giving ALL monsters the shield spell because it is the only way to have spellcasters make sense.

For Vecna specifically, he already has a reaction that should work against martials, the teleport. Sadly the original adventure just tosses Vecna in a white room to get blasted down. Isn’t it more interesting to have Vecna do something different?

Vecna does work fine without Shield.