D&D 5E Knight Denizen 5E equivalent?

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

Hello!

So, I'm working on something for my Tyranny campaign and I came across a monster that was not transferred over to 5e...maybe. It's the Knight Denizen and I'm looking to use it's equivalent. The one that keeps popping up for it is Narzugon, but I think it's because its got the word "denizen" in its description and nothing more. I was just wondering if that is the closets equivalent or if there is another closest to it. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Quickleaf]

Is the "knight denizen" one of those weird servant-monsters of Myrkul from the 1989 AD&D Waterdeep adventure by Ed Greenwood?

Lore says they were once living, but upon death were given new forms in Hades by Myrkul, and have some connection to the Tablet of Fate that I don't know enough about. They're described as very ugly with "cask like bodies, bilious fangs, and red eyes." Oh and they fly, have darkvision, and are 8 HD (in AD&D). Their powers - which only function on Hades or near a portal to Hades - include magic resistance, damage resistance, minor regen, and fire immunity. Otherwise not much going on with them.

Yeah, Narzugon works!

 

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

Is the "knight denizen" one of those weird servant-monsters of Myrkul from the 1989 AD&D Waterdeep adventure by Ed Greenwood?

Lore says they were once living, but upon death were given new forms in Hades by Myrkul, and have some connection to the Tablet of Fate that I don't know enough about. They're described as very ugly with "cask like bodies, bilious fangs, and red eyes." Oh and they fly, have darkvision, and are 8 HD (in AD&D). Their powers - which only function on Hades or near a portal to Hades - include magic resistance, damage resistance, minor regen, and fire immunity. Otherwise not much going on with them.

Yeah, Narzugon works!

YES! that's the one! I will confess that I did get the idea from my uncle to add something in like it, to tie in some familiarity for my dad and my uncles as we play 5e. I was trying to use the WoTC table of how to convert older monsters to 5e...but honestly, they make it more confusing on top of not very clearly explaining it...it's amazing how jumbled it all is to me LOL!!! Alright, I will be using the Narzugon for it then, Thank you very much for helping me with this!

 

[Quickleaf]

YES! that's the one! I will confess that I did get the idea from my uncle to add something in like it, to tie in some familiarity for my dad and my uncles as we play 5e. I was trying to use the WoTC table of how to convert older monsters to 5e...but honestly, they make it more confusing on top of not very clearly explaining it...it's amazing how jumbled it all is to me LOL!!! Alright, I will be using the Narzugon for it then, Thank you very much for helping me with this!

Have fun killing your dad and uncles' PCs You'll do great!

 

[Stormonu]

Looks like these creatures were specific to the adventure FRE3 - Waterdeep and meant to represent the damned souls of Hades. I doubt they ever got converted. Their stats are a bit wonky, but based on that adventure being for levels 6-8 and then be encountered in groups of 2d6, this should approximate them in 5E (though they're quite underwhelming in my opinion).

@Echohawk , can you add any additional information?

Knight Denizen
medium fiend, lawful evil
---------
Armor Class 19 (natural armor)
Hit Points 66 (12d8 + 12 )
Speed 30 ft.
---------
STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA
14 (+2)| 15 (+2) | 13 (+1) | 12 (+1) | 6 (-2)
----------
Damage Resistances bludgeoning,piercing and slashing non-magical weapons, poison
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened, poisoned
Senses darkvision 60 ft, passive perception 11
Languages Infernal
Challenge 3 (700 xp) PB +2
----------
Heightened Senses. A denizen has advantage on Perception checks based on smell or taste.

Magic Resistance. A knight denizen gains advantage on saving throws against spells or other magical attacks.

Regeneration. At the start of its turn, if the Knight Denizen did not take radiant damage since its last turn, it heals 1 hit point.

Undead traits. A knight denizen does not need to breathe, eat, drink or sleep.
------------
Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: (1d6 + 2 ) slashing damage.

<edit>, fixed some resistances I missed. Also, it does look the Narzugon might be what these things were meant to be, but I wouldn't want to run into them in groups of 2d6!

 

[Stormonu]

I was trying to use the WoTC table of how to convert older monsters to 5e...but honestly, they make it more confusing on top of not very clearly explaining it...it's amazing how jumbled it all is to me LOL!!! Alright, I will be using the Narzugon for it then, Thank you very much for helping me with this!

I agree trying to convert a 1E-2E monster to 5E is confusing and a straight conversion rarely works. I've sort of figured out you start with the HD, using that for your target CR, adding 1 to the CR for every special ability the creature had. Then everything is sort of "build backwards".

My (somewhat convoluted) method

Spoiler

1) take the expected hit point for the target CR, divide by 4.5 to get the creature's new base HD*.

• If the creature has Damage Resistances, multiply the new base HD by .75.
• If the creature has Damage Immunity, multiply the new base HD by .5.
• If it's HD is more than 150% the original HD, increase your divisor by 1 until you get in that range of no more than 150%. For every increase of your divisor, treat that as a +2 to Con (max 30).

2) Subtract the target's expected Proficiency Bonus (PB) from the creature's expected Attack Bonus on the CR calculator chart. Use the difference to calculate the character's Strength or Dexterity. (10 + twice the difference)

3) Take the creature's expected damage per round and break it across the creature's old attack routine, until the average damage and expected damage per round match.

• You will probably have to get creative here, tacking on extra attacks via multiattack or damage/effect carriers to the base attack. (example, for a CR 10 creature, you want to shoot for ~66 damage per round. If the old creature had a claw/claw/bite that did 1d6/1d6/1d10 (ave 12.5 damage), you might want to add a carrier attack that deal an extra 17 damage to each attack (don't forget ability modifiers may help you get part of the way; for a CR 10 monster it would have around a 16 STR (+3), reducing the carrier attack an extra 14 damage - say a 4d6 carrier attack)
• If the creature has multiple ways to attack (like a breath weapon vs. claw/claw/bite) make sure that either method hits the expected damage per round (example, for a CR 10 creature, the breath weapon* needs to do about 66 damage on a failed save and the claw/claw/bite needs to do about 66 damage)

4) Sprinkle with features and abilities that thematically match the creatures lore and/or old abilities.

* Remember that special abilities will affect the target CR so for every special ability you need to account for consider taking off 1 HD for every 4 HD you'd normally end up with.

** Remember that area effects can hit more than one target. In those cases, assume two targets will get hit, so in the example above the breath weapon would actually need to do an average of 33 damage

I find this tool pretty helpful for building or reverse engineering monsters, but a lot of times it just flat out is easier to find a creature similar or adjacent that already exists in 5E and use it - maybe with a little reskinning.

 

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

Looks like these creatures were specific to the adventure FRE3 - Waterdeep and meant to represent the damned souls of Hades. I doubt they ever got converted. Their stats are a bit wonky, but based on that adventure being for levels 6-8 and then be encountered in groups of 2d6, this should approximate them in 5E (though they're quite underwhelming in my opinion).

@Echohawk , can you add any additional information?

Knight Denizen
medium fiend, lawful evil
---------
Armor Class 19 (natural armor)
Hit Points 66 (12d8 + 12 )
Speed 30 ft.
---------
STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA
14 (+2)| 15 (+2) | 13 (+1) | 12 (+1) | 6 (-2)
----------
Damage Resistances bludgeoning,piercing and slashing non-magical weapons, poison
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened, poisoned
Senses darkvision 60 ft, passive perception 11
Languages Infernal
Challenge 3 (700 xp) PB +2
----------
Heightened Senses. A denizen has advantage on Perception checks based on smell or taste.

Magic Resistance. A knight denizen gains advantage on saving throws against spells or other magical attacks.

Regeneration. At the start of its turn, if the Knight Denizen did not take radiant damage since its last turn, it heals 1 hit point.

Undead traits. A knight denizen does not need to breathe, eat, drink or sleep.
------------
Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: (1d6 + 2 ) slashing damage.

<edit>, fixed some resistances I missed. Also, it does look the Narzugon might be what these things were meant to be, but I wouldn't want to run into them in groups of 2d6!

Yeah...Went and read it after...I was kind of worrying about that. I'm not too sure what level everyone is going to get here by, I like the way you did this monster, also thank you SO MUCH for the tools and advice for converting, it makes it so much easier. I'm going to play around with both and see what I can convert lol. What I'm going to do is, if they are high enough level for the Narzugon, I'll run it, if not, is it alright if I run your monster you made?

 

[Stormonu]

Sure thing! If you do use it, let me know how it goes (though I'm really worried it's damage output is laughable - but it will be hard to kill!).

 

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

I definitely will if I run it! I'm not too worried about the damage, I already have a couple things in here that are going to be hard, if it's annoying for my players to a degree, that's fine by me lol. Thank you so much!

 

[Echohawk]

Looks like these creatures were specific to the adventure FRE3 - Waterdeep and meant to represent the damned souls of Hades. I doubt they ever got converted. Their stats are a bit wonky, but based on that adventure being for levels 6-8 and then be encountered in groups of 2d6, this should approximate them in 5E (though they're quite underwhelming in my opinion).

@Echohawk , can you add any additional information?

I have nothing to add to this. The denizens were definitely a one-shot monster created just for that adventure. I was about to note that I wasn't completely sold on them being a fiend and was on the fence between undead and outsider but then I saw you'd cunningly given them undead traits, which sorts that out.