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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 9573717" data-attributes="member: 6677017">Monster 2: Yuki-on-naFor this monster, I'll be converting a monster from 2e and 3.0e. Converting monsters can actually be more difficult than making new ones, so we'll see how long it takes.Along with that thought, I'm not going to bother with organizing steps this time. I may try to work up some more concise and accessible steps for monster creation, and using different tactics might help with that. For this monster, I'm just going to do it in whatever order makes sense to me at the moment, but I'll tell you what I'm doing so you can follow along. That being said, I may call out some steps or other monster creation rules in an unorganized manner as I go through them.The yuki-on-na is found in the 2e Kara-Tur appendix of the Monstrous Compendium, and the 3.0e Oriental Adventures supplement (which gets it's name from a 1e supplement which did not includes this monster, and therefore is not used for this conversion).The first step to creating any monster is to look at existing similar monsters for reference. To find similar monsters, you really need a way to look them up by CR, and preferably something that can be sorted by size and type. Those three elements are the most important reference elements for finding similar monsters.Since it's a converted monster, and I want to convert over the same concept, I need to find it's CR (or HD/experience granted) in previous editions, and then find similar monsters with the same CR that also exist in 5e and compare their CRs.The yuki-on-na is CR 4 in 3e, and 2,000 xp in 2e. My thought for 5e fey in that general ballpark is some of the hags, so I start by looking up hags in 3e. The sea hag is CR 4 and 1,400 xp, and the green hag is CR 5 and 4,000 xp, so the sea hag is an exact match for CR, size, and type. (Note, you have to take xp with a grain of salt in 2e, and also look at HD, but I'm only using it for a ballpark idea, so we don't have to worry too much about that.) In 5e, sea hag is CR 2, and green hag is CR 3. So we are looking at a CR 2 monster in 5e.You may also want to look up monsters with a similar concept, even if they differ in CR, size or type. In this case, I want to take a look at dryad, since it's the closest fit, and mayber satyr, since there aren't a lot of fey in 5e. I'm also going to take a look at those high-level eladrin lord things in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, since there is a winter one there. In 3.0e the dryad is CR 1, but in 3.5e it is CR 3, so a pretty big boost. The 5e dryad is CR 1, which would probably convert to somewhere between the 3.0 and 3.5 version. We'll that's a bit of a mess. The 2e dryad is only 975 xp. 3e satyr is CR 2-4 (depending on pipes) and 2e satyr is 975 xp. In 5e, our satyr comes in at a pathetic CR 1/2, with no mention of what the optional pipes would do to that. I already know that those super eladrin are CR 10, and there is no point in looking them up yet.The most accurate 5e conversion would have me making them a CR 2 creature: that would give it the same CR as the sea hag in both editions. Dryad was a lower CR in all previous editions, and with it being CR 1 in 5e, in fits right into place.But...here's where I'm going to not be as accurate as I could be for my own reasons. I think a lot of the MM manuals in 5e need higher CRs to stack up properly to the monsters from other 5e sources, which tend to have higher CRs relative to MM monsters than they did in previous editions. Ie, they artificially inflated the CR of monsters that came out in later books, which throws off the balance between them. Sometimes monsters that were actually supposed to be weaker in previous editions were made stronger because they came out after the MM and they wanted to make higher CR monsters. All of that to say that I'm going to be personally increasing the power of many MM monsters (including the dryad). And, just because I want yuki-on-na to be less of a pushover, I want them to have a higher CR relative to other monsters than they did even in 3e and 2e. So with that consideration: I'm making my 5e yuki-on-na CR 3. That puts them on par with the green hag currently, and maybe they'll be on par with the sea hag later if I buff them. We'll see.Figure out what special features you want to convert and add. The 2e and 3e yuki-on-na have a paralyzing gaze (limited to one creature per round), and at will spells that would convert to the 5e spells: disguise self, comprehend languages, and detect thoughts. It also has a 1e spell, know history, which is kind of a 1st level member of the legend lore family. They also have an ability to cause a creature to get lost by touching them. They have an icy touch that deals what would have been good damage in 2e. She's also immune to cold and vulnerable to fire.I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm going to do with the know history part, but the rest of it will probably convert over fairly easily to 5e.But am I satisfied? Nope, I want more. My first thoughts are that I'd like her to have some sort of snow-themed misty step kind of ability. My second thought is that I'd like her to be able to conjure up highly localized snow storms (in combat time), and maybe be able to affect weather outside of combat time (unsure of that).Here is where I'm going to do a quick once over of those other creatures I looked up for comparison to see if there are any ideas for special abilities in there. 3.5e dryads have that minimal fey cold iron damage reduction, which isn't really well represented in 5e fey, but the winter eladrin have fey step, some spells worth glancing at, and a sorrowful presence I might look at. They also share magic resistance with satyrs (who otherwise have nothing of interest). Hags aren't going to be terribly useful here, though Illusory Appearance seems like a good stat-block way to represent the disguise self sort of ability.What I'm going to figure out right now is how to represent here snow conjuring features. Sleet storm looks like it could work with a bit of refluffing to make it blinding snow rather than sleet. The air elemental has a whirlwind attack that also has some merit. For non-combat blizzards, control weather or a feature based on it is the way to go.So here's what she should have so far:Cold ImmunityParalyzing GazeIcy TouchLose the WayFey StepIllusory AppearanceInnate Spellcasting: comprehend languages, detect thoughtsCombat snow stormMaybe Fire VulnerabilityMaybe Magic ResistanceMaybe control weather or similarMake the features you can. I don't think there is anything there that I can't make before knowing the rest of the stat-block, so I'm going to get to work on them immediately. I'll start with the ones that seem the easiest to figure out, and finish up with the harder ones.For the paralyzing gaze, the yeti has an extremely similar feature. I'm going to take out the damage and switch it to a Wisdom save for the more mystical element, and this is what I get:Paralyzing Gaze (Action). The yuki-on-na targets one creature it can see within 30 feet of it. If the target can see the yuki-on-na, the target must succeed on a a DC ??? Wisdom saving throw against this magic or be paralyzed for 1 minute. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If the target’s saving throw is successful, or if the effect ends on it, the target is immune to this yuki-on-na’s gaze for 1 hour.For Fey Step, I want to give it a rider, and I look at the PC eladrin rules for inspiration. I also like the idea that this is easier to use in a snowstorm. The lore says they normally appear in snowstorms, and I want mechanical ways to make that their ideal option.Winter’s Step (Recharge 5-6). The yuki-on-na dissolves into whirling snow and reforms up to 30 feet away in an unoccupied space it can see. Each creature of its choice that it can see within 5 feet before it teleports takes ??? cold damage.    If the yuki-on-na starts its turn inside a snowstorm, this feature immediately recharges.Illusory appearance is a straightforward conversion, though I'm not sure I want to leave it as a bonus action to end. I see her dropping it at the start of combat, and she might have other combat things to do with that bonus action. We don't want her to be stuck disguised rather than having the cool reveal, just because it's mechanically disadvantageous to literally give up her disguise! I put in some other end conditions that should cover using any of her supernatural abilities.Illusory Appearance (Action). The yuki-on-na covers itself and anything it is wearing or carrying with a magical illusion that makes it look like another creature of its general size and humanoid shape. The illusion ends if the yuki-on-na takes a bonus action to end it, makes an attack roll, deals damage, forces a creature to make a saving throw, or if it dies.    The changes wrought by this effect fail to hold up to physical inspection. Otherwise, a creature must take an action to visually inspect the illusion and succeed on a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check to discern that the yuki-on-na is disguised.For her innate spellcasting, I took some inspiration from dryad and threw in druidcraft. I also limited the frequency of control weather, because I don't want it to be something she can use regularly. They often rely on existing blizzards.Innate Spellcasting. The yuki-on-na’s innate spellcasting ability is ??? (spell save DC ???). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:At-will: druidcraft, comprehend languages, detect thoughts1/day: confusion (see below)1/week: control weatherLose the way is tricky. In both editions it was an automatic effect. It's written in a non-combat sort of way, but seems like it should also have combat effects. I had to put a bit of work into it, but here's what I came up with.Lose the Way (1/Day). The yuki-on-na touches a creature under the effect of its confusion spell and causes them to become completely unable to find their way anywhere for the next 24 hours. During this time the target’s speed is reduced to 10 feet and it can’t benefit from any bonus to its speed. It automatically fails any ability checks to avoid or recover from getting lost, and cannot even find its way across a field or from one room to another by itself. It can move at its normal speed and be guided by another creature holding its hand or otherwise guiding it by physical contact. If the creature can teleport or travel to other planes, it cannot do so while under this effect.    This effect can be ended early by a remove curse spell.Icy Touch and Combat Snowstorm are the features that are going to have the biggest effect on her DPR, so we'll postpone those for now and move on to the next part.Figure out the creature's basic stats. I'm going to figure out most of the other stuff in the statblock here, and I don't anticipate having a lot to slow me down at this point. A few things may need tweaked later.Ability scores are a part that requires some work. 5e dryads brought over their 3e ability scores exactly, with the exception of Dexterity. 3.0 and 3.5 differed on Dex, but in 5e they had her use barkskin so they gave her a lower Dex to fit the AC they wanted. Hags didn't stick with 3e nearly as much, for the same reason that dryads have different Dex: they needed to adjust stats for the 5e combat math. However, the green hag just got some straight up buffs. Since I'm making my yuki-on-na be a more powerful 5e creature than she was a 3e creature, I also might boost some stats.Medium fey, chaotic good or chaotic evilAC 17 (see below)Speed 30 feetStr 10  Dex 16  Con 10  Int 15  Wis 16  Cha 19Damage Vulnerabilities fireDamage Immunities coldSkills Stealth +5Senses darkvision 60 feet, passive perception 13Languages Common, Spirit TongueChallenge 3 (700 XP)While the monster eladrin just get ridiculously high natural armor to represent their supernatural protective abilities, I'm not sure I like it being conceptually written that way for this delicate creature. Instead I'm going to take a page from cambion and give her this:Spirit’s Blessing. The yuki-on-na’s armor class includes her Charisma bonus.To go along with the lore about hiding in the snow, I gave her Stealth (no other skills seemed necessary), and this feature adapted from Wood Elf:Snowy Veil. The yuki-on-na can attempt to hide even when only lightly obscured by falling snow.Damage vulnerability is normally to be avoided even if previous edition lore or rules might have given it, but in this case, I actually think she's a prime candidate for fire vulnerability. However, that does weaken her, and I'm going to give her Magic Resistance to help offset it.Magic Resistance. The yuki-on-na has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.You can substitute Sylvan for Spirit Tongue if you want your languages simpler.As I moved on I realized she didn't have any reaction, and I really, really want her to have a reaction. The obvious choice is to move her WInter's Step to a reaction, but I would rather keep it under her control. A thought finally came to me that letting her cast her 1/day confusion as a reaction would be a great way to make sure it gets used without sacrificing damage for the round. I decided to make the trigger be something that almost certainly will come up unless creative PCs know about it and take steps to fight differently, and seems appropriate. So attacks cause it, but damaging her by other means, such as failed saving throws, don't.Maiden’s Lament (Reaction). When the yuki-on-na is hit by an attack it casts confusion, using its daily casting of the spell.At this point, I basically have everything except hit points and her attack/damage dealing features--the stuff that needs to be adjusted to fit her intended CR.Figure out that math. Now I'm going to make those CR determining features. I can start by just getting her a defensive CR of 3, since I see her as a rather balanced type, not particularly higher in offense or defense. I might have to adjust it later if the offense feels off, but I think that's where I will start.Determine what features affect the defensive CR determination. I know that Magic Resistance raises her effective AC by 2. One would think the yeti's chilling gaze (and thus the yuki-on-na's paralyzing gaze) would have an effect on the CR, since taking an opponent out of the fight for a round reduces incoming damage. This is where I have to get creative, because there is a blind spot in the MM on this. If I figure a character will save out of the paralysis on their first or second try, that means paralyzing a creature is probably worth removing a 1.5 rounds of its damage output. Depending on how often you can use this feature over the course of three rounds should determine how much additional effective hp you should consider the monster to have.In the case of the yeti, who can and should use this feature every round, I calculate it as giving the yeti an effective +25% hp. In the yeti's case, this doesn't move its hp to a different line, and so has no actual effect. Allowing the yuki-on-na to use this feature as part of a multi-attack routine each round makes a lot of sense and will probably be needed for her offensive CR, so we can use the same number here. There are no other features that affect defensive CR.The yuki-on-na's special features mean for purposes of determining her defensive CR we treat her as having 25% more hit points than she actually has, and treat her AC as if it 2 higher (ie, AC 19).Set hp for desired defensive CR. So now we just need to determine her hit points to get that CR of 3. With her high effective AC and extra effective hit points, we know we're using a line below CR 3 for hp. They all have an AC of 13 listed, which means we can determine how much her AC shifts that: 19-13 = 6; 6/2= 3 levels higher. If her hp are in the 1/2 column, then that would work. We just need to make sure that (like the yeti) those 25% extra effective hp don't move her to the next row. That means we just need her hit points at 56 or under, which with d8s (for medium size) averaging 4.5 per HD and no Con bonus, means 12d8 gives us 54 hit points, which is an effective hp of 67.5.Hit points 54 (12d8)Determine what features affect the offensive CR determination. Before I continued with this, I had to figure out how to do her snow storm conjuring. I'm getting sort of tired and need to do some other stuff, so I just gave her sleet storm 1/day with a note to fluff it a bit differently, and added it into her "cast as a reaction" spells. There is no particular reason you couldn't have the spellcasting be a bonus action and the Winter's Step a reaction, but I like it better this way for some reason. These spells don't deal damage, which means we'll have to determine how much damage they would deal if they were damaging spells. Using the 2024 DMG guidelines (a bit better than the 2014 ones), a 4th level spell does about 33 damage, and a 2nd level spell does about 17 damage. So this means that she is treated as putting out an additional 50 damage over the course of the encounter, which we need to take account of when determining the damage of her actions and bonus actions.Her attack bonus and saving throw DCs are going to be based on Charisma so it's +6 attack, and DC 14. I've got a feeling that her damage will rely more on saves than attack rolls, which will mean that we won't have adjust the damage line.Other than the 50 "effective damage" from those spells, nothing is affecting offensive CR.However, as I started running numbers, I came up with a problem. There is too much "effective damage" and not enough real damage. Confusion and sleet storm are great, but it doesn't matter how much you mess with your foes if you can't actually do enough damage to win. Granted, you shouldn't use only one monster in 5e. However, almost completely relying on minions and allies to deal damage isn't really good monster design. If I give her a reasonable amount of real damage, then it is going to push her offensive CR up to 4.Now we figure out how to fix this issue. I could eliminate her Magic Resistance. Or drop her AC by 2 (removing the Spirit's Blessing feature and just giving her natural armor). But a better solution would probably be to take away the ability to cast those spells as reactions, and leave them as something she'd have to commit her action to doing. Hmm...running more numbers, there isn't any way around it. I'm going to have to do something to reduce her defensive CR down to 2. Dropping her hp enough to get her into CR 2 territory with the extra effective 25% hp, would leave her at 36 hp, and I'm not comfortable going that low. If I lower her AC by 1 point, I can keep everything else as-is. So let's drop her 16 Dex down to 15, and her AC to 16. Now her defensive CR is 2, and there is more space to work with for offense. But if I remove the ability to cast spells with anything but an action, she'll be giving up one use of Paralyzing Gaze to cast confusion (sleet storm will be worth less than her attack routine and so it won't be involved in the calculations, but is a situationally useful option), which means that her effective hp are no longer increased by as much. Now it's more like a 15% increase. That would still require her to have less hp than I'd like if we dropped to the CR 1/4 line, so I'm going to leave everything else the same, except I can raise her hp a bit to 58.Set damage output for desired offensive CR. I'm changing Lose the Way to a bonus action, because otherwise it is never worth using. It is weak enough that it isn't going to have any effect on her CR. Now that that is taken care of and we have an offensive CR 4 to work with, we can figure out how this is going to work. A larger percentage of her damage actually is going to end up being from her Icy Touch attack, so that means we need to use the CR 3 damage line. The maximum damage over the course of three rounds is 78. Subtracting 33 for an opening confusion leaves us with 22.5 damage for each remaining round. The damage from Winter's Step also needs to be included, and with a recharge 5-6 we can assume it isn't going to recharge, so she get's one use in those 3 rounds.Icy Touch. Melee Spell Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d10) cold damage.Winter’s Step (Recharge 5-6). The yuki-on-na dissolves into whirling snow and reforms up to 30 feet away in an unoccupied space it can see. Each creature of its choice that it can see within 5 feet before it teleports takes 11 (2d10) cold damage.    If the yuki-on-na starts its turn inside a natural snowstorm (including one created by control weather), this feature immediately recharges.I'm using d10s because the original used those numbers, and there's no reason not to. Multi-target effects are assumed to hit 2 creatures, so Winter's Step does 22 damage in the fight. She uses Icy Touch along with Paralyzing gaze as a multiattack each of the other two turns, dealing a total of 22 more damage. I could have instead had Icy Touch deal 3d10 damage, and Winter's Step only deal 1d10 for exactly the same mathematical results. However, I just don't see her at-will physical attack doing a crazy amount of damage like that. She is very much a finesse monster, designed to make use of multiple features and interactions.Finish up the rest. At this point, if I weren't converting an existing creature, I'd write up lore to go along with her, but since I already have the lore in two books, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. The only other thing I can think of is that I'd still really like to give her a reaction, but I don't have the "budget" left for one that affects her CR, since she's already sitting pretty high on CR 3. I can, however, give her a feature that is useful but not useful enough to affect her CR. Oh, and giving her a ranged attack wouldn't go horribly amiss if I can swing it.Got it. You'll see them in the write up. Note that while I gave her ray of frost for concept, it is only dealing 1d8 damage and can't be used with Paralyzing Gaze, and is therefore an inferior option only to be used as a backup.[ATTACH=full]395056[/ATTACH]You can see some little changes that I made. I improved Snowy Veil and Icy Touch. I changed the language for ending Illusory Appearance so that forcing targets to make saves with detect thoughts doesn't end it, but Paralyzing Gaze does. Instead of the know history thing, I gave her Insight.I wrote the language up as gender-neutral like the monsters in the 2024 MM in case anyone wants other-gendered yuki-on-na (though I like keeping them with a strong gender-identity).She is a complicated opponent. If you run into her by herself (not mechanically recommended, but lore-wise, should probably happen sometimes--though the 2e version lists "No. Appearing" as 1-3) and start a fight, she's going to open with confusion. Then, on this round or the next, she's going to use her bonus action to get up into the faces of as many people at once as she can and use Winter's Step to damage them and get out of range. The sooner she uses it the more likely she'll luck out and get a recharge. On subsequent rounds she will use Paralyzing Gaze and then move up and Icy Touch someone. Wind's Escape will help her get away from an attacker that she just slowed down with Icy Touch. She's supposed to be mobile and flitting around the battlefield. She relies on decent AC for her defense. I just now went back and made her immune to environmental effects and difficult terrain related to cold, snow, and ice, which means she is basically immune to all of the drawbacks of sleet storm and can operate inside it unhindered while others are blind, slow, slipping, and losing their concentration. It's possible that this completely throws off all of my balancing, since it presents an entirely new way for her to fight. It does, however, mean she's casting that instead of casting confusion, and it's probably not any stronger than confusion, even with her immunity to the effects, so we're probably okay (if in doubt, leave out that last sentence of Snowy Veil). It gives her an interesting alternate option for starting a fight, or even more useful, an option for fleeing from a fight.I also think a fight against 2 or 3 yuki-on-nas would be quite interesting and challenging.I'm personally a fan of yuki-on-na's. I like how 3e expanded the alignment options from just CE to also CG. You could also open them up to "any Chaotic", but I'm not sure that's needed on the typical alignment line. There is always the possibility of a different alignment than listed anyway. Because I'm a fan of the concept, I put a lot of cool stuff in, rather than going with only a conversion, and I increased the CR one level beyond what a strict conversion should do to it.(And, there is no way in heck I could have done this without the monster creation rules in the 2014 DMG <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />)</blockquote>

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