Level Up (A5E) Monster preview thread!

[Stalker0]

The grab addition is really nice because it makes zombies better minions. Even a mass of zombies might not do much damage to a fighter due to a low attack roll, but even one grab can really mess the fighter up, and force him to give up an attack to escape. That is good minioning!

I also like the swarm and its style.... but I cannot see how that's a CR 4. All of its stats: HP, AC, attack, damage are too low for a base CR 4....and then you factor in its vulnerabilities to bludgeoning and area attacks. I get a CR 2 at best (and that's even if you assume the zombie gets a full bite on turns 2 and 3 for healing), even with a couple of regular zombies added to the mix at the end I think the most you could say this is CR 3.... unless you all have changed the CR math on the low end of the monster spectrum.

 

[King Brad]

So, my campaign's necromancer bad guy gets a dragon mount. Nice.

 

[Zaukrie]

this might be the one that gets me to buy this book also.......well done on grab and horde.

 

[tetrasodium]

I love the return of multiple CRs of zombies to have a good selection of popcorn/filler & beefy threats.

 

[Nebulous]

I also like the swarm and its style.... but I cannot see how that's a CR 4. All of its stats: HP, AC, attack, damage are too low for a base CR 4....and then you factor in its vulnerabilities to bludgeoning and area attacks. I get a CR 2 at best (and that's even if you assume the zombie gets a full bite on turns 2 and 3 for healing), even with a couple of regular zombies added to the mix at the end I think the most you could say this is CR 3.... unless you all have changed the CR math on the low end of the monster spectrum.

Maybe Stalker, looking closer at the grab and bite, on a Crit, the horde is doing max of 65 damage (the grab) or up to max on crit with bite, 105 damage, and healing that immediately to the horde. Even without a crit that can be some serious damage. I can't think of anything that low CR that can dish that much damage off hand, CR 3 or lower. Maybe I'm wrong. Just a thought. I can see the players faces though when I tell them that horde they nearly killed just healed 75 points back to max hit points and keep coming. I don't know the LU auto-death rules, but a lower level party could be insta-killed by damage like that, no death saves.

 

[Stalker0]

Maybe Stalker, looking closer at the grab and bite, on a Crit, the horde is doing max of 65 damage (the grab) or up to max on crit with bite, 105 damage, and healing that immediately to the horde. Even without a crit that can be some serious damage.

It is absolutely possible they made some CR adjustments for low level creatures due to their new crit rules, or perhaps thought the grab was worth more. But even the healing of the attack is not all that crazy. A normal CR 4 has ~120 hp and that's with an AC of 14. This thing is dirt easy to hit, and any party with even just a club lying around is going to do double damage to this creature due to its bludgeoning vulnerability.

The healing looks really scary until you realize it takes a minimum of two rounds to activate that (and that's minimum, with a +3 attack you don't have a great chance to hit the party wizard let alone the front line, so statistically it will take more like 3 rounds to get a bite in), and meanwhile the party is going to be doing double damage in a lot of cases and are nigh guaranteed to hit... this horde will actually go down very quickly.

Don't get me wrong, I think its a cool monster, I just don't see it holding up to a CR4 weight class. CR 3 I could believe, CR2 this thing would be solidly scary, but 4 is pushing it.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Now THOSE are Zombies!

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

It is absolutely possible they made some CR adjustments for low level creatures due to their new crit rules, or perhaps thought the grab was worth more. But even the healing of the attack is not all that crazy. A normal CR 4 has ~120 hp and that's with an AC of 14. This thing is dirt easy to hit, and any party with even just a club lying around is going to do double damage to this creature due to its bludgeoning vulnerability.

The healing looks really scary until you realize it takes a minimum of two rounds to activate that (and that's minimum, with a +3 attack you don't have a great chance to hit the party wizard let alone the front line, so statistically it will take more like 3 rounds to get a bite in), and meanwhile the party is going to be doing double damage in a lot of cases and are nigh guaranteed to hit... this horde will actually go down very quickly.

Don't get me wrong, I think its a cool monster, I just don't see it holding up to a CR4 weight class. CR 3 I could believe, CR2 this thing would be solidly scary, but 4 is pushing it.

I don’t know if there are statistics for how common bludgeoning weapons are, but I know no one in my group has one! I would think with the popularity of swords, double damage would be less common than you seem to think

 

[PauloR]

I can't see why zombie horde is vulnerable to bludgeon weapons while zombies are not. Is there a reason for that? If anything, I think the hordes should be vulnerable to big swiping weapons like great axes, clubs and swords. Have you ever considered "vulnerable to heavy weapons"?

 

[tetrasodium]

I can't see why zombie horde is vulnerable to bludgeon weapons while zombies are not. Is there a reason for that? If anything, I think the hordes should be vulnerable to big swiping weapons like great axes, clubs and swords. Have you ever considered "vulnerable to heavy weapons"?

I'm kinda wondering too. used to be that zombies had a dr5/slash with skeletons dr5/bludgeoning. o5e skeleton is vulnerable bludgeoning but zombie has no vuln. I could see a "destroy the brain" reasoning if it was attached to all but only the hoard feels odd even if it's because of weapon changes we don't know about