D&D 5E Quests from the Infinite Staircase TOC and Zargon.

Brandes Stoddard shared the table of contents from Quests from the Infinite Staircase, along with the stats for the elder evil Zargon the Returner, over on BlueSky. Quests from the Infinite Staircase comes out on July 16th, and is an adventure anthology for character levels 1-13.

 

[Stalker0]

The Slime Wave is a decent spike. Also three Level 11 Champion Fighters can't kill him.

The slime wave does less direct damage than it’s normal attack routine.

And he’s I’ve done the math, if the fighters action surge on the first round, then attack again on the 2nd round…they get right in the ballpark of killing it

 

[JEB]

Now, something interesting is that the original links and statements on canon from the WotC website are no longer available. So is that still the SOP? IDK.

Fortunately, the Internet Archive saves the day: D&D Canon | D&D Studio Blog | Dungeons & Dragons

Though I agree, unless the policy makes an official comeback, who knows if it's still... canon?

(Seriously, though, I expect the policy would remain in place on the design side, even if not publicly acknowledged anymore. It had almost certainly been in place by the time they released 5e Ravenloft, for example, and that was months before the blog post. And Quests here clearly indicates it's still in effect...)

 

[Parmandur]

Fortunately, the Internet Archive saves the day: D&D Canon | D&D Studio Blog | Dungeons & Dragons

Though I agree, unless the policy makes an official comeback, who knows if it's still... canon?

(Seriously, though, I expect the policy would remain in place on the design side, even if not publicly acknowledged anymore. It had almost certainly been in place by the time they released 5e Ravenloft, for example, and that was months before the blog post. And Quests here clearly indicates it's still in effect...)

I think it was a bit of a design statement as that was written just as they were designing the new Core books, to set up our people thst the new Core would be a bit of a canon reboot (which we have seen presaged in the past couple years of books).

Currently tje oldD&D website is having stuff transferred over to Beyond, we'll see eventually if thst article makes it over.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The slime wave does less direct damage than it’s normal attack routine.

And he’s I’ve done the math, if the fighters action surge on the first round, then attack again on the 2nd round…they get right in the ballpark of killing it

But they can't kill it no matter how many rounds pass, not unless they have fire or ice to turn off the regen.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

not unless they have fire or ice to turn off the regen

That’s not exactly a big ask.

Should go with poison damage to shut off its regeneration. That would stymie them!

 

[Upper_Krust]

Tiamat was not really considered a god in her appearance in the Monster Manual.

Exactly, but then again neither were any of the other unique singular entities in that book. Plus the 1E Monster Manuals and Fiend Folio all preceded Deities & Demigods and the Manual of the Planes.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

That’s not exactly a big ask.

Should go with poison damage to shut off its regeneration. That would stymie them!

Well most players won't know how to turn off his regen.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well most players won't know how to turn off his regen.

But they will probably do fire and/or cold damage anyway as part of their regular attacks.

And if players notice something is regenerating fire is the very first thing they are going to try.

 

[Upper_Krust]

I hadn't heard that before. Interesting.

I was lucky enough to swap a few emails with Gary in the early 2000's.

Funny that he forced the max HP of gods from 1,000 HP down to 400 HP for Deities and Demigods.

Was not aware of that, who related that...Jim Ward?

I wonder if he regretted that!

I dunno. 1000 hp seems quite a lot though considering deity HP is doubled on their home plane, but would have been interesting. Remembering of course Takhisis had 999 HP in Dragonlance, so maybe there was a precedent for it.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Unfortunately like so many high CR monsters, this things defenses are pathetic. Now its got some nice anti-magic abilities, but its AC and hp are so low, 3 11th level champion fighters (not really optimized, no special buffs like a +1 or +2 weapon kidn of thing, no advantage) can mow through this guy in just about 2 rounds flat with just average damages.

and again that's just a joe shmoe champion, you could easily bust out a half optimized paladin or barbarian or something and wreck this guy even harder.

And the damage just isn't that impressive, this guy doesn't have any big damage spikes or big conditions that would make a party afraid of him.

Elder Evil? More like Elderly Evil

One-vs-one my Level 20 Fighter beats Zargon in a round (with attacks to spare)...although that character has a few unofficial items...but even with the official items he drops Zargon like a bag of dirt inside 2 rounds.

WotC seem afraid to actually make monsters deadly. I don't know if that's on purpose to resonate with the 'twee' and 'cutesy' feel of the game put forward by 95% of the art. Maybe in their eyes they are 'Marvel-ising' D&D. But it has the knock-on effect of making the monsters toothless pushovers to be laughed at rather than feared.

They keep saying they will beef up the higher CR monsters and at every turn they don't. This was a problem they recognized years ago, but for some reason they are waiting til 2025 to address it or will we end up with the now "infamous" CR 23 Blob of Annihilation dealing (a paltry) 10d6 acid damage.