#d&d statblocks

[squidkidghoul]

I made some dungeons and dragons 5e statblocks for some Zelda enemies. I focused more on game accuracy than balancing, but i tried to make them fun to fight. Feel free to use them, and feedback would be appreciated.

[orions-aether]

you ever just see a super niche piece of d&d advice (idek if this is the right word for it) and feel an itch in your bones to make an entire zine that's effectively an essay talking about how much you dislike it and the ableist implications of it being enforced at tables but it's just for you because you don't share your thoughts with other human beings that'd be wild and you don't particularly feel like being told it's not actually ableist and you're just oversensitive and can't take a joke today. no just me never mind dw about it

[stupidsexynonbinaryperson]

FUCK the MMIV layout, all my homies HATE the MMIV layout

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

hello welcome back to "god there's so much in Strahd's combat writeup", I want to talk about the Heart of Sorrow

because it's kind of weird

and at first I was like "why does he even have this" because if you're fighting him at 10th level and your party picked up their magic items, 50 HP is nothing. that's a trivial amount of protection. there are some builds that average close to 50 damage per turn at 10th level (and that's ignoring whatever insane stuff the 2024 PHB lets PCs do now).

so if I can't rely on this thing to keep this beautiful pipe-organ playing manicure safe from buffs and scratches in the final fight, what else is it good for

well I have some ideas.

mechanically:

this does mean Strahd can do insane stunts around 1st-3rd level parties, like just... let himself get stabbed or set on fire and just kind of laugh about it haha isn't this a fun time we're all having

mid-campaign this is a buffer for if I've fucked up and accidentally left Strahd somewhere the party can damage him

assuming the heart is still active, I'm in love with the image of Strahd opening the bossfight with fireball centered on himself and soaking the damage as an intimidation tactic

plot-wise:

the module kind of tucks the heart way out of the way, but I think it makes more sense to broadcast it to the party as a quest

make it something the party should go out of their way to destroy because for all they know, this thing will protect Strahd indefinitely

it's not like the party destroying it will change my tactics in the final fight because I already can't depend on it to protect Strahd

the party will get to feel like destroying the heart is a major accomplishment that opens a huge hole in Strahd's defenses and I can play along like YEP YOU DID IT, HE DEFINITELY NEEDED THAT HEART AND THIS WILL DEFINITELY NEGATIVELY AFFECT HIM IN THE FUTURE :)

if all else fails and they accidentally destroy the Heart of Sorrow way early by catching Strahd and eating through the damage threshold before he can disconnect from it, it'll be a great excuse for Strahd to be fucking pissed at the party for breaking his very expensive magical hit point rock

[phaerlax]

Hello Tumblr. I am once again mashing my few interests together into one big gooey megahobby. Here are D&D statblocks for BL corn game characters!

[bbubblerum]

BBED: Big Bad Evil Dudes

Hello I'm Ana and this is the third in the BBED series! Each installment is a different Homebrew BBEG of a different Challenge Rating that is as fleshed out(And hopefully cool and fun!) as I can make it. The art and statblock for each is made by me and I hope you have fun using them, either as they are or reflavouring them. Remember the lore info and stats are there to inspire you to do what you want to do, not as hard rules!

Lore: Xvarts are all servants of the demigod Raxivort. Acting as decoys for him as he is chased by servants of the demon lord Graz'zt after he stole a valuable object called the Infinity Spindle.

A Xvart Lord is a particularly favored servant of Raxivort, blessed with a powerful weapon known as a Raxivortian Blade that grants them abilities beyond a normal Xvart such as teleporting and summoning. A Xvart Lord is usually a leader of other Xvarts who worship them as high priests and even demigods.

Xvart Lords are noted as having a very notable stench, which is thought to be the reason why Rats and Bats seemingly flock to them and make nests on top of the Xvart's body. Xvart Lords are given the important task of sacrificing people to their god, which is the primary purpose of their blade. The Raxivortian Blade has the special property of transporting someone stabbed with it to Raxivorts domain in Pandemonium, in the hope that he will transform the sacrifice into a new Xvart. Gnomes are most easily transformed, so they tend to prefer sacrificing them.

Any Xvart that steals a Raxivortian Blade successfully becomes the new Xvart Lord, so Xvart Lords tend to be extremely paranoid.

Running a Xvart Lord: A Xvart Lord is still a Xvart, meaning that they will tend towards running away from a fight if it starts to look bad. This also means they will employ vast amounts of creatures to protect them.

I would recommend using a number of other Xvarts, Xvart Warlocks of Raxivort, Giant Rats, Rat Swarms and Giant Bats when planning an encounter with the Xvart Lord. I would also not say it is unrealistic for the Xvarts to have captured something like an Ogre, or to ride Worgs, but keep in mind Xvarts tend to dislike anyone larger than them.

I don't think the Xvart Lord is powerful enough to have lair actions, but in its place I made the stats for their weapon in case your players take it!

Raxivortian Blade: Uncommon Scimitar(Requires Attunement)

This short and jagged blade is embedded with crystals similar to those of Slaad Control Gems. When attuned, the wielder gains a +1 to attack and damage rolls with this weapon.

This weapon has 3 charges. It regains 1d4-1 at dawn.

This charge can be expended on a hit to cause the target creature to make a DC 14 Charisma saving throw or be banished. While banished in this way, its speed is 0, and it is incapacitated. At the end of its next turn, the target reappears in the space it vacated or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied.

Alternatively as a bonus action you can expend a charge to teleport to a location you can see within 60ft. Alternatively you can switch places with a willing creature within 60ft, or an unwilling creature if the target fails a DC 14 Charisma saving throw.

If the attuned creature is a Xvart, neither option expends a charge.

[theworldbrewery]

I just finished a 5 year long campaign on Saturday. I would describe myself as a hardass on the rules, up to the point that something worked within larger thematic parameters in the setting.

In practice, this meant that the game began with me being very strict on rules. Some things, like carrying capacity, were not worth tracking (especially once they got a bag of holding), but other rules, both official and house-rules, I kept to very closely. As the PCs became more powerful, I started offering them brief opportunities when something important wasn't going to go their way. Memorably, when a PC was about to die by mind flayer and lose her brain and drop concentration on the spell that was holding the boss monster at bay, I asked how badly she wanted to survive, and allowed her to make a sacrifice: the goddesses of luck had a problem with her using her Wild Magic subclass abilities to manipulate her fortune, so she gave up her subclass in exchange for surviving the attack (and got a new subclass later obviously).

This type of scenario worked because I established the possibility of 'trading' a consequence for a desirable outcome -- borrowing from other systems a little bit, where you can succeed at a cost. It fit into the mechanics and flavor of the Wild Magic sorcerer's abilities, but it broadened over time to include anyone willing to make a deal and give something up to get what they wanted.

That practice brought us to an underdark adventure where they found the place where sacrifices 'go,' metaphorically speaking, and set the stage for the finale in which the PCs broke with fate altogether and ascended to godhood to fight Bane to the death. I worked with them to build divine statblocks and what mattered most was the exchange. The sense of loss, thematically, that comes from achieving great feats of power that should be impossible. It builds on the most basic ideas of making sacrifices to a god to receive their support, and of destroying components to cast powerful spells, and turns them into a larger framework of magic and power.

But I still expected them to use spell components, and take fall damage, and remember you can't stack advantage or temporary hit points.

Once they ascended to godhood I relaxed the rules somewhat, to let them savor the power they'd gotten. But as mortal beings those rules represent their vulnerabilities, their relative weakness, the risks and rewards of adventuring. I always considered it necessary for my own peace of mind to be clear on the rules and on the interactions of mechanics, from the limits of dark vision and which hexes could be affected by a spell, but it also empowered me to be more flexible with the rules when specific, thematic moments came into play.

Rule of Cool can get weak when you rely too heavily on it. It takes away the stakes, which kills the fun. But this version of "Rule of Cool" expected the players to open themselves up to risk and change -- trying and failing to wake up a cursed archfey led the group's cleric to give up all his memories before the age of 10, trying to force an enemy to fail her Banishment saving throw made the bard swear to protect the cleric with their life (and be compelled to do so). The losses they suffered weren't punishments, but opportunities: what new subclass does the sorcerer take, and why? Do you throw yourself in front of a blow that would kill the cleric?

The role-play moments that resulted, the twists in the tale, were worth it, every single time.

I didn't accept pure mechanical sacrifices: the gods don't care about your melee weapon attack modifier. They had to give up something that mattered to the character. To understand what sacrifice really is.

And they sacrificed themselves, in the end.

[jotun-philosopher]

D&D monster: Vengeance Goose

This was inspired by a tumblr post which I've seen in screenshot form on imgur from time to time, though I'm having trouble tracking down the original post; the gist of it is, "don't wish death on your enemies -- wish geese on them. Infinite geese."

This appealed to my sense of humour, hence the following monster statblock (partly cribbed from the 'giant goose' from the 5e supplement Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, specifically some of the stats and the Actions section, especially the 'Thunderous Honk' move; it was the most goose-y statblock I could find) and accompanying summoning spell. Both monster and spell are deliberately overpowered jokes, so DMs, be judicious in using them with your table -- but if you do, definitely drop me a line because I'd LOVE to hear how it goes! (There's always one Big Bad Evil Guy who'd be soooooo satisfying to take down via swarm of cactus-wielding geese >:D Mwahahaha!!!)

In my mind, this monster resembles a Canada Goose (albeit larger), but feel free to sub in whichever type of goose you consider to be especially vicious b******s! :D

------

Long ago, a wizard specialising in transmutation magic (and not getting out in the fresh air enough) was seeking a more satisfying means than mere death for getting one over on his enemies. Remembering an incident in his youth and a plant from his homeland, he captured some local geese and magically engineered them to have enhanced aggression and the abilities to single-mindedly pursue a specified target and cast cactus-summoning magic.

Unfortunately for him, his original test subjects got loose and worked out their (very understandable) grudges against him, before escaping and mingling with the local goose population. Their descendants have lost none of their aggression or spellcasting ability, and are known to be violently territorial even by the standards of goose-kind, at least where non-avian intruders are concerned.

A group of adventurers who investigated the wizard's tower after his demise found his notes and managed to reverse-engineer them, creating a spell with which to summon one or more Vengeance Geese into temporary existence to assail an immediately present target. This spell is generally safe for adventuring mages to use; attempting to capture and tame Vengeance Geese from the wild is overwhelmingly discouraged by all reputable druidic organisations and any rangers with half an ounce of sense.

Vengeance Goose

Medium Beast, typically Chaotic Neutral

Armour Class: 16 (natural armour) Hit Points: 120 (16d8+48) Speed: 30ft., fly 30ft.

STR 18 (+4) DEX 14 (+2) CON 17 (+3) INT 12 (+1) WIS 18 (+4) CHA 12 (+1)

Saving Throws Dexterity +8, Constitution +6, Charisma +7

Skills Insight +7, Perception +7, Intimidation +7

Damage Resistances magical bludgeoning/slashing/piercing, force, poison

Damage Immunities piercing (own conjured cacti only), thunder

Condition Immunities blinded, charmed, deafened, exhausted, frightened, paralysed, poisoned

Senses truesight 30ft., darkvision 60 ft., tremorsense 30 ft., passive Perception 17

Languages Understands Common, Infernal, Celestial and Draconic but can't speak

Challenge 8 (3900 XP) Proficiency Bonus +3

Traits

Aggressive As a bonus action, the goose can move up to its speed toward a hostile creature it can see.

Magic Resistance The goose has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Action Surge (1/day) The goose can push itself through sheer vindictive aggressiveness to take one extra nonmagical action on its turn.

Innate Spellcasting The goose's spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 17). The goose can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

At will: Primal Savagery (2d10 acid damage)

3/day each: Ensnaring Strike (3d6 piercing damage/turn), Conjure Barrage (piercing damage), Plant Growth (1-action version only, goose takes no movement penalty from conjured plants), Grasping Vine

Cactus Growth The goose's Plant Growth spell exclusively creates cacti. A creature who comes into contact with these cacti gets pieces stuck to them, which inflict 1d6 piercing damage at the start of each of its turns until it or one of its allies uses an action to remove the pieces, making a DC 15 Dexterity save to avoid getting cactus'd in turn. The goose uses pieces of the cacti for its Conjure Barrage spell.

Actions

Multiattack The goose makes one Beak attack and either two Wing attacks or one Wing attack and one use of Spellcasting.

Beak Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage.

Wing. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d10 + 4) bludgeoning damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 17 Strength saving throw or have the prone condition.

Thunderous Honk (Recharge 5–6) The goose honks with ear-splitting volume. Each other creature within 30 feet of the goose must make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 16 (3d10) thunder damage and has the deafened condition until the start of the goose's next turn. On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage only. The honk can be heard within 300 feet.

Spell: Summon Vengeance Goose

Summon Vengeance Goose

1st-level conjuration

Casting time: 1 action

Range: 30 feet

Components: V, S, M (a goose feather and a fragment of cactus)

Duration: Special

You designate a target within range that you can see and that is hostile to you, and call forth one Vengeance Goose, which manifests in an empty space within range. The Goose shares your initiative count, taking its turn directly after yours, and attacks its designated target relentlessly. It disappears when either it or its target is reduced to 0 hit points.

At higher levels When you cast this spell with a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, 1d20 extra Vengeance Geese are summoned for each slot level above 1st. These extra geese can all manifest at once, or appear 1d20 at a time on each of your turns after casting until all of the bonus geese are accounted for or the designated target falls to 0 hit points (you choose when you cast the spell).

Classes: Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard

Note: I went for the limited-but-still-potentially-amusingly-high number of geese because infinite geese, while very much in the spirit of the post that inspired this homebrew, would have some potentially awkward consequences; see the What If xkcd article 'A Mole of Moles' for more information.

Happy dungeoneering!

[stirdrawsandreblaws]

genuinely wish i could make a paying job out of porting weird character sheets to roll20 and other vtts bc like. i love doing that kind of shit. i love making ttrpg supplements too but that's a lot more involved than just porting sheets and my attention span doesn't always let me finish a supplement

[creationcrumbs]

You've heard of 3 goblin, kobolds, halflings, and kids in a trench coat, right?

How about at least 3 tiny dragons controlling a knight's suit of armor? They probably think it's super funny.

[averyangrytissuebox]

The issues with Vecna: Eye of Ruin are foundational because they got Vecna himself wrong

If you either didn't know about this book or only vaguely looked at it because it is part of the content run that Wotc is pumping out before dnd 6e comes out soon, I can't blame you. A brief scan of *shudders* reddit shows that the it wasn't very well recieved by the die hard fans of r/dndnext and I've seen very little buzz about it in the general dnd zeitgheist. While I have lots to say about why this is probably due to lack of trust in Wotc after the OGL, official adventures being underwhelming and the community being fractured as all fuck, but I want to focus on one very specific thing to show what is wrong with the adventure: Vecna's statblock himself.

Here it is. If you downloaded the Vecna dossier a couple of years back, this will look very familiar and it isn't abundantly obvious where this goes wrong so I want to break it down.

The first is a flavour fail. Vecna in the lore is the archlich supreme, formerly a king and lich who ascended to godhood. Once considered one of the strongest liches to dwell in the Greyhawks setting, he has grown to be a scourge of the whole multiverse. An unmatched sorcerer and epic BBEG worthy foe (just ask Matt Mercer). Iconic to his appearance are four things: His eye and hand which were all that is left after he was betrayed by Kas, his right hand man. Just as synonymous to his appearance is the sword of Kas itself, the only blade capable of permanently destroying the hand and eye. Finally, Vecna created the most profane tome of them all, the book of Vile Darkness.

With all that established, there are some immediate flavour issues with this. Firstly, Vecna is not particularly intelligent as far as high level villains go. At 22, he is dumber than Auril (24), Zariel (26), Acererak (27), the demon lords and Manshoon (23), the guy who is well known for being paranoid enough that he created clones that turned on him. Notable wise guy. He isn't even the most intelligent character in his own book because Kas and Tasha are intelligence 23. Truly a bizarre decision for one of the greatest liches of all time.

Secondly, he isn't actually that good of a spellcaster. He is an innate caster and not a wizard for ease of use I assume but as far as spellcasters concern, he is lacking a lot of fire power that a CR 26 god should have. He doesn't have any 9th level spells, making him an inferior wizard to both Acererak and the humble CR 12 archmage. He doesn't have counterspell, instead having a non spell version (But I will come back to this later) and he doesn't have shield. He is not so sturdy that he shouldn't have it and there is no in lore reason why he doesn't have basic spell casting.

Finally, there is no mention of his eye or hand in the campaign itself. The blade of Kas gets an honorary "However, if the characters wish to find it and use it against the warlord, you might place the artifact somewhere in this adventure for them to find" in the introduction and can be acquired at the very end on an extremely high roll. The book of Vile Darkness is buried in his chest which is very cool though, I will admit.

The second and arguably bigger issue with the statblock is that it is bad to fight and lies to the DM because it is the wrong CR. Actual CR is calculated by averaging defensive CR (which is effective hit points and armour class) and offensive CR (damage dealt per round). So lets fact check those CRs to confirm the maths. [A quick side note before we continue, the closest approximation of Flight of the Damned is a dragon's breath weapon which assumes it hits two targets for offensive CR].

Offensive CR = 2(7+9+9) [From two attacks with afterthought] + 96 [Rotten Fate] + 10 + 10 + 10 [For all three reactions] + 10 [Vile teleport used offensively] = 186 dpr.

A very impressive but decidedly not CR 26. In fact, his offensive CR is only 23. Vecna's attack bonuses are higher than average which can increase CR by 1 but not that much. Also he never wants to cast a spell unless he has to because it is a massive damage loss on Vecna

Calculating Defensive CR is trickier. Effective health is calculated by taking his actual health 272 and multiplying it by 1.25 because he has immunities to poison and non magical bludgeoning piercing and slashing damage. Then we add 30 to that total for each legendary resistence. (272 x 1.25) + 150 = 490 which is CR 22. Averaging both of them gives you 22.5

The issue with this is twofold: It means the DM doesn't actually know how strong Vecna is and if they take it at face value, they might nerf them or pull punches when they shouldn't making the fight feel cheap. The second and much bigger one is that Vecna's defensive tools allow him to dispatch a party of spellcasters with ease because of 5 legendary resistance, impressive saves and dread counterspell which cannot be countered but he gets easily overwhelmed by any martial. This is further compounded by the fact that players win the encounter by reducing him to 50hp or less so two fairly optimised martials (e.g. took the relevant combat feat and have maxed out their main stat) can kill him on the first turn, ignoring magical weapons which this adventure has a lot of. This makes the fight swingy and not fun because the martials get to party like there is no tomorrow but if you are a full caster, you do not get to participate.

Overall, the stat block is a failure of flavour and balance, feeling like it was thrown together after the fact because they needed Vecna here. Ultimately, Vecna: Eye of Ruin is less about Vecna and more about going through the most iconic places in d&d's history to get the rod of seven parts, which is perfectly fine but then why put Vecna on the cover when he isn't even the main villain. It feels like they shoved Vecna into this book because recognisability from stranger things and Vox Machina rather than him being an integral part of the adventure and that is reflected in the stat block.

I have a lot more to say about d&d balance, official adventure design and homebrew fixes including how to make a Vecna that doesn't suck but this post is long enough as is so maybe another time

[dykesynthezoid]

In dnd canon the only “salamanders” are those big angry monsters and I wanted my character to have a funny little salamander companion that was immune to fire— Thus:

And listen— I KNOW creature stat blocks about real life animals aren’t meant to be literal in how they translate skills and abilities. Bc it’s a game. But I couldn’t help myself bc:

-> Speed is 10ft bc salamanders are Slow, unless they’re swimming

-> Beefy con bc they can survive losing limbs and tails and regrow them

-> Also why they have a regenerate bonus action to restore hit points

-> Disadvantage on opportunity attacks against them bc they’re slippery and covered in mucus

-> Their bite attack does bludgeoning instead of piercing damage bc most salamanders don’t have teeth

-> It’s their tail attack that does poison damage bc salamander’s poison glands are at the base of their tail, and salamanders will lift their tail in a defensive position when threatened

-> Some salamanders specifically produce tetrodotoxin, which is a dangerous nerve agent/paralytic (same one found in poisonous pufferfish) hence why failing the saving throw by enough can paralyze people

I imagine these guys are a bright red that fades to black on their limbs and tail, and a little bigger than most non-giant salamander species; maybe 18-24 inches long including the tail. My character’s is named Phlox.

[is-sni-ovg]

sometimes i think about the fact that when we started curse of strahd our dm decided not to have ismark travel with us, in-character because he has, like, a job and a responsibility to the village of barovia as the new burgomaster and out of character because they didn't want to have too many npcs with the party all the time

and now several months later we're collecting npcs like they're fucking pokemon

[cherrychoclatebar]

So I may have thrown my players into a Domain of Dread and they've loved it and nothing bad has happened to them :)

[undefeatednils]

@socialmediasocrates

Picture #6

[hiscursedness]

I made a very stupid wizard statblock

Created for the Guild of Icons campaign, but it never got used. Maybe you can find a use for him?