Help me balance this monster

[FunSize]

Using a Wraith as a basis for this monster, also taking some inspiration from XCOM 2's Codex. I'm aiming for a CR of 8 or 9.

Veilstorm Wraith

Medium undead, Chaotic Evil

Armor Class: 14
Hit Points: 168
Speed: 0 ft, Fly 60 feet (hover)

STR: 8, DEX: 18 CON: 16 INT: 10 WIS: 12 CHA: 15

Damage Resistances: acid, cold, fire, lighting, thunder, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks not made with silvered weapons.

Damage immunities: Necrotic, poison.

Condition Immunities: charmed, exhaustion, grappled, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained

Senses: Darkvision 60 ft, Passive Perception 12

Incorporeal movement: The veilstorm wraith can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. It takes 1d10 force damage if it ends its turn inside an object.

Sunlight sensitivity: While in sunlight, the veilstorm wraith has disadvantage on attack rolls, as well as Perception checks that rely on sight.

ACTIONS:

Life drain: Melee weapon attack, +8 to hit, reach 5ft, one creature. 4d8+5 necrotic damage. The target must succeed on a DC 16 Constitution saving throw or have its hit point maximum reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken. This reduction lasts until the target has finished a long rest. The target dies if its hit point maximum reaches 0.

Grim Malaise: (rechage 5-6) 20ft radius within 60 feet. Creatures within the area must make a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or take 5d6 Psychic damage and be silenced until the end of their next turn. Creatures who make their saving throw take half damage and are not silenced.

REACTIONS:

Soul Split: If the veilstorm wraith takes damage that does not reduce it to 0 hit points, it immediately creates a copy of itself in an unoccupied square within 30 feet. The original's remaining hit points are split between itself an the copy. The copy takes its own actions. Both the original and the copy retain this abilitiy. If the veilstorm wraith takes radiant damage, it loses this ability until the end of its next turn.

BONUS ACTION:

Gravestep: (recharge 4-6) The veilstorm wraith teleports to an unoccupied square it can see within 60 feet.

Not sure exactly where this stands in terms of difficulty, seeing as it'll end up with a lot of actions if it creates a lot of duplicates, I'm hesitant to give it multiattack like you'd often see with monsters of the CR I'm shooting for.

[Azgeroth]

would the duplicates then also split if damaged?

the fact it has a fly speed of 60, and cannot be restrained, knocked prone, or paralyzed is going to make fighting in the open extremely difficult.

the effective hp is alot higher due to the large amount of resistances.

without knowing the party you built this for, this looks like it could be quite the challenge.. especially with the teleport and silence, if it chases down the casters they could find themselves in a lot of trouble quickly..

if they kill a creature with life drain do they come back as a zombie 24 hours later?

are you planning on running this by itself or with other mobs?

all in all, doesnt look too bad, definately a dangerous enemy, possibly deadly.. but again that depends on the party at hand.

[FunSize]

Duplicates do indeed split if damaged -- that was the intended implication behind "both the original and the duplicate retain this ability."

I'm considering dropping the fly and just give it a normal speed of 30 feet since it's a little redundant with the teleport.

It's a big party -- seven total, a Dragon Sorcerer (with elemental adept, so he can ignore the fire resistance), Devotion Paladin, Arcane Trickster, Champion Fighter, Fiend Chainlock, Hunter Ranger, and Life Cleric. Most of the melee characters have magic weapons.

I was considering pushing its HP even higher, since the party does pretty ridiculous damage when the focus down one target. It's entirely likely that the Paladin will just spam smites and the thing won't be able to split at all.

[Cap'm Bubbles]

It's a big party -- seven total, a Dragon Sorcerer (with elemental adept, so he can ignore the fire resistance), Devotion Paladin, Arcane Trickster, Champion Fighter, Fiend Chainlock, Hunter Ranger, and Life Cleric. Most of the melee characters have magic weapons.

OK, I can foresee three problems (or solutions, depends on the perspective here :smallbiggrin: ) that may come up.
1) It's going to get singled out very quickly with radiant damage from the paladin and maybe cleric, rendering one of its two most interesting abilities useless.
2) If that doesn't happen, you haven't specified legendary actions or the initiative placement of the duplicate wraith, so your party will end up with side initiative and hold actions until the first scenario happens. It is not at all a logical leap to use radiant damage on undead.
3) Neither of the above happens in the case that the cleric and paladin do terrible on initiative, resulting in 3-4 wraiths total being in the fight before they go. The wraiths can then proceed to, with teleport, surround any target of preference, gain advantage on Life Drain, and kill them one at a time.

If you wanted an estimate for what that mosh pit looks like, it's an average of 23 Health drain per hit, +8 with advantage is closer to +12 or +13, and assuming nobody's touting over 20 AC, 65% -75% of those attacks will hit, with about a 10% chance for one of those to be a crit (now jumping to 41 damage).

Now, you could certainly have the wraiths attack targets indiscriminately and without focus. And you could see them slaughtered like anything else that attacks a 7-PC party unfocused. There's also the ironic solution of the party choosing to make as many weakened duplicates as they can so that a single EA Fireball can kill all the wraiths while they depend on some buffs to keep them alive for that round. The problem with this monster isn't that it has a de-facto vulnerability to a damage type, but that the damage type in question is the favorite of two of the more popular classes.

It would be a shame to not let its abilities ever get used, as well as for it to slaughter the party if its HP is too high and allows too many duplicates. Would it be feasible for this thing to be soul-split before the party encounters it, so they stumble on two wraith each at 70-80 health instead of one at 168? You'll get two initiative rolls for the wraiths instead of one, the party has a good chance of figuring out its abilities without making a fatal mistake, and you'll be sure to have at least three wraiths to play with before they eliminate one of them.

As for the target CR, it's really not an ideal system when you have variable capabilities of a monster. Damage reduction, if applied, poses a similar problem, as does any summoning ability. In my experience, assume any ability related to extra minions/actions will occur twice before a party deals with it one way or another, and go from there. That would be, with the original 168 HP wraith, 3 attacks or uses of its AoE per round when all are in play. That's an 11 offensive CR and 8.5 Defensive CR, averaging about CR 10. If a party starts with radiant damage, this thing drops to about CR 7.

[Squibsallotl]

Looks like a fun and interesting monster. Here are some changes I would suggest:

1) Remove Gravestep. It's redundant on a 60ft fly speed monster with incorporeal movement. Give it Acrobatics proficiency so it can have a fair go at escaping grapple/restrain effects that way, without completely bypassing them.

2) Remove the Radiant damage clause for Soul Split. This is its defining and most interesting ability, making it a hybrid between an Ochre Jelly and a standard Wraith. Against a party with a Devotion Paladin and a Life Cleric, you'll only ever trigger this once at the start of combat (and then only if neither of those PCs go first).

3) Have Soul Split copies insert themselves next in the initiative order, so if someone damages the Wraith, the new Wraith is acting next.

4) To compensate for the increased difficulty of making Soul Split guaranteed, give the monster Vulnerability to Radiant damage. That way the Paladin/Cleric can still feel special Vs undead and help burn it down faster.

5) You might also want to consider different status effects for Grave Malaise, so the casters don't end up perma-silenced once there are a few Soul Split copies floating around. Frightened works well, provided the Devotion paladin doesn't have his anti-fear aura yet.

[Waar]

Using a Wraith as a basis for this monster, also taking some inspiration from XCOM 2's Codex. I'm aiming for a CR of 8 or 9.

REACTIONS:

Soul Split: If the veilstorm wraith takes damage that does not reduce it to 0 hit points, it immediately creates a copy of itself in an unoccupied square within 30 feet. The original's remaining hit points are split between itself an the copy. The copy takes its own actions. Both the original and the copy retain this abilitiy. If the veilstorm wraith takes radiant damage, it loses this ability until the end of its next turn.

Not sure exactly where this stands in terms of difficulty, seeing as it'll end up with a lot of actions if it creates a lot of duplicates, I'm hesitant to give it multiattack like you'd often see with monsters of the CR I'm shooting for.


At least the Soul Split is a reaction, so it can't split all the time, but since it flies and has ranged attacks I wouldn't worry too much about it taking radiant damage early in the fight.
Taking some inspiration from the monster creation guidelines in the DMG, I think i would place it around cr 12, but that is very dependent on my evaluation of its "Soul Split" ability, so in practice it could vary quite heavily.

[FunSize]

Okay so here are the options I'm currently considering:

1) Remove flight, give it 30 foot movement speed.

2) remove teleport, keep flight.

3) Allow it to Soul Split after taking radiant damage, add vulnerability to radiant.

4) Swap the silence on it's AoE for another status effect, probably Fear.

5) Adjust HP upward but not hugely.

Also I'm probably going to put it with some other monsters (probably CR 3-5 demons or undead) because this party tends to burst stuff down very quickly when they focus fire.

[Specter]

I think too many elemental resistances are in play. The way I see it, without a Paladin or Cleric in the group this monsters could ravage through many parties.