Stats for Doresain, King of the Ghouls?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

My party is due to meet some Ghouls and Maurezhi next session. I'd love to give them an optional battle against Doresain, the king of the ghouls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Ghouls). Or at least a watered down CR12 or CR13 version there of.

I was thinking about something like this difficult:

Doresain
Medium fiend, lawful evil
Armor Class 16 (natural armor)
Hit Points 110 (13d8 + 52)
Speed 40 ft, can walk on the surface of smooth water



STR
DEX
CON
INT
WIS
CHA


14 (+2)
17 (+3)
18 (+4)
13 (+1)
16 (+3)
20 (+5)


Skills Deception +10, Insight +8
Damage Vulnerabilities piercing from magic weapons wielded by good creatures
Damage Immunities bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks

Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages Common, Infernal

Challenge 13 (10,000 XP)

Limited Magic Resistance: Doresain has advantage on saving throws against spells of 6th level or lower and takes half damage from magical effects (fire, thunder, physic and others)

Innate Spellcasting: Doresain's innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 18, +10 to hit with spell attacks). Doresain can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

At will: detect thoughts, disguise self, mage hand, minor illusion

3/day each: charm person, Hellish Rebuke , invisibility, major image, suggestion, Magic Missile Level 3

1/day each: dominate person, fly, true seeing

ActionsMultiattack: Doresain makes two attacks.


Dreamscape Sword: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) slashing damage, and the target is cursed if it is a creature. The target must succeed on a DC 15 Intelligence save or be cursed. The target's thoughts are filled with horrible images and dreams causing disadvantage on attack roles. The cursed target gains no benefit from finishing a short or long rest. The curse lasts until it is lifted by a remove curse spell or similar magic.

Bite Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) slashing damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 20 Constitution saving throw. The magical curse takes effect and after 1 D6 hours the target's body and mind begin to rot. After 1D6 hours and every 1D6 hours after that the target loses 2 points of Charisma and Intelligence. If either is reduced to zero the target dies and returns to life as a ghoul after 1D20 hours. The curse can be lifted by a remove curse spell or similar magic.

[Feuerphoenix]

Well I don‘t know the party composition, but the ghoul king feels...weak. If your party has only one pally, the group won‘t really have a Problem killing him in 3 turns, at level 5+

Edit: depends a lot if the party is able to deal magical damage. Range fighters with a Magic bow will kill him very easily

[Unoriginal]

Doresain stopped being a bad guy, though. After the elven deities saved him.

In term of power, while he got his donkey kicked by Yeenoguh, he should still be in the CR 20 range.

If you make him a bad guy again and water him down, well, it's not really Doresain. Maybe you should call the creature in the OP "Firstborn of Doresain" or something like that?

[MrStabby]

At a first glance this guy looks weak as a CR 12/13 creature.

For a major bad guy a vulnerability is a pretty big deal. Good aligned piecing damage might be very easy to come by for some parties and if they do have a lot of this then they only need to deal 55 points of damage...

AC 16 and 110 HP is the same as a CR 7 Oni (which also gets spellcasting and 2 attacks at +7 to hit). Your Doresain is probably a little more powerful due to the spell selection but certainly closer to a CR 7 than to a CR 12.

I think you can afford to buff this guy considerably. As for all monsters like this - legendary actions and legendary saves are great. I recon that if you were to give some of these and possibly a lair action as well then you would be looking a bit more like a challenge.

[No brains]

You should set some condition immunities. Remember that Doresian is an elf, an undead, and in your version, a fiend. He should probably be immune to magical sleep, charmed, poisoned, maybe stunned or paralyzed if you want to make him really tough. He's going to have a complicated relationship with the paralyzed condition, that's for sure.