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View Full Version : Wendigo monster, CR help please.



notXanathar
2019-10-26, 11:10 AM
This is the wendigo that I mentioned in my homebrewers dilemma (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?601060-The-homebrewer-s-dilemma) post. I have a whole load of lore but it would probably too much to put in a post. I have no idea about CR, but if you could tell

Wendigo
Large undead, chaotic evil

Armor Class 17(natural armour)
Hit Points 119 (14d10+42)
Speed 40ft.
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
17 (+3) 12(+1) 16(+3) 6(-2) 10(+0) 7(-2)
Damage Resistances Psychic; Bludgeoning, Peircing and Slashing from non-magical weapons.
Damage Immunities Cold, Necrotic, Poison
Condition Immunities Charmed, Frightened, Exhaustion, Poisoned
Senses Darkvision 120ft., Passive Perception 10
Languages Abyssal
Challenge XXX
Charge. If the Wendigo moves at least 20 feet straight toward a target and then hits it with an antler attack on the same turn, the target takes an extra 6 (1d12) slashing damage.

Rampage. When the Wendigo reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack on its turn, the Wendigo can take a bonus action to move up to half its speed and make a bite attack.

Actions
Multiattack. The Wendigo makes three melee attacks.

Antlers. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5ft., one target. Hit 9(1d12+3) piercing damage.

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5ft., one target. Hit 12(2d8+3) piercing damage.

Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10ft., one target. Hit 10(2d6+3) slashing damage.

Howl (Recharge 6). All creatures within 60ft. of the Wendigo must succeed on a DC 15 wisdom saving throw, or be frightened of the Wendigo for 1 minute and take 7(2d6) psychic damage plus 7(2d6) cold damage, or half that damage on a success. A creature may repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.

Torment: The Wendigo fixes it's green flame eyes on one creature that is frightened of it and within 60ft. of it, cursing it to a dreadful fate. The target must make a DC 15 wisdom saving throw, or be cursed. While cursed in this way, a creature suffers from terrible nightmares. When they finish a long rest, they must make another DC 15 wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, they gain a level of exhaustion, take 7(2d6) psychic damage, and gain no benefit from that rest. When a creature afflicted by this curse reaches exhaustion level 3, they gain the flaw: 'The flesh of other intelligent creatures is delicious,'. If the creature is reduced to zero hit points or otherwise killed while afflicted by this curse they transform into a Wendigo at full hit points. They cannot then be resurrected by any means other than a wish spell. This curse may be removed by a remove curse spell, or similar magic.

A Wendigo's Lair.
A Wendigo makes it's lair in a cave in the forests, often near villages where they have a steady supply of victims, or otherwise by isolated roads and tracks.

A Wendigo extends it's influence out about a mile from such a cave, so it is considered to in its lair within that radius.

Lair Actions.
On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the Wendigo takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects;

the Wendigo can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:

The Wendigo creates a small blizzard, occupying a 10ft. radius, 20ft. high cylinder within 60ft. of them. It's area is heavily obscured, and a creature that starts their turn there, or enters it for the fist time on it's turn must make a DC 15 constitution saving throw, taking 10(3d6) cold damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. This effect lasts until initiative count 20 next round.
The Wendigo calls up howling winds within 60ft. of it, imposing disadvantage on all ranged attacks that pass through that radius, and all creatures within that radius must succeed on a DC 15 wisdom saving throw or be deafened until initiative count 20 next round. Additionally, all flying creatures within that radius must succeed on a DC 15 dexterity saving throw or fall.
The Wendigo gains a flying speed of 80ft. until initiative count 20 next turn, at which point, if it is still flying, it descends gently to the ground, taking no fall damage.
The Wendigo summons a powerful gust of wind to attack it's enemies. All creatures within one 10ft. cube within 60ft. of the Wendigo must make a DC 15 constitution saving throw, taking 14(4d6) cold damage and being pushed 10ft. in a direction of the Wendigo's choice on a failed save, or taking half that damage and not being pushed on a success.
Regional Effects
The region containing a Wendigo lair is warped by the creature's malign influence, which creates one or more of the following effects:

People in the region have troubling dreams, particularly ones involving eating other humanoids.
The region is constantly affected by bad weather, particularly strong winds and continuous snow, which means that visibility is reduced to 60ft., beyond which it is lightly obscured.
All open fires which are not magical in nature go out, and refuse to light. Torches go out, though not covered lanterns.

noob
2019-10-26, 11:25 AM
Question 1: does the howl of a wendigo harms other wendigos(with the text as written it is clear it does but I think you had a different intent)
Question 2: are you aware that with torment wendigos can potentially makes tons of spawn and that they would make giant brick walls rather fast(117 hp per wendigo is a lot)?(technically animals can be turned into wendigos by wendigos with the current rules)

Ninja_Prawn
2019-10-26, 12:15 PM
I agree that Torment, as written, has bag-of-rats issues. I'd make it 1/day and limit it to 'Medium or larger' creatures. Or you could get around it by saying that any newly created wendigos are automatically hostile to the one that turned them, but that's kind of clumsy.

By my reckoning, CR is 7 normally, or 9 in its lair. That would mean its proficiency drops to +3, which drops all of its attack bonuses to +6 and save DCs to 11+stat (i.e. 14 for things keyed off Str or Con). That doesn't affect its CR though, luckily enough.

Gluteus_Maximus
2019-10-26, 01:19 PM
From this (https://1-dot-encounter-planner.appspot.com/quick-monster-stats.html) calculator, it's 5 without lair actions, 6 with.

Now, this is before adding up all the resistances and immunities, so I think it's a solid 8 without, 9 with

sandmote
2019-10-26, 02:40 PM
My calculations match Ninja Prawn's, which means the to-hit bonuses should drop to +6 and the saving throws to DC 14.

I'd restrict Torment to humanoids, at the very least.

Lord Von Becker
2019-10-27, 12:53 AM
Okay. I'm not super experienced with monster balance, but here are my best guesses:

*CR is based on how difficult it is for a party of adventurers to win the fight without having its' members die. If the party's expendable HP/water breathing spells/number of people not hypnotized/etcetera will last for enough rounds that they can probably kill the monster/open the drain/smash the amulet/otherwise win the day, and almost certainly get out alive if they lose, it's a reasonable challenge.

*A three-rest, six-encounter adventuring day means the average encounter is expected to take about a quarter of the tank's health and a sixth of the full-caster's slots, or half of the half-caster's. (This is based on using all your HD and Lay On Hands/Rages/Second Winds etcetera, but since you only get half your HD back with a long rest, you might be expected to take off-days.)

*You can adjust encounter length by changing the monster's attack/defense ratio, without much affecting its' difficulty. So long as you stay careful to leave the healers/controllers time to interrupt disasters, anyway.

*In accordance with the above points, there's a big jump at 5th level (because that's when the party's DPR is expected to double). Smaller jumps at 11th and 17th, for roughly the same reasons.

*I'm not super experienced with how saves work, but I think the 5E philosophy is to give monsters proficiency in all saves (so that spells can be balanced against saving about half the time), and to give players proficiency in relatively few of them (so that monsters get to show off their cool tricks). I assume Save DC's are roughly equivalent for each.

*Attacks are expected to miss about half the time against peer AC. You can break this trend if you're careful to keep the damage-per-hit in line, but remember that while a relative penalty of -5 is equivalent to halving the damage, a +5 bonus only means adding half again, not doubling. (With those examples and taking 3d6 as a default, the clumsy ogres would need 6d6 to keep up, but the elfish sniper can make do with 2d6.)

*Peer AC is roughly equivalent to Proficiency Bonus+13, which is also roughly equivalent to Spell Save DC. It's not a perfect equivalence - the armor system is kinda messy - but I think it's in the right neighborhood.

All this in mind: Probably somewhere in the realm of CR 7-9 if alone. Its' attacks aren't terribly strong at that level, but it is fairly tough, and Fear is a big advantage. (And it's even worse for the martials if they don't have magic weapons.) Exhaustion is also a big problem, if it's able to curse the party and then vanish.
It's notably weak to casters that don't rely on charm or fear, though - no fire resistance, bad saves, and frightening them mostly helps it kite. It's also quite grappleable, but I don't think that's a bad thing in context.
If it manages to convert one of the party, that could go south real fast. It's tricky to balance that, in part because PCs rarely die unless the rest of the party is already on the ropes. They would almost certainly have to flee.

As a side note, I would make the curse not instakill when the cursed character hits 0HP, especially if they can't be revived without a Wish.
This is partly because building a 7th-level character is a significant time investment, and that should be respected. But it's partly because the death save system is a great opportunity for ratcheting up tension, especially since you can have the wendigo decide to pick up an unconscious character and fly away with them. (At half speed for carrying a Medium creature, but it can Dash to bring that back up. And since it only flies every other round, the party has some chance of keeping up.)
What did you think its' tactics would be?

Ninja_Prawn
2019-10-27, 05:20 AM
*I'm not super experienced with how saves work, but I think the 5E philosophy is to give monsters proficiency in all saves

Where are you getting that from? Most monsters have no save proficiencies, very few have more than four. The official guidance is to give monsters save proficiencies in order to cover weaknesses in their stat line, which... I guess (see Oni, Androsphinx, Tarrasque, all dragons having Dex for blatant examples). In other cases it's clear that some monsters are built around a particular class so they tend to get that class' saving throws. But I don't think there's much 'philosophy' there. It's very fast and loose.

notXanathar
2019-10-27, 09:48 AM
Thanks for the feedback. A lot of the wording problems were, I think, caused by the fact that I didn't expect them to be fighting with many allies. The torment was designed more to pose the players a long term problem if the wendigo couldn't kill them, which it probably wouldn't. By default, the wendigo's aim is to eat other creatures, not to convert them, being a manifestation of hunger. Still, I've fixed the wording. I'll set the CR at 8 without lair, and 9 with, and probably give it some extra HP(I'd rather not change the attack bonus/DCs, but that's just me).

Torment (1/day). The Wendigo fixes it's green flame eyes on one humanoid that is frightened of it and within 60ft. of it, cursing it to a dreadful fate. The target must make a DC 15 wisdom saving throw, or be cursed. While cursed in this way, a creature suffers from terrible nightmares. When they finish a long rest, they must make another DC 15 wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, they gain a level of exhaustion, take 7(2d6) psychic damage, and gain no benefit from that rest. When a creature afflicted by this curse reaches exhaustion level 3, they gain the flaw: 'The flesh of other intelligent creatures is delicious,'. If the creature is reduced to zero hit points or otherwise killed while afflicted by this curse they transform into a Wendigo at full hit points. They cannot then be resurrected by any means other than a wish spell. This curse may be removed by a remove curse spell, or similar magic.

Old Harry MTX
2019-10-27, 02:10 PM
Torment (1/day). The Wendigo fixes it's green flame eyes on one humanoid that is frightened of it and within 60ft. of it, cursing it to a dreadful fate. The target must make a DC 15 wisdom saving throw, or be cursed. While cursed in this way, a creature suffers from terrible nightmares. When they finish a long rest, they must make another DC 15 wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, they gain a level of exhaustion, take 7(2d6) psychic damage, and gain no benefit from that rest. When a creature afflicted by this curse reaches exhaustion level 3, they gain the flaw: 'The flesh of other intelligent creatures is delicious,'. If the creature is reduced to zero hit points or otherwise killed while afflicted by this curse they transform into a Wendigo at full hit points. They cannot then be resurrected by any means other than a wish spell. This curse may be removed by a remove curse spell, or similar magic.

OK, it should be good now