Appriopriate Party Level for 2-3 Meenlocks

[Man on Fire]

I'm prepping a horror one-shot for 3-4 players, culminating in a battle against 2-3 Meenlocks, depending if they manage to kill one earlier or not. Official CR system tells me this will be a tpk for anything below 3rd level party but that seems wrong and it feels to me like it will be too easy. What level do you think this should be set on?

I also consider giving Meenlocks their Rend Mind back, basically play it like Intellect Devoier's Devour Intellect but for Wisdom and without body thief. Would it make Meenlocks too dangerous?

[Dungeon-noob]

I think you're overestimating the monsters. The CR system isn't as clear as you'd think, a "deadly" encounter means that there is a noteable chance a PC might go down. No death guarantee, not that the party will get wiped, just that this is an encounter that has downing and death as possible consequences, unlike the others.

It also heavily depends on how depleted the party will be. If a party only needs to deal with a single encounter a day, they can nova like mad and punch at almost double their CR. Less monsters also tend to be more vulnerable, due to action economy. So if this is indeed an encounter after several others, with more then one creature, that sounds quite okay.

Considering that meenlocks didn't seem that dangerous to me when reading about them, i doubt this is poor design. Go ahead IMO. Only thing i worry about is making them like intellect devourers. Those are notorious for being way too dangerous for their CR, especially because of the ability you want to mimic. I recommend making it less punishing and unfun then the devourers, otherwise you risk removing players from the game for the duration of the fight or longer, based on a single roll they can whiff.

[Galithar]

The paralysis and fear effects are going to make this super swingy. If more then 1 person gets paralyzed I can definitely see a TPK happening quickly. Same with the fear effect. I definitely wouldn't add a wisdom drain effect against a low level party.

Alternatively a fight against 5 of these could be a cake walk if they manage to catch them in a few area attacks and no one fails a save against fear or paralysis. Their 2d4+2 damage means they aren't scary damage wise, but if that becomes 4d4 (auto Crit on paralyzed targets) they'll drop your players a lot faster.

If the players are aware of them (and their weaknesses) I would think 3 would be a good fight for 4 level 3 players. If not a little easy.

Also with their low hit bonus it depends greatly on the party. If you have a lot of 17+ ACs in the group then the rarity of hits will protect them from the Paralysis. Especially if they know about the light vulnerability (note that this is LIGHT not SUNLIGHT so a simple Light Cantrip can put them at disadvantage)


Overall my opinion is that if the players are experienced and know what a Meenlock is then 3 of them would be an average to difficult combat depending on how the dice land. If they aren't experienced and/or don't know Meenlocks then it's a difficult to deadly encounter. By deadly I mean 1 or more characters may go down (or be removed from the fight by other means) not necessarily a TPK unless the paralysis hits and they all botch the Con save.

[Man on Fire]

Okay, I ran the game despite only having 3 players. And despite a ton of issues with online play, it was fun and two Meenlocks were an actual challenge for the party, almost taking down one of the characters. It helps I was using Stress rules and another character almost fell due to them. I think if I ever run it with 4-players party, I'll run it with an extra Meenlock. Thank you all for help.