Lillend

[rferries]

https://i.imgur.com/ZhunVLv.jpg

Lillend
Large celestial, chaotic good
Armour Class 17 (natural armour)
Hit Points 68 (8d10+24)
Speed 30 ft., fly 60 ft., swim 30 ft.


STR

DEX
CON
INT
WIS
CHA


20 (+5)
20 (+5)
16 (+3)

14 (+2)
16 (+3)
18 (+4)


Saving Throws Dex +8, Wis +6, Cha +7
Skills Arcana +5, Insight +6, Nature +5, Perception +6, Performance +7, Persuasion +7, Religion +5
Damage Resistances fire; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Damage Immunities poison
Condition Immunities charmed, poisoned
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 16
Languages Celestial, Common, Elvish, Sylvan
Challenge 8 (3,900)
Amphibious. The lillend can breathe both air and water.

Innate Spellcasting. The lillend's innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 15, +7 to hit with spell attacks). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

At will: light

3/day each: darkness, hallucinatory terrain, knock

1/day each: irresistible dance, speak with animals, speak with plants, transport via plants


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

Magic Weapons. The lillend's weapon attacks are magical.

Shapechanger. The lillend can use its action to polymorph into a Small or Medium humanoid, or back into its true form. Without wings, the lillend loses its flying speed. Other than its size and speed, its statistics are the same in each form. Any equipment it is wearing or carrying isn't transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies.

Spellcasting. The lillend is a 8th-level spellcaster. Its spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 15, +7 to hit with spell attacks). It has the following bard spells prepared:


Cantrips (at will): mage hand, prestidigitation, vicious mockery

1st level (4 slots): charm person, detect magic, healing word

2nd level (3 slots): lesser restoration, see invisibility, suggestion

3rd level (3 slots): dispel magic, fear, plant growth

4th level (2 slots): dimension door, greater invisibility


Actions
Multiattack. The lillend makes three attacks: one with its tail and two with either its longbow or its longsword.

Longbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, range 150/600 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) piercing damage.

Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) slashing damage, or 16 (2d10 + 5) slashing damage if used with two hands.

Tail. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft., one creature. Hit: 16 (2d10 + 5) bludgeoning damage. If the target is Medium or smaller, it is grappled (escape DC 18). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, the lillend can automatically hit the target with its tail, and the lillend can't make tail attacks against other targets.

Reactions
Parry. The lillend adds 3 to its AC against one melee attack that would hit it. To do so, the lillend must see the attacker and be wielding a melee weapon.

[Loek]

Oh, pretty. I like it.
It feels very much like the Celestial version of a Marilith (though significantly weaker at only 7HD/CR7)
I like the twist of making it a spellcaster instead.

A few things I'm gonna question though:

+16 to hit with it's longbow? Seems rather excessive.
Why resistance to both necrotic and radiant? Those are generally opposed, so I wouldn't expect a creature to be resistant to both (Well, maybe something unliving like a construct)
The 20ft walk and 20ft swim both seem really low. Why would it ever slither along if it could just fly a few feet of the air and go way faster?


And then we compare stuff (CR7 fiends/demons):
Maurezhi
Way more HD, way less stats.
Significantly less mobile
Weaker shapeshift
No spells
No magical weapons
Less attacks (and no range)

Draegloth
Way more HD, lower mental stats
Significantly less mobile
less damage resistances
Same innate kind of magic (Though far more limited)
No normal spellcasting
No magic resistance
No shapeshifting
Similar attacks (but not magical, and no range)

Armanite
Similar HD, lower mental stats
As fast, but no flying
less damage resistances
No shapeshifting
No spellcasting (except for the lightning lance)
Similar attack pattern (No range and significantly less damage on 2 of the 3)


Conclusion:
The longbow attack is overpowered, even with a more normal to hit, it seems way above the norm for this kind of multi attacking CR 7 critter to have such a powerful range attack in there.

Everything else is interesting. But this is not a CR 7 creature.


Suggestions:

I think I'd add a bunch of HD (up to 12-15) and bump the CR by a few (not exactly sure how many)
Up the movement to walk 30 and swim 30-60
Set the longbow to a more normal to hit (and possibly the damage as well, but that depends on what CR you end up on)
Move Psychic from immune to resistant, and remove necrotic resistance

[rferries]

Oh, pretty. I like it.
It feels very much like the Celestial version of a Marilith (though significantly weaker at only 7HD/CR7)
I like the twist of making it a spellcaster instead.

A few things I'm gonna question though:

+16 to hit with it's longbow? Seems rather excessive.
Why resistance to both necrotic and radiant? Those are generally opposed, so I wouldn't expect a creature to be resistant to both (Well, maybe something unliving like a construct)
The 20ft walk and 20ft swim both seem really low. Why would it ever slither along if it could just fly a few feet of the air and go way faster?


And then we compare stuff (CR7 fiends/demons):
Maurezhi
Way more HD, way less stats.
Significantly less mobile
Weaker shapeshift
No spells
No magical weapons
Less attacks (and no range)

Draegloth
Way more HD, lower mental stats
Significantly less mobile
less damage resistances
Same innate kind of magic (Though far more limited)
No normal spellcasting
No magic resistance
No shapeshifting
Similar attacks (but not magical, and no range)

Armanite
Similar HD, lower mental stats
As fast, but no flying
less damage resistances
No shapeshifting
No spellcasting (except for the lightning lance)
Similar attack pattern (No range and significantly less damage on 2 of the 3)


Conclusion:
The longbow attack is overpowered, even with a more normal to hit, it seems way above the norm for this kind of multi attacking CR 7 critter to have such a powerful range attack in there.

Everything else is interesting. But this is not a CR 7 creature.


Suggestions:

I think I'd add a bunch of HD (up to 12-15) and bump the CR by a few (not exactly sure how many)
Up the movement to walk 30 and swim 30-60
Set the longbow to a more normal to hit (and possibly the damage as well, but that depends on what CR you end up on)
Move Psychic from immune to resistant, and remove necrotic resistance


Thanks for the feedback! To respond to your points:

-The +16 longbow attack is a copy-paste error, my bad! Set to +8 as it should have been.
-Standardised the movement speeds.
-The resistances are from the original 2e creature, I've trimmed them to follow more from the 3e version.
-I'll cut the CR down a bit instead of adding HD, I'm enjoying a lot of 5e's mechanics but not the hit point inflation for monsters haha. This way it's a conjure celestial option too I suppose.

[RickAsWritten]

Nice! I'm currently running an altered Tales from the Infinite Staircase for my group. Definitely gonna borrow this.

The only thing missing that I can think of is the ability to disappear and turn into an infinity symbol. That may be an "exclusive to the Stair" thing though.

[Twelvetrees]

I'm going to be taking a look at the Lillend's Challenge Rating and then trying to figure out likely strategies it would employ in combat. The numerous options make it somewhat obtuse to figure out how to run, so this should help.

Defensive Challenge Rating: 8 (or 7 if the party has magic weapons)

Between its decent AC, damage resistances, saving throw bonuses, flight speed and ranged attacks, and ability to heal itself as a bonus action with healing word, the Lillend ends up being more sturdy than I initially thought.

Offensive Challenge Rating: 8

The tail attack is terrifying. Reach makes it better and using it while flying is almost unfair. I think I may have this pegged a little low, for reasons I will elaborate on later, but this is a good baseline.

Overall Challenge Rating: 8


Tactics

If the Lillend has time to prepare, some combination of hallucinatory terrain with pits, quicksand, or other dangerous terrain; and plant growth to make movement extremely difficult would help to tilt the battlefield in its favor.

In battle, there are a couple of tricks the Lillend could use to make a fight more challenging.
- Greater invisibility plus flight and only attacking with its longbow would make the Lillend nigh-impossible to hit.
- Starting the fight with fear and then attacking a single target on subsequent rounds with Tail and Longsword attacks would be pretty vicious, especially if fear caused some of the characters who failed saves to run into dangerous pieces of the landscape hidden by hallucinatory terrain. Not getting another save against the spell until the Lillend is out of sight effectively locks some characters out of the fight if used in combination with plant growth's ability to slow movement to a crawl.

I can't see vicious mockery, heat metal, or irresistible dance ever coming into play. None of them are effective enough compared to the other options available to the Lillend.

Transport via plants is a potentially good escape option. Healing word is always a good option for the Lillend's bonus action if they haven't already cast a spell because nothing else they can do uses a bonus action.

[Loek]

-I'll cut the CR down a bit instead of adding HD, I'm enjoying a lot of 5e's mechanics but not the hit point inflation for monsters haha. This way it's a conjure celestial option too I suppose.

I think I might not have been completely clear :-p

Your Lillend beats the 3 compared to creatures on every field mentioned, except health. (And I didn't check last night, but they are also beat on AC, even before the parry).

I think it has to ABOVE CR 7, not below. And the added HD were just to prevent it becoming a glass cannon.


At CR 5, we are now comparing to Tanarukk (which is clearly very much weaker) and a Nighthag (which seems surprisingly close (though less mobile and not very physically threatening, until you see that most of the stuff gets cut at CR5 :-p and only comes into play with multiple CR 7 creatures).
Or look at the Hollyphant (The first Celestial comparision, but still way weaker) and finally the Barbed Devil which comes close physically (though it's claws are far weaker than the longbow/longsword), has far less movement and has no magic, except for the hurl flame idea.

[rferries]

Thanks all for the feedback (and my apologies for misinterpreting the CR comments!). Added an extra HD and Constitution and bumped CR up to 8.