The Wendigo

[MrStabby]

I have no idea if anyone has adapted the legend of the Wendigo to D&D - or rather I am somewhat certain someone must have, but I can't be bothered to search for it and its sometimes more fun to create than to read.

The version I have here is atypical (which might annoy a few people). There are reasons for this...


1) Its a high level monster. This is for the role I want for it. When do you stop wandering the wilderness? Somewhat when you can teleport there. No campaign goes to the wildreness, they go through it to get to a location: a town or a tomb or the fountain of youth or whatever. Your usual wilderness monsters stop being a challenge after a while or feel contrived or prescriptive. They lent themselves towards being beasts or monstrosities (there is no reason why 3 Roc can't be a worthy wilderness encounter for a party, though I am not sure how fun it would be). So I thought that parties tended to get access to teleport from level 11 but can sometimes be a little higher. I then thought about what the highest (reasonable) level encounter is that would work for this party.

2) I wanted a horror feel. Something supernatural. Something to make the nights in the wilderness scary. Something detectable by hunger, though hard to spot and hard to hear. I gave mechanics to slowly close inexorably with the party - longstrider at will, no exhaustion, an etherial step ability. I want the party to be able to be hunted, to know it but not to see the creature. Good stealth, fog cloud... all trying to help build this. D&D doesn't realy do horror well, so not the highest expectations.

3) Fey. The creature type might be a surprise. Honestly there is a lot that could kind of work. Undead, fiend, aberation (though not the usual type), giant, even elemental. I went for Fey because I wanted the creature to be a winter spirit and that same Eladrin type seasonal emphasis felt Fey.

4) The widrerness doesn't have much in... thats why its the wildrness. I wanted an encounter or an enemy that doesn't need a full adventuring day built around it. The Wendigo can retreat, heal and return to be multiple encounters. Its longer term debilitations (exhaustion, Max HP loss) but also the gained buffs from immunity to its hunger will keep an encounter shifting. There are enough spells and special abilities to hopefully keep the Wendigo fresh for a couple of encounters.

I am looking for something about CR17 or CR18. Eyballing it at present is making it look just a little on the weak side. Comparing this to an Adult Gold Dragon for the target CR - the Wendigo is much more fragile, much less mobile (80ft fly speed is good). The Wendigo does a ittle less damage and has worse to hit modifiers and a lower DC on spell effects. The Wendigo's spells are weaker than those crazy 12d10 breath weapon attacks... The Wendigo does have better resistances though and a bit of flexability through spells.

I think I coud buff it a little, not going too crazy, and keep it a potent foe.


The Wendigo
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/UFBDVNdD4OcM

[sandmote]

Calculations:

three castings of Cone of Cold, two of which can be upcast to 6th level + 3 legendary claw attacks + 1 wolf I'm assuming will be active already up. Plus making PCs bite each other.
Attack modifier if we want it to be CR 17 or 18 would be +11; in the same situation the saving throws for The Hunger and the wendigo's spellcasting.
178 HP with AC 18 with 3 save proficiencies and a feature which can force PCs to attack each other for minimal damage.
The the calculations the DMG suggests for a CR 17+ monster, I get a defensive CR of 11 and an Offensive CR of 19, for a total CR of 15.
For a return fight (meaning if the wendigo doesn't have its highest spell slots available) I get an offensive CR of 14.

Design notes:
Adding longer lasting status effects is at least interesting, but I'm not sure this thing has enough defenses to stay alive through multiple combats. I'd at least buff the wendigo's hit points up to 247 (26d10+104) so it should be able to survive one or two more hard hits. That would be enough to give it a defensive CR of 14, for an average CR of 17.

Does the Wendigo want spellcasting in the manner of a wizard or sorcerer, or would the formatting for "Innate Spellcasting" fit better?


Innate Spellcasting. The wendigo's innate spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 18). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no components:

At will: Detect Thoughts, fog cloud (at 2nd level), Levitate, Silence, Spike Growth,

3/day each: Cone of Cold, Control Winds, Ice Storm, Plant Growth (produces large drifts of snow instead), Sleet Storm,

1/day each: Wind Walk, Wind Wall
And True Seeing and Longstrider can probably be rolled into the Wendigo's innate stats. I'd at least let the wendigo keep up with a horse; if you want a magical speed boost let it cast Expeditious Retreat.

Theming
I'm not sure the a Wendigo is the most effectively represented here, but that's probably something you should check with someone qualified.

As someone not qualified, I would probably replace the spirit wolf with some sort of undead which works like the the Echo Knight's echo (meaning the wendigo can do stuff from the undead's position) and when destroyed reveals itself to be the ice-clad corpse of a humanoid the wendigo possessed. The idea being to marry together the "wendigo is a spirit which possesses humans" concept with the "wendigos originate from a cannibal" concept.

If the minion can move on the wendigo's turn, its turn is at the end of a PC's turn (so its hard to tell when its the minion attacking and when its the wendigo using a legendary action), and the minion is visually indistinguishable from the wendigo until dead it might add to the horror element; you'd have one thing you actually need to bring down, but until you bring one down you can't actually tell which is the main creature and which is the undead puppet.