Shadowy 3.5 (My players stay out and PEACH)

[Yukitsu]

I'm currently running a 3.5 game using literally nothing but custom monsters against a low level, low powered, low wealth party. I have the stats blocks all figured out, but have just realized that I haven't attached CRs to any of them. I'll be posting them basically one by one.

Some things to know about the campaign world, is that it's focused on strange and new monsters that have been coming from the plane of shadow. which has become twisted and haunting (more than usual). Part real, part fake, the creatures have this general rule:

shadow type
d4 HD
1/2 HD BAB
4+int skills per level
Poor fortitude and reflex, high will.
Traits:
Magical nature: these creatures detect as magical with a school that is appropriate to their nature.
Proficiencies: If they appear as something that would be proficient with weapons or armour, the shadow type creature is also proficient.
Dark and light: If the creature appears during the day, the creature is engulfed by darkness, natural or magical in nature. When engulfed, the creature may not act, and becomes naturally invisible and incorporeal. If the creature appears during the night, it is banished by light to the plane of shadows, but automatically appears when the light disappears.
Darkvision: 120. Shadows are partly attuned to the darkness, even if they can't enter it themselves.
Shadows do not eat, sleep or breathe.

Not all creatures (in fact, only about half) in this campaign have this template. The rest are essentially aberations or undead.

[Yukitsu]

Wallflower shadow type:
HD: 1/2
HP:1
AC: 4 (touch 4, flat footed, 4)
Saves: 0,-5, 2
Attack: -2 touch, grapple +6 (constrict, d3-2 damage)
Movement: 30 on one wall segment (must be contiguous)
Stats: strength 6, dexterity 0, constitution -, intelligence - , wisdom 10, charisma 10.
Size: Large
Feats: Improved grapple, weapon focus (tendril)
Special traits: A wallflower is a day time shadow creature.
No anatomy: A wallflower is killed by disrupting the space that it is residing in. It takes damage so long as an attack is capable of causing damage to the surface that it is residing on.

"You see a dark shadow reach out and wrap itself, like coiling vines around his throat. They grab hold tight, as they start to slowly squeeze the life out of him."

A wallflower is a series of twisted vines and flowers that are flat and shadowy in nature. They have no colour, and often arrange themselves such that they appear as a shadow on the wall of the people that walk by, or some other such inconspicuous pattern. If someone strays too closely to investigate, a dark tendril peels itself from the wall and attempts to strangle the poor bloke to death.

[Yukitsu]

The next is a shopkeeper, but I statted him out anyway, in case the party wanted to try starting something (because adventurers will be adventurers, and he's not exactly the sort of fellow to avoid drawing fire.)

Curmudgeon, undead:
4 HD
15 HP (19 in desecrated shop)
AC: 16 (2 dexterity, 4 natural. 12 touch, 14 flat footed)
Saves: 1, 3, 3
Attack: Claw at +4, d4+0 damage, causes filth fever
Full attack: 2 claws at +4, d4+0 damage, causes filth fever
Movement: 20
Stats: Strength 10, dexterity 14, constitution -, intelligence 14, wisdom 14, charisma 8.
Size: Medium
Feats: Skill focus appraise, skill focus sense motive, ability focus, filth fever.
Skills: Appraise 8, Sense motive 8, knowledge local 5, profession clerk 9.
Special abilities: A curmudgeon may use the spell identify as a spell like ability at will.
Once per day, a curmedgeon may use the spell nystul's magic aura (caster level 11) as a spell like ability. This is used to keep 11 magical items in stock non-magical in appearance, cursed items as not cursed, and non-cursed items of mundane value as cursed.

"You see a well dressed, yet obese man, with beady little eyes and thinning hair, but more astonishing is that his mouth has been stitched shut, and a thick, jagged cut across his throat seems to be muttering something. Blood has dribbled down to his portly or bloated belly like a brown tie, where you can see a pair of crusty old hands with black, blood encrusted claws, which is delicately holding a fine gem under a looking glass."

These are the selfish or greedy who have died in this setting. When here, people don't pass on when they die, becoming instead a shadow of their former selves, often as a type of undead. They are somewhat gruff, but not unkind if you are willing to pay for their services.

[Yukitsu]

In this campaign, there are three groups of people that the players can interact with. People who have become like shadows such as the Curmudgeons that are active at night, the Children, who are helpful and active in the day, and the Adults, who are depraved monsters, generally of the aberation type that stalk the place day and night. Each of the Adults is an individually statted creature depending on what its "job" is.

The first one they've heard of (but haven't met) is "the Custodian" who prowls about the place.

The Custodian, Aberation
HD: 6
HP: 19
AC: 16 (-1 size, +5 natural, +2 dexterity. 11 touch, 12 flat footed)
DR: 5/silver and good
Saves: 3, 4, 4
Attack: unarmed strike +4, d4+4 (provokes, +12 grapple)
Movement: 40
Stats: Strength 26, dexterity 15, constitution 12, intelligence 5, wisdom 9, charisma 5
Size: Large
Feats: Improved unarmed strike, blindfight, track
Skills: Listen, 14 (+6 racial bonus)
Special abilities:
Bindsense: The Custodian has blindsense out to 30 feet.
Blind: Having no eyes, the Custodian is blind.
Scent: the custodian may detect or track using scent as if a dog.
Improved grab: On a succesful punch, the Custodian may make a grapple attempt for free without provoking a second time.

"You see a terrible brute, well over 10 feet tall and built entirely of muscles like steel cables near snapping with tension. Crowning the top of him is a literal mess where the top half of his head should be, just above his nose. He sniffs the air a bit and focuses in on you raising a slab like fist, charging at you with a scream of rage and pain and frustration."

The Custodian is designed to be a boss like character for the party, that they can avoid if they don't try to investigate him too deeply. He's a cultist in worship of the plane of shadows, trying to bring it closer to the prime material, but his body has been warped beyond recognition due to the nightmarish creatures of that place messing with him. The top half of his head was actually crushed between some grinding gears in a service elevator with an open top.

[Narmy]

Search the DnD hypertext srd reference document.

It's all OGL stuff, and probably has some stuff in there about cr's, that or you could just compare your monsters to the real ones and then give them CR's.

[Yukitsu]

I'm particularly bad at that particular skill, as I'm not really used to fighting things in my actual CR range. My DM has a "yukitsu calculation" where he ups the CR of our encounters by 1.5 my current level.

But given that, I'd assume the first is a CR 1/2 to a CR 1 depending on whether or not it gets surprise, the second, if the people decide to fight it, is about a CR 3, and the last one, I'm guessing is about a CR 5.

Forgot to mention. The players and monsters all have their hit die past the first minimized.

[Fortuna]

So you get 1dx + Con mod, plus (1+Con mod)*your level-1? That seems a bit excessive in terms of power level cutting.

[Temotei]

Bold is your friend. So is italics. Underline, I suppose, has its uses, but mostly bold.

[Yukitsu]

So you get 1dx + Con mod, plus (1+Con mod)*your level-1? That seems a bit excessive in terms of power level cutting.

It shouldn't be overly bad. I don't plan on going over level 5, and if I do, will likely undo the rule to make the party more "heroic" as it were. The absolute worst, it would knock one of my players back 22 HP.

You'll note I also am deliberately cutting damage from monsters. I want to prevent anyone from dying to a single lucky hit, (most any of these things does is 16 at once, on a maxed crit) while still making them viable threats to everyone, which I can't do when one person has 45 HP, and another has 14. Hence why it's more even across the board.

More of a nerf to melee, but casters all go insane, so it's not precisely a bad trade off.