Piscoloth, Canoloth (CR 4), and Howler (CR3)

[Yora]

For my campaign I want to use only Pandemonium and Gehenna for the lower planes, which means plenty of yugoloths and also howlers. There's always been plenty of talk of how the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide don't have enough monsters for higher levels, so it seems that for Mordenkainen's Tome they simply took the critters they still had to stat and assigned them higher CRs. Which does the job, but completely reshuffles the ranking of the relevant creatures. Looking at their stats in 2nd and 3rd edition and comparing how other creatures were converted in the Monster Manual, canoloths should be CR 4 and howlers CR 3, not CR 8. So I reworked them to match those CRs and also statted up piscoloths.



Howler
Large fiend, chaotic evil
Armor Class 14 (natural armor)
Hit Points 45 (6d10 + 12)
Speed 40 ft.
Str 17 (+3), DEX 16 (+3), CON 15 (+2), INT 5 (-3), WIS 14 (+2), CHA 6 (-2)
Skills Perception +4
Damage Resistences cold, fire, lightning; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Condition Immunities frightened
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
Languages understands Abyssal but can't speak
Challenge 3 (700 XP)

Special Traits
Pack Tactics: A howler has advantage on attack rolls against a creature if at least one of the howler's allies is within 5 feet of the creature and the ally isn't incapacitated.

Actions
Rending Bite: +5 to hit, 10 (2d6 + 3) / 11 (2d10).
Mind-Breaking Howl: DC 12.



Canoloth
Medium fiend, neutral evil
Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 60 (8d8 + 24)
Speed 50 ft.
STR 18 (+4), DEX 10 (+0), CON17 (+3), INT 5 (-3), WIS17 (+3), CHA 12 (+1)
Skills Investigation +2, Perception +8
Damage Resistences cold, fire, lightning; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Damage Immunities acid, poison
Condition Immunities poisoned
Senses blindsight 60 ft., truesight 120 ft., passive Perception 18
Languages Abyssal, Infernal, telepathy 60 ft.
Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)

Special Traits
Dimensional Lock: -
Magic Resistance: The canoloth has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Magic Weapons: The canoloth's weapon attacks are magical.
Uncanny Senses: -

Actions
Multiattack: The canoloth makes two attacks: one with its tongue or its bite and one with its claws.
Bite: Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (4d6 + 4) piercing damage.
Claws: Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) slashing damage.
Tongue: Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, 15 (2d10 + 4) piercing damage.

While trying to figure out what abilities a piscoloth should have I went back to the AD&D stats and realized that a piscoloth stripped of its yugoloth traits is a straight up chuul. For more than 18 years, I never realized that the chuul is a knockoff.
This did make the conversion fairly simple, though.



Piscoloth
Medium fiend, neutral evil
Armor Class 18 (natural armor)
Hit Points 82 (11d8 + 33)
Speed 30 ft., swim 30 ft.
STR 19 (+4), DEX 10 (+0), CON 16 (+3), INT 11 (+0), WIS 10 (+0), CHA 12 (+1)
Skills Perception +3
Damage Resistances cold, fire, lightning; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Damage Immunities acid, poison
Condition Immunities poisoned
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages telepathy 60 ft.
Challenge 7 (2,900 XP)

Special Traits
Amphibious: The piscoloth can breathe air and water.
Innate Spellcasting: The piscoloth's innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 12). The piscoloth can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
3/day each: blink, detect magic, meld into stone
1/day: phantasmal killer, stinking cloud
Magic Resistance: The piscoloth has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Magic Weapons: The piscoloth's weapon attacks are magical.
Uncanny Senses: See canoloth

Actions
Multiattack: The piscoloth makes two pincer attacks. If the piscoloth is grappling a creature, the piscoloth can also use its tentacles once.
Pincer: Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage. The target is grappled (escape DC 15) if it is a Large or smaller creature and the piscoloth doesn't have two other creatures grappled.
Tentacles: One creature grappled by the piscoloth must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute. Until this poison ends, the target is paralyzed. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
Teleport: The piscoloth magically teleports, along with any equipment it is wearing or carrying, up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space it can see.

I think the bonuses and DCs should all be correct, but if anyone wants to recheck that would help.

[sigurd]

I can't speak to balance and correctness, but I like them. Following.