So I'm looking at writing a 5 ed story and one of the baddies is going to be a Death Knight. I Just picked up the Monster Manual yesterday and HOLY HECK this guy is a CR 17!?!
I looked at his stats/few abilities and I don't see how this guy could last more than a few rounds against a party of four properly built 17th level PC's?
I admit I've only played 5ed a few times thus far due to work and getting people together but I must be missing something here.
I am also upset that he is chaotic. :/
Death Knights aren't some mindless undead like the rest of the rabble. LE suites the majority of these fallen Knights/Paladins
What do you guys think?
I think you should customize the Death Knight in whatever way suits your story.
As a DM I know I can, but the further I get from the rules given the less "authentic" it will be.
I'm writing this story while I'm on midnights at work and it's not for a campaign but for a book with the mindset of becoming a movie. (I know, high hopes lol)
I am creating a party exactly by the rules so when a reader/watcher encounters what happens in the story it's right from the rules. The biggest problem I had with the D&D movie years ago is it had nothing to do with D&D lol.
I didn't want the characters to be much more than level 6 by the end of the first book. The problem is the daughter of the now Death Knight will be grown and confront him not knowing who he is. (Cliche perhaps, but fun.) But dang they're CR 17. I'm fine with him being 10ish, but 17? A gargantuan monster like the Purple Worm is only CR 15...
I just have no clue where they came from with such a high CR. Sure a 17th level fighter against the Death Knight would be a challenge, but when that fighter has a 17th level Cleric, 17th level Wizard & 17th Level whatever behind him there is no challenge in it.
I also find it odd that a Vampire is LE, yet the Death Knight is CE...
MintFinkeldove wrote:
Well, if you want stuff to be "authentic", and find it odd that Death Knights are CE, go check the backstory of the allegedly first DK, Lord Kargoth of Mansbridge, also known as St. Kargoth, former Paladin of Heironeous, corrupted through the actions od Demogorgon, hailing from the world of Greyhawk. This is an example of a chaotic evil death knight, though it is common for them to be LE as you said. Well this is as lore-worthy as it gets, at least in a specific campaign setting, though not for D&D in general.
http://www.canonfire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Saint_Kargoth
Very cool Wilb, thanks for linking that. I'm not sure if the story I'm writing will be in Forgotten Realms or not. A long thought dead God is a major part and that could be a lore problem if I did put it into a certain known realm.
I am reading the DMG now about playing with monster CR's.
It is good to note that CR 17 assumes a party without magical items, not using at least some (lowly) undead as allies would negate at least one of the death knight's abilities.
The death knight has a good AC, and has a parry ability to boot, so it can be quite challenging if played to it's strengths.
I don't consider Lord Soth (the example death knight) to be Lawful Evil, infact he broke every important oath he took. It might still show some semblance of honor in it's behaviour but when it comes down to it he is likely to break an oath at his convenience. Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil would be my choice of his alignment.
That said I find abiities with many high CR creatures a bit lacking compared to the options PCs have, I would consider adding:
- Magic Resistance (they had very high magic resistance in previous edition and could even turn back spells)
- A fear aura (it could frighten even Kender, but now it is just not there) possibly replace it by aura of hate (oathbreaker paladin), hell possibly both.
- I'd also add some skills, I find this somewhat annoying trend to give intelligent monsters no or few skills.
- resistance against non-magical weapon attacks (an oathbreaker ability and used to be an ability of the death knight as well.
- give access to oathbreaker bonus spells
I would add some skills regardless and add one other ability without rasing CR, if I'd add all of them I probably raise the CR up by 1.
MintFinkeldove wrote:
The monsters in MM are a basic chassis for DMs to adjust how they need. Adjust stats, add or subtract abilities, change alignments etc. It's really easy. I've also noted that with bounded accuracy adjusting monsters up or down requires little skill. If you want an extra/lower bonus to attack just up/reduce strength by 2 points. Give them better/worse armour or +2 dex for AC. Uusually no need to adjust hit dice just give them 3hp per level or 6hp per level (more or less depending on hit dice) although giving leader types a couple of extra hit dice to bump them to a higher proficiency bonus often makes sense. Give fightery types manoeuvres or even legendary actions that perform manoeuvres. Give other monsters class features to suit your concept. Lair actions can adda bit of spice too.
The only metaphorical bugbear I can see if the XP rewards, as the rules are a bit wishy washy on what justifies a bump, which makes encounter building art more than science but I guess we'll learn as we go.
arderkrag wrote:
I've found for better or worse for this, is that monsters need a bit of DM love, not just for challenge, but to be fun to fight against.
This go's both during prep and during play. For example in my next game one possible encounter will have an Allosaurus. I felt its stat block was a bit limited for what is was, so I built it a couple of attacks and even a couple legendary actions.
When I run the fight it wont just bite people, it will fling them, grab them in its jaws etc. And thats not just flavor, those descriptions will have effects in the game.
This edition makes things a lot easier to prep and run, but it also expects more from the DM. This is not objectivly good or bad. Its prefrence.
A monsters CR rating is based on its number crunch, damage, hp etc. Would a death knight stand up against 4 level 17 PCs who were not totally incompetant at any kind of strategy? probably not.
But you can add your own bits and bobs to it.
CR 17 doesn't mean he's a challenge for 4 level 17 PCs by himself. Look at the XP, not the CR. A single Death Knight is only a Medium Encounter for a party like that.
Its clear from the Death Knight abilities that he's meant to be leading (and buffing) a force of lesser undead, e.g. Wraiths or Ghouls.
According to the encounter difficulty rules, a death knight would be a MEDIUM encounter for a party of 4 Level 17 characters. I used my Encounter Difficulty Calculator and got the following results:
MintFinkeldove wrote:
This is supposed to be a boss mob. It should have additional undead around it that its presence makes all the undead including itself harder to turn. It should be able to call in additional undead as the battle continues if you want this to be an epic end boss encounter.
Don’t forget the “Immortal Until Redeemed” paragraph in the description. You need some quest to make it want to atone for its wickedness. If the players wipe out its lair and plunder the treasure, they are going to have a very bad dude that never sleeps on their tail when it arises anew.
This is one real bad dude as written up.
Thanks for all the responses. I had a huge thing written out and the page flipped and deleted it all. -_-
To summarize it with some of the statements made above, the story I'm writing will be by the rules just as if I was making a campaign for my players. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing a D&D 5ed story, I would be writing a fantasy story that has some D&D elements. Every movie that has come out and just about every D&D book I've read does this. They don't base the characters and events on the rules in the editions, they just write a fantasy story with some familiar names/sites/ect...
arderkrag wrote:
Torg_Smith wrote:
MintFinkeldove wrote:
MintFinkeldove wrote:
To the OP, curiously, have you written novels/books before, and if so, was anything published or brought to market? What about experience writing content for film? Indie production or for larger production studios?
Here's my two cents, and in no way do I want to discourage your endeavors~
Although I do appreciate you wanting to write stories that are framed within the parameters of Dungeons & Dragon rules, I have a really hard to grasping who would really appreciate a movie or even a novel that from framework. I do not think most audiences for movies would even appreciate the differences in nuances of rules between editions, let alone truly understand what makes a Dungeons & Dragons movie set apart from any other fantasy movie (besides the title).
As someone who is familiar with D&D, I think for me, I would appreciate a movie based off a "known" quantity within D&D, meaning a familiar campaign world, like Forgotten Realms or Dragon Lance. RA Salvatore's Drizzt has built up a decent readership outside of gamerdom that perhaps, making it to the big screen would be an appropriate gamble for the studios. LIkewise, I think just by going off the marketing hype of a dragon war (War of the Lances) would be interesting for a Dragon Lance-sque movie.
That said, then there are the issues of copyrighted materials...if you want to move past "fan fiction", right? If you are writing beyond fan fiction and actually want to bring your work to market, you will likely face massive lawsuits (and far gone are the days of the gentler benevolent TSR) if you have anything closely resembling the Wizards/Hasbro IP. Perhaps instead, you should consider writing FOR these companies.... I know you complain a bit about the content that is out there (you ever read Dragon Lance, a bunch of the original work was greatly inspired through gameplay), but there is something to be said about some of the more successful series, like Dragon Lance, like the Drizzt chronicles, like the Ed Greenwood materials for FR, or even some of the newer content.
Just my rambling thoughts...
1eejit wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
MintFinkeldove wrote:
Ah yes, the copyright issues. 
I'm 39 and have seen the ups and downs of our game from when I started playing in the late 80's. I would submit what I've written to them and see if they like the idea. It would help 5ed get spread around in my opinion. But more than likely it's a pipe dream.
I've had very little experience writing except the many adventures I've created for my players over the decades. I've read just about every Dragonlance book out there and many Forgotten Realms novels for D&D.
Again guys, I realize a story doesn't have to be based on the rules. I get that. I also realize someone who doesn't play the game wouldn't realize it either way. It's the principle that a great story can be written within the guidelines of our great game.
When I describe a bag of holding in the story, it's not called a "Bag of Holding." It will be described as a sack the character is holding that's constantly filled with items. The fibers of the bag expand momentarily as an object is placed in it but then the bag goes back to it's normal shape. This happens over and over, and to a fellow observer, they would think it would be impossible to store that many things in such a "small" bag.
I'm sure some of you may be too young to remember the D&D movie that hit the theaters with Marlon Wayans but man what a dissapointment that was. Everything that was happening was rediculous and the worst part was the crappy effects of the Dragons. Seriously, this is dungeons and DRAGONS and they looked like crap lol. Reign of Fire came out not long after and had some of the best looking Dragons on the big screen thus far.
Anyway, I don't want to argue semantics over a story doesn't have to be in accordance with the rules of the game. I will be writing it that way to make it mean that much more to the fans and myself. They can see in each book the exact character sheet of each character. Every encounter will utilize the proper treasure according to the DMG. Every creature they deal with have the abilities of the MM from 5ed.
To the layman, it will just be a great adventure of 6 party members meeting early on, learning to work together and growing as individuals and as a team all the while confronting a rising threat to the land.
Half Elf Monk - female
Halfling Bard - female
Tiefling Warlock - female
Dwarven Cleric - male
Half Orc Druid - male
Human Paladin - male
The Tattooed Monk is the main character the story revolves around. The Human Paladin is atoning for a recent transgression. The Cleric learns life isn't all about the riches of his church. The Bard is an experienced treasure hunter and has her trusty "pet" with her all the time. The Druid is her "pet." He travels with her for her cooking and because she's usually deep into the woodlands searching out the unknown. The Tiefling only speaks telepathically and I havn't found where she fits in just yet, probrably at odds with the Dwarf.
I work long hours on midnights in a 911 center so in between the crazyness, I brainstorm/write. ;
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
FFSAA wrote: