Comments/suggestions on Jester's rules (5e)

[alhoon]

A toned down rewrite of the vampire of the monster manual, with sneak attack and good social skills. That's what I have.
And still, toned down she landed at CR9... which is not true Challenge rating. A 9th lvl party that is ill prepared will have a lot of trouble defeating her. A 9th lvl party that is well prepared will cut her down within a round or two.

As with Toben, I will put very little info on her. A couple of paragraphs, not the page-and-a-half that Gaz II has on her.
If you don't own Gaz II, the entry will be of little use to you. It's mostly an update of Kazandra to 5th edition.

[Jester of the FoS]

I think the racial vampire variants (elf, dwarves, halflings, kender...) are one of the distinctive monster types of RL that deserve priority.

Those will probably be sidebars, variants on the existing vampire. They should likely use the same statblock, and just swap out a few powers.

[alhoon]

You read my mind. I'm actually running a few sessions in Martira Bay. Can't wait to see what you got....

Done. She's 2 1/2 pages long. I really don't envy the one that has to write Strahd... vampires have huge entries

[jules]

how about the ravenloftian syrins & the various hags?

[Jester of the FoS]

You read my mind. I'm actually running a few sessions in Martira Bay. Can't wait to see what you got....

Done. She's 2 1/2 pages long. I really don't envy the one that has to write Strahd... vampires have huge entries

I wonder if you could get away with just skipping a few powers, referring back to the main vampire entry.

[alhoon]

Meh, I thought about putting down stuff like:
"Charm: As vampire with DC 16. " but decided against it. For starters, vampire is not in the PDF, so it's a hassle to find it. Better have the info there.

[alhoon]

I added the Kargatane there too. They're not tough in combat; the Kargat have their own agents for that. The main utility of the Kargatane in my opinion (and in my write-up of them) is their skills. They are more or less slightly combat-trained civilians that spy for their master with a few exceptions, inspired by the "Vampire thralls" of the Gazeteer. And those exceptions are not a match for a 1st lvl party BTW by themselves. One thrall will need 2-3 normal kargatane members to have a chance against a 1st lvl party.

Question: Did someone put Kazandra at the end instead of under Vampire, or I did it by mistake?

[Jester of the FoS]

Question: Did someone put Kazandra at the end instead of under Vampire, or I did it by mistake?

That was me. I'm thinking about separating the NPCs from the generic monsters.

[Svend]

Would it be possible to add all 5 magnitudes of ghosts (as pr. Van R) in the monster book? Also maybe age categories to vamps?

[alhoon]

I think the whole point of the google docs is
"Feel free to do it and we would be happy to comment on it!"
I have VRGtGhosts so I believe I could work on that, but ghosts are tough to calculate XP properly...



Keep in mind that D&D next finally after several decades has reached the conclusion that you can't go with "Asterisks give such XP each" or "Abilities give 1/3 of CR each" but you have to calculate the XP again.
So a 3rd magnitude ghost with malevolence is way tougher than a 3rd magnitude ghost that writes on walls and deals 3d6 energy drain (since it returns with a long rest) even if the second Ghost has more powers.

[Svend]

Yea, i guess I could have entered it in my self. I guess i'm a bit new and inexperienced atm (my first post, hi all ;P). Anyhow, it would be helpful in converting some of the old RL modules, there's a lot of good material!

[alhoon]

oh... so we're talking SPECIFIC ghosts. Yes, that's easier. Do you have something in mind?

[Jester of the FoS]

Would it be possible to add all 5 magnitudes of ghosts (as pr. Van R) in the monster book? Also maybe age categories to vamps?

I'm leaning away from 2e's "Ranks" for the various monsters. It was just a way to have slightly different types of ghost without having them be different monsters, which doesn't seem to be as much of a hurdle these days. It's easy enough to just make a variant ghost of any Challenge.

I'm more included to just have different powers you can add to the standard ghost, or use to replace the abilities of the standard ghost.
For example, see the specter on page 279 of the Monster Manual and its variant, the Poltergeist.

The ranks are a neat way of differentiating the monsters in-world, but making five variant statblocks isn't the easiest method of customizing monsters.

[alhoon]

I would beg to differ mostly for continuity reasons. Especially for ghosts, saying "A ghost has about one power per rank" is easy and simple.

[Jester of the FoS]

I would beg to differ mostly for continuity reasons. Especially for ghosts, saying "A ghost has about one power per rank" is easy and simple.

I tend to shy away from design when the best argument is "because that's how it was done 20 years ago."
There's just as much continuity if you say a ghost is 1 rank for every 4 CR. So a CR 13-16 ghost would be rank 4.