It's 2:40am here, but I'm not yet asleep and I saw a 5e cambian, so here's a bunch of line-by-line nitpicking followed by a giant flaw. You can tell me how I'm wrong tomorrow.
Damage resistance: is there anything that's resistant to only some non-magical damage types? The line "Damage Resistance: bludgeoning, piercing and slashing non-magical weapons" is getting on my nerves already. Every time, it has to be read to make sure a particular monster is not an exception to the pattern.
Fiendish blessing: Why should I care how this monster gets its AC? I presume it's a standard fiend feature, and still don't care. Multiattack: it can't mix up fire rays and spear stabs because of reasons. Spear: it's likely a template they have for standardised weapon attacks, and that's probably useful. But seeing a block of text each time discussing one- and two-handed uses is also getting on my nerves - a single line would have sufficed.
Fiendish Charm: and now we got to the issue at hand. This is a terrible monster. In a straight up fight it'll fly 30 meters in the air and fire rays at people, to, undoubtedly, the delight of everyone but the casters and maybe the archer. It will also plane shift away as soon as it is losing. But it's not a combat creature, it's clearly a social kind of monster.
Which is where fiendish charm comes in. Here's the MO of a cambian out to ruin PCs' day: wait until they are alone on a street, charm them (good luck spotting cambian in a crowd if you succeed on your save), have them follow you, give you everything they have, then tell them to close their eyes and stand very still. Slit their throat or run away, as needed. Repeat with a new face if save succeeded. Plane shift away at a moment's notice. This monster wins.
I can see an adventure built around trying to bait a cambian, and for a right party with a skilled GM this could be fun. For anyone else, this is a monster that, when played straight, will have his way with the party and be off on its next adventure. It's the protagonist here.
@Magician noticed this, they split "weapon" type damage 3 ways, and there has yet to be a meaningful difference between the 3 (I'm assuming some monsters will have resist to some but not all, but I don't feel like we've seen that yet). I'll take a peak at the DM monsters in a bit an see if this holds true.
@Magician don't know why the keep repeating it. Spear is versatile, we should know what that means. RE: AC, they're trying to be consistent wrt PC/Monster AC and so they feel the need to explain when the numbers don't add up (in this case Scale is medium so it's 14+dex max 2), so they need to explain why it gets to 19 (CHA +3)
I haven't decided if I agree or disagree with this logic, it makes for a neat monster construction system (Decide stats, decide profs, build like PC), but it means 4e's "monsters don't play by the same rules" is lost
wow, I'm developing a plot in my head already for this tbh. Every night when the PCs go to bed, they all make saves. The GM invents some kind of cockamanie reason, and after about a week, they start hearing rumors that there are adventurers terrorizing the town, people start hiding from them or acting strange around them etc.
this is definitely a big bad type monster...it's big punchy power should be largely narrative, but it could easily be used in combat effectively and it's not limited which is an issue IMO
Ok. I have a Lance weapon, and have next one situation. !@|@|X - where !@ it's me, @ is my ally, then X - enemy, which i try to attack. Do enemy have cover for my ally ( in dnd5 system )&
