Stream Results—February 13th, 2019: Nokris, Elemental Champion, and Astral Scout (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

Got some more monsters from my weekly Twitch monster making stream for you!

As per usual, stats and descriptions are below, and the GM Binder doc can be found right right here.

First though, as is tradition, I really wanna thank everyone tuning in, because you're all rad.

Now, monsters:

Nokris, Herald of Xol

Nokris is from the Destiny series, and was suggested by our resident Destiny lorehound @whistlehunter.

(note to self for future stream: "Lore Hound")

This one was fun to do because, like for Xol, I've actually played Destiny 2, and have run the mission in which this boss can be found a good number of times. Also because it's got a couple semi-interesting mechanics that were easy enough to port into D&D.

There was some initial debate on whether Nokris should be Large or Huge (and honestly, I still think an argument could be made for either), but based on the picture above, and the fact that we chose the same for Crota, I eventually decided on Large.

I didn't want him to be all too physically powerful, since he's mainly a caster, and is specifically mentioned in the lore as being considerably weaker physically than his siblings. So I gave him a decent AC (via the Hive Defense trait, which is a reflavored combination of Fiendish Blessing and Magic Resistance), but not a ton of hit points. Instead, Nokris' survivability comes from his various traits and his ability to fly—not to mention all the summons and the invulnerability bubble he gets from his Lair Actions).

Offensively, he's mostly a blaster, with Dying Star being his big nova attack (pun not intended, but enjoyed), and his multiattack and Legendary Actions allowing him to sling a hail of Darkness Blasts every round, preferably from above.

Elemental Champion

This cool concept was suggested by @MuxedoTask, and I knew we had to do it, because the art (created by fabulous artist Cristina Laviña) was just so awesome.

Honestly, this one was pretty straightforward. The biggest uncertainty came from the fact that I immediately jumped to lizardfolk with it, before finding out that the original art refers to the creature as a turtle.

Oh well. I ran with it anyway. Basically just took what I would think would be a big lizardfolk warrior, then sized it up to Large, and gave it an elemental "form-changing" power. I say form-changing instead of shapechanging, because the latter has some mechanical implications (namely moonbeam and other effects like it) that I didn't really feel should apply here.

One thing was that I felt like I had to give some kind of benefit to the normal form, otherwise there'd be no reason for a DM to ever use it. Chat suggested having it regain some stamina when it shifts back, and I thought that was a great idea. A little bit of tweaking back and forth between healing and temp HP got me to eventually split the difference and do both.

Astral Scout

@BobChao87 broke the news about Opportunity to me on stream, and I was crestfallen. We also needed one more monster for the stream, so I figured doing a D&D tribute would be a fitting gesture.

I basically wanted this to be a beast companion, but as a construct. So after all the default trappings for a construct, I created the Remote Scout trait to basically just serve as a built-in beast bond/beast sense analog, since the whole purpose is to be a scout, and neither of those would function with a construct.

After that, I figured the solar panels were a pretty characteristic appearance detail, and absorbing radiance is basically all they do, so the Radiant Absorption trait seemed like an easy fit.

Finally, I gave her the Astral Travel action once per day, so that at least in D&D, she can easily come home when her mission's done. <3

And that's it this week.

Once more, thanks a whole heap to everyone watching each week. I love y'all, and you're really awesome people.

Until next time, cheers!

~IADnDMN