Good morning everyone. I’m trying something new today - positing D&D content. Not for money though. Not for youtube. Not for self-promo. Not for Patreon. But for fun. YUP. Good old guy-with-a-blog fun.
Today’s dish is a boss I made for my D&D 5e crew to fight. He’s a CR14 undead flying reaper and boy is he nasty. That’s cause I incorporated design elements from the LancerRPG’s ULTRA bosses. Mwahahahah!
So, without further ado… STATS.
Then I’ll yak about how the battle went and the thoughts I put into designing this thing. Scroll way down if you want the commentary first.
The Revenant of Death (BOSS)
Huge Undead, Neutral Evil
A sinner bound for eternity and charged with protecting the god of death’s secret altar from the unworthy. It’s a flying reaper which forces everyone to kneel and then slays them while they are doing so.
Armor Class: 19 (Natural Armor) Hit Points: 330 (20d10 + 120) Speed: 0 ft., Fly 60 ft. (hover)
STR 18 (+4) DEX 24 (+7) CON 22 (+6) INT 18 (+4) WIS 12 (+1) CHA 12 (+1)
Saving Throws: Dex +12, Wis +6, Cha +6
Skills: Perception +6, Intimidation +6
Damage Resistances: Necrotic; Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from all non-magical sources.
Damage Immunities: Cold, Poison
Condition Immunities: Charmed, Exhaustion, Frightened, Paralyzed, Poisoned, Prone
Senses: Darkvision 120 ft., Passive Perception 20
Languages: Common, Telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge: 14 (11,500 XP)
TRAITS
Reaping Presence
The Revenant of Death emits an aura of dread in a 30-foot radius. Enemies that start their turn within this aura must make a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute. A frightened creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on a success. Once saved, this effect cannot reapply for 24 hours.
Alert. Cannot be surprised by mortals. Has +5 to initiative rolls.
Legendary Resistance (3/Day)
If the Revenant fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead. Only used to save the Revenant from hard CC such as Banish and/or a killing blow from a magical attack.
ACTIONS
Multiattack
The Revenant of Death makes two attacks with its Scythe of Oblivion. It can substitute a grapple or shove for one attack if desired.
Scythe of Oblivion
Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target.
Hit: 22 (4d6 + 8) necrotic damage. The target must succeed on a DC 17 Constitution saving throw or its hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken. This reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest. The target dies if this effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0.
Focus on prone targets or concentrating ones.
REACTIONS
If anyone blasphemies its god, the Revenant will use its reaction to fixate upon them until the end of its next turn.
Fixation: The revenant gains +2 to hit and +2 saves vs the target. It will pursue the death of that target on its turn, ignoring all others and disregarding “safe” or “optimal” actions in pursuit of the heretic.
LEGENDARY ACTIONS
The Revenant of Death can take 2 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature's turn. The Revenant regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.
Grim Pursuit. The Revenant moves up to its flying speed without provoking opportunity attacks.
Cloak of Shadows (Costs 2 Actions). The Revenant becomes invisible until the start of its next turn.
Necrotic Storm. The Revenant unleashes an unstoppable wave of necrotic energy which deals 2d6 necrotic to all targets within 5ft.
SPECIAL: EYE OF DEATH
Shouts: “Kneel before the glory of Death!”
At the end of each round, the Revenant of Death unleashes a devastating eye beam at all creatures who are within its line of sight and standing. The beam requires a DC 18 Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes 20 (6d6) necrotic damage and is restrained by shadowy tendrils until the start of the Revenant's next turn. On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage and isn't restrained.
Creatures know this attack is coming and can choose to drop prone as a free action regardless of their turn.
The Battlefield
(vs 4 players, level 10. They’ve some tasty homebrew bonuses so they’re more like level 11’s.)
Here’s the text from my adventure that I read when the players entered this chamber.
You open the door to an echoing hall filled with 8 stone columns and ringed by 8 sacred alcoves. Each alcove has a statue of a beautiful man. Going clockwise, he stands tall, he holds out his hand as if inviting, he stands aghast, he walks slumped, he wears rags elegantly, he smiles like a lover, he kneels with face in hands, he holds a quill high with defiance in his eyes.
At the end of the room is an altar with a dish stained deep with blood. Looming over it is a statue of the handsome god of death. An old book bound in black leather rests at his feet. (This is a book of forbidden prayers needed to by-pass much of the dungeon’s security. Placed here to enable more convenient revists.)
How It Went
This thing came roaring out of the gate. It grappled the lead sorceress with one hand (for drama!) and nearly one-shot her due to relatively high initiative. The warlock polymorphed* her into a Giant Ape so she’d have 157 HP, which was a clutch move as they needed all that HP.
(*We have this item in our game called The Scroll of Infusion. It’s very rare but it allows a character with the Spell Casting Ability to learn a new spell from any list. To learn the spell, the user must posses it in scroll form. They will first use this scroll and then use the scroll of the desired spell. When the ritual is complete (1 hour), they can add the new spell to their known spells list without counting against their maximum.)
Everyone failed their wisdom saves so the whole party had to suffer being frightened for about 3 rounds which locked the melee out (hi, bows!) and was responsible for loads of missed attacks until saves were finally made.
The Eye Beam special was a hoot. People were already taking cover due to the forced ranged combat, so I only hit a couple of them with it and they figured out that LOS via the 8 pillars was key. Going prone while a giant scythe monster flies around the room is a bad thing, haha.
The Giant Ape couldn’t take cover cause the pillars were 5x5, so it ate the Eye Beams, the Scythe, and the Necrotic pulse blasts. That HP went FAST. Though after the polymorph ended, the sorceress gave the Revenant the slip and we resumed a more normal chase around the room. “Now with 100% more fireballs!”
The boss shelled out the damage until the Aasamir warlock lit up his radiant wings for a full-out Tyrael/Gandalf moment. He’d figured out that it only dealt necrotic damage which he was resistant to, so he taunted it into a light vs dark head-on. Which worked really well since he also had half-plate and a shield (via feat.) This must’ve looked amazing btw. I want the movie of the moment.
The warlock held the boss across the finish line as they killed it.
Overall, it was a hairy fight that had multiple near-death moments, loads of reversals, and we saw a warlock tank. I’m proud of how this boss worked, hence the post about it, haha.
Design Philosophy
I’m not gonna lie, I watched Solo Leveling not to long ago so giant egotistical sadistic statues with eye-lasers were on my mind. Mostly though, I had this crypt map with a room of 8 pillars to work with and I thought, “LOS-based raid-boss style tactics would be fun here.”
Also, I’m perpetually disappointed by the simplistic designs of the 5e MM. Given that my players are level 10, I’ve been even more unhappy with the slim selection of non-dragon, non-demon high-CR creature selection. That’s fine though, I can make my own.
The LancerRPG has these great bosses called ULTRAs. They’re meant to challenge an entire party and they have what’s needed to do so. By which I mean sick action economy and a high resistance to most forms of control. A good ultra should be a wrecking ball that the players struggle to control-kill.
The revenant has many of ULTRA elements.
Action Economy: It has a special reaction, the 10ft reach for more opportunity, the legendary actions, and the end of round eye beams. This all combines into an enemy that is nearly always doing something. He goes first, 3rd, 5th, maybe 7th, gets a reaction if lucky, and last on every round. Truly dominating the battlefield.
Difficult to Control: High mobility is one. Legendary resistance is a hard NOPE on banish and other IWIN spells of the sort. It has sick good saving throws specifically for WIS and CHA to block most others. It has a high perception so there’s no casual sneaking up on it. Also no surprise allowed cause I’m not setting up this fight just to have them action-surge potion of speed murder ball it in 1 round from surprise. I don’t normally hard-counter like that, but this was the headliner fight of the entire dungeon. Lastly, you can see the list of immunities though I mostly just cribbed those from other undead in the MM.
Hard to Kill: 330 HP is about 3 rounds of full party damage for my players at this time. I usually plan for 5 rounds of combat at least though which implies 550 HP but the Revenant has sick saving throws, loads of resistances, that fear aura which was a no joke DPS killer, frequent invisibility, a high AC, and so forth. In the end, I stuck with 330 HP for those reasons and I think we went 6 rounds of battle. I’m gonna call that as a birdie.
A Deadly Foe: This thing was constantly swinging 4d8+8 usually with advantage, twice per round. It flew to clusters LOS-huddling players thereby trapping them in the devil’s choice of Eye Beams + Necrotic Burst OR eat the opportunity attack. It pulled 70+ damage in a turn vs the Giant Ape. Twice. The players’ summons evaporated due to all the damage flying around and the limited number of LOS-blocking positions. No one but the necrotic resistant Aasamir could stand in its way without getting cleaned.
Now, that’s a boss to be feared! It’s also one that can solo an adventuring party legitimately. This is much more my taste than a boss that swings twice then acts as a punching bag for 30 minutes, then swings twice more….snoooooore…. ^_^
Wrap Up
Is this thing CR14? Heck if I know. Yeah I referenced some charts in the DMG and so forth but at this level its really hard to tell. These days I go by the HP of the monster and how much damage it can deal before going down. (Aka, TTL x DPS = Difficulty. +/- from other features of course.) That’s relative to my players’ characters so this is on the bespoke side of design. I only assign CR for XP reasons these days.
That’s all the disclaimer I have though. You should definitely know thy players before throwing this this at them. Please don’t just blindly trust my CR evaluation. But if you’re in the CR14+ territory, I’m sure you’re very well acquainted with your players’ capabilities.
Brag moment: My players are a badass bunch. They’re all multi-decade TTRPG gamers who’ve worked together as a player-team for 14 years now. They’ve rock-solid teamwork, assigned roles, well-made characters, diverse problem-solving talents, and more. I flog my brain trying to provide them with meaningful challenges that they can’t deconstruct with just a moment’s glance. So proud. Also saying that my idea of acceptable difficulty might be skewed because of this, haha.
Anyway, if you do use The Revenant of Death, make sure you have a combat arena that’s limited in size and which has multiple scattered pieces of cover that can block line-of-sight. I think that’s where it performs best.
Also, if you use it, please drop your tale in the comments below. I hope it gives your players a good run-around.
Cheers,
-T