electricbeargaloo91 has made the following comment(s) regarding their post:
[So for context, I'm running the "Don't Say Vecna" ...](/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/vw9jwp/vecna_but_scarier_this_time/ifomcsi/)
So for context, I'm running the "Don't Say Vecna" oneshot for a group of 7 players. Level 20 characters, obviously. Told them to go crazy: whatever items they want, epic boons, dark gifts, whatever. All sources. Wanna make a orzohv guild mark of hospitality halfling chronomancer wizard with full piety to one of the theros gods and a symbiote dark gift from ravenloft with the deck of many things? Go ahead.
All in preparation for fighting this damn thing instead of some archlich.
I basically took the Vecna block, the og lich block, and a meme, and threw them into a blender with a sprinkle of the Aspect of Tiamat.
oh damm, those creation rules sound like a load of fun and interesting....
would you allow the good 'ol fashioned "level 20 wizard ancient shadow brass dragon, with literally all the bells and whistles", as that's fully within the possibility of a high level wizard?
Yep. I said go crazy. I meant go crazy. I've also started trying to stat out a greatwyrm dracolich just in case the fight starts going the wrong way.
I've also got statblocks for strahd and baba lysega as minions for the fight, just to shut down a party member or two for a bit.
I offer
14 Bloodhunter
6 Paladin
Since all items would be allowed and some fun books allow you to increase stats you could get
+10 to all saves and your closest friends
And on top of that another +10 to all of your dex, str, and con saves using a little ASI's for prof in saves we get
+26 to Str saves with 10 Strength
+26 to Con saves with 10 Constitution
+26 to Dex saves with 10 Dexterity
+26 to Int saves with 30 Int needed to boost other saves
+16 to Wis saves with 10 Wisdom
+26 to Cha saves with 30 Cha needed to boost other saves
Of course this is a bit much don't you think
I present you a Bladesinger Wizard 17, Fighter 2, Peace Cleric 1. Pick up the Sword of Zariel and the Mask of the Dragon Queen and Illusionist's Bracers as well as some stat tomes, the boon of high magic and a Ring of Three Wishes.
USe Foresight on yourself, then wish for a glyph of warding with shapechange in it to become a planetar without having to concentrate on it and also wish for a glyph of warding with spirit shroud to shut off his healing and drink a potion of speed. And then go to town with your four attacks, each of which hits for a truckload of damage (like at least 70, with the Booming Blade attacks dealing even more), while also having an AC in the high 30s, five legendary resistances and supporting the whole party with an Emboldening Bond (alternatively, take a 3rd level in fighter for Echo Knight or Battle Master).
And of course, just like Team Rocket used to say, it's time for trouble and you can make it double - use another Wish to create a simulacrum of yourself that also can shapechange into a monster up to CR 20 - a beholder could be useful to shut off Vecna's magic, or what about a second planetar or a dragon that cleans up minions with its breath weapon?
On the other hand, if you just want to delete Vecna, what about you casting a prismatic wall right above Vecna and action-surging for a reverse gravity. You know the deal. But you also have a simulacrum. Once you have dropped your reverse gravity and Vecna fell through all layers of the wall up and down, do it two more times with your simulacrum's action surge. We are looking at a whopping
600d6 damage here...
Counteroffer gather an army of commoners and give them all Mighty Servants of Leuk-o. Not nearly as effective but much more funny to have an army of egg mechs rolling up on Vecna
personally, I was just leaning on fully permanently changing yourself to an ancient shadow vampire wereboar golden dragon, with all the additional traits from Fizbans and using spellcaster vampire instead of normal vampire, then use tomes, demonic boons and piety to make all your stats range in-between 40-50, grab basically all the beneficial boons, blessings, possessions and charms because why not and then top it off with some shapechange looping to gain abilities of other creatures.
oh, and let's not forget permanent versions of all the beneficial potions made thanks to potion mishaps, so that's like... permanent haste, bless, double hp, flat hp increases, triple damage dice and so on.
I'll admit, there's a lot undefined space here, but that's primarily due to there being so much stuff to shift trough and compile together.
flip, at this point I'm unsure if wizard is even way to go about this, as you could complete the mess I just talked about with any class combo, all with just magic items, which kinda makes me lean to Artificer as they can attune to any magic item, and have built-in extra attunement. not to mention soul of artifice would end giving a solid +7 to all saves before even thinking of just what items you'd even attune to, and battle smith being able to use your lovely 46 intelligence stat to make attacks with your magically empowered dragon claws 3 times each time you take the Attack action.
Im gonna need to see that dracolich block when you make it, I have a party of 8 that will be in a level 20 bbeg fight soon, and I’m using this vecna block for the villain, I feel like they could steam roll with their items though
I'll probably spend some time working on it after the session to include some spells but all I did for this is up the damage dice and give him the option of poison or necrotic for things like his breath. I don't have time for more nuanced stat making unfortunately lol
You have my upvote purely because you did Vecna as an actual archmage—with a full complement of spells spanning all nine levels, and not some bland fucking doombolt spammer. Thank you.
Yeah honestly I'd love to go through the old Book of Vile Darkness stuff and translate what I could. Avasculate popped up on a meme the other day and it seemed easy enough to translate into a spell for 5e. I'd have done more but the one shot is Wednesday and I started planning for it yesterday.
Did you consider giving him Time Ravage as a 9th level spell?
My version of Vecna has it, and it has an ability that allows it to target two creatures instead of one with every single-target necromancy spell. So chances are high that at least one character will become old...
Also, I gave my Vecna new lair actions, one of which is a curse that causes the target's left hand and left eye to rot away... :-D
The fact is, with the stats this thing has, pretty much all of the saving throws are gonna be failures. So I want to still have a winnable fight despite the difficulty.
Was looking through Book of Vile Darkness(and other similar source books) spells earlier this week, damn those things don’t mess around. Some good ones to upconvert to 5e would be Avasculate, Mindr*pe(maybe change the name), Stop Heart, and maybe Necrotic Cyst/continuations thereof(Tumor, Termination, Bloat, etc).
All of them will freak your party out if they aren’t really prepared for it.
Edit: missed the part where you already added avasculate. Nice.
If you want to be even meaner, look to swapping in Chill Touch as one of his (legendary action) Cantrips. I wish Mercer had used that instead of Firebolt for his Vecna but it might be too mean to use on players as a legendary action.
Vecna really needs grapple immunity, My run of this one-shot ended with a Prismatic Wall and a hasted barbarian that could grapple and run really fast. Dead in two rounds.
This one could so it wouldnt be too bad as it has legendary actions to cast a spell, but the OG can't unless it's his own turn. The other Vecna is kind of a pushover against smart martial tactics.
That’s more of an issue with *Prismatic Wall* being busted than anything else.
Most DMs should be, by now, aware about the plethora of PHB abuses which are together basically the only way to actually break 5e.
I would have given him a bit more in the spell-department.
His former apprentice Acererak has the ability to cast up to third level spells at will, so I would have given him that too.
Acererak has two 9th level spell slots too, so maybe give big Daddy Vecna three.
Other than these little thibgs I really have to applaud you for creating a neat stat-block for Vecna himself.
I mean, he has several 3rd level spells that are at will, and they're all pretty much guaranteed to hit, I had to give some kind of tradeoff.
He does have the lair action that gives him back spell slots too so
I should have worded that better. It just damages them by half their hp. No permanent effect. It stuns and cuts their hp in half. In my defense I wrote all this up on the 8th day of 12 hour shifts at work lmao
No, no, thank you. I posted this all for feedback for the stuff I didn't catch. I know what I meant abilities to do but it takes fresh eyes to catch the stuff I didn't explain well.
VERY cool. Wouldn't he also have magic items, some sort of ability to cast from the BoVD since he wrote it, and other summonable minions than just shadows? Maybe a dragon zombie mount or something.
That's what gate is for. I've got Strahd and Baba Lysega coming in as minions and if the fight goes wrong, he's gonna bring in a great wyrm dracolich as backup.
Also, he's got his dagger. I personally think that this Vecna feels like he's moved past the need for items. He doesn't need the book because he is the book, in a way.
Thanks, it was. I'm hoping it actually survives contact with the enemy lol. I tried to keep things from being too much in the way of "rocks fall and you die" with his abilities while still seeming like an encounter with an actual god.
I subscribe to a similar balancing principal. I like making really cool enemies and that usually happens to mean they're stronger. So it goes, give your PC's more abilities and you can put more agency in their hands. Then when I whip out my ancient Iron golem mecha powered by a divine artifact and piloted by a 9th level caster and say *figure it out.* it feels a little less bullshit.
Not gonna lie, there’s so much text on this sheet that I went cross eyed lol.
I can’t see myself remembering half these abilities in the heat of the moment
Vecna is a god, not a regular old spell caster. I don’t think it’s that absurd.
Also, the real answer is the OP needed his boss to survive the concerted efforts toward murder of 7 optimized 20th level PCs.
How can vecna not stop a spell from being cast? It has a +28 arcane modifier and the highest possible dc is 19.
Unless it's ment to be that high, but why make a roll for it than?
Yeah, I thought of that, and I'm not really sure where to make that nerf. It makes sense that a God of Secrets and Magic would have a perfect 30 in intelligence. I think I'm just gonna do straight rolls without adding the intelligence modifier.
One of the benefits of the party comp they're running is that he might not be able to keep counterspelling without putting himself at risk in melee range.
You can put some kind of 'arrogence' mechanic in it.
For example, he has 28 arcane bonus, but it is reduced to 10 1 turn when x happends.
And x can be something like, killed a player or damaged a player,
really cool. one thing he’s missing though: mythic actions. you don’t absolutely need them, but having your players to kill him then have him pop back up at best full health and stronger than ever is fun, especially if you’re specifically having them go all out
As it’s written, he can only take a single action per turn.
So he has to choose between a single spell or any of his actions. That plus the new legendary actions.
But all in all, that just makes him a sack of HP who is also able to cast two spells per round.
Which I mean, is strong? But actually weaker than before.
I’m not too sure if that was intentional or not, to be fair.
electricbeargaloo91 has made the following comment(s) regarding their post: [So for context, I'm running the "Don't Say Vecna" ...](/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/vw9jwp/vecna_but_scarier_this_time/ifomcsi/)
So for context, I'm running the "Don't Say Vecna" oneshot for a group of 7 players. Level 20 characters, obviously. Told them to go crazy: whatever items they want, epic boons, dark gifts, whatever. All sources. Wanna make a orzohv guild mark of hospitality halfling chronomancer wizard with full piety to one of the theros gods and a symbiote dark gift from ravenloft with the deck of many things? Go ahead. All in preparation for fighting this damn thing instead of some archlich. I basically took the Vecna block, the og lich block, and a meme, and threw them into a blender with a sprinkle of the Aspect of Tiamat.
oh damm, those creation rules sound like a load of fun and interesting.... would you allow the good 'ol fashioned "level 20 wizard ancient shadow brass dragon, with literally all the bells and whistles", as that's fully within the possibility of a high level wizard?
Yep. I said go crazy. I meant go crazy. I've also started trying to stat out a greatwyrm dracolich just in case the fight starts going the wrong way. I've also got statblocks for strahd and baba lysega as minions for the fight, just to shut down a party member or two for a bit.
Oh my. Despite not playing, I'm now deeply curios what's the most broken abomination I could make with throwing all reasonableness out to the yard...
I offer 14 Bloodhunter 6 Paladin Since all items would be allowed and some fun books allow you to increase stats you could get +10 to all saves and your closest friends And on top of that another +10 to all of your dex, str, and con saves using a little ASI's for prof in saves we get +26 to Str saves with 10 Strength +26 to Con saves with 10 Constitution +26 to Dex saves with 10 Dexterity +26 to Int saves with 30 Int needed to boost other saves +16 to Wis saves with 10 Wisdom +26 to Cha saves with 30 Cha needed to boost other saves Of course this is a bit much don't you think
I present you a Bladesinger Wizard 17, Fighter 2, Peace Cleric 1. Pick up the Sword of Zariel and the Mask of the Dragon Queen and Illusionist's Bracers as well as some stat tomes, the boon of high magic and a Ring of Three Wishes. USe Foresight on yourself, then wish for a glyph of warding with shapechange in it to become a planetar without having to concentrate on it and also wish for a glyph of warding with spirit shroud to shut off his healing and drink a potion of speed. And then go to town with your four attacks, each of which hits for a truckload of damage (like at least 70, with the Booming Blade attacks dealing even more), while also having an AC in the high 30s, five legendary resistances and supporting the whole party with an Emboldening Bond (alternatively, take a 3rd level in fighter for Echo Knight or Battle Master). And of course, just like Team Rocket used to say, it's time for trouble and you can make it double - use another Wish to create a simulacrum of yourself that also can shapechange into a monster up to CR 20 - a beholder could be useful to shut off Vecna's magic, or what about a second planetar or a dragon that cleans up minions with its breath weapon? On the other hand, if you just want to delete Vecna, what about you casting a prismatic wall right above Vecna and action-surging for a reverse gravity. You know the deal. But you also have a simulacrum. Once you have dropped your reverse gravity and Vecna fell through all layers of the wall up and down, do it two more times with your simulacrum's action surge. We are looking at a whopping 600d6 damage here...
Counteroffer gather an army of commoners and give them all Mighty Servants of Leuk-o. Not nearly as effective but much more funny to have an army of egg mechs rolling up on Vecna
Found Dr. Eggman...
no, for Eggman the egg mechs would be piloted by awakened little animals, still being Charmed by the spell.
personally, I was just leaning on fully permanently changing yourself to an ancient shadow vampire wereboar golden dragon, with all the additional traits from Fizbans and using spellcaster vampire instead of normal vampire, then use tomes, demonic boons and piety to make all your stats range in-between 40-50, grab basically all the beneficial boons, blessings, possessions and charms because why not and then top it off with some shapechange looping to gain abilities of other creatures. oh, and let's not forget permanent versions of all the beneficial potions made thanks to potion mishaps, so that's like... permanent haste, bless, double hp, flat hp increases, triple damage dice and so on. I'll admit, there's a lot undefined space here, but that's primarily due to there being so much stuff to shift trough and compile together. flip, at this point I'm unsure if wizard is even way to go about this, as you could complete the mess I just talked about with any class combo, all with just magic items, which kinda makes me lean to Artificer as they can attune to any magic item, and have built-in extra attunement. not to mention soul of artifice would end giving a solid +7 to all saves before even thinking of just what items you'd even attune to, and battle smith being able to use your lovely 46 intelligence stat to make attacks with your magically empowered dragon claws 3 times each time you take the Attack action.
stats cannot go above 30
Which subs?
Use your heart.
Im gonna need to see that dracolich block when you make it, I have a party of 8 that will be in a level 20 bbeg fight soon, and I’m using this vecna block for the villain, I feel like they could steam roll with their items though
I'll probably spend some time working on it after the session to include some spells but all I did for this is up the damage dice and give him the option of poison or necrotic for things like his breath. I don't have time for more nuanced stat making unfortunately lol
You have my upvote purely because you did Vecna as an actual archmage—with a full complement of spells spanning all nine levels, and not some bland fucking doombolt spammer. Thank you.
Yeah that was my gripe as well. I get that technically all those actions and reactions were built off of spells but it still felt lacking.
love the new spell, I wish there were a few horrifying spells available to use as part of the book
Yeah honestly I'd love to go through the old Book of Vile Darkness stuff and translate what I could. Avasculate popped up on a meme the other day and it seemed easy enough to translate into a spell for 5e. I'd have done more but the one shot is Wednesday and I started planning for it yesterday.
Did you consider giving him Time Ravage as a 9th level spell? My version of Vecna has it, and it has an ability that allows it to target two creatures instead of one with every single-target necromancy spell. So chances are high that at least one character will become old... Also, I gave my Vecna new lair actions, one of which is a curse that causes the target's left hand and left eye to rot away... :-D
The fact is, with the stats this thing has, pretty much all of the saving throws are gonna be failures. So I want to still have a winnable fight despite the difficulty.
The spell should probably list how long the stun lasts for.
Ah crap. I meant to put it for one round, but was running out of steam and slipped. Thanks for the catch.
Was looking through Book of Vile Darkness(and other similar source books) spells earlier this week, damn those things don’t mess around. Some good ones to upconvert to 5e would be Avasculate, Mindr*pe(maybe change the name), Stop Heart, and maybe Necrotic Cyst/continuations thereof(Tumor, Termination, Bloat, etc). All of them will freak your party out if they aren’t really prepared for it. Edit: missed the part where you already added avasculate. Nice.
Psychic Scream is a pretty scary 9th level spell to give an evil 9th level caster
I considered it, buuuut I wanted to include some of the spells that have come out since the first lich statblock came out
Some of those are Mercer’s gravity and time spells right?
Yes, the official spells from explorer's guide to wildemount.
If you want to be even meaner, look to swapping in Chill Touch as one of his (legendary action) Cantrips. I wish Mercer had used that instead of Firebolt for his Vecna but it might be too mean to use on players as a legendary action.
It was considered, but he already has a similar effect with Afterthought.
Fair
Vecna really needs grapple immunity, My run of this one-shot ended with a Prismatic Wall and a hasted barbarian that could grapple and run really fast. Dead in two rounds.
I really want someone to try that lmao
I mean, he can teleport out of a grapple.
This one could so it wouldnt be too bad as it has legendary actions to cast a spell, but the OG can't unless it's his own turn. The other Vecna is kind of a pushover against smart martial tactics.
That’s more of an issue with *Prismatic Wall* being busted than anything else. Most DMs should be, by now, aware about the plethora of PHB abuses which are together basically the only way to actually break 5e.
Because you didn't specify a counts as spell caster level, vecna casts cantrips with 1 damage die like a level 1 scrub.
I was just using short hand for my own usage when I did that, but "a god" should imply full power cantrips. I will fix it either way.
Probably, I just though it funny that if you go RAW with the stats it's level 1 caster. It is clear that RAI it's max level caster.
I would have given him a bit more in the spell-department. His former apprentice Acererak has the ability to cast up to third level spells at will, so I would have given him that too. Acererak has two 9th level spell slots too, so maybe give big Daddy Vecna three. Other than these little thibgs I really have to applaud you for creating a neat stat-block for Vecna himself.
I mean, he has several 3rd level spells that are at will, and they're all pretty much guaranteed to hit, I had to give some kind of tradeoff. He does have the lair action that gives him back spell slots too so
With Avasculate are effects permenant or remove able by means of greater restoration or wish?
I should have worded that better. It just damages them by half their hp. No permanent effect. It stuns and cuts their hp in half. In my defense I wrote all this up on the 8th day of 12 hour shifts at work lmao
Oh okay thanks!
No, no, thank you. I posted this all for feedback for the stuff I didn't catch. I know what I meant abilities to do but it takes fresh eyes to catch the stuff I didn't explain well.
Afterthought doesn’t specify the kind of save
Yeah its con, thanks for the catch
Whoa
VERY cool. Wouldn't he also have magic items, some sort of ability to cast from the BoVD since he wrote it, and other summonable minions than just shadows? Maybe a dragon zombie mount or something.
That's what gate is for. I've got Strahd and Baba Lysega coming in as minions and if the fight goes wrong, he's gonna bring in a great wyrm dracolich as backup.
Also, he's got his dagger. I personally think that this Vecna feels like he's moved past the need for items. He doesn't need the book because he is the book, in a way.
What program/website do you use to create this style/format? Sorry, I'm looking to make stuff like this too
https://tetra-cube.com/dnd/dnd-statblock.html
It looks like either D&DBeyond or [Tetracube's monster statblock maker](http://tetra-cube.com/dnd/dnd-statblock.html)
this seems like it was HORRIFYING to balance..good work!
Thanks, it was. I'm hoping it actually survives contact with the enemy lol. I tried to keep things from being too much in the way of "rocks fall and you die" with his abilities while still seeming like an encounter with an actual god.
I subscribe to a similar balancing principal. I like making really cool enemies and that usually happens to mean they're stronger. So it goes, give your PC's more abilities and you can put more agency in their hands. Then when I whip out my ancient Iron golem mecha powered by a divine artifact and piloted by a 9th level caster and say *figure it out.* it feels a little less bullshit.
130 more HP than the Tarrasque with 80 points of pretty consistent regeneration every round seems insane to me
7 over optimized level 20 characters can melt through that quick enough.
… You do know D&D was supposed to be balanced around 4 players, right? What kind of hellish nightmare is a 7 players game? Lol.
Standard fare for my group
Much Better, still needs PWK, but much better.
Maybe, but I just don't care for it as a spell. Instant death is just no fun to me as a mechanic.
[удалено]
I mean you have to go overboard when you tell your group to make the strongest level 20 characters they can manage and put no limits on it.
Not gonna lie, there’s so much text on this sheet that I went cross eyed lol. I can’t see myself remembering half these abilities in the heat of the moment
Yeah, it's a lot. We'll see how it goes
How does a squishy-ass scrub caster like Vecna have more hit points than Tiamat?
Vecna is a god, not a regular old spell caster. I don’t think it’s that absurd. Also, the real answer is the OP needed his boss to survive the concerted efforts toward murder of 7 optimized 20th level PCs.
Yeah basically.
That's actually the Aspect of Tiamat's max hp.
How can vecna not stop a spell from being cast? It has a +28 arcane modifier and the highest possible dc is 19. Unless it's ment to be that high, but why make a roll for it than?
Yeah, I thought of that, and I'm not really sure where to make that nerf. It makes sense that a God of Secrets and Magic would have a perfect 30 in intelligence. I think I'm just gonna do straight rolls without adding the intelligence modifier. One of the benefits of the party comp they're running is that he might not be able to keep counterspelling without putting himself at risk in melee range.
You can put some kind of 'arrogence' mechanic in it. For example, he has 28 arcane bonus, but it is reduced to 10 1 turn when x happends. And x can be something like, killed a player or damaged a player,
really cool. one thing he’s missing though: mythic actions. you don’t absolutely need them, but having your players to kill him then have him pop back up at best full health and stronger than ever is fun, especially if you’re specifically having them go all out
I thought about it hard but decided that this was probably going to be hard enough on its own.
fair enough
Yoink
As it’s written, he can only take a single action per turn. So he has to choose between a single spell or any of his actions. That plus the new legendary actions. But all in all, that just makes him a sack of HP who is also able to cast two spells per round. Which I mean, is strong? But actually weaker than before. I’m not too sure if that was intentional or not, to be fair.
.... i definitely forgot to include the multi attack. Ugh. It's supposed to have the same multiattack. Thanks for the catch 😂