Looking at the Updated Empyrean

 One of the other big video previews we got for the new Monster Manual is the updated Empyrean. This one comes care of d4: D&D Deep Dive.

The Empyrean is, actually, one of the most potent monsters in the book for storytelling. As direct offspring/creations of the gods, the Empyrean is tailor-made to be some kind of divine avatar or demigod, and, lorewise, makes for a great climactic final boss of a campaign. At CR 23, it's also going to fit that difficulty-wise at least until you get up into tier 4.

As I've had fun doing with these monster previews, I like to look at what kind of encounter the new DMG claims this will give us for a group of 4 player characters (I wonder what most tables' actual group sizes tend to be. My Ravnica game is pretty consistently 6 players, while the Wildemount game I play in has a party of five.) Notably, a CR 23 monster actually gives more XP than it did before, meaning that even if monsters are being buffed to better match their CRs, we might also take that with a grain of salt because encounter-balancing is based on XP. Hopefully it's all balanced well, but we can't really know that until we're playing (or we have a superhuman ability to simulate battles in our minds).

So, with these folks counting for 50,000 xp (up from 32,500 - a pretty big jump) we're thus looking at 12,500 xp per person in a 4-player group. At 17th level, that's a little north of high difficulty, and still considered high at 18th level, only getting closest to medium difficulty at 19th level and still considered moderate at level 20.

I'm curious to see what all the higher-CR monsters have, XP-wise.

Anyway, a couple changes off the bat for the Empyrean. The Empyrean's creature type is now either Celestial or Fiend, depending on its creator deity, and doesn't have the weird "75% chaotic good, 25% neutral evil" alignment that I think harkened back to when oldschool D&D stuff tended to be much more "here's the general mix of things" in percentage points. Instead, it has a Neutral alignment, which they've explained will also take the place of "any alignment." (Not sure if they're also keeping "unaligned," or if that gets folded into Neutral as well.)

Looking broadly at their base stats: the Empyrean has the same AC but higher HP, and their fly speed now includes the hover feature. Like most legendary monsters now do, they get expertise in initiative, making it all but guaranteed that you get to do your cool move first.

Ability scores are the same, but they lose saving throw proficiency in Intelligence and Charisma (so Banish away - they only have a +8 from their raw Charisma).

Their bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage immunity has been reduced to resistance, but of course, no longer calls out an exception for magical weapons. This, honestly, might be a giant hidden nerf to martial characters throughout the Monster Manual. While martials might get around this with things like Flame Tongues or dipping Warlock to get a Pact weapon (or being Monks, whose fists can punch ghosts and deal Force damage) it does really potentially slow down the game's single-target damage experts. In addition to this, they also have immunity to both necrotic and radiant damage (sorry Paladins). Truesight remains the same, but they also have a higher passive Perception, as they swapped their Persuasion proficiency for Perception. (Though I am thinking about how good passive Perception is given the change to the Hide action. Also, if Hiding gives you the Invisible condition, does Truesight negate that? I need to look into this).

Their legendary resistance charges go up to 4 (this is all well and good for making monsters tougher, but I almost feel like no monster should have more than 3, just so that players know when they've burned through the legendary resistances. I mean, you don't want the battle to end with a single failed save against Banishment, sure, but... I don't know, I like how Flee, Mortals gave its Villain stat blocks a downside when they used their equivalent of legendary resistance).

Ok, this is all the boring stuff. Let's get to the meat of it: what does this thing do?

Well, one crazy thing is that the 2014 Empyrean did not have extra attack - just a single attack per turn. Granted, with a +17 to hit, it's going to land more often than not. The new one has multiattack, and can mix and match Sacred Weapon and Divine Ray as it pleases, each of which is the equivalent of one of its old attacks.

Divine Ray is the replacement for Bolt. With the same +15 to hit (using Charisma rather than Strength) and the same range, this now only does Necrotic or Radiant (down from a broad list of types) but the damage is a little higher - up to 6d8+8 (average of 35) from 7d6 (average of 24.5). And given that you can do twice as many attacks, that's almost three times as much damage potential.

However, I think that Sacred Weapon, which replaces the old Maul attack, is more interesting: it's the same hit bonus and range, and does an initial 6d6+10 damage (though this has become Force instead of Bludgeoning - sorry Barbarians) but, rather than allowing the target a Con save versus getting stunned until the end of the Empyrean's next turn (and a pretty easy-for-this-CR DC at that, at only 15) instead the Sacred WEapon simply lets the target choose whether they get stunned or not (and this stun ends at the beginning, rather than the end of the Empyrean's next turn). However, if they choose not to be stunned, they take an irresistible and even immunity-bypassing 21 Force damage.

And I find that fascinating.

By making this the choice of the player, you create such an amazing little gambling game. Getting stunned means losing a turn, effectively, which is enormous. But if you're sitting at 40 HP, and you get hit by this thing, maybe getting stunned is better than getting knocked out. Of course, if its only their first attack, getting stunned might make it easier for them to hit you. Do you take the 21 force damage if you're just going to get hit again the next turn? Perhaps your Wizard would rather take 62 damage than 102?

I think in most cases that you'll probably be better off taking the damage, but it's a really interesting choice to thrust into your players' hands when they likely aren't expecting it.

Also, simply by making this part of the multiattack, you're significantly increasing the damage output of this thing.

The Empyrean's spellcasting is less damage-focused (as we've seen in a lot of these redesigns,) though I'll note that its Plane Shift is no longer "self only," meaning that the Empyrean could forcibly plane-shift a PC to their home plane (or I guess a different plane.) That's... that's honestly freaking terrifying. Imagine your healer getting chucked into the Abyss in the middle of a fight. (Actually, I love the idea of a misguided celestial empyrean chucking a PC onto Mount Celestia, where they're dumped into the ocean of holy water surrounding the mountain).

Again, some other spell changes, but none that stick out to me as utterly transformative. (Calm Emotions could be).

Now, all that's left is their legendary actions. Notably, their "Attack" is changed to "Smite," and only allows Divine Ray, and not Sacred Weapon. That's probably for the best, as that stun bargain would be a little crazy and honestly kind of sloggy if it was happening five times a round. Bolster now adds temp HP and applies Advantage to all d20 tests (which didn't previously include attack rolls).

Bolster is interesting, because it really makes it clear this is not intended to be a solo monster. It could, of course, be a legendary ally (note to self, must design fight in which the party faces a whole bunch of simple but dangerous monsters with an Empyrean ally) but I think the most likely intention here is that you could have an epic 20th-level boss fight in which one of these is supported by a some tough celestial or fiendish minions. I think largely because of the temp HP, this is limited to once per round.

The Trembling Strike legendary action is essentially replaced with Shockwave of Glory, which has numerous changes beyond the name. First, like all legendary actions, it costs just one (that will probably be great for DM mental bandwidth, to be honest). Second, it's a lower-DC Con save, compared to the Strength save it had been. Third, it's now an emanation rather than a cone (so it goes in all directions). And finally, in addition to knocking things prone, it also deals 6d8 force damage, or half as much on a successful save.

    Ok, so let's put it all together:

The new Empyrean is unquestionably a more dangerous monster than before. Its attacks all hit at least as hard and generally harder. Interestingly, while putting the decision about the stun into the hands of the players lets them be strategic about it (a design choice I'd love to see in more monsters) I think what this translates to in almost every instance is that the Empyrean is going to be hitting for 52 damage on average with every hit. Frankly, with only a DC 15, I think that the old version's Maul attack is probably resisted a lot. And, of course, we can't forget that the old one just plain lacked Multiattack.

I think piloting one of these as a DM will be pretty straightforward - which I kind of like for a being that's something like a demigod. I don't think god-like beings really feel the need to strategize much when fighting mere mortals. Basically, smite with Divine Rays from afar and then punish with that Sacred Weapon if anything gets close.

Indeed, Shockwave of Glory could be great for an Empyrean that stays up high in the air - punishing any melee aggressors who fly up to them and don't have a Hover rider on their fly speed.

As a Titan, an Empyrean kind of demands to be, if not the final boss of a campaign, at least a truly climactic fight. If you spend a campaign fighting against, say, a cult trying to summon an avatar of their evil god, or a cult leader trying to become a god, or maybe even some misguided effort to release the long-mad offspring of a benevolent deity, the Empyrean could be your guy.

(If you're one of my players, skip this paragraph: I've actually been planning for a long time to have a four-phase final boss fight for my Ravnica campaign that takes inspiration from the final Kefka fight in Final Fantasy VI, and the Empyrean could potentially be the basis for either the first or possibly final phase of the fight - in which Elesh Norn makes Yawgmoth into a true god at the multiversal intersection of Sigil and Ravnica, which will have been effectively linked together by the Ilithid.)

Again, I think you could throw in some Celestial or Fiend minions here. We don't know what the updated Deva looks like, but if CR 10 is still worth 5,900 xp, and we want, say, a pretty epic showdown for a group of 6 level 20 characters (epic meaning high difficulty,) our budget would be 132,000. 50k of that goes to our Empyrean, leaving 82,000. That's actually a whopping 13 Devas (and we could potentially squeeze in another, as it's closer to 14). I... that actually sounds like hell to run. What if we made them Planetars instead? Again, assuming CR 16 is still worth 15,000 xp, we now have room for 5, which feels far more manageable, but still nasty as hell.

If we shrink that group back down to our standard of 4, though, we're now looking at a budget of 88,000, meaning an Empyrean and just two Planetars (which is 8k short of our full budget, but feels about right).

I'll concede here that I'm still primarily thinking of the Empyrean in its 2014 Celestial mode. It could be a Fiend and thus be accompanied by Devils, Demons, Yugoloths, or... Demodands, even. Bizarrely, did you know that none of the fiends in the 2014 PHB were legendary? Even the Balor and Pit Fiend are just normal monsters. Both of those guys are a little too high-CR to be anything less than a singular lieutenant to our Empyrean (and probably best as the headliner of their own encounter prior to this final boss fight). You just need to dip down to lower-CR fiends to find good matches.

Now, Empyreans can certainly play the role of divine avatars, but their explicit lore in the new MM describes the relationship as being, depending on the deity, like the god's children, or like their royal courtiers, like their inventions, or something along those lines. Pointedly, Empyreans have free will.

Now, as an Elden Ring fan and (in part thanks to that game, along with other media) someone who has done some research into esoteric alchemy for the novel he's writing, the word "Empyrean" has a special meaning: The "pyre" part of it refers to Fire, which in alchemy is the uppermost element in the elemental hierarchy. In Aristotelian cosmologies, the Empyrean is the highest heaven, and in Dante's Divine Comedy, it is the abode of God. The Empyrean is sort of like the "Secret Fire" that Gandalf directly serves in Lord of the Rings (itself a kind of manifestation of the will of Eru Iluvatar, which is that world's name for the Abrahamic God). It's likely what Chronias, the uppermost layer of Mount Celestia, is meant to represent in D&D's own cosmology.

Now, in Elden Ring, Empyreans are select demigods who are believed to have the potential to become gods. In the game, you can assist one demigod, Ranni the Witch in fulfilling her Empyrean destiny and succeeding the current deity Marika, while in the DLC, you fight against another Empyrean, Miquella, who has taken a deeply compromising and arguably self-defeating journey to apotheosis (as always in these games, the morality of your actions is very much open to interpretation, but while he never expresses doubt in his path, it's strongly implied you're doing Miquella a favor by killing him once he becomes a god).

Borrowing this idea from Elden Ring, though: I think that an Empyrean represents perhaps better than any other creature the idea of a being that is just on the cusp of becoming a god. And how many fantasy stories have the heroes stopping an unworthy individual from attaining godhood? How many villains try to achieve such a goal?

I mean, to be frank, both of my longest-running campaigns were designed to build to a climactic fight in which the headlining villain is on the cusp of becoming a god (I hope I get to finish the second of these, at least). You look at Critical Role, and their first campaign is ends like that, and the second one... kinda sorta. (The third is even more bonkers, but if I'm honest, I think suffers a bit from high-stakes fatigue). Unsleeping City? Yeah, kind of. It's a really common trope, because it's just such a big idea.

And these guys are built for it.

Again, it's not a terribly complex stat block. And it's probably pretty simple to run. But I think it's likely to have an impact.

I will note, one last thing: it doesn't (nor did it in 2014) have any condition immunities. Legendary resistance will help fend off encounter-ending spells, but that's basically all you can rely on. On one hand, this means that, once those resistance are burned (or if the players have some way to inflict conditions without saving throws - like knocking them prone with Eldritch Smite, though granted with Hover that might not be the end of the world) your players can complete clown on them, which could be fun and, frankly, cathartic. (I constantly feel bad when I have monsters that are immune to being Charmed, which invalidates a ton of what my best friend's Bard can actually do to them.) But I also think you need to make sure that the Empyrean is going to make its big statement quickly.

While I do think, tactically, it is still best to stay hovering at range and chucking Divine Rays, and then using Shockwave of Glory to knock melee attackers out of the sky (and at 600 feet, they can start attacking before most PCs are able to return fire,) if the party can burn through those legendary resistances, you might find things goings south quickly for them.

In a more damage-focused race, though, I think the Empyrean should do decently.

Anyway, I've been enjoying these monster analyses. I wish we had the full Archhag stat block, because that's one I think could be very fun to dive into. We're also only around 10 days from the earliest access on D&D Beyond. No, I don't think I'll be making a post for every single monster in the book (I do have something of a life!) but I imagine I'll do deep-dives into the ones I find particularly interesting.

Naturally, big high-level bosses are always exciting to look at, but I might make my next deep dive something a little more down-to-earth. I don't know if we're expecting more previews, but we'll see what we get. (And there are, of course, other previews I haven't touched on yet).