Flee, Mortals! Monster Design - Count Rhodar von Glauer and Its Take on Legendary Creatures

Boss fights in D&D are tricky. See, in a video game, you can run so many "combat encounters" that it can be easy to differentiate a boss - this guy takes more than one minute to kill? Must be a boss. Even in difficult, unforgiving games like Dark Souls, where you need to be careful even when fighting the handful of poorly-armed Hollows you face just by the Firelink Shrine, a boss fight stands out.

In D&D, though, every fight tends to take a while to complete. Unless the challenge is totally trivial, you're going to spend probably ten minutes minimum just moving through peoples' turns. And thus, when you get to a climactic fight, you have to figure out how to make it memorable.

Indeed, I think you can build a satisfying dungeon without any true boss fights. If each fight feels special because of its environment, its monsters, and the strategies the players use, that's fine.

But if we want a villain to really feel special, we also want it to feel special when we face them.

FM bosses come in two varieties: Solo monsters and Leaders. The former are designed to be faced truly on their own, and pose a threat to the party (of an appropriate level) even without backup. The latter are meant to have lackeys (I'd say minions, but that has a specific meaning in FM).

Notably, FM sometimes gives us two versions of what, in the Monster Manual, would be a single legendary stat block, with one serving as a named Villain and the other being a generic version that does not necessarily play the role of a legendary creature - the standard Vampire is a CR 13 Skirmisher, which, yes, has a bonus action and reaction that makes it an "action-oriented monster" and a full-page stat block, but could technically play lackey in a high-level fight against some other boss.

In most cases, the "Villain" stat blocks are given specific names and backstories, but you can easily re-skin them. These are meant to make for memorable encounters.

We'll look at Count Rhodar von Glauer, the vampire "villain" character, as our showcase for the way that FM builds these characters.

The Count is a CR 19 Solo monster, which means that he could be a significant challenge on his own for a tier 3 party.

Now, let's talk about the really distinguishing features:

The Count has three "Spears of the Damned," magically summoned and made of darkness. In addition to his blood-drinking sword, Sanguinus (he doesn't actually physically bite people in combat, but gets the usual vampiric attack through his sword,) he hurls these spears at players to deal damage and then pin them down by impaling them.

Now, a Solo monster needs a lot of actions to make up for the fact that they're so outnumbered. The Count thus gets, usually, five attacks with his main Multiattack. He swings Sanguinus twice and then hurls each of his Spears of the Damned. Now, if a spear is currently impaling a player, if he uses it to attack someone, that player is no longer impaled (and thus no longer restrained).

So essentially, he's going to have a big burst of damage at the start, but sacrifices some damage to keep party members locked down.

Like other vampires, the Count has a bonus action that can momentarily Beguile a creature into attacking an ally or falling prone, or he can use a bonus action to move without provoking opportunity attacks. Finally, he has a reaction that can deal some damage to a foe that just hit him with an attack.

So, he hits hard, hits a lot, has a lot of health, and can fly. And he can kind of choose between damage or crowd control to make sure there's a problem for the party five times on his turn.

Now, most Legendary monsters have two factors: Legendary Resistances and Legendary Actions (and often Lair actions, which FM keeps but has its own designs for them).

FM alters both of these.

So, Legendary Resistances are there to ensure that a boss isn't taken out by a single spell - Banishing the Demon Lord who has crashed out of the Abyss in the big climactic fight makes things, well, a bit anticlimactic. Sure, if they're banished only after weakened by three other powerful spells they need to burn their LRs on, that's a bit better. But the problem with Legendary Resistance is that it creates a "null result," which means that whatever you were trying to do, the monster is unaffected. Sure, you moved their meter down a bit toward being unable to get out of a powerful spell effect, but there's a good chance you're just going to kill it before you churn through all of them.

So, FM's take on Legendary Resistance is really cool: Each "villain" has a 3/day way to get out of failing saving throws (there are a couple variations that don't quite work that way) but each comes at a cost. In The Count's case, he needs to sacrifice one of his Spears of the Damned, shattering it to absorb the power of the spell he would have been subjected to. Until the next dusk, the Count cannot re-summon that spear, which means that his action count is reduced to 4, and he can only pin down two characters, not three.

In other words, yes, you're unable to Turn Undead on him and send him fleeing from his ruined castle, but by doing so (and assuming he failed his Wisdom save even with a +9) you've still significantly reduced his power to hurt you.

FM also replaces Legendary Actions with Villain Actions.

Each villain has three Villain Actions, which they can, like with Legendary Actions, use on the end of another creature's turn. But, each of these Villain actions can only be used once per encounter, and they can use a villain action only once per round. The latter is not unlike any "uses three actions" features on existing legendary monsters, like a Lich's Disrupt Life.

But this means that these effects will only happen once during an encounter, and thus should be dramatic and shift the dynamic of the fight.

Villain Actions are also given in a suggested order. In the Count's case, he splatters blood on creatures within a 20-foot radius sphere, potentially giving them a special "bloodstained" status effect, which gives him advantage on attacks against them and gives them disadvantage against his Beguile until the end of his next turn.

The second one is Fire Drake, where he gets to transform into a fiery dragon and blaze across the battlefield up to twice his flying speed, ignoring difficult terrain and causing fire damage to anyone he passes through.

His third allows him to fill the room with mist, heavily obscuring the area (note that he has blindsight) and he gets to teleport around the room making four Sanguinus attacks against targets in the mist, before the mist dissipates.

The structure of these follows a similar pattern: the first is usually a wake-up call: this is a boss, and has serious abilities. The second sort of knocks the board over and rearranges the pieces - either moving players around or moving the boss around. And the third is a final, big burst of damage - by round 3, the fight's getting desperate, and this is the boss's last chance to take the party down.

These actions don't need to be taken in this order, but they're arranged that way as a suggested order, to make things dramatic. But if the fight is going faster than expected, you might jump to the final one (the "ult") immediately, or if the fight is likely to go on for more than three rounds, you might hold off on one of them until the boss goes down to 50% health or something.

So, here's what I really like about these Villain Actions: The boss does less.

That might be surprising given that one of the biggest challenges in a boss fight is managing to give the boss enough to do to make them a threat to a coordinated party. But the old Legendary Actions aren't actually gone - they've just been incorporated into the boss' main action. You have five attacks (at least to start with) on your turn. And the bonus actions and reaction give you even more wealth in the action economy.

A single Unarmed Strike as a legendary action is... it's not nothing, because it includes a grapple, but it's kind of this low-impact, normal thing the vampire usually gets to do. These three villain actions are all Big Moments.

And it's also less to track. You don't have to remember if you used two or three of your legendary actions in the middle of a round.

So, pretty soon we might start to look at how we want to incorporate these ideas into our own homebrew monsters. The tuning of attack bonuses and damage, though, is something we might want to look at next. I've often used the DMG's "creating monster statistics" table for my own homebrewing, but we'll see how well this matches up with that table.

Flee, Mortals! Monster Design Review - The Hill Giant

 So, in my last post I tried to pick out the "standard" goblin from Flee, Mortals! to compare with the Goblin in the Monster Manual. The Goblin Warrior is relatively similar to the one found in the MM, and I think could be swapped in without making fights too much harder, but if goblins are meant to be mobile on the battlefield, these skirmishers are even better at it.

Now, Giants in the Monster Manual are... pretty boring, for the most part. They have thematic damage immunities, they hit hard, have lots of hit points, and... that's about it. The higher-level ones get some spells, too. Now, not to disparage WotC's Giants - they literally just came out with a book filled with lots of cool giant stat blocks that are far more interesting than the MM ones. But this series is intended to look at the design philosophy in MCDM's Flee, Mortals!, and so we'll be comparing the "base" model with the FM version, given that the book is meant in a lot of ways to let you use it in place of the Monster Manual for most standard monsters.

The Hill Giant is likely the first "true" giant that a party will face (as opposed to ogres and trolls - the 'lesser' giants). The standard MM Hill Giant is a CR 5 creature, and FM gives us its equivalent in the Hill Giant Clobberer, which is a CR 5 Brute.

Brutes are kind of the simplest monsters - their role is to be a damage sponge that does enough damage it can't be ignored. Unlike the Soldier, which usually protects its more vulnerable allies by locking down player characters like a tank, Brutes just come in, smash things, and threaten the party in the traditional way.

The Clobberer has an AC of 12 and 126 HP. That's a very low AC for a CR 5 monster, but if we're expecting this guy to be the main thing a low-level party is fighting (perhaps with some minions or non-giant allies) that's a lot of HP to churn through. Our giant friend gets a +8 to hit with attacks and deals 18 damage with its Greatclub, which then also forces the target to make a DC 16 Strength save or get knocked prone. They can also hurl rocks for 2d10+5 damage, and they get to make two attacks per turn.

There's a little rebalancing here compared to the MM Hill Giant - more HP but lower AC, and the Rock attack does somewhat less.

This one has a climb speed of 20 feet, and a movement speed of 30.

That actually makes this slower than the MM version, at least on land.

But there are also some additional features, and not all of them make it more powerful:

The Clobberer has a bonus action called Hill Quake, which lets it intentionally fall prone damage nearby structures (not creatures) and potentially knock them prone. It also has a trait called Pummel, which gives it a bonus to damage against prone creatures and lets them reduce a creature's movement speed to 0 if it hits them while prone. It's also a Siege Monster, making that Hill Quake thing doubly devastating against structures.

(I think at this point it might be interesting to see if we'll get more prominent environmental destruction rules - for all I know there is a robust system that I just never happen to use.)

Finally, however, there's Distracted - with no check at all, only spending a reaction, a creature within range of one of the Clobberer's attacks who is not the current target can make the Clobberer attack them instead.

And so, the way a fight against one of these comes together seems to go thusly:

If the Clobberer has enough movement, it starts off with a Hill Quake to knock PCs prone, and then stands up with remaining movement. It then tries to smash anyone who is prone with its greatclub, but let's say you're the beefy Barbarian who easily succeeded on the saving throw, and your Sorcerer friend is on the ground following the Quake. Knowing that the Sorcerer is going to be laid out for extra damage and also unable to stand the next turn if their movement is reduced to zero, you use your reaction to make sure that at least one of its attacks comes at you instead, giving your Sorcerer friend a chance to escape.

And I think that's a showcase of the strength of FM's monster design: these stat blocks are built to create a scenario like that that goes well beyond "well, it hits hard." Our Hill Giant Clobberer really needs to be dealt with, because it's smashing our party and refusing to be ignored.

Now, there is one aspect of the design here that I find kind of curious:

Distracted, as a trait, requires the DM to tell the party about it ahead of time. (There's even box text titled "Make Players Aware: Distracted.") While a player might stumble into the idea that they can distract the giant, there's basically nothing in the game rules that would hint to them that this is a genuine mechanical aspect of this creature. Thus, the DM needs to be upfront and say "you would know, as adventurers, that Hill Giants are easily distracted, and you can use your reaction to get them to attack you instead of an ally if you're in range."

You could play coy and lock this information behind a successful History check (and I do highly recommend giving successful "Knowledge" checks like Arcana, History, Nature, and Religion, clear mechanical benefits) but I think this monster doesn't really work unless that information is shared.

This is similar to Minion Rules. Minions are lots of fun (well, lots of fun for martial characters who usually don't get to do AoE damage) but they work so differently from normal enemies that you need to pull things out of the game for a moment to explain how they work.

And so, while I'm still very much on board with FM and am eager to use basically every stat block in it at some point (though call be again when I find a group ready to face the two-phase CR 30 Tarrasque equivalent, which... geez) I do think that the design here is a little more transparently "gamey." That's, honestly, probably a good thing. But it does give you things like having to set aside the idea that every Minion is an individual person rather than a mass to be chunked through (though in an upcoming fight I have five minions that are Brad, Chet, Chad, Brett, and their Buddy, Beefer, which is an inside joke with one of my players).

Designing Monsters Like Flee, Mortals!

 Ok, I'll confess, I'm obsessed. I've barely been able to run much D&D since getting Flee, Mortals! and so I'm of course a little worried that I'm singing the book's praises based on impression alone. But I think it's really good, and I feel relatively confident in that assessment.

FM is a giant book with tons of monsters, but as you might know from reading this blog, I amass monster books like crazy because I tend to prefer weird and unusual monsters to fit with my genre-heresy. One of my favorite adaptations I've done in D&D is to add the Taheen from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. These animal-headed humanoids (actually monstrosities in a more recent re-design) are sort of embodiments of the banality of evil, and so I built a version of them that come from the Shadowfell and are related to the Nagpa. But another key to their aesthetic is their use of modern (as in late 20th/early 21st century) technology, such as automatic weapons, cars and trucks, and they work in office buildings with a kind of 1970s/80s aesthetic, drinking foul "coffee" to keep alert while they doom people on spreadsheets.

They're a kind of intrusion of the real world upon the fantastical, but doing so actually makes them otherworldly to places with wizard towers and dragons and such.

The point is, between their equipment and overall vibe, it's not terribly easy to just use existing stat blocks to represent them. But I long ago became pretty comfortable with homebrewing monsters, so that's what I do.

But I think FM has kind of stepped up to the stage and challenged any monster designer to try to do better - make more dynamic monsters with more interesting abilities, but without the kind of unchecked complexity that some of my earlier homebrew designs have fallen into. FM monsters have a clear role in an encounter and are "action-oriented" to give them options in combat, but they're (theoretically) simple enough to run in combat that the DM doesn't get bogged down.

While I might do a future post in which we look at how to make a "Taheen" chapter similar to the ones in FM for Orcs and Kobolds and Time Raiders, I want instead to look here at some of the basic creatures in classic D&D creature cohorts.

And what's more classic than Goblins?

    The first thing you'll notice when looking at the Goblin chapter in FM is that there is no stat block that is just called "Goblin." None of these creatures is the "basic, no-frills" Goblin that represents the quintessence of their lineage.

There are fourteen stat blocks in the Goblin chapter, though we can set aside three of these, which are Retainers and Companions - designed to join and fight alongside the party rather than for our party to fight against.

One of these is the named Goblin Villain, Queen Bargnot. She is a Leader character (thus designed to be a boss who has lackeys that fight alongside her, with abilities that can make use of or help those lackeys).

We're not ready for her yet, though - at CR 3, and with an expectation of lackeys, a 1st level party isn't going to face her. Probably only a party that has made it to tier 2 is going to be able to fight her without cheesing the battle by isolating her.

There are also some creatures here who are not goblins - little flying beasts called Skitterlings the goblins use as pets, and giant war spiders they ride as mounts.

Ultimately, what do we want to look at as the "equivalent" to the standard Goblin in the Monster Manual? Those guys are CR 1/4, and while they don't do much more damage or have much more health than the CR 1/8 Kobolds, they have higher AC, meaning they're more likely to dodge an attack or two and live to fight another round.

The only CR 1/4 Goblin that isn't a Minion (which have special rules and don't really have equivalents in the MM outside of "send a bunch of low-CR monsters against the party that will probably die without ever hitting anything") is the Goblin Warrior.

So, we'll consider this our "equivalent," that in theory could be used to replace a MM Goblin in any planned combat.

Our Goblin Warrior has an AC of 15 and 9 HP. Most 1st level characters start with an attack bonus of +5, meaning that they should be hitting a creature like this about 55% of the time. Longbows and the most powerful 1-handed weapons use d8s for damage, so weapon-wielders will often hit for 4.5+3 for their ability modifier, or 7.5. Relying on cantrips means less than that - 5.5 for Eldritch Blast or Fire Bolt, 4.5 for Shocking Grasp or Ray of Frost, or 3.5 for Acid Splash or Mind Sliver. So, if our goblin is dodging or getting missed about half the time by a 1st level player, it'll probably take on average about 4 offensive abilities to take one of these down.

That's all very basic, though. What can this guy do to our party?

Well, first off, FM Goblins have "Crafty," which causes them not to provoke opportunity attacks. That makes them very mobile in combat, so they can strike in and then back away. Warriors also get Fleet Foot, which lets them move up to half their speed as a reaction if a creature misses them with a melee attack made within 5 feet.

Also, FM goblins have climb speeds, which isn't quite as powerful as Fly speeds to evade melee, but does make their mobility a little more potent.

The Warrior has a Shortsword and a Shortbow attack, both of which have a +4 to hit and deal 1d6+2 damage.

This means it's usually going to miss anyone wearing any real armor (even a Rogue with only an AC of 15 is still only getting hit 50% of the time) and the damage is probably not taking down even a 1st level character with one hit.

Now, how is this different from the MM "Goblin?"

AC is the same, HP is 2 higher (from 7). Attacks are the same. The MM Goblin has Nimble Escape, which allows it to Disengage or Hide as a bonus action. The FM ones does not need to disengage because of its Crafty trait, but it will not be able to slip into the shadows and hide. The MM does not have the reaction to slip away after a missed attack.

The FM one has +4 to Acrobatics and Stealth, whereas the MM one has only a +6 to Stealth (evidently getting expertise).

    So, what's the difference in how these play?

Ultimately, and appropriately, not a whole lot. They can both strike equally well in melee or at range, and are good at getting away from players who confront them in melee (playing tactically, they'll prefer range, as there's no real benefit for them to be up in melee).

The FM one will be a little harder to pin down, though: the MM one still only has its normal 30 feet of movement, so even if it disengages, it must dash to get outside of most player characters' movement speed and avoid a melee hit, and if it's dashing, it's not hindering the party much.

The FM one (which is listed as a Skirmisher) gets an extra boost of movement thanks to its reaction, meaning it can potentially move 45 feet on a round - though only gets that extra 15 if something misses it (which, as we established, should happen about half of the time a level 1 player attacks them). If the environment has things to climb, their 20 foot climb speed can also help them get away from melee players.

But none of this seems overpowered - they'll be a pain for melee characters, potentially, but they don't have enough movement to run in, attack, and run out of a character's range.

One thing opportunity attacks do as a rule is encourage static battlefields - you stand your ground because you don't want to give the monsters an extra swing at you, and the monsters don't want to do that for the same reason.

Both of these goblins get around this, and are likely to keep the battlefield flowing - though again, I'd argue that in both cases, if the goblins stick to ranged combat, this won't do much to counteract it.

Here's the scenario I see the difference in design creating different encounters:

If the party and the goblins are ducking behind cover and shooting at one another, it might become something of a stalemate where the only way to fight is to hold actions and attack when a foe pops out of cover. This is, of course, what a charging Barbarian is for, but these Goblin Warriors could also potentially break up a stalemate like this as well - they can run across the gap and get into melee with ranged characters, even if it takes their dash action, but it's a little safer for them because they can potentially get away from an attacker who misses while your Wizard might be forced to use their action to disengage.

I don't think the FM Goblin Warrior is really much more complicated than the MM Goblin to run - really you just need to remember the reaction, but you get to forget about the bonus action.

I think when we look at another creature type, we might go a little higher-CR to get a sense of where the complexity comes in with more dynamic monsters. I think I'd like to look next time at Giants.

How Baldur's Gate 3 Got Me Thinking About Dungeon and Adventure Design

 I still haven't played the full release version of Baldur's Gate 3 - as a Mac user, we're still in Early Access, so while I've just managed to biff on quietly eliminating the Arcane Eye in Grymforge to get a couple of disgruntled duergar to help me take out the cultists there and wound up having to fight basically everyone in the place (which was honestly fun - I had both Wyll and Gale in the party and bottlenecked a bunch of them through a Grease and Hunger of Hadar, and then dropped two fireballs, each hitting four targets apiece - and then kept knocking the villainous barbarian back through the Hunger of Hadar thanks to Repelling Blast... did I mention how much I love Warlocks?) I'm getting to a point where I think most of the quests I can actually do are complete (Grym, the guardian of the forge, was more like a puzzle than an actual boss fight, but my Paladin is now wearing some fancy adamantine splint and a cool helmet).

Still, I have been thinking about the way that the game treats its dungeons.

Early on, the first big conflict you can run into is a group of goblins assaulting a druid grove. The druids (and especially the nasty one who has been left in charge after their normal leader was captured) want a group of tiefling refugees to move on so they can seal the grove away from the attackers. Naturally, one way to resolve the conflict here is to go and take out the goblins.

However, there are also potentially NPCs amongst the goblins you might want to help you.

The "Goblin Camp" is thus a rather sprawling defunct temple. And if you go in guns-a-blazing, you can treat it as a difficult, long-term dungeon crawl where you'll probably be forced to retreat and take long rests in the middle. Alternatively, you can walk right in and talk your way into meeting with the gang's three leaders (one of whom, if you go along with the gang's evil plan, will join your party - I'm a little bummed that that's the paladin companion character).

If you play it really cool, you can even manage to take some of the "bosses" out without giving yourself away, making it easy enough to walk around the temple without anyone giving you any trouble. (Even if you are still ultimately trying to take them down).

I think perhaps because my first introduction to D&D was Acquisitions Incorporated - and specifically the grand PAX one-shots initially run by Chris Perkins (and now apparently run by him once again, switching off with Jeremy Crawford) - my sense of how to run D&D has bene a bit more guided - the DM makes sure the players move along and hit their marks and get to the big set piece battles.

Naturally, I've been running D&D a long time and have seen plenty of other actual-play, like Critical Role and Dimension 20.

There's this tension in D&D - for the players to feel like they have agency, you never want to tell them no - you want them to feel like they can do anything they want their characters to do, or at least attempt to do so. But there's also a need to make for reasonable challenges, and to provide a path for them to walk.

I read something I think from maybe the 3rd Edition PHB (an edition I'm not terribly familiar with) that suggested the Dungeons are actually the ideal way to build adventures - you create a space where the players can let loose, be destructive, creative, and imaginative, and you know that the only thing that will break is the dungeon itself. Get them exploring that dungeon, meeting NPCs within it, and let the consequences of their actions be limitless - but bounded by the dungeon's outer walls.

I don't know that I'd want every D&D game I ran to be so closed-off. I like having things take place in a broader world.

But I think I'm growing an appreciation for the idea of this kind of bounded space of a dungeon, and that a dungeon need not be just a series of combat encounters either.

My tendency is to plan things around the idea that "ok, they're going to have this fight, and then this fight, and then this is going to happen, and then they can probably take a rest here," and I think my goal moving forward as a DM is to build things in a more open-ended manner.

Now, balancing is still important - and combat is fun. And I want to have fights that are appropriately challenging while not murdering the party. I think, then, the key is to have those fights sitting around, justified by the world.

Today I put together a dungeon for 4th level players built around the idea of a Green Hag villain (using Flee, Mortals!' version of the monster). What wound up developing was a kind of Southern Gothic story in which the hag had taken over a wealthy family's plantation and grown a massive, corrupt tree up through the manor house, and was now forcing fairies from the feywild into indentured servitude (note here that if I were to try to publish this, I'd want to get some serious cultural consulting on the premise, given its themes and aesthetic) and holding curses over people in the nearby town.

The first part of the dungeon that the party will interact with is the camp with all the indentured servants (the idea is that she's been ferrying refugees from conflict in the feywild to the material plane but forcing them into a contract they'll likely never pay off to come to this plane.) There's a single big combat encounter that could be had with the goblinoid gang that the hag has hired (actually as part of a similar deal) to prevent any of the fairies from running for it.

If the party approaches as potential customers (the hag sells potions and poisons made from the herbs she has the fairies cultivating and harvesting) they could, potentially, talk their way into the camp and treat the hobgoblins leading the gang as NPCs to negotiate with. But they could also just start attacking, facing off against the many goblins in the gang (and here I use minions to make up 10 of the 14 gang members, allowing it to feel reasonable that this group could keep watch over twenty fairies.)

If the party enters the old manor house, things get a little more universally-hostile. There's one potentially friendly NPC - the bedridden woman who actually owns the house and who has been manipulated and exploited by the hag for thirty years - but then it's basically monsters all the way down.

But I think the approach here is also to just kind of imagine what would actually be there, and let all the "extraneous" details either lie there harmlessly, or get picked up by players and used in ways I couldn't anticipate.

Say Hello to the Adze of Annam, the New Hardest-Hitting Weapon in 5E

 Ever since Mythic Odysseys of Theros came out, I've looked to Akmon, Hammer of Purphuros, as the hardest-hitting weapon in the game. It's an artifact that is best if you're a worshipper of the eponymous deity (Theros' version of Hephaestus, basically) and is a +3 warhammer that does 3d10 additional fire damage on a hit, along with a few other bonuses.

As far as I can tell, it was the weapon in all of (officially published) 5E that hit the hardest, hitting for 1d8/1d10 + 3d10 damage, plus 3, before your own personal bonuses. So, two-handed, that's 25 damage on its own with each swing. Notably, the Sword of Zariel from Descent into Avernus actually keeps pace with it when wielded two-handed (and is also the basis for the artifact my party has acquired in my Ravnica campaign - basically the redeemed sword of a champion of Serra from Dominaria that has a living angel inside - the sword's stats are slightly tweaked, but the damage is the same). But one-handed, Akmon does a little more, as its 3d10 remain the bonus while the Sword of Zariel's radiant damage is downgraded to 2d8.

But Bigby Presents Glory of the Giants has brought us a new king of weapons: the Adze of Annam.

The Adze is a +3 Greataxe that does an additional 3d12 force damage, meaning we're looking at 29 damage on average before we take the wielder's strength into account.

The Adze does have a few other bonuses, namely being able to cast Move Earth or Fabricate once a day (and it seems that using one locks you out of the other for the day) along with a couple minor beneficial, minor detrimental, and one major beneficial traits you can randomly roll. But that's about it.

I'd still say the Sword of Zariel is probably the most powerful weapon they've ever made, due to the massive number of additional features it provides. But if we're talking about pure hard-hittingness, this is it.

Now, I'll note that there's actually a nonmagical weapon that comes close to this. In the DMG, amongst the futuristic weapons, the antimatter rifle deals 6d8 necrotic damage on a hit. That's an average of 27 damage per hit, meaning that if you had a +3 magical version, it would actually out-damage the Adze. The Antimatter Rifle, however, has the reload property, which the Gunner feat notably does not let you ignore. Thus, you get two shots and then must use a bonus action or action to reload the weapon. While other reload weapons often have a clip of several shots - the laser pistol, for example, can fire 50 times before reloading, meaning it's unlikely you'll ever have to do so in the heat of combat - this limitation on the antimatter rifle makes it less ideal for the "max damage scenario" fun of a level 20 fighter. Technically, you could get four shots off in a round, but you wouldn't be able to do so again the next round.

If we had a Champion Fighter with maxed out Strength using this agains the Tarrasque, we'd do the following damage on average:

We have a +14 to hit, meaning we hit on an 11 or higher, so 50% we're hitting overall.

Hit damage is 34

With a 15% chance to crit for an additional 26 damage.

So, per attack, we're looking at 17 plus 3.9 for crits, giving us 20.9 damage per attack, and thus doing 83.6 damage per round. (And unlike with Akmon, all our damage actually affects the Tarrasque).

Solo Monsters that Aren't Solo Monsters

 So, while I haven't yet had a chance to toss its monsters against my players a lot (basically two sessions, and I had to cancel tonight's because I'm sick and don't want to strain my throat) the monster design in Flee, Mortals! tickles me profoundly on a theoretical level. That being said, I suspect that these monsters will be generally tougher than what we get in the Monster Manual.

Take your standard Orc from the Monster Manual. These guys have a +5 to hit with their Greataxe and Javelin attacks, with a +3 to Strength. They have an AC of 13, and 15 hit points. The main thing that makes them distinct as monsters is that they can dash toward a target as a bonus action (this "aggressive" trait being kind of the defining Orc feature).

There are two CR 1/2 Orcs in FM - the Fury, which is a Brute, and the Bloodrunner, which is a skirmisher.

FM's Orcs have Relentless as their shared trait, which functions like the playable Orc and Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance, allowing them to drop to 1 instead of 0 HP when their HP is depleted once a day.

The Bloodrunner already has a speed of 60 feet, meaning that it can move the speed a MM Orc would be able to without a bonus action, and it has a number of other features, along with having a higher AC. Its Spiked Shield attack does less than a Greataxe, but its Unimpeded passive feature can potentially make up for that if it runs through a prone creature's space - something its shield attack can cause.

The Fury is perhaps closer to the "standard" Orc, in that it just strikes with a Greataxe or Javelin. It is not going to be moving as quickly, (though still has 35 feet, over the standard 30) and gets to deal a little extra damage against a prone target, and can knock a target prone if they aren't already. And they can heal themselves a little once a day.

So, yeah, these are, I think, both more powerful than the Monster Manual version.

They're more dynamic, to be sure, and I think experienced players will enjoy the greater challenge of the fight.

But that's not really what I'm looking to explore here.

FM has a number of "Solo" monsters that are designed to be a challenging fight without any additional monsters. If you face down its version of the Kraken, that's meant to be a serious encounter even if the party is composed of six level 19 characters. The Kraken has 499 HP, its standard "multiattack" involves seven different attacks (four tentacles and three mental lances) along with a bonus action that can hurl grappled creatures up to 60 feet and a reaction that will deal an AoE burst of psychic damage to the attacker and anyone nearby. And then, on top of all of this, it has three "villain actions," which are one-use-only-per-round and once-per-encounter legendary actions that have pretty big effects.

So, naturally, these guys are built to put a party through their paces without any help from other monsters. And, indeed, encounter-building uses a different sort of math for them: A solo monster against a group of 4-5 level, say, 10 characters, should have a CR of 11-12 if you're building a Standard encounter, or 13-15 if you want the fight to be hard.

Normally, using FM's encounter-building system, each player accounts for a certain "budget" of CR, depending on their level and the encounter difficulty. There's also, then, a CR cap, where the fight shouldn't involve creatures that go above it. The solo encounter building system uses this cap as a maximum as well, and then lowers it depending on how much you want to tune the difficulty down from its maximum.

So, for example, the CR cap at level 20 is 30, which means you should never throw the Titan Goxomoc (kind of FM's version of the Tarrasque, with a whole second phase as a powerful elemental) against any party that's not level 20, and even then it should, in theory, be a difficult fight.

But what about less powerful monsters? Can we build a solo monster encounter that doesn't use a, well, solo monster?

So, right from the start, I think we've got an issue: the CR cap for solo monsters is already a pretty hard limit - they recommend never going over it even when you've got a big, climactic boss fight. So, really, can we put a single monster in there that fills out our CR budget without hitting the cap?

The answer is, well, yes. But it'll be an easy encounter.

Level 10 players are each worth 3.5 CR's worth. So, if we have a four-player party, that puts us at a CR budget of 14 - just shy of our cap at 15. There are a couple CR 14 monsters in FM, though a couple of them are Leaders or Support, neither of which seem like they will lend themselves well to a single-monster fight. There's also a solo monster, but we're looking specifically outside of that for this case. (Though it might be a point of comparison). So, we're left with the Devil Adjudicator - a Controller, which seems like the sort of monster that might pose a challenge on its own.

The Adjudicator has a three-part multiattack, with two uses of its main spell attack (dealing 27 fire damage on a hit and either charming or frightening the target) and a recharge ability (5-6) that can significantly reduce a character's power with a fairly high Charisma save.  It also flies, which is not unbeatable at this level, but will make things tougher for melee characters.

The key here, though, is that unlike a Solo or Leader monster, there's no remedy if a player uses a powerful spell like Banishment and the creature fails. The Adjudicator has a +10 to charisma saving throws, which means there's a good chance it will succeed against such a spell, but once they fail, the fight is over - the party needs to only wait around for the full minute and let the guy be banished permanently back to the Nine Hells (or Seven Cities of Hell, in MCDM's multiverse).

That being said, I'm not sure this is such a bad thing. If this is not meant to be a climactic encounter, and is only something that might emerge in a dungeon room as a sudden threat, perhaps getting lucky and taking it out with a single spell is all right. At level 10, whittling down 204 HP is not going to be super easy, so this devil will in most cases pose a fair challenge. But even if he's pumping out 54 damage per round (assuming he's always hitting) a level 10 group can probably manage it, especially if they're smart.

Now, as a point of comparison, Xorannox, the named "Overmind" villain (MCDM's version of the Beholder) is also CR 14. They have the same AC, while Xorannox has a little more HP (228 to the adjudicator's 204). As a Beholder-like creature, most of its eye beams (which it chooses, rather than rolling randomly) impose status effects. That said, if it goes in for maximum damage, using its Lightning Bolt, Explosion, and Necrosis beams will do a lot more than the 54 the devil is doing.

So, truly, CR is not everything here - Solo monsters are really built differently.

Still, I think using the normal encounter-building rules and sometimes having the party fight a single monster is not totally infeasible. But as any experienced DM will note, it's generally better for your standard fights to involve multiple monsters.

Runic Items on Bigby's Rune-Wielding Giants

 Many of the giant statblocks (ok, some are giant and some are elementals and fiends) are sort of grouped in thematic cohorts, or "cycles" to borrow a term from Magic the Gathering. For example, there's a demon-corrupted version of almost every one of the main giant types (the Fire Giant is an exception, in that its fiendish version is a devil, while I believe the closest equivalent for the Storm Giant is the Storm Herald - basically what happens when a Storm Giant becomes a Kraken Priest. There's also a Demogorgon-corrupted Ettin.)

One of these cycles is a version of each giant type that has a powerful rune-based item on them. What makes this interesting is that they typically get two special abilities that they can use while bearing this rune, but the runic object is destroyable - if you can smash it, you reduce the number of things that giant can do.

Now, the trick here is that these runes aren't terribly easy to destroy. The Hill Giant Avalancher, for example, carries a rock with the Hill rune on it, giving it access a Stone Avalance ability (an AoE cylinder that does a fireball's worth of damage and creates difficult terrain) and a reaction in Hill Rebuff, which can damage and push back foes who strike them.

The rock, however, has its own HP and AC - 20 and 15, respectively. However, if you want to destroy it, you had better do it quickly, because the rune stone regains all of its HP at the end of each turn - not just the Giant's, but every turn. So one character needs to put out 20 damage in a single turn. The giant is CR 12, so at this point we can expect characters to have things like extra attack and other damage-boosts, but it becomes very clear that they need to invest some resource unless they get lucky (given the relatively low AC, something like Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter would likely be a good call for this). (It's also immune to psychic, poison, and necrotic damage, the latter being less usual an immunity for objects.)

The giant still has some powerful attacks, but it's not nearly as much of a threat when its rune is destroyed.

Now, damaging objects is one of those things I don't see come up a ton in my own D&D sessions. One thing to bear in mind is that a lot of spells don't actually harm objects. A Fireball would seem like a good option to take out a stone like this, but while Fireballs ignite flammable objects in their area of effect, they only directly damage creatures. And since this rock is definitely not flammable, I don't think it would succeed in destroying it.

Notably, this is one of the often ignored benefits of the Fire Bolt cantrip. Eldritch Blast, Ray of Frost, and most damage cantrips can only target creatures, but Fire Bolt specifically calls out that it can target objects. That said, unless you have some damage boost, a Fire Bolt's average damage will remain under 20 until you hit tier 4.

Of course, weapons can target objects just fine, and I think this is going to probably be the primary way you can get rid of a rune item like this.

Now, as a DM, you might be tempted to put these objects out of reach of the party. These creatures are all giants, and so it stands to reason that they might be holding their runic object high enough that, without reach, a creature won't be able to target it in melee. I would say... don't do that. Have the giants wear it on a belt or something, putting it in range, as long as the characters is willing to get up within reach of the thing.

Now, the next question is how open you want to be with the players about the rules surrounding the rune. I'd err on the side of making it clear that they can destroy it, giving them the tactical option to attempt it. Given that they won't necessarily be able to do so, it becomes something of a risk vs. reward decision. Do you forgo damaging the monster itself in order to make it less of a threat, with the risk that if you can't put out enough damage (such as if you roll low on one of your attacks) the turn becomes a waste?

This, incidentally, is an area where I think the game can reward characters with the various Intelligence proficiencies. If you have a strong History bonus, letting you make a History check to know about the way this runic magic works - and how it is reflected mechanically - would make such a proficiency feel like it's pulling its weight.

Barring that, you could describe how the rune flares whenever the runic abilities are being used, and call attention to the fact that the giant is invoking these magical abilities through the rune, letting the players get a strong sense that without that object, the creature would be unable to use them.