Talk:Acheron Cube (5e Equipment)

How many warriors does the cube create and what are their statistics? SirSprinkles (talk) 01:59, 8 February 2024 (MST)

Good questions. Regrettably, "the area of this battlefield is covered with bands of spectral warriors" is actually only marginally more helpful than "each 1-mile area of the battlefield has 8d10x1000 + 9d10x100 + 1d100 spectral warriors on it, each warrior using the statblock of a veteran" because it doesn't risk misleading with the impression that the DM should attempt to put 49005 creatures in initiative order. And that's not to mention that even with that calculation it's still a bit low density for a battlefield, with about only one warrior per 25 square feet. Given 5E's lack of precedent for mass combat rules (and the many homebrew rulesets created to fill the void), the most currently game-runnable version of this item is the one where its effects, much like mass combat, are treated as a backdrop to a scene instead of the primary object in the scene itself. This is a similar principle to deities in 5E not being statted: if you managed to kill one, it's not from reducing its hit points to 0. The DM is left open to handle these bands of warriors in the same way they would have to handle any other army in their game.

That doesn't mean that the item can't certainly be improved from its current state, far from it in fact. I'll work on brainstorming ways to address the inadequacies without prepackaging invented mass-combat rules into the item page. It's just that, again, barring some minor adjustments, this is really the most practically runnable version of this item at the moment. --ZarHakkar (talk) 04:31, 8 February 2024 (MST)