Talk:Darkside Heartless (5e Creature)

first hp is not done in a way for challenge rating 5(more like the way from a cr 9 without the con mod added right) also the auto hit 60 necrotic damage at range every turn is insane for a cr 5(also the bonus to hit for the giant stomp is around 2 too high for the cr.)

I'll take a crack at correcting this. --SlaadSack (talk) 12:00, 3 June 2019 (MDT)

Rework: Changes and Rationale

Here is a list of the changes I made to the article, along with my reasons for implementing them:

• Reduced size from Gargantuan to Huge. Darksides are undeniably massive in the Kingdom Hearts games, but Sora—a short and scrawny human teenager—still comes up to their knee. This should make a Darkside comparable in size to a giant, and thus of Huge size.
• Added neutral evil alignment to fit the precedent set by other Heartless creatures on the wiki.
• Reduced speed from 50 feet to 30 feet and reduced Dexterity from 14 to 10. In the games, Darksides are slow to move, slow to attack and not particularly hard to hit.
• Reduced total hit dice from 18d12 to 14d12 and recalculated hit points. Surprisingly, this worked out to the exact same number of hit points as before.
• Reduced Intelligence from 10 to 6. These things aren’t terribly smart, to the best of my knowledge.
• Added 60-foot darkvision. It’s a heartless, a literal manifestation of a person’s inner darkness; it ought to be able to see in the dark.
• Rewrote “Hearts to Heartless” to make it more like the wraith’s “create specter” action. Also moved it from the traits section to the actions section.
• Moved “Frightful Presence” from the traits section to the actions section. I’m considering getting rid of it entirely, since they don’t actively seem to try and frighten people at any point in the games; they just smash things.
• Consolidated “Giant Fist/Stomp” and “Dark Grip” into a more conventional Slam attack. Increased its reach from 5 feet to 10 feet.
• Replaced “Dark Energy Ball” and its auto-hitting nonsense with two special attacks, “Dark Volley” and “Dark Rain”. These are meant to replicate some of the attacks that the Darkside uses in the Kingdom Hearts games.
• Added a copyright disclaimer.

By my calculations, this puts the creature's defensive CR at 8 and its offensive CR at 5, for an average of 6.5 (rounded up to 7).

If anyone else has any ideas for how to improve this creature, I'm open to suggestions. --SlaadSack (talk) 13:25, 3 June 2019 (MDT)