Talk:Nuckelavee (5e Creature)
Things I like:
-The underwater stalking and lurking
-The poison breath weapon
-Idea of having the rider do claw attacks
-Movement speeds for both walking/dashing and swimming
-That it doesn't need air, food, drink, or sleep
What I mainly disliked:
-Concerning the lore portion, it's being treated as some manner of swamp hunter that pokes its head out for a little rampaging every now and again. I see it more as a force of nature, and as a harbinger of death and disease. Mayhem and destruction aren't its intentions, but, more specifically, death and misery may be considered its goals (if its intelligent enough to have specified goals rather than just unchecked desires). In accordance with its original lore, it should be restricted to the cold parts of the year for when it appears; when illness is more rampant, the seas become less favorable, and the nights are long and cold.
Suggested edits:
-Change type to fey (source material being celtic mythology makes it a fey and not undead, despite appearances to the contrary.)
-Add lore concerning nuckalavee's relations to the ocean, winter, and illnesses. Its lore, as I understand it, has it making crops fail, livestock ill, and infants die.
-Its lore puts it in the northern waters of the Orkneys during winter. So, maybe add cold resistance/immunity.
-Add feature that makes it so it won't cross running rivers and streams. It likely hates fresh water since it is itself an ocean creature. (May be in the original lore since salt water fish don't fare well in fresh water.)
-Put intelligence into range of 4 to 6 (It doesn't have language in any lore as far as I know, and doesn't seem to have anything intelligent going on in either head.)
-Reduce reach of claws to either 10 feet or 15 feet and perhaps give it some necrotic damage if you want it to be that scary. It has good movement speed, though, so even 15 may be unnecessary. Also, if the horse is 5ft at the shoulder, the arms would reach no more than 10ft to the sides if the knuckles are dragging no more than a foot behind the rider torso when the creature is walking.
-Change HP to 16d10 + 80 (net loss of 15 HP, but it's compensated for in the next suggestion that goes over damage resistances.)
-Give partial resistances to non-magical damage types (i.e. "Nuckelavee gains slashing/5, piercing/5, and bludgeoning/5 from non-magical sources." Meaning to subtract 5 from damage dealt to nuckelavee from non-magical sources.)
-Add a possibility to inflict the magical disease/curse called "mortasheen" when it does its poison breath attack. This ties into its lore of causing death and illness.
-Maybe give a fear inducing gaze that acts separate from the creature's visage feature.
-Maybe add a little flavor text as to the color of the gas. I'm thinking black vapors that also leak out of the horse head passively outside of combat as it keeps the horse head low to poison the earth it walks on. Therefore, it leaves of path of decay where it travels.
-Give the nuckelavee the ability to travel to and from its fey realm by way of submerging itself in ocean water, rather than the camouflage. It can do so freely as a sort of planar shifting. (This may cause it to prefer small islands and coastal regions, as well as make it that much scarier near the shore.)
Misc.:
-I'm not sure how best to approach the legendary actions, but I think it's appropriate that the creature has them, given the CR and nature of the creature.