Building the Chronohag
A mobile nightmare for your low-level boss fights
Building on last month’s post, Buffing Zarak, we return with another low-level monster with legendary actions. Why should high-CR monsters have all the fun? The way that 5th Edition action economy works, even low-level parties overwhelm single monsters with ease, and if you want to run some fun boss fights where the characters have to deal with only one tough foe you’re going to need to use legendary actions. Enter this month’s creation, the Chronohag. As we’ve talked about before, Aaron and Chris both play in each other’s games, and Aaron created the Chronohag as a boss-monster for our 2nd level characters in his excellent Ison’s Refuge setting (watch this space for future world-building in Ison’s Refuge). As a player, Chris remembers how difficult and unnerving the Chronohag was. “The hag kept moving around, moving us around, slipping attacks, limiting our movement and performing crowd control—we never knew if we were going to get out of this fight or if the hag was going to beat us. On the other hand, the Chronohag didn’t dish out tons of damage, so although we were worried only a few of us went down for short periods of time. It was an edge-of-your-seat battle, made even more interesting by the fact that none of us had any idea what Aaron had created.”
Aaron takes over below, describing what he was after in building the Chronohag.
I based this design on a classic archetype from Dungeons & Dragons (and, truly, all fantasy/fairy tale tropes): the Hag. The Chronohag, unsurprisingly, appears in a campaign with a substantial amount of time manipulation, so I wanted it to really feel as if time acted differently around it, both in its lair and during combat.
Recent published adventures have succeeded at evoking the conniving, bargaining nature of Hags, but they tend to fall short during combat encounters. I designed the Chronohag as the final encounter of a short dungeon crawl that took place beyond the bounds of time, and I needed a creature that could stand its own against a low-level party and really make them sweat. The first obstacle? Mobility. One of the typical weaknesses a single monster suffers against a party of PCs is its inability to maneuver safely once the front line fighters have closed to melee. By giving the Chronohag both legendary and bonus action movements free from attacks of opportunity, I allowed it to focus on whomever it chose in any given turn. The mobility, flavored as time-warping, really worked, too, as I narrated the Chronohag slightly altering the weave of time and space and appearing just outside of the characters’ clutches.
Although the 13 AC and 85 hp seems low, the Chronohag survives through good use of its Divergent Futures ability, allowing it to potentially shrug off high-damage rolls or debilitating spell effects. Its Turn Back Time legendary action provides the same design choice, but one that can be used to devastating effect against a single high source of damage. This does come at the cost of all its legendary actions for the turn to balance the cost. If and when you do use Turn Back Time, make sure to up your narrative energy so the players know the Chronohag just burned up a very powerful ability for the round.
The lair actions the Chronohag has are designed to help it perform crowd control and set up good targets for it Time-Warped Blade attacks. The final lair action heals not only the Hag but every creature in the room, and while it can be used to allow them to survive one more round to potentially finish off their foes, it is also a good panic button that a DM can utilize if the action has swung too far in the Chronohag’s favor. As the Hag is designed to be a low-level monster and combat below level four can be a bit…swingy this legendary action is an evocative way to avoid an accidental TPK.
Backyard Adventure Games 