Monster Monday: One Who Walks Between

RPG monsters

Last week, I created a faction of rangers who watch over portals, a group that calls themselves Those Who Walk Between. Today, I'm going to stat up one of them as an enemy.

They're inspired by the Horizon Walker Rangers from Xanathar's Guide to Monsters, and I want to re-use several of the abilities there: Detect Portal (duh), Ethereal Step (the ability to cast etherealness as a bonus action, but it only lasts this turn and recharges after a short or long rest), and Distant Strike (teleporting up to 10 feet before each attack). The Planar Warrior feature is basically extra damage, and while it's cool flavor we can wrap that into the creature's attacks. It also gets several spells that I'd like to find a way to use.

Fantasy Portal Environment CE3 by Fanny Vergne

As a basis, I want this to be a CR 10 enemy (Distant Strike is a level 11 ability, so we'll shift something else down slightly to accommodate it), and something similar to a regular humanoid. The CR 10 Deva is quite close to the concept, so let's start there.

Let's look at the deva's abilities. We can swap out the angelic nature of its weapons with force damage, replicating the Planar Warrior feature. That leaves us with Healing Touch and Change Shape. I'm comfortable swapping those out with Ethereal Step and Distant Strike, while also giving it Detect Portal in exchange for removing the condition immunities and its resistance to radiant damage.

Conveniently, the deva can also cast three spells, so we'll just swap those out with the spells that the Horizon Walker gets.

The basic ability scores for the deva are bonkers, but we do want these to be very experienced characters. We'll keep the high strength, dexterity, and wisdom, but lower the constitution and charisma to more normal levels. Similarly, we'll swap out the higher charisma save for a higher dexterity save.

That'll do it! Let's stat it up.

Stat block

Homebrewery stat block:

One Who Walks Between

Medium humanoid, lawful neutral

  • Armor Class 17
  • Hit Points 136 (16d8 + 64)
  • Speed 30 ft.
    STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
    18 (+4) 18 (+4) 14 (+2) 17 (+3) 20 (+5) 13 (+1)
  • Saving Throws DEX +9, WIS +9
  • Senses Darkvision 120 ft., Passive Perception 19
  • Languages Common
  • Challenge 10 (5,900 XP)

    Innate Spellcasting. The walker's spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 15). The walker can innately cast the following spells, requiring only verbal components:

1/day each: protection from evil and good, misty step, haste

Ethereal Step. The walker steps into the Ethereal Plane (as in the etherealness spell) for the duration of its turn. It cannot use this feature again until completing a short or long rest.

Distant Strike. When the walker attacks, it can teleport up to 10 feet before each attack to an unoccupied space it can see. If it attacks two different creatures on the same turn it uses this feature, it can make one additional attack against a third creature.

Actions

Multiattack. The hell knight makes two melee attacks.

Pike. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d10 + 4) piercing damage plus 18 (4d8) force damage.

View the art for this monster here

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