Stormwrought Stonewarden
Large elemental (air and earth), neutral
Armor Class: 16 (natural armor)
Hit Points: 102 (12d10 + 36)
Speed: 30 ft., climb 20 ft.
Challenge Rating: 5 (1,800 XP)
| STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | 12 | 16 | 10 | 14 | 8 |
Saving Throws: Str +7, Con +6, Wis +5
Skills: Athletics +7, Perception +5
Damage Vulnerabilities: — None
Damage Resistances: lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Damage Immunities:
Condition Immunities: petrified, poisoned
Senses: darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 15
Languages: Auran, Terran; understands Common but rarely speaks
Spellcasting
Spellcasting. The Stormwrought Stonewarden is a 5th‑level spellcaster. Its spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 13, +5 to hit with spell attacks). The Warden regains its expended spell slots when it finishes a short or long rest and requires no material components to cast its spells. The Stonewarden has the following spells prepared:
Cantrips (at will): lightning lure, mold earth, thorn whip
1st level (4 slots): earth tremor, thunderwave, fog cloud, absorb elements
2nd level (3 slots): gust of wind, spike growth, shatter
3rd level (2 slots): call lightning, erupting earth
Special notes
– Stormbolt. The Stonewarden’s Stormbolt action is a unique spell‑like ranged spell attack that uses the Warden’s spell attack modifier (+5). (Use the Stormbolt action as written in the stat block; its attack and damage scale as a special ability rather than a prepared spell.)
– Spellcasting style. The Warden is a prepared caster tied to the mountain and storm; it needs no material components and can cast spells while standing immobile or while moving slowly. It frequently uses cantrips and low‑level control spells to shape the battlefield before closing to melee.
– Pre‑combat casting. The Stonewarden may cast spells such as fog cloud, spike growth, gust of wind, or call lightning before combat begins to manipulate approach routes, conceal its position, or call down storm energy as intruders draw near. In stormy weather, a DM may rule that the Warden recharges its Call Lightning (or regains a single expended spell slot) more readily.
Actions & Abilities
Core trait reminders (affect how actions interact): Stormbound Core. When the Stonewarden uses Stormbolt or Tremor Pulse, arcs of lightning dance across its surface until the start of its next turn. While those arcs are active, any creature that hits the Stonewarden with a melee attack takes 1d8 lightning damage (no save).
Mountain’s Bulk / Earthen Camouflage: The Stonewarden ignores difficult terrain caused by rock or earth and can attempt to hide while motionless against natural rock (advantage on Stealth checks when motionless).
Note on reactive lightning (to avoid confusion): The Stonewarden also has the Static Shunt reaction (below). If the Stormbound Core arcs are active, only the Stormbound Core damage applies to a melee attacker (the Stonewarden does not apply both Stormbound Core and Static Shunt to a single hit).
Multiattack: Multiattack. The Stonewarden makes two Slam attacks.
– Tactical note: Use Multiattack to pressure front-line fighters and to set up a push/knock-prone that splits the party.
Slam: Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (2d10 + 4) bludgeoning damage plus 4 (1d8) lightning damage. If the target is Medium or smaller, it must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 10 feet away and knocked prone.
– Tactical note: Slam is the Stonewarden’s primary control tool — it both deals solid damage and creates space or forces spellcasters out of position. The extended 10-foot reach allows it to punish characters trying to steer around it.
Stormbolt (Recharge 5–6): Stormbolt (Recharge 5–6). Ranged Spell Attack: +6 to hit, range 60 ft., one target. Hit: 18 (4d8) lightning damage. Immediately after hitting, the lightning arcs to a second creature of the Stonewarden’s choice within 20 feet of the first target; that second creature takes half the lightning damage. Instead of taking half, the second creature can make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw; on a successful save it takes no damage.
– Tactical note: Prefer targets who threaten its safety (spellcasters, archers). The arcing effect punishes clustered parties and can be used to pick off a wounded ally standing near a primary target.
Tremor Pulse (Recharge 5–6): Tremor Pulse (Recharge 5–6). The Stonewarden slams the ground. Each creature of the Stonewarden’s choice within 15 feet must make a DC 15 Strength saving throw. On a failed save a creature takes 13 (3d8) bludgeoning damage and is knocked prone. On a successful save the creature takes half damage and is not knocked prone.
– Tactical note: Tremor Pulse is a positional reset — excellent for breaking enemy formations, knocking down fighters that try to pin it, or preventing a sprint down a narrow pass. Use it to combine with Slam’s push to isolate a target.
Raise Bulwark (Bonus Action, 1/day): Raise Bulwark (1/day). The Stonewarden forms a ragged earthen wall in an unoccupied space it can see within 15 feet. The wall is 10 feet long, 5 feet high, and grants half cover. It lasts 3 rounds or until destroyed (AC 13, 15 HP). The Stonewarden can place the wall to block a narrow path or to protect its flanks.
– Tactical note: Use this to funnel enemies into chokepoints, shield from concentrated ranged fire, or buy time to retreat to a favored position. The 1/day limit makes the timing of the wall important.
Static Shunt (Reaction): Static Shunt. When a creature within 5 feet hits the Stonewarden with a melee attack, the attacker takes 1d8 lightning damage.
– Interaction note: If the Stonewarden currently has Stormbound Core arcs active (from using Stormbolt or Tremor Pulse last turn), only the Stormbound Core damage applies to that hit (to avoid double-dipping).
Other special uses and minor actions (not separate action economy entries, but relevant in play): Stormbound Arcs (automatic when using Stormbolt or Tremor Pulse). The arcs last until the start of the Stonewarden’s next turn and make melee attackers take the 1d8 lightning described above.
Movement and terrain. The Stonewarden uses its Mountain’s Bulk to move through rock-strewn terrain unimpeded, and will attempt to occupy or retreat to advantageous terrain (narrow passes, cliff-side watchposts) where its push/prone and wall are most disruptive.
Optional Lair Actions (use only in its home shrine or lair; initiative count 20 — no action cost): Thunder Clap. Unseen thunder rattles the slopes. Each creature within 30 feet of the Stonewarden must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or be deafened until the end of its next turn.
Rockfall. The Stonewarden causes loose stones to tumble in a line 30 feet long and 10 feet wide that it chooses. Each creature in the line must make a DC 14 Dexterity saving throw, taking 9 (2d8) bludgeoning damage and falling prone on a failed save, or half as much and not prone on a success.
– Tactical note: Lair actions amplify the Warden’s role as an environmental controller — they’re best when the battlefield includes ledges, scree, or narrow approaches where forced movement matters.
Tactical behavior summary (how the Stonewarden sequences actions in combat): Opening: If it can see a dangerous ranged threat, it opens with Stormbolt to punish spellcasters and archers; otherwise it closes to engage with Slams.
Mid-fight: Use Multiattack + Slam to push and knock prime targets out of position. When foes cluster, use Tremor Pulse to knock them prone and break formations. Use Raise Bulwark to funnel attackers or block line-of-sight when overwhelmed by ranged fire.
Target prioritization: Spellcasters and ranged attackers are primary targets; heavy front-liners that attempt to pin it are pushed and knocked prone to disrupt tactics.
Retreat and defense: If reduced below half HP while guarding its assigned post (marked ritual ground, shrine, or pact-stone), it will attempt to fall back to that spot and use walls/lair features to delay pursuers and call rockfalls (DM fiat) if appropriate.
Design notes for DMs: Recharge management: Stormbolt and Tremor Pulse are powerful — don’t let the Stonewarden roll both recharges each round. Use one early and the other later for pacing.
Weather interplay (optional): In a stormy encounter, consider allowing Stormbolt and Tremor Pulse to recharge on a 4–6 rather than 5–6.
Rewarding nonlethal solutions: Offer clear ways for players to placate or distract the Stonewarden (ritual items, offerings, repairs to carved markers) so fights can be avoided or ended without destruction.
Follow-up offer: If you’d like, I can convert these actions into a single ready-to-paste stat block (including traits, all actions, reactions, lair actions, and formatted tactical notes) or provide a slightly tougher CR 7 variant with added damage and an extra lair action. Which would you prefer?
Appearance
Size and Shape:
A towering, humanoid sentinel roughly 10–12 feet tall with a broad, monumental silhouette: wide shoulders that taper to a firm waist and thick, pillar-like legs. The stance is architectural and rooted—monumental rather than lithe—designed to read clearly at full scale on a white background.
Coloration:
Matte charcoal to deep-slate basalt dominates the form, streaked with green‑gray lichen and damp, ink‑black sheens where ice clings. Pale cyan to electric-azure veins run through the stone, pulsing to a colder, white‑blue glow when the creature is active.
Texture and Surface:
Surface textures marry weathered geology and craftsmanship: sandblasted planes, chisel marks, natural fracture lines, and glassy translucent crystal veins. Pebbles and grit are fused into crevices; frost beads in hollows. Occasional sparks crawl along the veins, and a faint metallic hum seems to emanate from within.
Facial Features:
A single carved, mask-like face hewn from rock: multifaceted crystal orbs sit in the eye sockets, emitting steady cool blue light and tracking with uncanny patience. There is no conventional mouth—only a narrow fault-line seam that parts to exhale a hiss of ozone and cold mist. Low crystalline brow ridges and small hornlet accents give an austere, guardian aspect.
Limbs and Appendages:
Massive arms finish in broad, hand-like fists shaped like flanged hammers, palms edged with chisel ridges. Fingers are thick and segmented, studded with tiny crystalline growths that flash when stressed. Legs are squat, pylon-like, with broad slab feet and natural treads for gripping scree and ledges. An exposed, fist-sized crystal core set in the chest throbs with inner light; electric filaments run from it through the veinwork.
Movement and Posture:
Typically still and sentinel-like, it reads as part of the cliff when motionless. Movement is measured and resonant—each step heavy enough to unsettle dust and loose stones; when the core flares its motions become suddenly more forceful and precise, capable of swift, powerful gestures despite the mass.
Special Features:
Bioluminescent crystal veins pulse in cyan-to-white-blue, and thin crystalline tendrils can briefly sprout from cracks during storms, shedding glittering fragments. Carved runes and votive marks scar the shoulders and back; tufts of moss and icicles cling to recesses. A faint static aura lingers around it, raising fine hair and making thin metal objects hum, while the air carries the clean scent of ozone and cold rain.
Tactical Information
Behavior in Day-to-Day Life
The Stonewarden is a presence carved into the slope itself rather than a roaming monster. Most days it stands sentinel on a favored ledge, switchback, or ruined altar—statues and carved markers at its feet—barely moving as wind and weather play across its basalt plates. It does not hunt for food like a beast; instead it “feeds” on purpose: lightning strikes, the ritual energies bound into its post, and the compacted stability of the ground it protects. A storm or a hard strike against its core will invigorate it for hours; long stretches of fair weather leave it slow and watchful.
Motivation is simple and narrow: preserve the boundary it was made to guard. That can mean keeping routes open and safe for pilgrims or vigilant monks, or denying desecrators access to a shrine or vein. It will repair small collapses by shifting stones with deliberate pushes and will stomp loose scree into place; lichen and moss cling to its crevices, and it sometimes sheds small stone fragments that local shepherds gather as “warding pebbles.” It rarely interacts socially. Where several pacts were made in proximity, two or three wardens may rotate posts and use simple geomantic signals—stuttered lightning pulses or timed tremors—to pass information. To mortals it is taciturn, rarely vocal; it is more likely to answer a ritual knock on a monolith than to approach a caravan of merchants.
Because its mandate is functional rather than moral, the Stonewarden’s temperament is stoic and dispassionate. It tolerates normal traffic if the markers and offerings remain intact; it permits passage to those who follow the old rites. It becomes watchful at signs of mining, blasting, or desecration, and it will become active and forbidding if the balance of the ground is upset. It does not relish slaughter—if a route can be secured without needless ruin, it prefers that—but it is relentless when its purpose is threatened.
Combat Behavior
The Stonewarden fights like a deliberate battering ram that can suddenly become a lightning conductor. It opens from range when appropriate: the first rumble of movement is often a jagged bolt arcing from its chest toward the most threatening distant target—an archer on a ledge or a spellcaster lifting hands above the party. It uses Stormbolt to punish ranged harassment and to pin down the most dangerous enemy while it closes.
Once in melee, its priority is control. It uses its heavy Slam to shove and knock prone, aiming to break lines and isolate single foes on narrow paths. The Warden deliberately targets characters who threaten to escape or who stand as fragile supports (healers, spellcasters). Knockdowns and forced movement are not cosmetic: the Warden will exploit edges, ledges, and narrow switchbacks to push foes into hazardous positions or to deny them safe footing. Tremor Pulse is a toolbox weapon: used to stop a fleeing enemy, to disrupt a tight formation of fighters, or to throw casters off their concentration. The Warden times Tremor Pulse to deny movement on the enemy’s turn or to interrupt a retreat.
Defensive play is intentional. If a volley of ranged fire is shredding it from afar, the Warden will make use of Raise Bulwark—slamming a short, crude wall between itself and the attackers and then letting its ground-control abilities funnel foes into a kill zone. Its Stormbound Core and Static Shunt serve to deter recklessly aggressive melee attackers; striking it up close carries a cost in lightning burns. Because of its resistances to nonmagical physical and storm/tremor synergy, it is hardest to wear down with sheer sword-army attrition unless the attackers use magical weapons or can outmaneuver its control.
When outnumbered or losing, it does not cling to martyrdom. At about half health it tends to shift tactics: fall back toward the ritual stone or chokepoint it guards, use Tremor Pulse and slam to slow pursuit, and force enemies into terrain that favors its pushes. If it still cannot hold the ground, it withdraws into its post or cracks open a narrow crevice behind which it can reconstitute or call local stonefall (if the DM allows environmental hazards). It prefers to preserve itself to continue the watch, so it will disengage from hopeless fights rather than die for pride.
Cunning tactics that make it dangerous at CR 5:
- Prioritize targets by threat rather than hit points: push/prone fragile spellcasters to stop their control spells or cut down archers on ridgelines to remove ranged disruption.
- Use line-of-sight blocking (raise bulwark) to funnel enemies into narrow approaches where knockbacks are lethal.
- Knock prone on ledges and slopes to create environmental damage—falls, dislodged scree, or separation.
- Stagger its powerful abilities: don’t use both Tremor Pulse and Stormbolt on the same round if you want a dynamic fight; use one, forcing the party to change tactics, then use the other later to punish adaptation.
Roleplay / Narrative Interactions
The Stonewarden’s first behavior toward intruders is a warning—usually nonviolent. It will step onto a path and raise an arm, a torrent of small blue sparks arcing across its shoulders; thunder reverberates low in the stone. If the party stops and displays respect—replacing a broken marker, leaving a small offering, or reciting the known vow—the Warden will allow limited passage and will often use a single tremor or soft lightning pulse as a signal of acknowledgment. If the party presents the correct token (a locally carved sigil, an amulet from the shrine, a recited line from an old chant), the Warden’s hostility drops; it may even clear a minor slide or point the safest route in silence.
It understands Common and local ritual languages but rarely carries on conversation. When it does communicate, it does so succinctly and gravely: a few words in a voice like grinding stone, an echoing nod, or a pattern of lightning pulses whose cadence conveys “halt,” “leave,” or “repair.” Local shamans, monks, or elders who know the original rites can bargain for respite or a temporary truce; the Warden responds more readily to cultural and geomantic actions than to bribes of coin. Returning a relic to a shrine, re-carving a marker, or performing a brief storm-binding ritual are credible diplomatic paths. Conversely, shiny trinkets alone are unlikely to satisfy a protector whose purpose is the land.
If the party tries stealth, the Warden’s Earthen Camouflage and patient watchfulness make it a challenging sentinel to bypass: it blends into rock and sees movement along its pass. It is not cruelly duplicitous; it will not lie to trick travelers. However, it is unforgiving toward intentional desecration or those who break the rules of the old pact. If attackers defile a shrine or blast a vein, the Warden’s posture hardens into active defense—lightning arcs, newly aggressive pushes, and the calling-in of local rockfall if the environment supports it.
When cornered and outmatched emotionally rather than tactically—say, if the adventurers beg for mercy once they have knocked down its guardianship markers—the Warden’s response is functional: it demands repair or recompense in the form of re-sanctifying the site. If the party refuses and it is mortally threatened, it will fight to buy time for the artifacts and markers it values, sometimes attempting to cradle a reliquary core back into the earth as it collapses. Destroying it has consequences: its crystal heart is a rare and morally fraught prize that reveals the cost of removing protections from the land.
Roleplaying cues for the DM
- Peace first: start most encounters with a single, dramatic warning gesture and the sound of low thunder; this gives players the chance to parley.
- Responses are ritual-based: describe the Warden’s approval as a single pulse of blue light or a small, organized rockslide that clears a path.
- Make negotiation meaningful: require simple actions (repairing a marker, leaving a crafted offering, reciting an old line) rather than pure skill checks to placate it—those acts align with its nature.
- If the party tricks it or violates its ground, escalate predictably: first warnings, then targeted strikes against tools and leaders, then full defensive measures.
Use the Stonewarden to teach the players about consequences in the environment—respect for old pacts, the difference between treasure and desecration, and the tactical value of terrain. Its personality is measured, rarely malevolent, but unyielding; the players’ choices—fight, appease, or sneak—should feel consequential.
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