D&D Creature Feature – Young Cyclops

After completing my scale backs of the Monster Manual CR5 Elementals. I was looking for the next monster to tweak for lower level adventuring parties. An interesting thought across my mind about what kind of monster could be found that would seed a later adventure with the actual higher CR creature itself.

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I liked the idea of a young cyclops. I don’t know off hand what the age rates for Forgotten Realms Cyclops are, but this new version would be a young adult. Maybe a Teenager or very early 20’s. Huge Cyclops stand 11-18 feet tall. So these are likely 8-11 feet tall. It’s size is Large now which has effected a lot of it’s physicality. Lower STR & CON. Fewer HP and smaller weapons. This also removes it’s reach ability that came from being Huge.

One complication came from it’s Boulder/Rock throw ability. 4d10 damage rocks are likely really fucking big. So I was looking for a precedent to scale it down but couldn’t really find one. Apes have a Rock ability, but they are Medium Creatures with 16 STR. Their attack does 1d6 damage dice. Quite the disparity between that and the Cyclops.

The number I landed on was 2d10. This could easily be 2d8 instead. You make the call.

Additionally the Huge Cyclops AC was 14, which came from it’s natural armor… older editions of D&D & Pathfinder gave size bonuses or penalties to AC. The only real precedent of this in 5e that I can find is the Animate Objects spell. So I bumped the AC up one point to 15 to account for the smaller version being just a tad bit of a smaller target.
I guess this could go the other way since you could argue that its flesh hasn’t gotten as thick and it should be 13… Again your call.

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