New Monster: the Blind Serpent

[Quixote]

Working on a custom dragon for one of the high-power NPC's in the area of a setting. Similar to the lindworm/linnorm in appearance, with a gaze attack that it takes steps to shut down most of the time, so people could seek it out for council or whatever.
Feedback and suggestions would be awesome, especially regarding CR and anything that seems to fall short or too far ahead.

Once again, apologies for any maths that don't seem to add up and anomalies due to extensive houserules.

LN Huge dragon
Init +9, darkvision 120ft, low-light vision, blindsight 60ft, Perception +36, frightful presence (270ft, DC27)

AC34, t13, ff29
298hp
Fort +20, Ref +18, Will +20
DR10/magic and cold iron; Immune to fire, paralysis, petrification and sleep; SR28

Spd 60ft, burrow 20ft, climb 60ft, swim 60ft

Bite +29 (4d8+15 and poison plus grab), 2 claws +24 (2d6+10), tail +29 (2d10+15 plus lashing coils)

Space 15ft.; Reach 10ft (15ft with bite, 20ft with tail)

SA constrict 2d10+15, gaze attack (60ft, turn to stone, DC24), lashing coils, poison (injury, bite, DC28, onset 1 round, 1d8 Dex/6 rounds, cure 2 consecutive saves)

Spell-Like Abilities (CL22; concentration +29)

Constant-- detect thoughts (DC 19), speak with animals and plants

At will--fog cloud, statue
3/day-- charm monster (DC21), cure critical wounds, dimension door, dispel magic, divination, invisibility, remove disease
1/day-- arcane eye, mass suggestion (DC21), neutralize poison, remove blindness, stonetell
1/week-- stone to flesh

Str30, Dex20, Con25, Int20, Wis25, Cha22
CMB +34*; CMB49* (+8 grappling)

Dodge, Cleave**, Combat Reflexes, Great Cleave**, Greater Grapple, Improved Grapple, Improved Initiative, Lightning Stance, Mobility, Multiattack, Spring Attack, Vital Strike, Wind Stance

Acrobatics +18***, Athletics +18***, Bluff +19, Diplomacy +20, Handle Animal +14, Heal +16, Intimidate +20, Knowledge (arcana, geology, nature,  history) +13, Perception +21, Sense Motive +21, Spellcraft +10, Stealth +23
***+8 climbing and swimming

Common, Demonic. Draconic, Dwarven, Halfling, Elven, Sylvan

SQ: change shape (animal or humanoid, polymorph), water breathing

Lashing coils (Ex): the Blind Serpent may make a free bullrush, drag, trip or reposition maneuver with a successful tail attack.
**The Blind Serpent may only use Cleave and Great Cleave with it's tail attack.

[VoodistMonk]

Nice.

I really like the Lashing Tail maneuvers in concert with Cleave... assuming that works the way I think it does.

Unfortunately, without the ability to guarantee it is only encountered in specific environments (GM's are wierd and put monster where they don't belong), I would slash its CR lower than a dragon of similar strength... without the ability to deal with flying enemies, this worm is going to get picked apart.

Its Dispel SLA is only going to help it against enemies reliant on magical flight, but that pesky Strix Zen Archer Monk...

[Quixote]

Yeah, I've thought about that.
I used the Very Old bronze dragon stat block as a jumping-off point. That's CR17, so where do you think this guy would fall?
Between being encountered in a specific kind of terrain and it's invasive abilities, I feel like it would probably just leave if faced with an adversary it couldn't come to grips with. Maybe I should bump dimension door to teleport?

[VoodistMonk]

Give it Stone Throwing... it just squirms its body across the ground, seemingly absorbing nearby rocks from the earth, itself... and then, like in cartoons where they spit bullets...

Or something like the Gorgon's breath weapon, but in a 120' line (because worm)...

[Quixote]

How do you think Lashing Coils works with the Cleave feat line? I was thinking of a more effective Tail Sweep attack, where it can trip/knock back/etc the whole party. But maybe I missed something.
(Side notes: our houseruled Cleave just triggers off of a normal attack, so the Serpent could tail-Cleave-Great Cleave-Great Cleave-claw-claw-bite-grab-constrict in one turn.
Also, we ruled that choosing to move a grapple twice in a turn would activate Wind Stance, so it could also grab one poor PC and then run off at 60ft a round with 50% concealment and constrict damage + gaze attack all the while).

I originally gave it a breath weapon; either a line or a cone of fire. What if it could spit it's poison?

Comparing this guy to the Very Old bronze dragon:

- better Initiative and AC

- better singular attacks, worse full attack.

- more movement options, but no fly speed.

- no spells, added spell-like abilities.

- constrict, grab, lashing coils, poison and a gaze attack.

The lack of spells felt like a big deal at first, but I figured that utility < potency in most scenarios; a monster that's great at one thing is usually more dangerous than one that's pretty good at four things. Because monsters usually don't have a lot of time on screen, as it were.
Plus there's the spell-likes.

The breath weapon and gaze attack...probably balance out?

The biggest thing seems to flight.

[Pizza Lord]

Designing creatures is fun, especially when you can add new and fun things that aren't the norm (they may not always be balanced or work for everything, but can be fun in individual creatures' cases).

It looks like you have it set to approximate most linnorms, at about CR 18. I am a little puzzled why you gave it DR 10/ cold iron and magic. I get that maybe this isn't a linnorm, but most of them just have cold iron and it's around 15. Again, being different is fine, but I just don't feel right about requiring a material that inherently resists being enchanted as being a requirement. Sure, it sounds like a challenge, but at that level most weapons will be magical anyway and it's just going to fall on whether the item is cold iron. It might work in some cases for a story or lore reason, but it's almost contradictory, like requiring an adamantine weapon with the fragile quality or something.

You may as well just go with a unique unusual material, like wood... or even more specifically cedar or Shadow-plane pine. Otherwise, just stick with cold iron and up the DR.

As for some flight, maybe you could just give it a leaping ability, similar to breath weapon with a cool down, like, Springing Coils, where every 1d4 rounds it can coil its body like a spring and leap up to twice (or more) its base Movement in height and make one attack (other than its tail, which was in use for the leap), or even a pounce-like full attack (except its tail). That's not flight, and an attacker could theoretically still outrange it, but it would be something.

If you wanted a breath weapon, you could make it unique, maybe it metabolizes silver or mercury from eating rocks around it and its breath weapon is liquid silver or mercury (or even a gas-like mist that congeals on metal). Mercury would be poisonous (though hardly a fast acting one), but its main purpose might actually be to coat exposed weapons in an almost alchemical silver effect for a time (or until washed off with an alcohol solution like a flask of wine or an acidic one, like a bottle of vinegar, or 1 minute of cleaning). The main purpose being that the coating makes the weapon not count as its normal material during that time, like it was coated in silversheen or something, so your cold iron weapons aren't working unless you pull out a new one or clean it off. Not quite effective on missile weapons though.

You could also give it a Deflecting Coils special ability, something like maybe it just naturally has quick lashing coils that can deflect one attack per round as though it had Deflect Arrows (without requiring a free hand). That's not going to be hugely powerful at that level, any ranged attackers are going to have multiple attacks, but it's an option or at least something. OR maybe a 1/day wind wall for some small projectile defense.

[Quixote]

So just to offer a little insight into this process, I'm not just messing about and creating things to have fun. I mean, it is fun, sure, that's why I have this hobby and all, but I've got way too much going on to tinker for the sake of itself.
I would say about 50% of my monsters are homebrewed at this point. Of those that are encountered more or less alone, it's 100%. I do that because I'm really looking for something specific in terms of tone, and then while I'm at it I can tweak a few mechanics so the encounters are easier for me to run and more dynamic for my players. I really hate creature type; this idea that everything you'll ever hear about or see or fight or get eaten by has been cataloged neatly away into one of a handful of boxes, and which box it's in tells you all sorts of things about it. I want to tell stories where the boogeyman could be a daemon or a faerie. I want faeries that essentially defy categorization all on their own. Stories that focus on mystery and wonder, where the fantastical elements are ill-defined and subtle.

So with that in mind, the setting this guy would go in wouldn't have your standard metallic/chromatic spread of dragons. Dragons are just dragons; certain categories exist (wyvern, lindworm, lung, etc.), but there's a lot of variation and exceptions to otherwise hard-and-fast rules even within those groups.
So yeah, this guy is obviously styled after the lindworms/linnorms as I said earlier, but that's really where the comparison ends. Honestly, the DR thing was just me looking at the DR15/magic of the Very Old bronze dragon and adding a second condition while bumping the value down. Faeries and such will be sort of the main source of fantasy elements in this area, so I just wanted to tie this guy in a bit, connect him to the magic of the land, etc.

I was actually thinking about that Springing Coils ability. I think that would shore things up nicely.

If I were to give him a spit poison attack (+24 ranged touch...80ft?), Springing Coils (80ft again?) and swapped dimension door for teleport, what would you guys suggest I drop/downgrade to keep him in the CR17-18 range?

[Pizza Lord]

I think if you kept dimension door instead of teleport it shouldn't change anything in the CR 18 range. The leap isn't changing combat damage or adding an attack, only the ability to move and reach foes. The poison attack, as you have it, looks like a targeted ranged (touch) attack. That's basically just a single attack for (likely) little damage. Assuming PCs of 16th level or even 14th minimum, poison bonuses to saves and even basic immunity-type effects are common as well as poison mitigators. Your poison would have to be overwhelmingly deadly and fast to affect the CR at the current range. Teleport certainly will raise it as, unlike dimension door, it will allow moving or an action after arriving instead of ending the turn (whether the creature can do anything with the move action or not isn't important).

[Azothath]

Flight is a very strategic loss along with Flyby Attack...
overall designing dragons is complicated. I haven't read up on it for this post so take it as an off-the-cuff thing 8^0
Linnorm at d20pfsrd

usually there's a CR you are shooting for.

I would add Mistsight(Ex) or Cloud Gazer or some way to see though its basic ability of Fog Cloud if you keep that.

Combat -
Borrowing from Giant Frog I would add;
Melee: ... or tongue +29 touch (grab)
Reach (...30 ft with tongue) which gives it another std action "grab" option that wouldn't be poisonous.
SA: pull (tongue, 5 ft + 5 per size category less), swallow whole (4d4+15{1.5*STR Bns} slashing/bludgeoning damage, AC 24(? scale loss), 10 hp), tongue.
Tongue (Ex) A giant frog’sworm's tongue is a primary attack with reach equal to three times its normal reach. A worm's tongue deals no damage or natural poison on a hit, but can be used to grab or for a touch attack. A worm does not gain the grappled condition while using its tongue in this manner.
This makes it a combat monster up close and the ability to pull opponents in.

Poison - hmmm, not listed. Might I suggest an effect like Bloodwine, Liquid Persuasion, Alchemical Isolation, or Bite of Burning Acid-injury; save Fort DC {}; freq 1/r for 6 r; effect 2d4[acid] damage, 1 Con and 1 Dex damage, and sickened or nauseated if already sickened for 4 rounds; cure 2 consecutive saves and a single save prevents the victim from taking ability damage and reduces the nauseated to sickened condition or ends the sickened condition for that round. The save DC is Con based.

Spells -
Charm Monster is quite awesome, so I'd change it to 1/d or make it vs [earth or water] types only, or delete it. Yes, a worm with Earth Elemental buddies...
Cure Critical is also amazing...

I'm not sure if there's an earth theme, water theme, or amphibian theme...
What about looking at the Earth elemental school. Earth Supremacy(Su), Acid Cloud(Su){to 10ft radius}, Earth Glide(Su) at HD r/d. Then choosing spell abilities from the school spell list.
I personally prefer 1st and 2nd level spells for at Will, 2-4th for 3/d, and so on... I'm sure similar guidance is there...

[*Thelith]

So, rather than worry about flying...
Or jumping into the air...
Or having a ranged attack...

Maybe boost the burrow to match the other speeds. 60ft burrow and if people fly out of his reach he just burrows..
Give him like fast heal 10 (only while burrowed) and tremorsense so he knows when his enemies are back on the ground.

If they refuse to fight him on his turf (pun intended) then he refuses to fight them and heals fully...

When people land he erupts from the ground attacking again. (And probably full health)

20 int 25 wisdom, he would just not engage anyone who is flying.. imo.

[Ryze Kuja]

I like the Lashing Coils Tail Great Cleave + Free Combat Maneuver thing. What if your dragon had a 3-forked tail at the end, and was able to make CMB's vs. up to 3 targets of the Great Cleave?

Also, what about a special "Cleave Through/Goblin Cleaver/Orc Hewer/Giant Killer"-esque ability that allowed him to Cleave through to targets that have a 5ft+ squares between them or vs. all threatened enemies?

I think it would really turn that Tail Cleave from "omg this is gunna hurt" to "OMG NO NOT AGAIN Not good Not good Not good Find a Happy Place..."