The Revamped Manual of Monsters: Cambions

 Cambions don’t have too much wrong with them conceptually, provided that they aren’t given a particularly heinous backstory and aren’t inherently evil. Some may indeed be, y’know, evil, working for fiendish parents ranging from the typical incubi or succubi to more esoteric demons and devils and even archfiends, such as Graz’zt or Asmodeus himself. However, others may instead dedicate themselves towards opposing their fiendish kin, rejecting their birthright.

Aside from codifying this alignment variation into their stat block, a few other changes have been made in order to make them more tactically interesting while veering away from their reliance upon charm magic. Instead of having scale mail by default, their AC has been lowered to the natural minimum of 17 granted by Fiendish Blessing, but to account for this, they gain the Flyby trait to increase their maneuverability, especially in the air. They also lose Fiendish Charm, but to compensate for that, their innate spellcasting ability is upgraded to include a wider range of spells than they originally possessed. They gain Detect Magic and Alter Self at will, albeit it is limited to the Change Appearance option, as well as three daily uses of Protection From Evil and Good and one daily use of Dispel Evil and Good, giving them some good tools to contend with both evil and good foes alike. Finally, they gain the newly introduced Fiendish Rebuke reaction three times per day, allowing them to blast back at melee opponents who are a little more likely to hit them due to their lower AC. All in all, the cambion should still be around the same level of power that they were before, but they now have a wider range of tricks that suit them regardless of alignment, making for a more interesting enemy overall.


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