D&D 5E I know he's a death knight, but he's a real fungi

[Mouseferatu]

Yes, I'm going to pit my players against a death knight who was a fungus--a myconid or something similar--when he was alive. I'm looking for suggestions for minor changes I can make to the standard death knight stat block to play up his originally fungal nature.

I don't want to make too many alterations--the fact that he's undead trumps everything else. And the changes don't need to match anything specific in the myconid stat block. I'm just looking for little alterations to make him feel a little more, well, fungus-y. (Changing certain damage types to poison is easy enough. I'm thinking of things a little more dramatic than that.)

Any suggestions?

 

[SkidAce]

Some type of spore aura that generates fear.

Bugs and aphid like creatures that crawl or fall off of him. Onto the characters.

 

[Leatherhead]

Stripping various creatures of their key elements and appending them to different stat blocks is fun!

Awakened Plants don't have anything in the way of a signature ability or trait, other than looking like a plant, so no fun there.

Most Blights, however, have a specialized attack, but still not much other than that that screams "I am Groot" The Constrict and Spine Attacks are the real winners here, consider cribbing them.

Myconid key traits:
Spores: Distress, Rappaport, Animating , Hallucination, Pacifying. Most of these work as-is. The Spore Servant, however, becomes an undead, probably a zombie of some type. And the Distress spores can be twisted into some kind of reaction that spreads pain to everything around it.

Shambling Mound:
They might be just a bit too dumb to be what you are looking for, But they get to eat lightning and an Engulf attack.

Treants:
HUGE, Siege Monster, Animate Trees. If you are looking for as "little" plant as possible in order to emphasize the undead part, this is probably it.

Vegepygmy (VGtM):
Regeneration, resistances, Spores (poison), affinity for Russet Mold. An undead Russet Mold spreading out around them is the best bet, also make any creatures animated by it into zombies of some kind.

Wood Woad (VGtM):
Resistances and vulnerabilities (lots), Natural Amor, Regeneration, Magic Club, Tree Stride. Not as much to work with sadly.

An interesting idea is to take the Burrowing Worm attack off of a Spawn of Kyuss, and re-flavor it as spore or a seed. Which in turn can make more Spawns of Kyuss with plant flavor for the Deathplant to command.

So bullet points are special defenses, Spores (or possibly seeds), zombie spawning, and body parts that can be used for crowd control.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

I recently ran a session in which the players faced modified versions of twig blights that was slightly inspired by Huu from avatar (this guy):



Basically the plants/vines "infected" and grew into people's muscles and nerves, allowing them to control them and giving these plant creatures mobility.

In this line, an interesting Myconoid Death Knight could leave an aura of spores in its wake that bore into flesh and rapidly grow, taking over their bodies and making them the Deathknight's minions, similar to the fungus that infects ants and hijacks their brains. The worst part is these people remain conscious, but can't control their actions and are in pain as these things continue to grow and feed on them.

In combat with the PCs, in addition to giving the Death Knight Myconoid these minions, he could unleash the spores on them. PCs exposed to the spore cloud are reduced to half speed and can't make reactions. At the end of their turn, they get a Con Save. If they succeed, they shake off the effect. If they fail, the effect continues on their next turn. At the end of their next turn, they make another Con Save. If they fail, they take damage and suffer the poisoned condition in addition to half speed and no reactions. At the end of their next turn, they make another Con Save. If they fail, they take damage, remain poisoned, half speed, no reactions, and they must use their next action to attack their closest ally. Once they reach this tier of the effect, they are allowed a new save at the end of each turn to end the effect.

If you really wanna be evil, each save only allows you to shake off the most recent effect. So if the PC failed 3 Con Saves before making one, it would only allow them to act normally, but they'd still take damage, be poisoned, move at half speed, and can't take reactions. Then they keep saving at the end of their turn until they succeed, at which point they would end the poisoned effect and stop taking damage, but would still be limited to half speed and no reactions until they make one final save.

 

[jaelis]

He should be a deathcap mushroom, with a poison attack.

 

[Herobizkit]

Give it monk levels. (See Miko from the video game Battleborn).

Give it twig blight summoning. (See Goombas from Mario).

Let it feed off plants in the area for health. (See Defilers from Dark Sun).

Maybe other types of Fungus grow on him, giving him cold/fire resistance?

 

[Schmoe]

I really like the idea of burrowing spores. Maybe make it triggered by receiving a physical blow. I would also change resistances so that he is highly resistant or immune to piercing and bludgeoning damage, and takes normal damage from slashing weapons (maybe with a magic caveat).

To build on the fungus theme, since fungi draw sustenance from death and decay, maybe he could have a regeneration ability that requires him to have active spores infecting a nearby creature. The scale could increase with the number of infected nearby, so that as more creatures become infected he becomes nearly invincible, and the party needs to manage the spore infections to be able to defeat him.

 

[TwoSix]

Spores that make them hallucinate that they're also undead would be fun. Bonus points if they try to heal themselves and it doesn't work. (Keep track of their actual hit points behind the scenes, and have them collapse when they think they've hit "0".)