To those who don’t know, the Reddit user Oh Hi Mark has remade nearly every single 5e monster stat block and then some and gave them all unique abilities and variants. Gives you a familiar monster with a terrifying and creative twist
I had a dungeon dive into a black dragon's lair. The boss was an adult black dragon necromancer who rounded up bullywugs in the local swamp and used them in horrible experiments. The black dragon created a monstrosity called the "Frankenwug." I found the most horrific zombie frog fantasy art I could, then I made something that combined the froghemoth, roper, and flesh golem. The frankenwug had a four attack cycle: tongue, which was a DC 20 dex save, and on failure, stuck to the target and dealt acid damage; reel, a DC 20 strength save that sucked a tongued target toward the frankenwug; bite, well, you can guess, and swallow, which eats a bitten creature. The player has a lot of opportunities to survive this attack without getting eaten, but could get immediately swallowed on the frankenwug's turn if they lose all of the dice rolls. If the frankenwug fails at the tongue or reel stage, it uses its multiattack to do a simple slam attack (slam is also a legendary action). Now, for the flesh golem part: the frankenwug (which is immune to acid damage) is sitting in a big pool of acid. Surrounding it are six hovering mindless constructs that each cast Witch Bolt. Every round, one of the black dragon's lair actions is to increase the level of the witch bolt. The constructs are usually instructed to attack the frankenwug and zap it round after round as long as it stays within range. If so, the frankenwug has the flesh golem's lightning absorption feature, so the constructs can heal it. Even worse, if a construct falls to 0 hp, it falls into the acid pool, where it also has an acid regeneration feature! I tracked negative HP on the constructs, so players would sometimes wallop a construct so hard that it took a few turns to reconstitute itself in the acid. The players correctly figured out that they needed to drag/push/teleport the constructs out of the acid. While at 0 hp, they were objects and auto failed the save against Vortex Warp. The constructs could not move under their own power, so even pushing one 5 feet out of the acid was enough, as long as one of the bad guys didn't push it back. During this whole mess, the party was also dealing with a halfling necromancer - the black dragon in disguise, of course - who was shouting orders, including occasionally ordering a construct to change its witch bolt target to a player. The dragon had several bullywug prisoners that it intended to kill and feed to the frankenwug to heal it. The party actually saved the bullywugs, which gave them a nice XP bonus. Once the necromancer dropped to 0 hp, she changed into her true form. When she got to about 2/3rd hp, she called for help from her brood, three young black dragons, who fought to the death to defend their mother. Once the black dragon and frankenwug were dead, though, the young black dragons fled the dungeon. The frankenwug did not have legendary resistances, but the dragon was had a whole separate set of LRs in halfling form, and she was predisposed to use Dispel Magic to free the frankenwug of Slow and anything else that CCd it. She also had lair actions to splash acid on the players, increase all construct's witch bolt levels permanently, and drop several one-round stinking clouds. The fight was tough and memorable, but not as hard all those mechanics might suggest. This was a tier 3 party who could probably handle an ancient; adult dragons are CR inflated to account for the cunning nature of the dragon. They don't deal very much damage, and a prepared party with a lot of acid resistance (which they had) can take a lot of punishment. My party was good at using player abilities to prevent party members from being eaten. Dimension door alone makes escaping the frankenwug easy. The young black dragons were basically fodder, although the first round of triple acid breaths was a little concerning at first. The Frankenwug was one of my favorite boss encounters I've designed. It was inspired by a thought that Witch Bolt could be used by enemy spellcasters to power a flesh golem. I put a necromancer with a regular flesh golem on an encounter table and prepared a much simpler battle, but fortunately, the players never rolled it. Instead, they decided to help the bullywugs against the necromancer/dragon, and spent time gathering resources (including acid resistance potions). I dug into my encounter spreadsheet and combined everything they hadn't rolled yet together. When I realized - oh, duh, the black dragon capturing and experiment on bullywugs is obviously the same necromancer with the flesh golem - the rest came together pretty easily.
My favorite thing to do when it comes to making a new monster stat block is take two monsters and Smash then together. The easiest of which is making a mounted enemy. Goblin + Giant Spider = Spider Rider. Orc + Dire Wolf = Wolf Rider, Hobgoblin + Dire Boar = Boar Rider, etc. A little more difficult to balance, but alot more fun is smashing other monsters into my Dragons to make them more unique than just the color and breath type. Blue Dragon + Behir = Great Linnorm. A serpentine dragon that can constrict and swallow its prey as well as unleash a devastating lighting breath attack. *chefs kiss*
For a winter mountain encounter I made "Snowfish". The basic idea was they were like flying fish but they 'swam' through the ground and snow instead of the water. They start the fight by kicking up a cloud of snow to obscure the area, then they would leap out of the ground, make flyby attack, then immediately burrow. They could also potentially grapple as they burrowed, dragging the players to the ground in process. Because of the flyby/smoke cloud, the players had to bunch together and hold attacks for when the Snowfish jumped out, which made them vulnerable to the Schoolmaster who had an AoE cold breath attack. They really struggled with it (in a good way), except the Bard who loved the fact that flyby attack meant the extra damage from booming blade got triggered every single time. Personally one of my favorite fights I've ran & my players tell me they enjoyed it a lot, too. It came very close to a TPK considering it was a random encounter though.
First step... apply Tahsa's Sidekick levels to an existing stat block, even those over 1/2 CR. Even a "First Year Student" stat block with some levels of Warrior sidekick feels like an Auror from the Fatastic Beast series (a couple hyped up force blasts per turn with a spell or two in the pocket). Adding some Spellcaster levels to a magical beast opens lots of doors.
for the 'swamp monster' idea, kobolds that are adapted to water, they have water breathing and crocodile/aligator tails that grant them double movement speed while swimming, give them multiple javelin attacks for hit-and-run fights, and use Summoned hawks, wolves, and rat-swarms. Have 1-2 of them be Sorcerers with Subtle Spell casting used to cast illusions, Charm Person, and Command on the party, and that is a recipe for a *brutal* fight; even more so if you have the kobolds throwing nets/lassoo's over the players and trying to drown them in the swamp.
This was helpful, thank you. I'm currently designing a boss monster based on Iku-Turso, a finnish folklore monster. Make it kinda like a Aboleth Elder, which operates almost like a singular entity aircraft carrier, launching minions, bending reality and splashing with tentacles to break the will of those who resist. So, comparing the statblocks of multiple CR 18-22 monsters is very useful.
Thanks to y'all I have brought the world my brother and I created to play in growing up to life for my players. Thanks for this as well. One thing I have done is take and change dragons around a lot since on my world what thier breath weapon is doesn't depend on color or shape, and some it actually heals not harms.
I'm playing Pathfinder 2e, so this is going to take some finagling to balance in 5e, but I think the core concept of my monster works very well in any system! It's a Grey, a level 5-7 creature currently, but they've been tormenting one of my level 2 NPCs. Their signature ability is Greater Remove Presence, a metamagic-like ability (Grey spells are also non-magical, they are just sufficiently advanced aliens) that removes the ability to see or remember the caster from a target that fails a save after being affected by one of the Grey's spells. Only one target can have the effect of Greater Remove Presence active on them at the time, though, so the player character's allies still know of the greys and can see them. They also have an ability similar to ro disguise self, so my kitsune player (Kitsune in pathfinder get an ability that automatically lets him know if a character is shapeshifted) met a mysterious looking trio of tengu speaking with the Tengu delegation to the Lizardfolk city of Stoneshore. When he went to talk to the leader of the delegation afterwards, he remembers the party catching the leader alone, while everyone else remembers the leader having three tengu with him...
2 years ago when i was running a D&D campaign, one of the monsters that I homebrewed was a lowley Kobold Worker that just had 3 hp, 10 AC, and carried a dagger and had a -1 to hit. The whole purpose was to create a kobold that was geared to fight so that I could fill out the places that had kobolds with these to bring those places to life without having to many fighting combatants for the players to deal with. I remember the first time I ran these guys it was in the Redbrand Hideout under Tresander Manor outside Phandalin, that the kobolds were using as a outpost to bring food that they were stealing from the towns farms to feed the recovering young white dragon cryovain, and in the hideout, these workers were the ones moving the stolen livestock to the stairwell for Cryovain (who was sitting in the ruins of the manor) to consume. The second time I used them was in a Kobold Siege Camp a few miles downstream from the Gnomish village gnomengarde which the kobolds were trying to siege to claim the magic items that the village artificer's built for Cryovain's hoard. In that camp, the workers were building a catapult, overseen by several kobold warriors. In both case, my players were kind of brutal. Every kobold worker that came across their sights was quickly eliminated.
My favorite homebrew I've made was a zombie born of electricity (think Frankenstein) which had an ability called quantum leap allowing it to jump like an electron jumps: effectively misty step but with a small chance of jumping out of existence each time.
This immediately inspired me to make a wooden clockwork robot inspired by Edward Elric who's limbs tranform, one of them extends with long springs to reach and grab people from far away so it can pull people out of the sky, and the other arm changes between a slicer like edward's main weapon, and a shield to gain ac as a reaction for one person's turn.
Playtesting is my favorite part of homebrew! My first ever homebrew project I tried to make a 3-phase rpg boss fight with a million different mechanics and abilities and counters I'd have to manage. It was fun to think about theoretically, assuming my players did everything I wanted, but I'd played enough to know that you can never rely on the players doing what you want. Once I finished the stat block and battle plans I called up a fellow DM friend, had them make a party of characters to match mine, and had them throw their best at my monster. It helped me better streamline my boss battle mechanically, and come up with ways to keep my 3-phase idea without railroading my players in unfun ways. In the end we managed to make it almost perfect. It was still a really long battle, but my players had fun fighting an impossible beast with OP characters so I call it a win.
Awesome Video. As a beginner DM I did some research looking at creatures between CR 3-6 and picked out a few fun choices then just re-flavoured them in the game so it wasn't clear that I had a star spawn mangler and gauth until they started using their abilities. It was a lot of fun having a beheaded creature split into these 2 things and then hearing the sudden intake of breath from the players when I said "The head focuses it's eyes rays on you". :o)
What I’ve been doing that works well for me is taking a monster that fits the role I’m looking for, then weakening or buffing it, using monsters of the desired CR as a guide for how much to change it.
I completely misread the flee mortald hobgoblin smokebinder's mist form the first time I ran the stat block and the entire point of the monster didnt exist until I reread it.
One of my favorite monsters I ever made was a troll with a crustacean's exoskeleton and electric eel glands. Gave it Regeneration, Natural Armor, all attacks with metal weapons or unarmed dealt lightning damage with chance to stun, and it could circulate electricity internally to "overclock" itself, so it got action surge, reflexive dodge (once per round, if attacked, make a reflex roll to evade. On success, take 0 damage), and reflexive strike (once per round, if hit by melee, make a free basic attack at your attacker). Oh, and Flurry of Blows.
This video came just at the right time. In a few weeks I will run a session with a harpy tower inspired by the Drakkenheim campaign you guys run (I am new to dnd and dming, so seeing what kind of situation can come up and how they play out is super helpful). However, the tower has been the home of my harpies for a long time, so I made harpy children and rebellious/emo harpy teenagers with one small ability each (two children can immobilize a player and do next to no damage, the teenagers can swing their wings and push people away for the get-out-of-my-room-vibe)....
My daughter and I have been watching you guys for a couple years and always enjoy your videos. Thank y'all for good fun informative content. I run a game for my wife, daughter, mother-in-law, and one of my friends and like to adapt in stuff from you guys as well as other content creators, and enjoy the community environment and how everyone treats each other respectfully. My daughter and I were curious how you guys met and became friends, maybe you could make a video about how y'all starting playing together or became friends? We may have missed but we have watched a good majority of your videos. If not a reply would be cool, but we understand it may not be possible. Thank you.
Since Ad&D I mostly used homebrew monsters, unless they were undead, but even there I made several new types as I have always felt that monsters would change according to the environment to a degree and where they live/ were created. Spread among them were more basic monsters. I always had done the same thing with my NPC to make each person in my rg world feel more alive and it might have take a lot of time, but it worked. My players loved my games for several years until we all moved and spread out into the world. I also added hierarchs within most monster types, as elders and others as age should alter something with each type of monster, which also means that my players usually had no idea how powerful a monster was until fighting them unless they listened to their survival skills which in turn would tell them that the monster was maybe a bit dangerous or very dangerous or worse. This opens other options to if you really think about it, like social combat where someone might have a talent or knowling a few tricks that make it much harder than it should be. Which would be just like the real world if you think about it. Usually I started by figuring what type of monster I would need, then which race of monster were closest including from monster books, mythology and more. From there I decided the danger it should be, and that sort of blended into the monster to create something new or maybe a twist of something old. Frost Wolves with ice burning breath attack, a weak mouse with an insane mind attack using illusions to hide and many many more. I 'm not even sure how many monster variations I have created over the many years I have been a DM and a player.
I absolutely LOVE the monster mash scenario Monty gave about the 4 person generic party. It feels like a near perfect “sterile” environment for core testing a monster.
I made a boss named Ping and he was a time-warping assassin that the more the fight went on, the more powerful he got. Later abilities caused the slow condition to all enemies and he could go back to any space he was a turn or 2 before (think ekko ult from league) and he could spend some built up time Stacks to use cool abilities actively, his ultimate was freezing everybody in a time stasis except for 1 other person, making it into a late-battle duel. If he didn't spend Stacks then he would get debuffed, eventually getting stunned from overloading. It was the most complicated boss I made but it was so cool to see it in action and I somehow made it balanced enough that the party killed him with only 1 pc death, and that was from friendly fire. That alone is a funny story, maybe for another time. I also made a music based boss just because i wanted to play Through fire and flames while fire erupt from the ground burning the party.
I was waiting for the parts at 12:40 and 20:30. We can Frankenstein the appearance and physical traits however we want and still use an existing stat block. Example: The party watches as ooze drips onto the emaciated corpse, and the liquid in its bloated form sloshes as it rises to face you. It has the stat block of flesh golem, but they don’t have to know that.
This video couldnt have come at a better time as I am currently working on a monster for the endgame of a spooky horror game im going to hopefully run for my players this year :P
I gave a giant metal construct with a reach attack that grabs and grapples multiple creatures at once (big whoop), BUT I gave it a feature called "Conductive" which makes it so if ever it takes lightning damage it splits between all the creatures it has grappled. It was fun to use as an "oh sh*t!" monster against the tempest domain cleric who normally wrecked everything :)
I haven't played much, and I have never DMed, but I like to homebrew monsters on DnDBeyond just for fun. I have also found that making statblocks for characters from a book I'm working on, can be a nice way to help develop them. My most ambitious monsters would be an archdevil that is essentially the devils' equivalent of Orcus, and an epic, green greatwyrm dracolich.
My advice is looking for different systems in a "monster manual" section. For example there is a whole section of traits that creatures (monster or humans) have in Warhammer Fantasy RPG, or Warhammer 40K rpg books. Also simple designs could be found in Mork Borg and they work great for DnD.
I may had been home brewing a character for DND (which I got a lot of possibilities for playing it for the first time like ever). He's native American that ended up in one many realms, then met a person, whose a werebear, that gotten injured. After taken care of that person, the native American had become a were bear himself and had no town or village to protect and started to travel from one location to another after made a vow to protect every monsters that are good from poachers to evil monsters that will harm them with a combination of his weapons from his tribe and his new found abilities of a werebear. Also his totem is a bear.
Flavor is free. I turned a Gorgon bull into a spider. Instead of a cloud of bad breath, it had a web of calcification. Full on homebrew "reinventing the wheel" is way harder than tweaking what already exists.
Pharmacy Dan's Homebrew process: how much damage can your players do on average when going nova(average damage of everyone's strongest ability added together)? That number times 2 is the hp spread out among all creatures in the enemy party. Dice gods will make it 3 rounds. What is the lowest hp of the weakest player? Weaklings do 1/8 that damage. Bosses do 1/3 that damage. Dice gods decide how much is actually done. What features did your players invest in? That's the kind of stuff they find fun. Your creatures interact with those.
I like to build eco systems that make sense and design the monsters first, thinking about how they'd interact together and with the environment. Then I give them abilities that match their lifestyle and balance the stats around similar monsters from the MM. For example I made a swamp biom. The bottom of the food chain are deer rabbits. To serve as the bottom of the food chain they have to breed rapidly and be elusive enough to not go extinct. So I gave them the ability to burrow as well as a high jump ability and they can cast invisibility as it fits their theme of camouflaging. CR 1/4 or 1/8 seems to be appropriate. I revamped Ankhegs because they can eat the deer rabbits underground. I made them behave like ants and they make underground drainage systems so their nests don't get flooded. I made the Ankheg queen a legendary monster as well because these are always fun for players to hunt. CR 2, Queen CR 7, rest somewhere between. Then I made big evil swaml Storks that are about 12ft tall and have giant beaks with savage theets. These things can eat both Ankhegs and the deer rabbits. They are birds so they live in flocks. CR 4 Because its a swamp it definitely has water, so I made a Swamp Hydra that is capped at 5 heads. CR 6 The biom also needs an apex predator and I decided that a very muscular oversized Puma with flight membranes of a flying squirrel would be a great choice. It is very territorial but because its a cat it prefers ambush hunting. I also decided that some adults of this race would be legendary monsters as well. Adults must be able to decisively beat Young Black Dragons and the legendary version should be able to flee from Adult Black Dragons after fighting for a bit. Cubs CR 1, Youths CR 4, Adults CR 9 and Legendaries CR 12
I homebrew most of my monsters, I reflavor existing monsters, give them feats and different gear, change the element etc and fine tune them with chat gpt. chat gpt makes statblocks much easier and gives some inspiration. Since I work fulltime and prep every week I would not manage to do all that without AI support.
I am currently using a variant of a Deathlands "Sticky" which is a humanoid octopus that has a grab that's near impossible to escape and has an incredible hunger for human flesh. They are also immune to and attracted to fire and explosions as it drives them into a frenzy.
Hey Dudes! I'm planning on running Dungeons of Drakkenheim for my next campaign. So much stuff in the store! Can you do a video about the different Drakkenheim-related products and how to use them together or independently?
These days, I find it so hard to run monsters straight out of the books, I almost always tweak something and quite often make my own monsters. I made an owl bear I really like, a werewolf pack lord, I turned a purple worm into a giant plant monster that spawns blights and has grappling vines, I made an Oni eldritch knight, a grotesque troll with grafted on shrunken heads that acted like beholder eye stalks, I’ve changed giants to knock you prone with their movement and force you to have to attack them in vulnerable areas to actually deal damage, I’m currently working on an encounter that details what happens when you cast remove curse on an entire village of people affected with lycanthropy and how those cursed shadows swarm and form into one large monstrous werewolf shadow creature, I just go crazy, lol.
Not So Pro Tip: Trolls are really easy to make subspecies for, both because their regeneration allows then to inhabit and adapt to inhospitable environments, but also because there was an old bit of lore in the Monster Manual that said if troll flesh wasn't cooked thoroughly enough, it would grow in the consumer's stomach and either burst them like an overripe tomato or fuse with their flesh and make a troll-like mutant. I that's what happens to (assumedly) humanoid adventurers/players, then i don't see why force feeding troll meat to a crab or lobster wouldn't get you an Armored Troll covered in a chitinous exoskeleton, or a Troll left in a poisonous bog won't get you a Bog Troll that secretes noxious fumes and toxic/acidic mucus from its constantly festering and regenerating flesh.
My favorite homebrew monster was a goblin chieftain who had a "lair action" to summon more goblins. My players thought it was going to be an easy fight against a few goblins (they were level 5). They started to get scared when they killed their 30th goblin. And I ran extra simplified goblins so the combat only lasted about an hour and a half.
Some swamp creatures/monsters to think about using if you haven't already: water witch, swamp rabbit, siren(eel shaped salamander), screech owl, any semi aquatic snake, leach.
I've found that homebrewing monsters is much easier than homebrewing player content. If a subclass is too powerful or too weak it will require a lot of fine tuning , which sometimes requires yo to compromise the theme you intended to give it, sometimes even scrapping the entire reason you decided to write it. But if that happens with a monster you can just adjust the CR.
Keep on thing in mind with CR. CR in dnd is calculated based on the players handbook and what it offers players. Keep this in mind, Feats Are An OPTIONAL Rule. By default, player characters don't get feats. They also aren't assumed to multiclass. So when your party of level 13 barbarian, cleric, ranger, and wizard take on a CR 13, without feats, and also using the standard array for stat ;which is again the assumption the books make, that CR 13 monster is a whole lot more dangerous to that party. People forget just how much feats alone increase the power of PCs, let alone rolled stats along with additional subclasses that absolutely change how the base class works. So take all that into consideration when picking the CR of your monsters, and if you're group is rolling stats, using feats, and lugging around more magic items then they can atune too, you might wanna consider treating the party as a few level higher then they actually are when thinking of CR, cuz with a well rolled, well equipped, feat enables party of level 13, even something of CR 17 might not be a challenge because of the extra power they have. I sweari get so sick of everyone batching CR is broken, without acknowledging the fact optional extra power is what makes CR broken, not the fundamental CR calculation itself.
My first homebrew was a slight modification of the base Orc I call a Hunter Orc. All I did was swap the strength score with dexterity and give them bows and crossbows.
Two thoughts. First, don’t stat out your BBEG until you feel the characters might actually run into them. Second, a low level boss fight easily becomes minions for higher level bosses.
a troll. but its aa construct. it has a hand that shoots out of his arm attached to a chain. its range is 30’. on a hit the creature must make a strength save on a fail it either is knocked prone or pulled to the troll. this attack is a melee attack and can only be done once per turn. if the creature failed the strength save the troll can make a second attack with his saw blade hand. it can be shot via ranged attack or it can be used as a 1h weapon. if the character hit by the saw blade is killed by it, its cut in half.
I think one of my favorite homebrew monsters I ever made was the Dragon Mimic. Just a mimic type creature that turns into a dragon and menaces people into giving it treasure. It may or may not have eaten that treasure.
Question Dudes: building a human GHOST who died as a Soldier & returned as a really pissed off Rogue. Ghost starts with good spells but wondering if he should choose Necromancy spells, dual wield with magical weapons? Also, should he use his human traits for the build or forgot these? Any tips, thanks Dudes!❤
One thing I always do when making a monster is give them bith melee and ranged options. Typically one of those is notably worse, but having a monster be shut down because the players are out of range because of flight is just not fun for me. Regarding stats, I recommend looking at Keith Ammann's The Monsters Know What They're Doing, and looking at how stats spreads reflect the combat behaviors of the monsters. So if ypu know how you want the monster to work you can put the stats in the proper array for that behavior
My favorite monster I've made thus far is probably the Calcium Crawler, inspired by the Canyon Crawlers from ATLA, but these have exorbitantly high calcium content and primarily reside in the Plane of Earth. It's been a while since I looked at them but designing them was a blast. A solid mental image of what i wanted them to be also helped a lot in the design process
7:37 tbh my 1st homebrew monster is a big bad guy... A pile of gold actually. I was inspired by one boss from WoW BFA, literal guardian of treasure room... Being that treasure. So, I've spent many hours to browse through monsters and started the process. Later found that thing in pathfinder but it was weaker than I needed to be. So, today I would refine it's wording and balanced it a bit
So about y’all’s old video cleric barbarian Storm herald Tempest cleric Elemental adept lighting Channel divinity + crit +sea storm +great weapon master + your brutal critical dice +rage +strength mod + spiritual weapon you casted pre combat (house rule me and my dm uses) That would be a force of nature right there just saying
"Corpse Crone": When a warlock with a hag patron dies they can be brought back to life by their patron. They can come back to life unless you kill them with radiant or fire damage. Based on the deadite hags from evil-dead. she has climbspeed, cunning-action, and a few cantrips. she can also lash out with her tongue to grab enemies and drag them towards her. she can get more powerful by eating corpses. Her niche is to stalk the party over a period of time if they dont kill her properly. she has survived two encounters with the party. she is opportunistic and meant to be like this lingering background threat that shows up at inopportune times to attack the party, and then leaves when it looks like the battle is about to go in their favor.
Reposting your own video ideas you accidentally had on a class Tierlist from a while ago: What if EVERY class/subclass had an "expanded" spell list they always know? Regular fighters getting to know and cast shield by level 9 sounds amazing to me, even if it is just once. Or haste by level 17 or something like that. Sounds simple, unusual and interesting. Barbarians knowing Warding Bond? Enhance Ability? (ironically), Calm Emotions? Speak with Animals? I would like to see other people's takes on this. Non-spellcasting classes getting access to simple magic around up to 3rd level, once per long rest, while spellcasters can get a little bit more room to know spells or get spells not included on their list?
You? You are enough, and you are loved. The monsters? All monsters must die and there will never be enough. On a serious note, I heard bear stat blocks are a great starting point for almost anything.
I've actually started to make my NPC spellcasters use castings per day of individual spells instead of standard spells lots. A) I find myself not using most of the spells anyway, otherwise. This kind of forces me to change it up. After the 3rd time, the npc evoker Wizard casts fireball , the party gets pretty bored. B) if I really want my NPC to get one more casting of fireball, then I can just cross out one of those sleet storms. I've never actually had an NPC baddie use up all of his slots, though. The battle is always over before that.
On of the first homebrew monsters I made was just taking a giant rat and giving it the magma mephit’s breath weapon. And I told my players it was a half dragon rat. And the boss for the area I took the giant rat and a young red dragon and mashed them together to make “mom”.
I pretty much homebrew all my enemies to some extent, because even when the idea I have already exists, it's usually not the right difficulty for my players. Or I want it to be tailored to my players' abilities. Or I want to tailor it to the arena it is in. About the monster mash: wouldn't it make more sense to run the encounters with the party for which the monster was made?
Slyflourish's Forge of Foes is spectacular for homebrewing monsters >_>
I backed it, excited to unleash some “new” monsters on my players!
Seconded
To those who don’t know, the Reddit user Oh Hi Mark has remade nearly every single 5e monster stat block and then some and gave them all unique abilities and variants. Gives you a familiar monster with a terrifying and creative twist
What’s his actual username…? I couldn’t find anyone posting dnd related stuff under that username or others that were similar.
@@ozylocz4078 I checked and it’s Conflux Creatures or u/Oh_Hi_Mark_
If you google “dnd oh hi mark” a Reddit post of his will pop up
@@ozylocz4078 Oh_Hi_Mark_
Omg this dude is amazing! Thank you so much for this post!
This is an unbelievable treasure horde of high quality monsters
Love his stat blocks! I've thrown a few at my players to spice things up.
Best moment so far: a sword mimic cartwheeling between players lmao
"There's always room for another cool goblin."
Those are words to live by.
I had a dungeon dive into a black dragon's lair. The boss was an adult black dragon necromancer who rounded up bullywugs in the local swamp and used them in horrible experiments. The black dragon created a monstrosity called the "Frankenwug." I found the most horrific zombie frog fantasy art I could, then I made something that combined the froghemoth, roper, and flesh golem. The frankenwug had a four attack cycle: tongue, which was a DC 20 dex save, and on failure, stuck to the target and dealt acid damage; reel, a DC 20 strength save that sucked a tongued target toward the frankenwug; bite, well, you can guess, and swallow, which eats a bitten creature. The player has a lot of opportunities to survive this attack without getting eaten, but could get immediately swallowed on the frankenwug's turn if they lose all of the dice rolls. If the frankenwug fails at the tongue or reel stage, it uses its multiattack to do a simple slam attack (slam is also a legendary action).
Now, for the flesh golem part: the frankenwug (which is immune to acid damage) is sitting in a big pool of acid. Surrounding it are six hovering mindless constructs that each cast Witch Bolt. Every round, one of the black dragon's lair actions is to increase the level of the witch bolt. The constructs are usually instructed to attack the frankenwug and zap it round after round as long as it stays within range. If so, the frankenwug has the flesh golem's lightning absorption feature, so the constructs can heal it. Even worse, if a construct falls to 0 hp, it falls into the acid pool, where it also has an acid regeneration feature! I tracked negative HP on the constructs, so players would sometimes wallop a construct so hard that it took a few turns to reconstitute itself in the acid. The players correctly figured out that they needed to drag/push/teleport the constructs out of the acid. While at 0 hp, they were objects and auto failed the save against Vortex Warp. The constructs could not move under their own power, so even pushing one 5 feet out of the acid was enough, as long as one of the bad guys didn't push it back.
During this whole mess, the party was also dealing with a halfling necromancer - the black dragon in disguise, of course - who was shouting orders, including occasionally ordering a construct to change its witch bolt target to a player. The dragon had several bullywug prisoners that it intended to kill and feed to the frankenwug to heal it. The party actually saved the bullywugs, which gave them a nice XP bonus. Once the necromancer dropped to 0 hp, she changed into her true form. When she got to about 2/3rd hp, she called for help from her brood, three young black dragons, who fought to the death to defend their mother. Once the black dragon and frankenwug were dead, though, the young black dragons fled the dungeon.
The frankenwug did not have legendary resistances, but the dragon was had a whole separate set of LRs in halfling form, and she was predisposed to use Dispel Magic to free the frankenwug of Slow and anything else that CCd it. She also had lair actions to splash acid on the players, increase all construct's witch bolt levels permanently, and drop several one-round stinking clouds.
The fight was tough and memorable, but not as hard all those mechanics might suggest. This was a tier 3 party who could probably handle an ancient; adult dragons are CR inflated to account for the cunning nature of the dragon. They don't deal very much damage, and a prepared party with a lot of acid resistance (which they had) can take a lot of punishment. My party was good at using player abilities to prevent party members from being eaten. Dimension door alone makes escaping the frankenwug easy. The young black dragons were basically fodder, although the first round of triple acid breaths was a little concerning at first.
The Frankenwug was one of my favorite boss encounters I've designed. It was inspired by a thought that Witch Bolt could be used by enemy spellcasters to power a flesh golem. I put a necromancer with a regular flesh golem on an encounter table and prepared a much simpler battle, but fortunately, the players never rolled it. Instead, they decided to help the bullywugs against the necromancer/dragon, and spent time gathering resources (including acid resistance potions). I dug into my encounter spreadsheet and combined everything they hadn't rolled yet together. When I realized - oh, duh, the black dragon capturing and experiment on bullywugs is obviously the same necromancer with the flesh golem - the rest came together pretty easily.
That sounds really freaking awesome
Might legitimately be the most useful video for a DM
Absolutely
My favorite thing to do when it comes to making a new monster stat block is take two monsters and Smash then together.
The easiest of which is making a mounted enemy. Goblin + Giant Spider = Spider Rider. Orc + Dire Wolf = Wolf Rider, Hobgoblin + Dire Boar = Boar Rider, etc.
A little more difficult to balance, but alot more fun is smashing other monsters into my Dragons to make them more unique than just the color and breath type.
Blue Dragon + Behir = Great Linnorm. A serpentine dragon that can constrict and swallow its prey as well as unleash a devastating lighting breath attack.
*chefs kiss*
Kelly: i love swamps
Me: are you the canadian version of Hidetaka Miyazaki ?
For a winter mountain encounter I made "Snowfish".
The basic idea was they were like flying fish but they 'swam' through the ground and snow instead of the water. They start the fight by kicking up a cloud of snow to obscure the area, then they would leap out of the ground, make flyby attack, then immediately burrow. They could also potentially grapple as they burrowed, dragging the players to the ground in process.
Because of the flyby/smoke cloud, the players had to bunch together and hold attacks for when the Snowfish jumped out, which made them vulnerable to the Schoolmaster who had an AoE cold breath attack. They really struggled with it (in a good way), except the Bard who loved the fact that flyby attack meant the extra damage from booming blade got triggered every single time.
Personally one of my favorite fights I've ran & my players tell me they enjoyed it a lot, too. It came very close to a TPK considering it was a random encounter though.
Great idea man! I'm copying it for my sessions. Thanks!
Kelly: "I love swamps, I'm on my 6th swamp"
We've found the one putting al the poison swamps in soulsborne games, get him
First step... apply Tahsa's Sidekick levels to an existing stat block, even those over 1/2 CR. Even a "First Year Student" stat block with some levels of Warrior sidekick feels like an Auror from the Fatastic Beast series (a couple hyped up force blasts per turn with a spell or two in the pocket).
Adding some Spellcaster levels to a magical beast opens lots of doors.
for the 'swamp monster' idea, kobolds that are adapted to water, they have water breathing and crocodile/aligator tails that grant them double movement speed while swimming, give them multiple javelin attacks for hit-and-run fights, and use Summoned hawks, wolves, and rat-swarms.
Have 1-2 of them be Sorcerers with Subtle Spell casting used to cast illusions, Charm Person, and Command on the party, and that is a recipe for a *brutal* fight; even more so if you have the kobolds throwing nets/lassoo's over the players and trying to drown them in the swamp.
This was helpful, thank you. I'm currently designing a boss monster based on Iku-Turso, a finnish folklore monster. Make it kinda like a Aboleth Elder, which operates almost like a singular entity aircraft carrier, launching minions, bending reality and splashing with tentacles to break the will of those who resist. So, comparing the statblocks of multiple CR 18-22 monsters is very useful.
Thanks to y'all I have brought the world my brother and I created to play in growing up to life for my players. Thanks for this as well. One thing I have done is take and change dragons around a lot since on my world what thier breath weapon is doesn't depend on color or shape, and some it actually heals not harms.
Dude, this is going to be so helpful for my dm friends! Thank you!!!! I'll be sending this video out soon!
I'm playing Pathfinder 2e, so this is going to take some finagling to balance in 5e, but I think the core concept of my monster works very well in any system!
It's a Grey, a level 5-7 creature currently, but they've been tormenting one of my level 2 NPCs. Their signature ability is Greater Remove Presence, a metamagic-like ability (Grey spells are also non-magical, they are just sufficiently advanced aliens) that removes the ability to see or remember the caster from a target that fails a save after being affected by one of the Grey's spells. Only one target can have the effect of Greater Remove Presence active on them at the time, though, so the player character's allies still know of the greys and can see them.
They also have an ability similar to ro disguise self, so my kitsune player (Kitsune in pathfinder get an ability that automatically lets him know if a character is shapeshifted) met a mysterious looking trio of tengu speaking with the Tengu delegation to the Lizardfolk city of Stoneshore. When he went to talk to the leader of the delegation afterwards, he remembers the party catching the leader alone, while everyone else remembers the leader having three tengu with him...
Thanks for this, guys! This'll be really helpful
2 years ago when i was running a D&D campaign, one of the monsters that I homebrewed was a lowley Kobold Worker that just had 3 hp, 10 AC, and carried a dagger and had a -1 to hit. The whole purpose was to create a kobold that was geared to fight so that I could fill out the places that had kobolds with these to bring those places to life without having to many fighting combatants for the players to deal with.
I remember the first time I ran these guys it was in the Redbrand Hideout under Tresander Manor outside Phandalin, that the kobolds were using as a outpost to bring food that they were stealing from the towns farms to feed the recovering young white dragon cryovain, and in the hideout, these workers were the ones moving the stolen livestock to the stairwell for Cryovain (who was sitting in the ruins of the manor) to consume.
The second time I used them was in a Kobold Siege Camp a few miles downstream from the Gnomish village gnomengarde which the kobolds were trying to siege to claim the magic items that the village artificer's built for Cryovain's hoard. In that camp, the workers were building a catapult, overseen by several kobold warriors.
In both case, my players were kind of brutal. Every kobold worker that came across their sights was quickly eliminated.
My favorite homebrew I've made was a zombie born of electricity (think Frankenstein) which had an ability called quantum leap allowing it to jump like an electron jumps: effectively misty step but with a small chance of jumping out of existence each time.
I love your method of play testing. I usually “playtest” my homebrew/altered monsters by just putting them into the campaigns, with mixed results.
I'm working on some custom monsters right now so thank you!
The Frog that throws stuff should be called a Frogadier. Like a Grenadier.
Frogoteur would be my suggestion.
yeah, and then a more powerful frog monster that’s sneaky and french, and name it something like greninja- wait
Yeah, Pokémon is a really great inspiration for different homebrew monsters
@@theadventuresofhuckletaryfin Gonna be honest I wasn't making a reference.
Frogadier? Maybe make a stronger, faster, older version as well.
Call it: Greninja.
I enjoyed the trolls yesterday! Excited to watch this episode, thanks dudes.
Thanks dudes! ❤
Love the monster mash idea deff going to do this
First time that i nothiced the WEB DM intro as your outro! Gave me chills down my spine. Love the work!
This immediately inspired me to make a wooden clockwork robot inspired by Edward Elric who's limbs tranform, one of them extends with long springs to reach and grab people from far away so it can pull people out of the sky, and the other arm changes between a slicer like edward's main weapon, and a shield to gain ac as a reaction for one person's turn.
love how fast another video came out
Playtesting is my favorite part of homebrew! My first ever homebrew project I tried to make a 3-phase rpg boss fight with a million different mechanics and abilities and counters I'd have to manage. It was fun to think about theoretically, assuming my players did everything I wanted, but I'd played enough to know that you can never rely on the players doing what you want. Once I finished the stat block and battle plans I called up a fellow DM friend, had them make a party of characters to match mine, and had them throw their best at my monster. It helped me better streamline my boss battle mechanically, and come up with ways to keep my 3-phase idea without railroading my players in unfun ways. In the end we managed to make it almost perfect. It was still a really long battle, but my players had fun fighting an impossible beast with OP characters so I call it a win.
Great video. Please record a "monster mash" sounds awesome.
Dungeon dudes! 👍
Awesome Video. As a beginner DM I did some research looking at creatures between CR 3-6 and picked out a few fun choices then just re-flavoured them in the game so it wasn't clear that I had a star spawn mangler and gauth until they started using their abilities. It was a lot of fun having a beheaded creature split into these 2 things and then hearing the sudden intake of breath from the players when I said "The head focuses it's eyes rays on you". :o)
What I’ve been doing that works well for me is taking a monster that fits the role I’m looking for, then weakening or buffing it, using monsters of the desired CR as a guide for how much to change it.
I cannot wait to be supporting the book. As a DM, and a player who loves making magic items from creatures, this book fits all of my interests!
i was a big fan of you guys helping the community homebrew things in live streams there were a lot of super cool ideas in those streams
I can't express how freaking awesome this video was.
Seriously - great job guys.
don't underestimate the complexity of a stat block, I forgot about the displacer beast's "displace ability" for the first half of a combat XD
I completely misread the flee mortald hobgoblin smokebinder's mist form the first time I ran the stat block and the entire point of the monster didnt exist until I reread it.
One of my favorite monsters I ever made was a troll with a crustacean's exoskeleton and electric eel glands. Gave it Regeneration, Natural Armor, all attacks with metal weapons or unarmed dealt lightning damage with chance to stun, and it could circulate electricity internally to "overclock" itself, so it got action surge, reflexive dodge (once per round, if attacked, make a reflex roll to evade. On success, take 0 damage), and reflexive strike (once per round, if hit by melee, make a free basic attack at your attacker). Oh, and Flurry of Blows.
This one is gonna do numbers
This video came just at the right time. In a few weeks I will run a session with a harpy tower inspired by the Drakkenheim campaign you guys run (I am new to dnd and dming, so seeing what kind of situation can come up and how they play out is super helpful). However, the tower has been the home of my harpies for a long time, so I made harpy children and rebellious/emo harpy teenagers with one small ability each (two children can immobilize a player and do next to no damage, the teenagers can swing their wings and push people away for the get-out-of-my-room-vibe)....
My daughter and I have been watching you guys for a couple years and always enjoy your videos. Thank y'all for good fun informative content. I run a game for my wife, daughter, mother-in-law, and one of my friends and like to adapt in stuff from you guys as well as other content creators, and enjoy the community environment and how everyone treats each other respectfully. My daughter and I were curious how you guys met and became friends, maybe you could make a video about how y'all starting playing together or became friends? We may have missed but we have watched a good majority of your videos. If not a reply would be cool, but we understand it may not be possible. Thank you.
You both are why I’m on RUclips on Tuesdays and Thursdays 🖤 now let’s see these monsters!
Since Ad&D I mostly used homebrew monsters, unless they were undead, but even there I made several new types as I have always felt that monsters would change according to the environment to a degree and where they live/ were created. Spread among them were more basic monsters. I always had done the same thing with my NPC to make each person in my rg world feel more alive and it might have take a lot of time, but it worked. My players loved my games for several years until we all moved and spread out into the world.
I also added hierarchs within most monster types, as elders and others as age should alter something with each type of monster, which also means that my players usually had no idea how powerful a monster was until fighting them unless they listened to their survival skills which in turn would tell them that the monster was maybe a bit dangerous or very dangerous or worse.
This opens other options to if you really think about it, like social combat where someone might have a talent or knowling a few tricks that make it much harder than it should be. Which would be just like the real world if you think about it.
Usually I started by figuring what type of monster I would need, then which race of monster were closest including from monster books, mythology and more. From there I decided the danger it should be, and that sort of blended into the monster to create something new or maybe a twist of something old. Frost Wolves with ice burning breath attack, a weak mouse with an insane mind attack using illusions to hide and many many more. I 'm not even sure how many monster variations I have created over the many years I have been a DM and a player.
I absolutely LOVE the monster mash scenario Monty gave about the 4 person generic party. It feels like a near perfect “sterile” environment for core testing a monster.
I made a boss named Ping and he was a time-warping assassin that the more the fight went on, the more powerful he got. Later abilities caused the slow condition to all enemies and he could go back to any space he was a turn or 2 before (think ekko ult from league) and he could spend some built up time Stacks to use cool abilities actively, his ultimate was freezing everybody in a time stasis except for 1 other person, making it into a late-battle duel. If he didn't spend Stacks then he would get debuffed, eventually getting stunned from overloading. It was the most complicated boss I made but it was so cool to see it in action and I somehow made it balanced enough that the party killed him with only 1 pc death, and that was from friendly fire. That alone is a funny story, maybe for another time. I also made a music based boss just because i wanted to play Through fire and flames while fire erupt from the ground burning the party.
Thanks for sponsoring Pack Tactics!
I was waiting for the parts at 12:40 and 20:30. We can Frankenstein the appearance and physical traits however we want and still use an existing stat block.
Example: The party watches as ooze drips onto the emaciated corpse, and the liquid in its bloated form sloshes as it rises to face you. It has the stat block of flesh golem, but they don’t have to know that.
This video couldnt have come at a better time as I am currently working on a monster for the endgame of a spooky horror game im going to hopefully run for my players this year :P
Good stuff as always! Gl with your kickstarter :)
I gave a giant metal construct with a reach attack that grabs and grapples multiple creatures at once (big whoop), BUT I gave it a feature called "Conductive" which makes it so if ever it takes lightning damage it splits between all the creatures it has grappled. It was fun to use as an "oh sh*t!" monster against the tempest domain cleric who normally wrecked everything :)
Super advice, once again!!! Thank you so much for sharing
I haven't played much, and I have never DMed, but I like to homebrew monsters on DnDBeyond just for fun. I have also found that making statblocks for characters from a book I'm working on, can be a nice way to help develop them.
My most ambitious monsters would be an archdevil that is essentially the devils' equivalent of Orcus, and an epic, green greatwyrm dracolich.
My advice is looking for different systems in a "monster manual" section. For example there is a whole section of traits that creatures (monster or humans) have in Warhammer Fantasy RPG, or Warhammer 40K rpg books. Also simple designs could be found in Mork Borg and they work great for DnD.
Fellas rolling up to the table with some High Caliber Homebrewium, very exciting
I may had been home brewing a character for DND (which I got a lot of possibilities for playing it for the first time like ever). He's native American that ended up in one many realms, then met a person, whose a werebear, that gotten injured. After taken care of that person, the native American had become a were bear himself and had no town or village to protect and started to travel from one location to another after made a vow to protect every monsters that are good from poachers to evil monsters that will harm them with a combination of his weapons from his tribe and his new found abilities of a werebear. Also his totem is a bear.
Flavor is free. I turned a Gorgon bull into a spider. Instead of a cloud of bad breath, it had a web of calcification. Full on homebrew "reinventing the wheel" is way harder than tweaking what already exists.
Until Monsters of Drakkenheim comes out, I’ll have to homebrew the monster(s) from the Trust No One episode for my players.
Greay video Dudes. Thanks!
Pharmacy Dan's Homebrew process: how much damage can your players do on average when going nova(average damage of everyone's strongest ability added together)? That number times 2 is the hp spread out among all creatures in the enemy party. Dice gods will make it 3 rounds.
What is the lowest hp of the weakest player? Weaklings do 1/8 that damage. Bosses do 1/3 that damage. Dice gods decide how much is actually done.
What features did your players invest in? That's the kind of stuff they find fun. Your creatures interact with those.
i dont make a bunch of monsters, but i am a huge fan of reskining or re flavoring abilities to fit in what i want.
I like to build eco systems that make sense and design the monsters first, thinking about how they'd interact together and with the environment. Then I give them abilities that match their lifestyle and balance the stats around similar monsters from the MM.
For example I made a swamp biom.
The bottom of the food chain are deer rabbits. To serve as the bottom of the food chain they have to breed rapidly and be elusive enough to not go extinct. So I gave them the ability to burrow as well as a high jump ability and they can cast invisibility as it fits their theme of camouflaging. CR 1/4 or 1/8 seems to be appropriate.
I revamped Ankhegs because they can eat the deer rabbits underground. I made them behave like ants and they make underground drainage systems so their nests don't get flooded. I made the Ankheg queen a legendary monster as well because these are always fun for players to hunt. CR 2, Queen CR 7, rest somewhere between.
Then I made big evil swaml Storks that are about 12ft tall and have giant beaks with savage theets. These things can eat both Ankhegs and the deer rabbits. They are birds so they live in flocks.
CR 4
Because its a swamp it definitely has water, so I made a Swamp Hydra that is capped at 5 heads.
CR 6
The biom also needs an apex predator and I decided that a very muscular oversized Puma with flight membranes of a flying squirrel would be a great choice. It is very territorial but because its a cat it prefers ambush hunting. I also decided that some adults of this race would be legendary monsters as well. Adults must be able to decisively beat Young Black Dragons and the legendary version should be able to flee from Adult Black Dragons after fighting for a bit. Cubs CR 1, Youths CR 4, Adults CR 9 and Legendaries CR 12
I homebrew most of my monsters, I reflavor existing monsters, give them feats and different gear, change the element etc and fine tune them with chat gpt. chat gpt makes statblocks much easier and gives some inspiration. Since I work fulltime and prep every week I would not manage to do all that without AI support.
I am currently using a variant of a Deathlands "Sticky" which is a humanoid octopus that has a grab that's near impossible to escape and has an incredible hunger for human flesh. They are also immune to and attracted to fire and explosions as it drives them into a frenzy.
Hey Dudes! I'm planning on running Dungeons of Drakkenheim for my next campaign. So much stuff in the store! Can you do a video about the different Drakkenheim-related products and how to use them together or independently?
These days, I find it so hard to run monsters straight out of the books, I almost always tweak something and quite often make my own monsters. I made an owl bear I really like, a werewolf pack lord, I turned a purple worm into a giant plant monster that spawns blights and has grappling vines, I made an Oni eldritch knight, a grotesque troll with grafted on shrunken heads that acted like beholder eye stalks, I’ve changed giants to knock you prone with their movement and force you to have to attack them in vulnerable areas to actually deal damage, I’m currently working on an encounter that details what happens when you cast remove curse on an entire village of people affected with lycanthropy and how those cursed shadows swarm and form into one large monstrous werewolf shadow creature, I just go crazy, lol.
Awesome video. Thank you
Reflavoring works so well. Like I used mud hulks to make cheese elementals, and it mechinachly works so well I'm still amazed.
Not So Pro Tip:
Trolls are really easy to make subspecies for, both because their regeneration allows then to inhabit and adapt to inhospitable environments, but also because there was an old bit of lore in the Monster Manual that said if troll flesh wasn't cooked thoroughly enough, it would grow in the consumer's stomach and either burst them like an overripe tomato or fuse with their flesh and make a troll-like mutant. I that's what happens to (assumedly) humanoid adventurers/players, then i don't see why force feeding troll meat to a crab or lobster wouldn't get you an Armored Troll covered in a chitinous exoskeleton, or a Troll left in a poisonous bog won't get you a Bog Troll that secretes noxious fumes and toxic/acidic mucus from its constantly festering and regenerating flesh.
The homebrew monsters i use all have one thing in common
I drew them from my deck of yugioh cards
I'm hoping the new book includes rules for epic monsters. That video was awesome for boss monsters
My favorite homebrew monster was a goblin chieftain who had a "lair action" to summon more goblins. My players thought it was going to be an easy fight against a few goblins (they were level 5). They started to get scared when they killed their 30th goblin. And I ran extra simplified goblins so the combat only lasted about an hour and a half.
Some swamp creatures/monsters to think about using if you haven't already: water witch, swamp rabbit, siren(eel shaped salamander), screech owl, any semi aquatic snake, leach.
I've found that homebrewing monsters is much easier than homebrewing player content. If a subclass is too powerful or too weak it will require a lot of fine tuning , which sometimes requires yo to compromise the theme you intended to give it, sometimes even scrapping the entire reason you decided to write it. But if that happens with a monster you can just adjust the CR.
Keep on thing in mind with CR. CR in dnd is calculated based on the players handbook and what it offers players. Keep this in mind, Feats Are An OPTIONAL Rule. By default, player characters don't get feats. They also aren't assumed to multiclass. So when your party of level 13 barbarian, cleric, ranger, and wizard take on a CR 13, without feats, and also using the standard array for stat ;which is again the assumption the books make, that CR 13 monster is a whole lot more dangerous to that party.
People forget just how much feats alone increase the power of PCs, let alone rolled stats along with additional subclasses that absolutely change how the base class works. So take all that into consideration when picking the CR of your monsters, and if you're group is rolling stats, using feats, and lugging around more magic items then they can atune too, you might wanna consider treating the party as a few level higher then they actually are when thinking of CR, cuz with a well rolled, well equipped, feat enables party of level 13, even something of CR 17 might not be a challenge because of the extra power they have.
I sweari get so sick of everyone batching CR is broken, without acknowledging the fact optional extra power is what makes CR broken, not the fundamental CR calculation itself.
My first homebrew was a slight modification of the base Orc I call a Hunter Orc. All I did was swap the strength score with dexterity and give them bows and crossbows.
When I ran an upscaled Dragonheist, I made the sewer goblins into a homebrewed clan of werealligators
Eyyyyy Dresden Files!!! Hell yeah
Two thoughts. First, don’t stat out your BBEG until you feel the characters might actually run into them. Second, a low level boss fight easily becomes minions for higher level bosses.
a troll. but its aa construct. it has a hand that shoots out of his arm attached to a chain. its range is 30’. on a hit the creature must make a strength save on a fail it either is knocked prone or pulled to the troll. this attack is a melee attack and can only be done once per turn. if the creature failed the strength save the troll can make a second attack with his saw blade hand. it can be shot via ranged attack or it can be used as a 1h weapon. if the character hit by the saw blade is killed by it, its cut in half.
I think one of my favorite homebrew monsters I ever made was the Dragon Mimic. Just a mimic type creature that turns into a dragon and menaces people into giving it treasure. It may or may not have eaten that treasure.
Question Dudes: building a human GHOST who died as a Soldier & returned as a really pissed off Rogue.
Ghost starts with good spells but wondering if he should choose Necromancy spells, dual wield with magical weapons?
Also, should he use his human traits for the build or forgot these?
Any tips, thanks Dudes!❤
Kickstarter is still showing, Coming Soon, for me not live =(
Yes. It launches on the 26th
@DungeonDudes Thank you. The live on kickstarter sent me into panic mode. Waiting to send you all my money!
One thing I always do when making a monster is give them bith melee and ranged options. Typically one of those is notably worse, but having a monster be shut down because the players are out of range because of flight is just not fun for me.
Regarding stats, I recommend looking at Keith Ammann's The Monsters Know What They're Doing, and looking at how stats spreads reflect the combat behaviors of the monsters. So if ypu know how you want the monster to work you can put the stats in the proper array for that behavior
My favorite monster I've made thus far is probably the Calcium Crawler, inspired by the Canyon Crawlers from ATLA, but these have exorbitantly high calcium content and primarily reside in the Plane of Earth. It's been a while since I looked at them but designing them was a blast. A solid mental image of what i wanted them to be also helped a lot in the design process
7:37 tbh my 1st homebrew monster is a big bad guy... A pile of gold actually. I was inspired by one boss from WoW BFA, literal guardian of treasure room... Being that treasure. So, I've spent many hours to browse through monsters and started the process. Later found that thing in pathfinder but it was weaker than I needed to be.
So, today I would refine it's wording and balanced it a bit
So about y’all’s old video cleric barbarian
Storm herald
Tempest cleric
Elemental adept lighting
Channel divinity
+ crit
+sea storm
+great weapon master
+ your brutal critical dice
+rage +strength mod + spiritual weapon you casted pre combat (house rule me and my dm uses)
That would be a force of nature right there just saying
27:59 I see this “monsters last 3-5 rounds” discourse a ton. My combats go like minimum 6 rounds. Not sure why, but changes the design philosophy.
"Corpse Crone": When a warlock with a hag patron dies they can be brought back to life by their patron. They can come back to life unless you kill them with radiant or fire damage.
Based on the deadite hags from evil-dead. she has climbspeed, cunning-action, and a few cantrips. she can also lash out with her tongue to grab enemies and drag them towards her. she can get more powerful by eating corpses. Her niche is to stalk the party over a period of time if they dont kill her properly.
she has survived two encounters with the party. she is opportunistic and meant to be like this lingering background threat that shows up at inopportune times to attack the party, and then leaves when it looks like the battle is about to go in their favor.
4 encounters per game session! My crew really needs to pick up the pace I guess. We're lucky to make it through 1!
Monty’s shirt rocks
11:25 evil big fly. Lol
Love to Kelly and his tee! X
4 encounters per session? God I'm so jealous of you people. My group would get through a half a fight per game session.
Reposting your own video ideas you accidentally had on a class Tierlist from a while ago:
What if EVERY class/subclass had an "expanded" spell list they always know?
Regular fighters getting to know and cast shield by level 9 sounds amazing to me, even if it is just once. Or haste by level 17 or something like that.
Sounds simple, unusual and interesting.
Barbarians knowing Warding Bond? Enhance Ability? (ironically), Calm Emotions? Speak with Animals?
I would like to see other people's takes on this.
Non-spellcasting classes getting access to simple magic around up to 3rd level, once per long rest, while spellcasters can get a little bit more room to know spells or get spells not included on their list?
I’m curious if you folks will share what some of the pledge levels will be!
My first homebrew was a rousing success. A CR 15-ish undead against a party of 6-7 level 7 PCs
You? You are enough, and you are loved. The monsters? All monsters must die and there will never be enough.
On a serious note, I heard bear stat blocks are a great starting point for almost anything.
I've actually started to make my NPC spellcasters use castings per day of individual spells instead of standard spells lots.
A) I find myself not using most of the spells anyway, otherwise. This kind of forces me to change it up. After the 3rd time, the npc evoker Wizard casts fireball , the party gets pretty bored.
B) if I really want my NPC to get one more casting of fireball, then I can just cross out one of those sleet storms.
I've never actually had an NPC baddie use up all of his slots, though. The battle is always over before that.
May the dude be with you
Excellent as always, but shouldn’t there be at least an honorable mention of Tucker’s Kobolds?
On of the first homebrew monsters I made was just taking a giant rat and giving it the magma mephit’s breath weapon. And I told my players it was a half dragon rat. And the boss for the area I took the giant rat and a young red dragon and mashed them together to make “mom”.
I pretty much homebrew all my enemies to some extent, because even when the idea I have already exists, it's usually not the right difficulty for my players. Or I want it to be tailored to my players' abilities. Or I want to tailor it to the arena it is in.
About the monster mash: wouldn't it make more sense to run the encounters with the party for which the monster was made?