@@DungeonDudes My apologies on getting that wrong, and it was indeed funny. The best part of D&D is moments like this parties can look back on together.
So it's actually more of a group than a single Npc, but one of my current projects in my setting is a necromancer, who was once an adventurer but was driven mad by an eldritch horror, then then murdered his party mates, and raised them as powerful undead under his thrall, he's in the process of becoming a Lich, and his party mates are a ranger, a Paladin, and a divine soul sorcerer. The ranger is now a wight, the paladin is a death knight, and the sorcerer is a wraith, they were once very well renowned heroes of the realm, and I can't wait to see how it all plays out.
I introduce most of my players to a quest where they’re tasked to eliminate a band of goblins... that is literally a BAND of goblins that have instruments, the vicious mockery cantrip, cutting words feature, and 2 bardic inspiration dice.
I prioritize how much flavor and RP potential an NPC can give to the campaign. My favorite NPC: A winter wolf tasked by her pack to escort the PCs out of their region. She did fight alongside the party a couple times, but her main role ended up being throwing dead-pan, sarcastic insults at the PCs the entire journey.
I love giving NPCs awesome magic items. But remember, once they're dead, you're PCs get that magic item. So don't give you're NPCs a magic item you wouldn't want your players to have.
I was once holding a Haste on our Barbarian, as a Vengeance Paladin and we were fighting multiple high level spell-casters (we were like 17th level or so) and took three Fingers of Death to the face, survived and held concentration. Only had the help of one Portent from another party member. It was badass.
Fantastic advice guys, I've been doing this for years. This and Matt Colville's video on Action-Oriented Monsters should be required viewing for any DM trying to design interesting and exciting encounters, NPCs and monsters.
I love how you still give page numbers from the real books! Some RUclipsrs just give the chapter name or whatever because they present everything on D&DBeyond. I find that annoying because if you use D&DBeyond, it's easy to search anyhow, but if you have the books, the page number is super super useful. Thanks guys :)
One of the things I used to do was find a monster that was similar enough in power and changing things. For example, Strahd could be used as a base to generate a Mummy Lord with sorcerer spellcasting instead of wizardry.
DnDBeyond really makes this easy. Choose make a new monster based on an NPC you want to use as a template. Give it your NPC name, say Beatrice. Then do the same for a monster you want to steal from. Copy and paste the power from the monster into the NPC, and save Beatrice. Done!
One of the things I like to do for adversarial NPC's in 5e is to go back through 4e content for the different classes, and pick out a couple of cool Powers that a similar class would have there to use as a Recharge 5-6 or 6 ability, or a Legendary action. There are some great attack options in those books for some epic moments, like giving a Fighter-style character an ability where they dash at a target and attacks then, and then runs over to another target within 25-30 feet and attacking them also, and then yet a third target, all without provoking opportunity attacks and within the same action. Nothing scares your party more than seeing a big greatsword wielder attack your tank, and then immediately plow through to your squishies hiding in the back all in one fell swoop.
We had one spellcaster who took Imprisonment, and it kickstarted the entire next campaign when the surviving party went out to find a lvl 18 Wizard to free their friend.
In our Dragon of Icespire Peak game, the players were more powerful than they were "supposed" to be so I created a sub-category of dragon and made a "Young Adult" version of Cryovain. Most of the white dragon stats between young and adult were easy to just split the difference and making hybrid legendary actions and resistences was a TON of fun!
JNJ Tabletop i am in the same position, and i was considering adding legendary actions/resistances to Cryovain as well. cool to know that someone else had the same thought haha
I made the same too quick level ups mistake. My players just found a dead chromatic dragon's lair. With mundane and magic traps...still working. When they leave with their cursed loot I'm going to have everyone with some lose an ability point. Not sure if I want to force strongest ability or let the PC choose.
My DM at the time just tripled cryovain's hp and doubled all damage.... fastest TPK in my dnd career. He "reivived" us with full hp via our paladin's god. Tpk'd again... fun stuff
You guys have been nailing all my needs these last few weeks. Including helping my gf, a first time player with the dual wielding stuff last week! Hope you guys are good! Keep up the excellent work!!
As far as modifying existing stat blocks go, I have found that the Mummy Lord in the MM makes for a great lower-level reskinned Lich if you want to have your players fight one but they are not high enough level for it yet. Just replace its spells with a curated list of the Lich's most iconic spells and re-flavor the rest of its abilities in the battle and you're good to go. It even has a phylactery equivalent with the canopic jars.
What I do is basically what you guys suggest, but I dont even limit myself to using basic templates. Once I wanted a group of street kids that would attack the party, so I actually used the stat blocks for kobolds even though they were a bunch of Drow teens. I chose kobolds cause of pack tactics, which would help them feel like they had strength in numbers above all else. You can use stat blocks for virtually any monster for virtually any kind of NPC so long as you're able to flavor the abilities in a way that makes sense, and if ability doesnt make sense, just swap it out or get rid of it.
Using the Taz wonderland fight was so much fun. Flavoring all of the lich abilities as the suffering smoke and tying them into the story of our own game!
The one thing ive got in mind is to use some NPCs as the guiding beacon for my next campaigns party, teaching them and fighting alongside so they can marvel at their role models. And then slowly have them corrupted into monsters which they must fight.
This is kinda the same mindset I have. My world is inflicted by a curse of beastdom, where people who have died turn into various wild beasts losing all sense of humanity unless they are disposed of properly (burned, brought to a church, etc). My players all joined a guild and are going on different hunts/marks with a few guildmates learning the ropes. Those guildmates may eventually die and succumb to beastdom and will be adversaries for the party at some point. I'm very much looking forward to it.
My personal addition to this conversation are these two things: I love the variant dragon spell casting as a good rule of thumb to add innate spell casting. I added that to a kraken and just uses intelligence instead of charisma. Past that one amazing resource I found is the side kick template in the d and d essentials kit, pretty much custom made to stream line npc creation as it is like a abridged playerish npc making guide.
My experience with the DM process (as a new DM): a) Find something awesome = for example, cool NPC concept such as a rogue-like villain who is actually only a low-level rogue and instead gains most his power from being sorcerer using a subtle spell b) Plan and create bunch of stats for the monster/NPC c) Realize I made it overly complicated and lost the original idea in the process d) Simplify the NPC tremendously Really there is so much you can do just with MM + Volo's and a few ajustments. That cool concept? After building a weird Rogue/Sorcerer hybrid I instead picked up the mage stat block from MM, added metamagic, evasion, uncanny dodge and some proficiencies.
for spells, i recommend mostly ignoring the spellcasting system once the players hit 5th-7th level. spellcasting templates and monsters tend to have far more spells than you’ll ever use. for villain magic users, priests, or shamans i tend to just look through the spells and pick the ones i like. give a monster three or four spells that they can use, following a similar mindset that kelly and monty said. then you don’t have to worry about how many second level spell slots they have, because they weren’t ever going to cast Melf’s Acid Arrow anyway.
So many thanks to you guys! I start our first and campaign and I only was dm for three or four times for one-shots and now I start a whole campaign and this helped so much!
Thank you for making these guides, Dudes, they are fun, informative and well made :D I need to be reminded, from time to time, that a simple soulution is not worse than a complex one.
Oh and one of the staples you can always give an NPC .... spellscrolls for stuff like finger of death, teleport etc. You dont have to give the pcs those scrolls if the NPC uses them and sometimes even an not so magical NPC can use them. Also the players are less likely to complain if they dont get them and you can avoid powercreep that could happen with Magic items.
So helpful. I made an awesome evil Wood Elf Druid/Wizard NPC for my homebrew campaign that my players both love and hate. He sets traps using his Druid magic but uses Conjuration Wizard spells to conjure battlefield control effects and summon demons.
I have a big battle coming up in 2 weeks for our first Face to face session since lockdown. The party will be facing an NPC who has been behind everything that’s been going on since the start of the campaign. This video was perfect!
This couldn't come at a more perfect time as I'm about to DM my first game next week. This and the video about spells for villains and strongholds have been very helpful to me. Thanks a lot Dudes!
One of my favorites was a battle master demon slave who on a hit had a 50% chance of doing a 1d4 damage rebuttal of his weapon type almost as though each strike that was dealt to him in close combat (his prominent style of coliseum battle) was close enough for him to knick a small cut to my Player’s characters aswell. This made all my happy brutish players think carefully on how to approach this threat and gave a fun style of play to one of my players who chose range build. These were first time players so it was a hidden spotlight. Lots of environment made cover a thing and in general this fight made my players so excited and very threatened. In the end he fled, leaving the players with a bomb to take care of. They actually are planning on a hunt for this Npc in a session we hope to have soon... it’s been hard to get the table together again
A thing I like to do for NPCs beyond just adding a class feature or two is to give them a feat. Usually, it doesn't boost their CR at all (Pole-arm Mastery notwithstanding) and so long as it isn't something lame like Linguist, it really adds to the flavor. The Monster Manual actually does this a lot by giving Defensive Duelist to NPCs that have a formal martial training background. If they have the Parry reaction, it's just that feat slapped on.
I'm not sure why putting random abilities like Divine Smite on the Gladiator stat block, or switching the mage to a sorcerer and giving them some metamagic has never occurred to me. I watch all of y'alls videos but this is one of the best for DMs that you guys have made. Thanks for helping out the community so much!
Not a D&D player nor a DM but if NPCs have healing spells then there ought to be a party of villains to face off against the PCs. Having a villain party consist of a cleric, bard, barbarian, druid, fighter, and paladin would be a solid enemy party since the druid and bard act as backup healers and make hitting the melee fighters tougher.
I used a messy glop of methods similar to what y'all talked about to make my BBEG for a campaign I run based loosely off of the ghost stat block (with some augmented possession rules and a healthy dose of uncanny magical spears). The players have just been introduced to it, but I used the modified rule to also build a simple little "tutorial" character on the modified mechanic for them to meet so they can get the ropes on how possession works in my setting (it's up in the air if they'll try to kill the poor guy, but hey, such is life for a D&D NPC). I get that posession's a super easy to mess up mechanic, but oh do I wish more than one monster got it sometimes. That said, great content! For anyone who, like me, gets a bit too chaotic with the ingredients, I'd definitely recommend using some CR calculators if you're lazy on the math. Someone down below also mentioned DND Beyond's homebrew creator, which is a great way to cleanly line up the material you need, especially if you pay attention to the html coding in the block editor! Happy homebrewing, everyone! >:)c
Great video as ever! This came a little bit too late for me! I've been running antagonistic NPCs based on the Hunters from Bloodborne and at first I was using PC stats for them. A couple of weeks ago I started using monster stat blocks for NPCs and realised I should do that for the Hunters too. (Yesterday I had a Warlord as a party ally, flavoured as a vampire hunter named Elrikka Coppergard, that was weird, but a DM controlled NPC works way better as a monster than as a PC) Today I made 5 Hunters based mostly on stuff in Volo's. And Simon (based on the Archer) managed to kill a PC with his Bowblade, and the help of a Blood Elemental that he had made by robbing the graves of a town for years. Great video though, can't wait to apply the ideas to improving my NPCs and making more!
Great video... One of my best NPCs was a tiefling who had a magic dagger that gave him advantage and extra damage on creatures charmed or Friends-ed by him. He also had innate spellcasting for the charm effects. He is treated like a son by the party and helps them while staying out of danger(he is basically 1st level)
I did something I'm pretty proud of. I made a NPC that was actually not that strong but was quite literally unkillable. He would just get beaten up, pass out, then heal up in a few hours no matter what was done to him. He wasn't a villain, though. It was just that later on the players found out why he was immortal and had to fight the thing keeping him alive after getting it out. It was a fun thing and something I felt didn't take away from the players enjoying combat.
One thing that I've learned from designing NPC spellcasters is to be careful about giving them access to Magic Missile. Sure, it's not a very strong spell, but it's a base-level auto-3-hit attack that's extremely dangerous to any PCs dropped to 0 HP (and little else feels worse than getting picked off like that by a level 1 spell). Had this happen to a barbarian in one of my sessions. The group was taxed for spells and the barbarian did an amazing job absorbing damage for them. That said, when he did finally go down, the other players just left him down for the round and then my spellcaster got his turn. They quickly realized how much of a mistake that was. (And because it was his first game of D&D ever, I flipped a coin to see if the barbarian lived or died. He won the coin toss, so my spellcaster get "distracted" by something else)
In the campaign I'm running now, I made a "rival adventuring party", which ended up on the other side of the civil war as my PCs. While all of them are really cool characters in my opinion, I especially love the Open Hand Monk/Barbarian, who focuses on Grappling. Always trying to flank the party, uses the open hand feature with flurry of blows to knock the PC prone and then grapple them. That makes them unable to move completely and forces the party to prioritize saving their friend.
For us, it’s just practice. There are a lot of great tools out there, and each one takes several hours of learning and understanding to truly master. We didn’t master them in a day, we made some awful maps for a while.
One mean trick is just having an enemy Wizard specialize in Necromancy and then cast Danse Macabre. The zombies/skeletons raised will have an increase in HP equal to the caster's Wizard level, a bonus to attack rolls equal to their spell casting modifier, and damage rolls will be boosted by both proficiency bonus and the spellcasting modifier. With their Shortbows they're able to strike effectively from 80 feet away; and likely with +9 to the attack rolls. Depending on the level of the baddie they might have standard Animate Dead up, ghouls from Create Undead, or other stronger entities captured via Command Undead.
awesome. i'm a lazy dm and suck at creating npc-s. i recently used one of those methods (generic npc) to great success, it seems. Merry is liked by the players and has been a asset in fights. she also made them drunk for their first first job at the Clifftop Adventurers Guild, so thats great :D
I modified the archmage for my campaign that I plan on playing to make it be a major villain in the campaign and this was really helpful in telling me what challenging rating I need to make it as I wasn't sure if I should have made it 13 or 14 and I feel safe making it a challenge rating 14 now after what I have done.
At lower levely magic items can work too: One of my NPC Guards had a metal shortstaff that had 6 Charges of shocking grasp (useable from the staff) ... like cattle prod. It recharges 1d4 charges. Since my players are lowlevel it is still usefull and it does level with playerlevel. Apart from that there will be some items that consume a spellslot to cast an imprinted spell. Like a swordhandle that creates a flameblade if it consumes a slot. Things like this give options for a price. As for spellcasters ... Armor of aghastis can be a very good retributive and buffing spell without concentration.
When I first started with making up npcs I always tried taking the pc rout. For a good few years now I have been basically doing what is said in this vid so it's good that it's here for others to see.
Yes -- "cast" your NPCs using prominent actors or characters from movies, and do your best impression! If your PCs pick up the reference, it's usually an awesome laugh and helps them visualize the NPC. If they don't realize who you're doing an impression of, they'll love your roleplaying ability!
@@DungeonDudes great advice! It's easy to feel like you need to slap an accent on an NPC, but you might get away with simply raising or lowering the pitch of your voice too!
It’s not always about accents. I like to think about the “texture” of their speech pattern. Is it smooth or sharp? Do they stumble over their words or are they rigorously precise? Do they patter off quickly or do their words flow like molasses? Besides just being fun, voice acting is about expressing certain qualities of your NPCs to your players. Just ask yourself what qualities you want to express and what speech pattern would do that 😄
Would love to see an episode on how you guys organize your DM notes, both world notes and session notes. As a new DM I've found that to be a challenging thing for me to do and would love some advice
Great video as always. Could you make a future video about Mythic Encounters from the new Theros book? It adds an entire new level for epic boss fights and I would love to hear your ideas about it.
I've had a recurring NPC. SIR David Attenborough himself! The party randomly stumble upon him whilst travelling between towns and it is always funny and memorable. Like having his assistance mauled to death whilst David narrates or my newest one where he is narrating Koala bears in mating season and the one male has crafted a shiv to get rid of the competition so that he can take the female for himself.
I really like the black viper statblock from waterdeep dragon heist for a crimelord type npc Also one spell I like to have villains prepare is cloudkill (terrible spell for a player because by the time you pick it up the majority of enemies will be resistant or immune to poison damage but for the same reason it's great for a necromancer or a conjurer who summons fiends)
I didn't really create this NPC, but my players got attached to the spectator in lost mine of phandelver, and they ended up with a monster NPC companion through some good roleplay and amazing dice rolls.
I enjoy making monsters and NPC templates for fun in my free time. Yes, an official NPC template would likely work, bit I've probably made one I like better before I needed it hahaha
I would ignore the "Monster Statistics By Challenge Rating" table in the DMG. The stats in this table don't reflect the monsters in the monster manual. I figured this out when I was making some new beast for my player who is playing a moon circle Druid.
I have a half-Goblin Draconic Sorcerer (probably around level 6) that nuked the party (level 3 party) from across a river with a fireball before using a ring to teleport away on the next turn - rolled 33 on the Fireball with a +4 on the hit, half the party went down (the front line and the healer) Remainder of the party has to deal with a few goblins and some machines that haven't powered up yet (not in melee range yet). - This was the first encounter where an enemy actually spoke Common, as well ("Die filthy humans!", before proceeding to laugh maniacally) Thinking of giving her "Potent Spellcasting" from Cleric for my planned final encounter with this character (planned encounter is probably level 8/9 for the party) - a spicy +10 on her Firebolt basically
I mean all of this is just so cool! I can just disembowel 4 of my really good friends, but I just kind of want to do it in a undetermined amount of tendays.
I have been creating a whole campaign for a dm friend of mine. I use to write in college and wanted to bring that flavor to his group so they can enjoy it and at the moment I'm in the party where my character will eventually become one of the generals of the embodiment of death himself (the hand of the vail) and betray the party as I become the bbeg behind it all so I can do a large portion of the dming. Each general have their own duty to the lord of darkness. One is the gate keeper of his astral realm, one makes death knights, one loves the battle field and is a mercenary that collects souls with his blade, and one is the keeper of their lords book (backstory and big plot device for later) in his temple library, and my character will eventually be tasked with conquering the realm in the name of my new lord and the only way to nerf my character to stop me is to defeat all the generals and the lord of darkness. Then they will finally see my character that will probably be out of the story for a long period of time. This is a really quick summary of the story but making the npc's has been the best part. Can't wait to see the look on the players faces after going through everything with them.
i have the habit of turning old PC ideas i've had, into bosses by just doubling HP, giving a couple legendary resistances, & then having some legendary actions. I also run bosses like video game bosses where players could figure out how to shut down lair mechanics or disrupt legendary actions (usually by dealing a specific type of damage, the way fire shuts down a trolls regen)
Im intrigued from a techincal perspective, what camera is Monty using to shoot, and what camera is Kelly using to shoot? Also, i appreciate all the videos you guys produce, i defer my new players to your videos a lot.
Not a dm, but I like to play around on DnDBeyond, and decide to make a monster just for fun. Decided to create a "werepyre" from Adventure Quest and Adventure Quest Worlds. The result was really just a buffed vampire, but I added some more flavor with things like dealing extra dmg when there is a full moon. I actually think it worked out quite well in the end, though I'm not sure what the CR is yet.
on the fly NPC. Krahg'Yim. Literally all I did was take a Gnoll Pack Leader and gave him Polearm Master. He survived the one shot and may be a villain that resurfaces. Literally took less than 1 minute
Caos reflex an 8th level spell within 200 ft any concentration spell broken and not dismissed will trigger a wild magic surge. If you cast this spell instantaneously it lasts an hour and can be moved at the castors travel speed. If however you use the eight hour cast it's permanent and has a fixed location.
![Five Combat Encounter Building Mistakes in Dungeons and Dragons 5e [DM Tips]](/img/1.gif)
I am 100% here for the dramatic moment of Monty talking about killing Kelly's Wizard and Kelly just being like >.>....
Great times...
*fortunate son starts playing*
HAHAHAHA OH MY GLOB! Kelly's delivery of "...Yeah, great times." was absolutely perfect.
I was at that point and I immediately went to the comments expecting one of the top maybe ten comments to mention it.
Sure enough XD
21:55 The biggest insult wasn't that he brought up those sour memories, but Monty left it in the video XD
Actually, I (Kelly) do all the editing, I thought it was hilarious! 😂
@@DungeonDudes My apologies on getting that wrong, and it was indeed funny. The best part of D&D is moments like this parties can look back on together.
@@DungeonDudes "Yeah, great times."
So it's actually more of a group than a single Npc, but one of my current projects in my setting is a necromancer, who was once an adventurer but was driven mad by an eldritch horror, then then murdered his party mates, and raised them as powerful undead under his thrall, he's in the process of becoming a Lich, and his party mates are a ranger, a Paladin, and a divine soul sorcerer. The ranger is now a wight, the paladin is a death knight, and the sorcerer is a wraith, they were once very well renowned heroes of the realm, and I can't wait to see how it all plays out.
“Yeah, great times” lmao
Starting a campaign tomorrow, this video couldn't have come at a better time! Quality content guys
Thank you so much!
21:55 I choked on my coffee laughing. Low blow Monty XD
Thank you guys for validating all the many hours I've spent homebrewing NPCs for my game.
I introduce most of my players to a quest where they’re tasked to eliminate a band of goblins... that is literally a BAND of goblins that have instruments, the vicious mockery cantrip, cutting words feature, and 2 bardic inspiration dice.
I prioritize how much flavor and RP potential an NPC can give to the campaign. My favorite NPC: A winter wolf tasked by her pack to escort the PCs out of their region. She did fight alongside the party a couple times, but her main role ended up being throwing dead-pan, sarcastic insults at the PCs the entire journey.
I love giving NPCs awesome magic items. But remember, once they're dead, you're PCs get that magic item. So don't give you're NPCs a magic item you wouldn't want your players to have.
I mean, you could just take the magic items anyway and turn them into abilities instead.
I was once holding a Haste on our Barbarian, as a Vengeance Paladin and we were fighting multiple high level spell-casters (we were like 17th level or so) and took three Fingers of Death to the face, survived and held concentration. Only had the help of one Portent from another party member. It was badass.
Fantastic advice guys, I've been doing this for years. This and Matt Colville's video on Action-Oriented Monsters should be required viewing for any DM trying to design interesting and exciting encounters, NPCs and monsters.
I love how you still give page numbers from the real books! Some RUclipsrs just give the chapter name or whatever because they present everything on D&DBeyond. I find that annoying because if you use D&DBeyond, it's easy to search anyhow, but if you have the books, the page number is super super useful. Thanks guys :)
One of the things I used to do was find a monster that was similar enough in power and changing things. For example, Strahd could be used as a base to generate a Mummy Lord with sorcerer spellcasting instead of wizardry.
If you want to give your party a powerful magic item, they should have to pry it from the hands of an NPC.
I would love an episode about NPC spell selection and usage over a few archetypes. It would be both interesting and helpful.
DnDBeyond really makes this easy. Choose make a new monster based on an NPC you want to use as a template. Give it your NPC name, say Beatrice. Then do the same for a monster you want to steal from. Copy and paste the power from the monster into the NPC, and save Beatrice. Done!
One of the things I like to do for adversarial NPC's in 5e is to go back through 4e content for the different classes, and pick out a couple of cool Powers that a similar class would have there to use as a Recharge 5-6 or 6 ability, or a Legendary action. There are some great attack options in those books for some epic moments, like giving a Fighter-style character an ability where they dash at a target and attacks then, and then runs over to another target within 25-30 feet and attacking them also, and then yet a third target, all without provoking opportunity attacks and within the same action.
Nothing scares your party more than seeing a big greatsword wielder attack your tank, and then immediately plow through to your squishies hiding in the back all in one fell swoop.
We had one spellcaster who took Imprisonment, and it kickstarted the entire next campaign when the surviving party went out to find a lvl 18 Wizard to free their friend.
In our Dragon of Icespire Peak game, the players were more powerful than they were "supposed" to be so I created a sub-category of dragon and made a "Young Adult" version of Cryovain. Most of the white dragon stats between young and adult were easy to just split the difference and making hybrid legendary actions and resistences was a TON of fun!
JNJ Tabletop i am in the same position, and i was considering adding legendary actions/resistances to Cryovain as well. cool to know that someone else had the same thought haha
I made the same too quick level ups mistake. My players just found a dead chromatic dragon's lair. With mundane and magic traps...still working. When they leave with their cursed loot I'm going to have everyone with some lose an ability point. Not sure if I want to force strongest ability or let the PC choose.
My DM at the time just tripled cryovain's hp and doubled all damage.... fastest TPK in my dnd career. He "reivived" us with full hp via our paladin's god. Tpk'd again... fun stuff
@@ethandowler4669 sorry about how long it took to see this. It worked out really well for us!
@@WhatsAGoodName42069 Oooofff making changes like that can be tricky. Hopefully your DM learned a thing or eight that day lol
You guys have been nailing all my needs these last few weeks. Including helping my gf, a first time player with the dual wielding stuff last week! Hope you guys are good! Keep up the excellent work!!
I’m making a recurring villain NPC who will be a Swashbuckler Rogue, this advice has helped a lot!!
As far as modifying existing stat blocks go, I have found that the Mummy Lord in the MM makes for a great lower-level reskinned Lich if you want to have your players fight one but they are not high enough level for it yet. Just replace its spells with a curated list of the Lich's most iconic spells and re-flavor the rest of its abilities in the battle and you're good to go. It even has a phylactery equivalent with the canopic jars.
What I do is basically what you guys suggest, but I dont even limit myself to using basic templates. Once I wanted a group of street kids that would attack the party, so I actually used the stat blocks for kobolds even though they were a bunch of Drow teens. I chose kobolds cause of pack tactics, which would help them feel like they had strength in numbers above all else.
You can use stat blocks for virtually any monster for virtually any kind of NPC so long as you're able to flavor the abilities in a way that makes sense, and if ability doesnt make sense, just swap it out or get rid of it.
Using the Taz wonderland fight was so much fun. Flavoring all of the lich abilities as the suffering smoke and tying them into the story of our own game!
The one thing ive got in mind is to use some NPCs as the guiding beacon for my next campaigns party, teaching them and fighting alongside so they can marvel at their role models. And then slowly have them corrupted into monsters which they must fight.
This is kinda the same mindset I have. My world is inflicted by a curse of beastdom, where people who have died turn into various wild beasts losing all sense of humanity unless they are disposed of properly (burned, brought to a church, etc). My players all joined a guild and are going on different hunts/marks with a few guildmates learning the ropes. Those guildmates may eventually die and succumb to beastdom and will be adversaries for the party at some point. I'm very much looking forward to it.
Woohoo! This is so helpful for creating special bosses without breaking my mind! Thank you!
You are so welcome!
My personal addition to this conversation are these two things: I love the variant dragon spell casting as a good rule of thumb to add innate spell casting. I added that to a kraken and just uses intelligence instead of charisma. Past that one amazing resource I found is the side kick template in the d and d essentials kit, pretty much custom made to stream line npc creation as it is like a abridged playerish npc making guide.
Monty didnt feel like he was yelling at me this time in the intro. Thank you Monty.
Monty Martin tries to say "Hypnotic Patterin" as often as possible.
My experience with the DM process (as a new DM):
a) Find something awesome = for example, cool NPC concept such as a rogue-like villain who is actually only a low-level rogue and instead gains most his power from being sorcerer using a subtle spell
b) Plan and create bunch of stats for the monster/NPC
c) Realize I made it overly complicated and lost the original idea in the process
d) Simplify the NPC tremendously
Really there is so much you can do just with MM + Volo's and a few ajustments. That cool concept? After building a weird Rogue/Sorcerer hybrid I instead picked up the mage stat block from MM, added metamagic, evasion, uncanny dodge and some proficiencies.
for spells, i recommend mostly ignoring the spellcasting system once the players hit 5th-7th level. spellcasting templates and monsters tend to have far more spells than you’ll ever use. for villain magic users, priests, or shamans i tend to just look through the spells and pick the ones i like. give a monster three or four spells that they can use, following a similar mindset that kelly and monty said. then you don’t have to worry about how many second level spell slots they have, because they weren’t ever going to cast Melf’s Acid Arrow anyway.
This video released at the perfect time for my campaign. You guys are like mind readers. Thanks for all you do! Keep up the awesome work!
So many thanks to you guys! I start our first and campaign and I only was dm for three or four times for one-shots and now I start a whole campaign and this helped so much!
This is the PERFECT video for me. Thank you!
Thank you for making these guides, Dudes, they are fun, informative and well made :D I need to be reminded, from time to time, that a simple soulution is not worse than a complex one.
Oh and one of the staples you can always give an NPC .... spellscrolls for stuff like finger of death, teleport etc.
You dont have to give the pcs those scrolls if the NPC uses them and sometimes even an not so magical NPC can use them. Also the players are less likely to complain if they dont get them and you can avoid powercreep that could happen with Magic items.
So helpful. I made an awesome evil Wood Elf Druid/Wizard NPC for my homebrew campaign that my players both love and hate. He sets traps using his Druid magic but uses Conjuration Wizard spells to conjure battlefield control effects and summon demons.
I have a big battle coming up in 2 weeks for our first Face to face session since lockdown. The party will be facing an NPC who has been behind everything that’s been going on since the start of the campaign. This video was perfect!
This couldn't come at a more perfect time as I'm about to DM my first game next week. This and the video about spells for villains and strongholds have been very helpful to me. Thanks a lot Dudes!
This video has saved a lot of folks some trips to the drawing board, me included, thank you!
One of my favorites was a battle master demon slave who on a hit had a 50% chance of doing a 1d4 damage rebuttal of his weapon type almost as though each strike that was dealt to him in close combat (his prominent style of coliseum battle) was close enough for him to knick a small cut to my Player’s characters aswell. This made all my happy brutish players think carefully on how to approach this threat and gave a fun style of play to one of my players who chose range build. These were first time players so it was a hidden spotlight. Lots of environment made cover a thing and in general this fight made my players so excited and very threatened. In the end he fled, leaving the players with a bomb to take care of. They actually are planning on a hunt for this Npc in a session we hope to have soon... it’s been hard to get the table together again
A thing I like to do for NPCs beyond just adding a class feature or two is to give them a feat. Usually, it doesn't boost their CR at all (Pole-arm Mastery notwithstanding) and so long as it isn't something lame like Linguist, it really adds to the flavor. The Monster Manual actually does this a lot by giving Defensive Duelist to NPCs that have a formal martial training background. If they have the Parry reaction, it's just that feat slapped on.
I'm not sure why putting random abilities like Divine Smite on the Gladiator stat block, or switching the mage to a sorcerer and giving them some metamagic has never occurred to me. I watch all of y'alls videos but this is one of the best for DMs that you guys have made. Thanks for helping out the community so much!
Not a D&D player nor a DM but if NPCs have healing spells then there ought to be a party of villains to face off against the PCs.
Having a villain party consist of a cleric, bard, barbarian, druid, fighter, and paladin would be a solid enemy party since the druid and bard act as backup healers and make hitting the melee fighters tougher.
Your videos really help a lot in playing D&D (I mostly use the ones about DMing, as I'm mostly a DM)
I used a messy glop of methods similar to what y'all talked about to make my BBEG for a campaign I run based loosely off of the ghost stat block (with some augmented possession rules and a healthy dose of uncanny magical spears). The players have just been introduced to it, but I used the modified rule to also build a simple little "tutorial" character on the modified mechanic for them to meet so they can get the ropes on how possession works in my setting (it's up in the air if they'll try to kill the poor guy, but hey, such is life for a D&D NPC). I get that posession's a super easy to mess up mechanic, but oh do I wish more than one monster got it sometimes.
That said, great content! For anyone who, like me, gets a bit too chaotic with the ingredients, I'd definitely recommend using some CR calculators if you're lazy on the math. Someone down below also mentioned DND Beyond's homebrew creator, which is a great way to cleanly line up the material you need, especially if you pay attention to the html coding in the block editor!
Happy homebrewing, everyone! >:)c
Great video as ever!
This came a little bit too late for me!
I've been running antagonistic NPCs based on the Hunters from Bloodborne and at first I was using PC stats for them. A couple of weeks ago I started using monster stat blocks for NPCs and realised I should do that for the Hunters too. (Yesterday I had a Warlord as a party ally, flavoured as a vampire hunter named Elrikka Coppergard, that was weird, but a DM controlled NPC works way better as a monster than as a PC)
Today I made 5 Hunters based mostly on stuff in Volo's. And Simon (based on the Archer) managed to kill a PC with his Bowblade, and the help of a Blood Elemental that he had made by robbing the graves of a town for years.
Great video though, can't wait to apply the ideas to improving my NPCs and making more!
Great video...
One of my best NPCs was a tiefling who had a magic dagger that gave him advantage and extra damage on creatures charmed or Friends-ed by him. He also had innate spellcasting for the charm effects.
He is treated like a son by the party and helps them while staying out of danger(he is basically 1st level)
I did something I'm pretty proud of. I made a NPC that was actually not that strong but was quite literally unkillable. He would just get beaten up, pass out, then heal up in a few hours no matter what was done to him. He wasn't a villain, though. It was just that later on the players found out why he was immortal and had to fight the thing keeping him alive after getting it out. It was a fun thing and something I felt didn't take away from the players enjoying combat.
thanks you guys. This topic is exactly what I was looking for!
Monty: On your doorstep.
Kelly: From the bottom of your well.
One thing that I've learned from designing NPC spellcasters is to be careful about giving them access to Magic Missile. Sure, it's not a very strong spell, but it's a base-level auto-3-hit attack that's extremely dangerous to any PCs dropped to 0 HP (and little else feels worse than getting picked off like that by a level 1 spell).
Had this happen to a barbarian in one of my sessions. The group was taxed for spells and the barbarian did an amazing job absorbing damage for them. That said, when he did finally go down, the other players just left him down for the round and then my spellcaster got his turn. They quickly realized how much of a mistake that was.
(And because it was his first game of D&D ever, I flipped a coin to see if the barbarian lived or died. He won the coin toss, so my spellcaster get "distracted" by something else)
In the campaign I'm running now, I made a "rival adventuring party", which ended up on the other side of the civil war as my PCs. While all of them are really cool characters in my opinion, I especially love the Open Hand Monk/Barbarian, who focuses on Grappling. Always trying to flank the party, uses the open hand feature with flurry of blows to knock the PC prone and then grapple them. That makes them unable to move completely and forces the party to prioritize saving their friend.
"...Yeah, great times." You guys never fail to make me laugh!"
Perfect timing on this video, I’m literally beating my head against the wall because I need to come up with about 10+ NPC’s
You guys are amazing! Thanks for the thoughtful and informative tips.
I’m big into homebrew stuff so keep this content coming
I will never understand how others are able to use digital map tools so easily.
Edit: I will accept help from others too. 😂
For us, it’s just practice. There are a lot of great tools out there, and each one takes several hours of learning and understanding to truly master. We didn’t master them in a day, we made some awful maps for a while.
Give me a yell on the DD discord and I might be able to help.
You always make amazing videos, thanks for the great effort you always show on the making of them.
One mean trick is just having an enemy Wizard specialize in Necromancy and then cast Danse Macabre. The zombies/skeletons raised will have an increase in HP equal to the caster's Wizard level, a bonus to attack rolls equal to their spell casting modifier, and damage rolls will be boosted by both proficiency bonus and the spellcasting modifier. With their Shortbows they're able to strike effectively from 80 feet away; and likely with +9 to the attack rolls. Depending on the level of the baddie they might have standard Animate Dead up, ghouls from Create Undead, or other stronger entities captured via Command Undead.
Great video concept - very useful.
Glad you think so!
awesome. i'm a lazy dm and suck at creating npc-s. i recently used one of those methods (generic npc) to great success, it seems. Merry is liked by the players and has been a asset in fights. she also made them drunk for their first first job at the Clifftop Adventurers Guild, so thats great :D
I modified the archmage for my campaign that I plan on playing to make it be a major villain in the campaign and this was really helpful in telling me what challenging rating I need to make it as I wasn't sure if I should have made it 13 or 14 and I feel safe making it a challenge rating 14 now after what I have done.
Caldera the Argent. A white dragon who can turn into an Archmage. CR 27. My players are gonna have soooooo much fun with that fight.
how was it
At lower levely magic items can work too:
One of my NPC Guards had a metal shortstaff that had 6 Charges of shocking grasp (useable from the staff) ... like cattle prod. It recharges 1d4 charges.
Since my players are lowlevel it is still usefull and it does level with playerlevel.
Apart from that there will be some items that consume a spellslot to cast an imprinted spell. Like a swordhandle that creates a flameblade if it consumes a slot. Things like this give options for a price.
As for spellcasters ... Armor of aghastis can be a very good retributive and buffing spell without concentration.
When I first started with making up npcs I always tried taking the pc rout. For a good few years now I have been basically doing what is said in this vid so it's good that it's here for others to see.
Nice work on the video!
Any tips for voice acting your NPCs? I keep falling into an awkward Australian accent 😂
Yes -- "cast" your NPCs using prominent actors or characters from movies, and do your best impression! If your PCs pick up the reference, it's usually an awesome laugh and helps them visualize the NPC. If they don't realize who you're doing an impression of, they'll love your roleplaying ability!
@@DungeonDudes Thanks for the advice! 😄
@@DungeonDudes great advice! It's easy to feel like you need to slap an accent on an NPC, but you might get away with simply raising or lowering the pitch of your voice too!
Dungeon Dudes I really needed that advice, 90% of my NPCs all have a bad Scottish accent 😂
It’s not always about accents. I like to think about the “texture” of their speech pattern. Is it smooth or sharp? Do they stumble over their words or are they rigorously precise? Do they patter off quickly or do their words flow like molasses? Besides just being fun, voice acting is about expressing certain qualities of your NPCs to your players. Just ask yourself what qualities you want to express and what speech pattern would do that 😄
you guys are awesome dudes.
Did...did you read my mind that I need this?
Thanks for the discussion!
Would love to see an episode on how you guys organize your DM notes, both world notes and session notes. As a new DM I've found that to be a challenging thing for me to do and would love some advice
I just saw “5 Tips for Homebrewing”, and was very excited ...
Great video as always. Could you make a future video about Mythic Encounters from the new Theros book? It adds an entire new level for epic boss fights and I would love to hear your ideas about it.
Good topic
Always looking for ideas on this
Glad to hear that :)
Your best video ever! Great job!
I've had a recurring NPC. SIR David Attenborough himself!
The party randomly stumble upon him whilst travelling between towns and it is always funny and memorable. Like having his assistance mauled to death whilst David narrates or my newest one where he is narrating Koala bears in mating season and the one male has crafted a shiv to get rid of the competition so that he can take the female for himself.
Thank you so much! Starting my first campaign and I literally printed out extra character sheets for NPCs 🤦♂️ This will be a HUUGE help!!
Great video, I also find it funny that the info tab for the video has Baldur Gate as the game 😂
I really like the black viper statblock from waterdeep dragon heist for a crimelord type npc
Also one spell I like to have villains prepare is cloudkill (terrible spell for a player because by the time you pick it up the majority of enemies will be resistant or immune to poison damage but for the same reason it's great for a necromancer or a conjurer who summons fiends)
I didn't really create this NPC, but my players got attached to the spectator in lost mine of phandelver, and they ended up with a monster NPC companion through some good roleplay and amazing dice rolls.
I enjoy making monsters and NPC templates for fun in my free time. Yes, an official NPC template would likely work, bit I've probably made one I like better before I needed it hahaha
Thank you for this.
I would ignore the "Monster Statistics By Challenge Rating" table in the DMG. The stats in this table don't reflect the monsters in the monster manual. I figured this out when I was making some new beast for my player who is playing a moon circle Druid.
Are you guys gonna make a video on the Wildemount subclasses? I’d love to see your take on building an echo knight
I have a half-Goblin Draconic Sorcerer (probably around level 6) that nuked the party (level 3 party) from across a river with a fireball before using a ring to teleport away on the next turn - rolled 33 on the Fireball with a +4 on the hit, half the party went down (the front line and the healer)
Remainder of the party has to deal with a few goblins and some machines that haven't powered up yet (not in melee range yet). - This was the first encounter where an enemy actually spoke Common, as well ("Die filthy humans!", before proceeding to laugh maniacally) Thinking of giving her "Potent Spellcasting" from Cleric for my planned final encounter with this character (planned encounter is probably level 8/9 for the party) - a spicy +10 on her Firebolt basically
"... Yeah, great times." Hahaha!
I watched your livestream for the first time this Tuesday. Way better Than watching afterward ok youtube!
Thanks for tuning in!
Dungeon Dudes thanks for hosting! Chud is easily my favorite character.
I mean all of this is just so cool! I can just disembowel 4 of my really good friends, but I just kind of want to do it in a undetermined amount of tendays.
21:55 you're welcome
Transmute Rock is one of my favorite spells for evil wizards to have.
I have been creating a whole campaign for a dm friend of mine. I use to write in college and wanted to bring that flavor to his group so they can enjoy it and at the moment I'm in the party where my character will eventually become one of the generals of the embodiment of death himself (the hand of the vail) and betray the party as I become the bbeg behind it all so I can do a large portion of the dming. Each general have their own duty to the lord of darkness. One is the gate keeper of his astral realm, one makes death knights, one loves the battle field and is a mercenary that collects souls with his blade, and one is the keeper of their lords book (backstory and big plot device for later) in his temple library, and my character will eventually be tasked with conquering the realm in the name of my new lord and the only way to nerf my character to stop me is to defeat all the generals and the lord of darkness. Then they will finally see my character that will probably be out of the story for a long period of time. This is a really quick summary of the story but making the npc's has been the best part. Can't wait to see the look on the players faces after going through everything with them.
i have the habit of turning old PC ideas i've had, into bosses by just doubling HP, giving a couple legendary resistances, & then having some legendary actions. I also run bosses like video game bosses where players could figure out how to shut down lair mechanics or disrupt legendary actions (usually by dealing a specific type of damage, the way fire shuts down a trolls regen)
“Yeah, great times. “ still laughing at that.
Im intrigued from a techincal perspective, what camera is Monty using to shoot, and what camera is Kelly using to shoot? Also, i appreciate all the videos you guys produce, i defer my new players to your videos a lot.
Not a dm, but I like to play around on DnDBeyond, and decide to make a monster just for fun. Decided to create a "werepyre" from Adventure Quest and Adventure Quest Worlds.
The result was really just a buffed vampire, but I added some more flavor with things like dealing extra dmg when there is a full moon. I actually think it worked out quite well in the end, though I'm not sure what the CR is yet.
on the fly NPC. Krahg'Yim. Literally all I did was take a Gnoll Pack Leader and gave him Polearm Master. He survived the one shot and may be a villain that resurfaces. Literally took less than 1 minute
Caos reflex an 8th level spell within 200 ft any concentration spell broken and not dismissed will trigger a wild magic surge. If you cast this spell instantaneously it lasts an hour and can be moved at the castors travel speed. If however you use the eight hour cast it's permanent and has a fixed location.
The two monster manual expansion books have a Absolute Ton of templates for monsters and npcs
The good ol' D&D trauma stare at 22:05