How to Create Your Own Monsters in 5e Dungeons & Dragons

hello fellow Frankenstein's I'm Pruitt and this is Jim Davis and today we are going to show you how to twist God's work into a horrible slithering abomination it's home brew monsters on web DM alright Jim yeah let's craft an episode about crafting home - monsters why home brew a monster in the first place oh we have the monster manual we got tel aviv's one we got we got bolos you know me we have all these books full of monsters full of monsters yeah for just from Wizards of the coast not to mention all the other so why home brew monsters because none of those are custom to your setting you know that's the that's sort of the the the big one for me because with you know the hundreds and hundreds of monsters they're out there for this additional loan let alone other editions of D&D plus other role-playing games in general you still might need or want or would benefit from having monsters that are custom for your setting and if we think about it for a minute this this sort of idea of creating custom content for your setting is is at the heart of the hobby and and in the early years it was it was much more explicit and and the the game as written was explicitly like a toolkit approach and I think a lot of the times when people complain about older editions of the game being incomplete or having a lot of weird rules and inconsistencies they are expecting the game to be this holistic complete and internally consistent system and not a collection of systems that you will then put together in different combinations and add your own stuff in to create the game you want to play right and that's sort of do-it-yourself homebrew sort of ethos is you know one of my favorite parts of the hobby and it's a very satisfying creative outlet for a DM you can surprise players with new monsters particularly if you've got like veteran players who as much as they try to cut let their there's their player experience color how they play their characters I can't help but remember all the different things that monsters do and just you know they have that information so spring a brand new monster on them those are those are the reasons why you would you would want to homebrew and and I think that that the big thing about homebrew that I see the most of we get a lot of questions about this like how do i homebrew X X Y Z where there's monsters magic items spells subclasses the like and the answer that I always want to give people that sometimes I worries a little bit too flippant or dismissive is just like you just do it there's not a trick to it there's not a secret now there's experience right there there's things that you will learn as you you know as you do more of it and you play test your creations and use them in your games but the the idea that that number one you need some kind of special permission to do this in the first place is bupkis forget all that throw that out yeah you are the sium that you're the only authority you need to be concerned with it's like what it is is what you need to do to divorce yourself it's the same thing as when you buy a mattress and it says do not remove this under penalty of law oh sure actually does people like you're not supposed to it's like rip that tag right off you bought it you bought the mattress sleep on it however the [ __ ] you want sure sure you bought this game make the monsters that you want for it I can imagine how if you're starting out in the hobby and you're not you know you don't have that that kind of benefit of state for myself where there was not a bunch of videos to available to watch there wasn't a lot of resources available to figure out the game and so you do just sort of have to to just do it until he waited until until it works and and in that respect I think that approach is is good but you know you I can also have a lot of sympathy for the people who do come into the Hobby and it seems like they they seem to think that that there's permission that needs to be given or or that there's some way that they can do it wrong or something like that and maybe there's a lot of anxieties wrapped up in it or they're worried about doing their players a disservice by not thinking about how they're going to homebrew their content as much as they can so but but here web DM we are very much in the in the vein of don't sweat it practice makes perfect and that that the doing of the thing is what we want to get to quickest exact so we're gonna let's talk about just making some of your own monsters don't sweat it don't regret it and then fake it till you make it sure in this case we're making monster so we're so where do you begin when making monsters I usually begin with some kind of concept almost it's almost always a you know an image or a theme or something about an antagonist a monster occasionally I have a mechanic in mind okay that I want to try out or unleash so for instance in fifth edition I really like those mechanics that are about when this attack brings you to zero X happens right right so whether you know whether it's those type of undead attacks it's like alright this this attack hits you make a constitution say if you fail you're your max hit points is like lowered by that amount and then if you're killed by this attacking you that's it yeah I like those because I think that those kind of writers on attacks are very often a way to make the game deadlier and to have enemies that are really fearsome most of the time it's it's a theme it's a concept I need a you know a desert stalker type animal or beast or monstrosity and occasionally it's more like I want to create a monster that kills characters what's what's a good way to do that and so that's that's my starting point right to to either come up with a concept or a mechanical hook longtime viewers will know that that's sort of how I also come up with characters so there's a lot of similarity and an overlap there at least in terms of the you know imagining something and working through the implications of that and then figuring out how to translate that vision into the mechanics of the game so they're very often very similar in that respect with concept versus mechanics though just something take precedent ever with you or is it just for the situation you're in yeah you know okay well I'm gonna do mechanics more this time than concept I get what you're saying ya know that concept always wins okay I might not always start there but if you don't know if I don't if I don't have a strong concept for a monster then that means I don't have a strong idea for how I want to use them in the game I don't have a strong idea of what you know their place in the game world how it influences it how it's gonna interact with the players and it might just be more like I kind of would like to do this little thing and and very often those those kinds of monsters are not evocative they're not they're not numerable and so I try to stay away from that and wait until I have a really strong concept in mind to do that now I I have a lot of sort of criteria that I would use for a concept or how I might present something to me that the the first one is I like creating monsters that are weird and unique in some way I really think sometimes that the the way that modern versions of DNA are presented as like this is a setting in and of itself not necessarily a toolkit for you to make your own stuff but it comes with its implied setting in there and and there's all this lore that sort of already packaged in with the monsters and the like get a sense from DMS that there's an expectation that everything in the monster manual has to have a place in my world and is multiple copies of Ryan an example of this is not it's not the Medusa it's the race of Medusa's right as opposed to the Medusa being the name of the Gorgon that is this creature this mythological figure cursed by the gods and I'm guarding whatever you know sort of location that it is and it having a lure and the mythos and a place that's embedded in enmeshed in your setting it's where just like ah well there's this there's many of them snake-haired petrification gaze ladies or just thick on the ground in this setting there's a lot of things about the monster manual where you know they are presenting prepackaged lore for you in case you don't want to use or you don't wanna have to come up with your own you just want something quick or you just want to read something and be inspired by it but thinking about monsters as these unique threats these weird sort of legendary creatures it's not a chimera it's the chimera yeah and maybe it's bigger and larger than life and does something new and different in extra than the baseline monster but those are the kinds of monsters that I really like making that this is unique one-of-a-kind and weird not not just you know the only version of X but but a truly different kind of creature in the same vein of starting where where can our perspective monster makers start as far as like like as far as like looking for like considerations in making oh yeah thank you like I mean I think some whatever inspires you right like if you're you know an Internet the image binging you're just looking for sort of inspirational images or you're reading a lot of things that inspire you taking mythological figures and turning them into monsters or other media really and being inspired by that or you're taking monsters that it already exists from the game and mixed machine mashing them you know I'm gonna take a dragon and another kind of creature and Maxima together let some dragon Apple if there's something like that in draggable away you know or any other number of a sort of weird combinations of monsters maybe the Wizards experiment or something oh yeah right what do you think owl bears come from right or an owl and a bear one night too much to drink sometimes it's like a variant right you know there's a monster in the monster man you're like I like I want something like this but it's a little different those are places where I will start conceptually but then once I'm ready to kind of move off that stage I've got an idea for the monster in mind and you know I may be rolled on some random tables or something to give me an idea of its appearance or I've I've seen something that's really got me my juices flowing yeah yeah yeah what resources do you do you delve into sources I think like the starting point that you that you would really want to consider is are you gonna make this thing entirely from scratch or are you gonna take an existing monster and modify it yeah and the existing monster and modify it is everything from take that monster and only change the name and and how you present that monster to them to you know changing almost everything about it and you're using the base as a reference point a starting point when otherwise you're just gonna remake the whole thing I don't know you know it really depends I'm a fan of whatever is the least amount of effort that it's gonna take you to do if you can reskin something reskin it if giving it just like one or two extra little abilities is going to make it unique then more power to you yeah REE skinning isn't gonna cut it then is there a way to just sort of like add stuff on to the monster takeaway and starting completely from scratch is just one of those things where I I mean I sometimes I do it if I need to or if I'm creating a monster that just doesn't have any any reference point in a published of a published creature but as we said earlier there are so many monster books out there this is so many resources for monsters in fifth edition you probably find something to use as a base and then ya move on from there and some take something away oh I want you know I want a whole like slew of like lesser angelic beings yeah it's like okay we'll just take like giants and give them wings switch their damage type to radiant sure yeah and you got a really big angel oh yeah giving a creature of fly speed giving a creature a magical attack allowing it to cast a couple of handful of spells that you never really present as like this is full-on magic it's more like they can sort of produce magical effects or yeah have some sort of innate power it's a full-blown like you're making up new abilities yourself and sort of presenting them to the table and sort of working through that play test material and and really going all out and using your creative output to make these new mechanics and these new game elements that that you're going to use if you're looking for guidance if you're looking for a little to make sure you're not too far outside the bounds the Dungeon Master's guide does have some guidelines to create your your own monster they start on page 273 of the Dungeon Master's guide sort of towards the back and it gives advice on everything from modifying a monster not a lot of advice there to how to create a monster quickly using the monster to statistics by CR chart that's the one that'll tell you like if it's a CR - this is sort of where it's AC should be this is about how many hit points we'll have here's kind of what its damage output will be moving onto that from like how to create a full-on monster stat block and then the monster features table on page 280 is sort of like a big a lot of different types of abilities that the monsters have it'll give you an example of right this is like an orc that has aggressive or something like that so you can go and look in the monster males or see what's there but this chart is a master list of that and I think probably that chart and that the two charts that are there statistics by CR and the monster features probably two that I would use the most it's a good time to sort of talk a bit about CR and and how it's it's not necessarily a good barometer for how tough a monster is certainly not once you've gotten the idea for how the system works and what your players are like and how they play the game but a lot of the features in the Dungeon Master's guide do use a proximate CR or anticipated CR as a way to guide your process through it so you want at least be familiar enough with the challenge rating and and how it's calculated and what you do with it that that that part of the monster creation process is at least understand it assuming you're not just gonna ignore it entirely right and just like I'm gonna this had this creature has 8 hit died and an AC of 13 and 4 attacks and you know it has that because that's what I need it to have and that's what makes sense for for the monster and a lot of times just thinking through it like that like okay this is a really tough beast like how difficult should it be to hurt should it be like plate mail difficult to hurt yeah like chainmail really really tough hide or does it have just normal skin awesome actually wear armor rice is it a Const Ramin like yeah there's there's a lot of considerations to take into account yes right yes there is so let's let's let's let's start moving through some of those things because I mean there's quite a lot to consider when creating monsters like yeah so I think to me that the big thing is is is thinking through what the point of the monster is and and this does require a bit of meta game thinking on your part is the monster a big bruiser that's meant to be physically imposing and menacing to the party they hit hard but but maybe if you can stay out of their reach it's not going to be that that difficult of a fight or maybe they're like a mastermind type enemy that that has a lot of minions and other things that they control and they sit at the center of a web of intrigue and and allies and and all the life that they'll send out to the party that's gonna mean a different style a monster different abilities that they need like you can create sort of a monster that does a little bit of everything and is just sort of like well they're tough they can fight they've also got some magic they've got some ways to manipulate things or rakshasas something like that where they have some magic some ability to sort of sneak around and manipulate there they're also sort of tough for you know the the levels that you might introduce them and they can hit pretty hard they're just sort of a good overall rounded out kind of antagonist for a mid-level party and so thinking about that using the Monster Manual as a reference point even if you're not gonna modify an existing monster just being familiar enough with the different types of monsters what they can do how they're used in play will help you understand what what what you want out of your monsters and and will get you to that point you know a bit smoother as opposed to just I'm gonna pick a lot of stuff either at random or a roll on some random charts and see if it all fits together having an idea in your head for the game a purpose of your monster not like the in law or in setting lore but you know what's their function their role in the game is a good place to to start for those considerations because you want to talk and think about you know their abilities and how tough they are and what's their HP and how many hit dice do they have and do they have any weaknesses definitely do they have any weaknesses resistances thinking about all of those things thinking about their abilities their weaknesses their resistances what their behavior is like what a typical member of this species if you're creating like a you know a whole group of monsters it's like worthwhile I think it's kind of like a good time to mention the the monster alphabet from Goodman games because there's a lot of if you are big into like homebrew and sort of like coming up with your own stuff it's a great book full of a lot of tables and inspiration and the like and gives you a lot to sort of think about as you're home brewing your own monsters it's not just for dungeon crawl classics you can use it for wide variety of games but it it it gives you a lot to chew on I guess I'm kind of curious right now like how do you come up with like sort of abilities like what are your considerations as you're looking at homebrew monsters Krim well right now I you know I'm I'm I'm a wee a wee baby DM and so I have modified a few monsters ah right it's really just like okay I kind of want this I want this monster to do this yes and so you just you give it that ability right I want you know and I know it's not a monster but same thing kind of with like NPCs sure rather monster is a vague term here yeah you know is if you if you need them to have like like that like the reaction bump a sea bump a paler parry ability ability I give that to my bandit cap I mean I think Dana captain actually gets that but you know I don't really kind of things but for other kind of things like I love that one all the abilities are out there and so it just it doesn't matter just pick and choose you know I mean take into consideration the party that you're gonna throw this against you know take the action economy into into account to some degree but I know that can be quite a lot to think about for some people like you you're not really thinking like 10 steps down you're just like I want this bruiser in here but like are they fast no okay so they're slow yeah so they have far they have a high AC yes yeah do they have a lot of hit points yes okay how many hit how many times can they hit how long will they actually stay in the fight right you know these are all things to kind of consider that's mostly what I do I mean I I haven't exhausted the Monster Manual like you have so I'm still like just flipping through and like I've talked about many times like I've just never been one of those players that when they flip to the Monster Manual I don't really read what they can do I try to not look at that I like reading the lore and I like looking at the pictures and kind of getting a feel for it but I try not to spoil myself as that way and so now as a DM when I'm flipping through and read my holy [ __ ] they can do that you know like yeah and I'm like I just never knew you know it's it's all still new to me yeah and so I you know I'm mostly a Tweaker what I hear though and and for first off that's perfectly fine play for decades and you never run out of interesting foes to fight but what I'm hearing is that it's it's really easy for for Newton for a new dungeon master you just say like yeah I want to change this and a lot of what particularly sort of beginning of the video we're talking about is just it there's no trick to it there's no nothing you just understand what you want and a lot of this process is considering a lot is sitting and thinking and understanding the point of what you're trying to do the purpose of it how do you want to use this creature you don't have to do all that you can just sort of be like I kind of want this creature to be a little bit tougher than the toughest party member so I'll give it one more AC than the toughest party member I'll have it the same hip hit points as them or maybe double their hip points or something I do that all the time I alter hip points in AC all the time with my group they're a bunch of badasses you got a barbarian a monk and a cleric and a badass rogue yeah like no no it's almost always max hit points and usually bump the AC by one or two yeah and I might even bump the damage by it died I've done that quite a bit recently just cuz it's just like I want to challenge these people but right I'm still trying to use the CR as a general just to get in the ballpark right and but I have noticed it's like now I need to go ahead and bump almost all those things up by a bit and then that's that CR works yeah for this party no no like oh they're all seventh level I grabbed a couple of CR 7s throw it in there and just go ahead juice it just a bit and they still they have a fun fight you know it lasts four or five rounds six rounds and it's a fun encounter right that's not I wouldn't even count necessarily count that as as big modifications because of like the we're just thing with the hip points you know you have what's presented in the monster mail is just the average so doubling it or even tripling it is sometimes still within the it's still not gonna be too far outside the bounds but it does show how easy it is to do and and how you don't have to do a lot to tweak the encounter in the monster enough to to produce something memorable and unique in terms of just you sort of coming back and looking at the considerations that you might want for your monster consider it as a lair or not where is that lair where is it situated what does the lair look like is it a small sort of just place where they sleep is it extensive complex something what kind of environment does the lair take place in that might help determine yeah sort of it what kind of monster it is and how it works does that monster have minions does that monster mean when you're home brewing the monster it might be one of those things that of course they're gonna have minions that come around and do its bidding right right how does it get the minions how does it keep them around you know are these minions something that it can produce itself does it have to go and gather them how does it convince them to stay all of those things answering those questions figuring out how that works will again give you an idea who your monster is what it is that they need to do the job that you've assigned them and and will again now we're starting to build it we've know sort of at what resources they have where they where they reside I mean now we starting about the abilities that they have not just their strength dexterity Constitution etcetera but also like what sort of powers they might have do they have access to magic or magical items do they have some sort of innate ability that replicates a magical effect and this is where you can just let your imagination run wild and and by thinking outside of mechanical terms and just thinking and concepts and effects I want them to do this I want them to do that it'd be cool if this happened or if they had this sort of ability and then translating that into the mechanics by looking at if it's an attack does it impose certain conditions or does it do a combination of damage types that this is how it represents sort of you know itself my big giant undead ogre thing that's all full puss and disease and whatnot might have a vomit attack that does acid and bludgeoning or acid and piercing or acid and poison poison there's something right in poison it burns and poisons you of it then there's all these chunky bits in it that will get you that's something to think about right you know they find that moment between where your concept of something what you would like to happen becomes a game yeah that can be a weird transition from there as you sort of grapple with like is this a condition that I'm trying to impose is this just a lot of damage is it too much damage too little damage all of these things and and and we're talking here now about the weaknesses that the monster has any sort of special defenses or special attacks that it might have and and and before we even moved on into sort of lore of it and its motivations and what kind of typifies a typical member of this monsters group all of those things these mechanical bits to your monster you might feel the need to do extensive play testing on them you might feel the need for them to be perfectly balanced for it to be this well crafted well thought-out thing and that can a lot of that can happen during the game and you know you approach your players and say hey I made this new monster tonight we're gonna try it out for the first time I think it's gonna be pretty fun but we might need to make some adjustments on the fly because this is the first time we're using yeah you know and and and recognizing as a dungeon master that you might have made a big misstep and thrown something that you created against your party that can just curb stomp them and that that will happen again as you realize that that your perfect vision of this apex predator monster is maybe too good and and you're not you know you were not ready to follow through with the cut with what that means you know it's one thing to be like yeah I put this elder dragon here because I want there to be an elder dragon and you guys picked a fight with it at third level it's another it to be like well you didn't necessarily know what was in there this is a new thing you know we'll we will have a bit of flexibility as we sort of play tests as we go and I don't know that I I've never encountered a player who's been really upset with that a lot of them are just fine with fighting something new and unique and different oh yeah totally you know but assuming there's even a fight yeah if if if that scenario did play out like you explained though where you're like hey guys we're gonna do this monster and then it destroys them wouldn't you retcon that I might wreck on that and I might I might look you know if there's not a way to salvage it after the fact like oh it's savages you and everything but now you just wake up in its lair or or it was like way you know evil Lucan that in the ice cave right right exactly and you know or if it's just bad if it just goes bad then at the first sign of that I might tell the players hey guys let's just finish this fight let's see how it goes and if it's if if it's like devastates the party and particularly if it's not an interesting or relevant to what's going on in in the game at the moment and does it produce a more interesting outcome then maybe just say like hey tonight guess what we were playing but now we're just doing pure play testing I don't know it might be cheesy and kind of hackneyed but I would might even do a thing like that was an illusion or losing some cast dream on you sure there's any number of ways you can kind of like save a you know y'all wake up from your long wrestle what the [ __ ] talk about a shared dream right turns out the monster has an ability you didn't know about so that and that's what is it play testing for stuff that you're creating only for your group first of all I don't know how much play testing needs to be done with it other than everyone needs to go in with an attitude of we're experimenting we're creating we are thinking of interesting things to do and there might occasionally be slip-ups and we get a result that's way outside the bounds of what we want and we'll deal with that when it comes up it's more like an attitude of being open to new material open to play testing and and open it open to sort of creating your own you're right right you've taken all these considerations in sure you're making your monsters let's let's just let's just chat about some some monsters got about some awesome example sure sure sure you ask me like how I'd do it Jeff how do you do it I came up with a lot of custom creatures for out of the abyss yeah so an iran rise of Tiamat and so the back half of hoard of the Dragon Queen I I made a purposeful decision to not alter a lot to not change things I wanted to see how the game played without doing any of that and sort of realize that after a certain level with the kind of game that I was running in the kind of players that I had that I couldn't use baseline monsters in the party after about eighth or ninth level without either needing to put a lot more of them on the table that I wanted to manage at one time or just had to accept the fact that my the characters that were in the game that I had were we're just gonna out class the monsters if I was using the base sort of see our guideline system so four out of the abyss I did a lot of custom monsters by creating different sorts of drow that we're gonna pursue the party and some of those were taking like the four original drow monsters before morning tenants came out and and just like adding characteristics onto them that I wanted taking a class and saying like okay this drow elite warrior has these abilities from say Ranger or power barbarian or uh or something right we're taking the the drow priestess and saying like well alright what domains does Loaf have well why doesn't you know trickery i think is wolf's domain why don't they have the trickery cleric abilities that you know trickery trickery cleric would have and then sort of taking those are they appropriate for for the priestess can I substitute them for something else and that was where I started with the monsters and out of the abyss as we went along and the game developed its own life moved away from the book I started authoring almost altering almost everything trigger Lee the demons that you'd find there towards the end I'd I'd take something like a glabra zoo and give it you know virtual spell levels as if it were like a really high level wizard or something and then the one that I had had two heads cuz it was sort of part of a cult of dimming or getting both of the heads could each cast spells separately and communicating concentration on separate spells cuz are two different minds there and and I recalled that particular demon alluded y'all several times where he finally cornered it and were able to to fight it it I can just like bugged out to the abyss it never came back after the last funny yeah it's pretty smart with the party we had down there I think yeah that was the time that I tried to take the cleric to me with the abyss yeah or no yeah that was the one I tried to Clara go with me to do miss it did not it did not he had to go running back home without a prize but in that sense I just took the base demon the base CLAB Razoo and and used some of the guidelines in the dmg to add class levels to it but otherwise if it needed to do something if it needed a spell or if it needed an ability if it needed something I gave it to it and so I wanted this demon to be a master manipulator and and and someone that was scheming and and you know manipulative and all that other kind of things and so that's that was the abilities that that I imparted to it as the campaign progressed I came back to doing drow when you guys assaulted the house bond ray and and I was like well how do I simulate an entire drow house that's under attack required a lot creating high level NPCs and things like that for free all to fight yeah doesn't matter what level they are they all fall into a crevasse created by an earthquake right exactly the next big one that I made was razzle sim yeah and and the razzle sin game I wanted something that was more than just a night hag I looked at the night hag and I was like you know I'd asked y'all to create I think it's like seven full characters at the time and I thought my night hag that's not exactly what I want this before Volos came out as well so I didn't have that resource to kind of like look at four hags I decided that you know using the warlock as a base and using a lot of the invocations for the warlock as special powers or razzle sin and then just kind of like looking at the other hags and so what did they have that I wanted razzle sin to have and then as I built the campaign up and everything it became a matter of looking at like alright I need the hag to do this I need the hag to be able to move about this region virtually undetected and and with a freedom of movement that the players might not initially assume that the the hag has and so that involved a lot of things that would give it in chant mint type abilities the ability to to just go to a village and mess with the people there and and and cause them to to like this kindly grandmother who travels from village to village and gosh she's always been around and and and it's just such a wonderful little person and so there was a lot of things like oh they're gonna like her and and sort of want to be be around her she had a lot of like innate like I said charm abilities and things like that as well as the ability to to inflict more powerful curses through the stoker spell and then the spell would normally do so that's another way I might change a monster is have it access to spells there are more powerful versions of what they might have to highlight a particularly powerful spell caster or something like that and so that was razzle sin I needed a night hag who was also a powerful supernatural figure in that region as someone who could plausibly be like a demigod or something like that and I think it it came off rather well for for her most definitely I just realized that this weekend while we're shooting kind of having fun on Twitter kind of created a monster that I want to use what's do which is the mimic Ches creates more mimics it would be a chest that's a mimic but yeah doesn't it doesn't just attack the party unusual it sits there and maybe even it's like a chest of holding your honor it holds hell of a lot more than usual and when the players open it up it is full of gold right right and they're like well [ __ ] let's take this back and so they take that chest full of gold back to town and start spinning that gold well once the gold leaves the chest it's like an egg and about a week later that gold hatch and it is a minute the goal itself is a mimic so you can imagine the chaos that it would so as the players move through town and start spending all this gold at places and Ulsan just mimic gold starts running right this is the gold that those people brought right right now they become villains yes because they're leaving this behind uh-huh and any gold anything you put in there becomes a mimic and if you store it for X amount of time once it's out for a week it's a mimic now and so in that so things it will never attack the party maybe unless it's completely empty completely appear like destroy it or something yeah you try to destroy it with self-preservation yeah but once it's empty for a while maybe it starts to starve a little bit then it will attack something just to get something in it yeah you know it's it's dormant again like a mother just waiting to give birth well I like I really like that monster because it highlights that that sort of line of conversation we were on we were talking about like dungeons and mimics and and sort of the things that are found in dungeons and if you think of like these D&D worlds as having anything like natural selection or an evolutionary process and and yet magic exists shape-shifting type match consists then you may have a monster it's like looks like ordinary manufactured objects that you know it needs to reproduce and how would it do that other than finding ways to to get it out of the dungeon and into the larger world and then we said calamity and and havoc ensue yeah and so that's one of those where it maybe you take the mimic and just modify it maybe you go around and look for some other abilities or something that the little golden mimic coins exactly sort of some examples that we've had I created a time-traveling psychic wizard four-lane between two rivers Langly immortal chrono mansur and and he was a combination of some abilities that I found in Toma beasts the cobalt press a monster book that they had that inspired me and then just sort of some of my own what what should a chrono mansur be able to do and I was like he should be able to age a target right and hitting you with this sort of like mega beam of dark energy that that doesn't a chronic damage and potentially ages the target it's more more powerful versions of the time themed spells in that are found in the in the players handbook so an example with that is hit a time stop but the time stop was like it stops time it doesn't just like make you really fast in this bubble his time stop was like I stopped it everybody that's all across the globe this it like my magic is is sort of that powerful and that gives him a wider range of what what he can do when that when that time is is stopped and so I I just sort of looked at what I wanted out of the monster and and you know it's kind of a caster but I didn't want to have to deal with spell slots and other things like that so I used mostly the die Refresh mechanic or was just like I don't care this you can cast slow as often as he wants okay and and you know with with the realization that chances are that once these abilities start coming into play it's gonna be less than ten rounds that they're gonna be around yeah and of course slang escapes using a you know makeshift time machine they had and maybe will return to the party it's another point there's other types that I've created created all bunch of Bazell escs and I was like sometimes I want a bass class that's like the size of a tiny lizard and others are made like these giant Megalodon sort of you know just nasty reptilian beasts and maybe those other things with its gaze attack instead of petrification it just like causes open sores to bleed or just like this starts to dissolve or disintegrate you with its gaze yeah and and all of those are just variants they all fit tight you know within the setting of land between two rivers they're all you know meant to be in that world and are embedded in that world with lore and and you know a sense of place there as opposed to just like I guess I'll include it because it's in the monster manual and so I you know I kind of like talked a lot about these I think that the the big takeaway for homebrew monsters is to not sweat it yeah is to just find what you think is gonna be interesting about a custom monster or whether it's a tiny tweak to an existing one or a full-blown I'm gonna go all out with the lair actions and the regional effects and legendary actions and all of this custom spells and you just want to like wow your players with with original content from your from your brain that fits perfectly for your campaign setting the big thing is to is to just do it and and if you mess up if you create something that's way out classes your you know your party that you're that you're running against then give it a my bad and try again later and if it was a disaster then it's you know just talk through it and you know the fun of this game is creating something for it that that really fits and is really perfect for what you need and you know then the secondary part is getting to share it and having other people take enjoyment out of out of what you thought up so yeah that's why we definitely love homebrew monsters as well as other your monster head on over to patreon for our weekly podcast and so much more web DM is also on Twitch with three weekly games starrwood bound unearthly twilight's and land between two rivers which we upload to web DM plays our second youtube champion [Music] like a flush oh well totally you can get them all that so that they're completely flush and there's nothing stopping you as a DM from just going yeah I mean like if I was using this as a as a screen what did you take a selfie of me putting makeup okay oh wait did you did you talk about me in the third person to me I mean I talked about me and the third person to you so that you can my head hurts no no you said will you go ahead and take a selfie of me putting makeup on Pruitt maybe you did but it's a selfie of you me in it oh wait no you're right on Pruitt yeah

Channel: Web DM

Views: 133,484

Keywords: Dungeons, Dragons, Role, Playing, Tabletop, 5e, WebDM, D&D, DND, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and dragons monsters, dungeons and dragons homebrew, 5e dungeons and dragons, dnd5e, 5e campaign ideas, d&d campaign prep, monster design, ttrpg, gm tips, dm tips, running the game, critical role, geek and sundry, dungeons and dragons writing an adventure, 5e monster manual, 5e monster, one shot, how to create monsters in d&d, how to play dungeons & dragons, Web dm

Id: aGvP_ZWN8TY

Length: 41min 21sec (2481 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 28 2018