Making New Monsters without the Effort
Elm
Depending on the tone you wasjust make up new monsters that use existing stat blocks, the difficulty of making this work varies. It' s very handy for settings or encounters that are supposed to have particularly unnerving and
strange monsters, you can describe something completely alien and leave the players with absolutely no idea what they' re up against yet still have a fairly balanced encounter.
This is exactly what I do. My players fought a den of monsters which were Lovecraftian in description but were Goblins, Elms, Hobgoblins and an Daaugh for stat blocks. You can keep the game' s "balance" by using the same
stats just change the description of the monster to suit your needs.
Alternatively, sometimes it helps to explain to the players what youre trying to do with the campaign before starting it and help to keep the players in character giving helpful hints or suggestions when theyre being too
micahamey or acting out of character.
Anonymous ( Tue) : 35: 35 F
Elm
Oops, posted too soon. For exam pie:
Before the party floats what appears to be the head of a very elderly male human. A thick tangle of vines ' thes and coils through the air all around it, also digging into the ceiling, floor and walls and ripping back out
seemingly anywhere. It is impossible to tell exactly how extensive the creature really is. As they approach the head whispers something (a successful check will reveal it to be some ancient elven dialect but no check can
decipher the meaning) and the ends of some vines empt from the ground at the feet of the closest character and attempt to grab them, if they do they explode in a shower of magical energy and do some bad things to them.
They can hack away at the vines, which shudder and recoil in a shower of what appears to be cyan blood, but they just keep coming. Attacks aimed at the head are all intercepted by the tendo' ls up until the final blow of the
fight where someone finally lands a hit, slices it open to reveal a normal human brain with tiny plants sprouting from it and then promptly all of the vines go limp.
What the hell did they just fight? A normal beholder. The ray attacks are replaced with the vines coming out at the point, it still requires a touch attack so makes sense mechanically and the other differences can be safely
hidden by the in the background. There doesn' t need to be any further elaboration on what the thing was, the next beholder encounter can play out as something completely different and the players never need to have the
tension broken by finding out what generic stat block they were actually up against.
Depending on the tone you wasjust make up new monsters that use existing stat blocks, the difficulty of making this work varies. It' s very handy for settings or encounters that are supposed to have particularly unnerving and
strange monsters, you can describe something completely alien and leave the players with absolutely no idea what they' re up against yet still have a fairly balanced encounter.
This is exactly what I do. My players fought a den of monsters which were Lovecraftian in description but were Goblins, Elms, Hobgoblins and an Daaugh for stat blocks. You can keep the game' s "balance" by using the same
stats just change the description of the monster to suit your needs.
Alternatively, sometimes it helps to explain to the players what youre trying to do with the campaign before starting it and help to keep the players in character giving helpful hints or suggestions when theyre being too
micahamey or acting out of character.
Anonymous ( Tue) : 35: 35 F
Elm
Oops, posted too soon. For exam pie:
Before the party floats what appears to be the head of a very elderly male human. A thick tangle of vines ' thes and coils through the air all around it, also digging into the ceiling, floor and walls and ripping back out
seemingly anywhere. It is impossible to tell exactly how extensive the creature really is. As they approach the head whispers something (a successful check will reveal it to be some ancient elven dialect but no check can
decipher the meaning) and the ends of some vines empt from the ground at the feet of the closest character and attempt to grab them, if they do they explode in a shower of magical energy and do some bad things to them.
They can hack away at the vines, which shudder and recoil in a shower of what appears to be cyan blood, but they just keep coming. Attacks aimed at the head are all intercepted by the tendo' ls up until the final blow of the
fight where someone finally lands a hit, slices it open to reveal a normal human brain with tiny plants sprouting from it and then promptly all of the vines go limp.
What the hell did they just fight? A normal beholder. The ray attacks are replaced with the vines coming out at the point, it still requires a touch attack so makes sense mechanically and the other differences can be safely
hidden by the in the background. There doesn' t need to be any further elaboration on what the thing was, the next beholder encounter can play out as something completely different and the players never need to have the
tension broken by finding out what generic stat block they were actually up against.
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