Creating new monsters

 

Creating new monsters for rpgs was probably the start of my journey going from just running games as a new GM that wanted to play RPGs but doing so required me to be the GM to getting a lot more involved in creating settings, systems, and being far more involved in thinking about RPGs.  I certainly wouldn’t have a mostly written rpg with embedded setting if I didn’t start dabbling in monster design many years ago.

Creating monsters is a great way to start adding some uniqueness to your game and comes in varying levels of complexity.  Starting with the simplest at re-skinning and ending with an entirely new monster from scratch.

 

 

So the simplest method is to take an existing stat block and just call it something else.  Odds are the players are never going to know.  If for some reason you need a massive orc with a bunch of long term magical buffs placed onto it, maybe you just use a troll stat block.  Or maybe you want some kind of reptilian humanoid enemies that you came up with some lore for, but it is easy to just use the lizardman stats rather than writing new ones.  This has huge benefits as there is very little work involved and you can quickly throw something at the players if the story evolved in a way you didn’t expect and you need to react quickly.  Standard orc stats could stand in for human bandits ambushing the party on the road.

The next level of complexity is slightly modifying an existing stat block.  This could be for a couple of different reasons starting with wanting a unique version of a stat block for a named villain.  A great example of this would be taking a dragon stat block and trading out some feats and spells for a dragon that you want to be a big part of a campaign, making it stand out a bit from the crowd.  Though I would argue every dragon should be unique in some way, even if you are using a generic stat block, dragons are great centerpiece monsters, and should rarely be used without thought.  But that is my love of the Draconomicon coming through.  The next reason for this is needing something that is very similar to an existing stat-block or monster.  Maybe you need water breathing dwarves for the underwater arc of your campaign, so rather than writing their stats from the ground up, take the dwarf stats and replace a few things to get what you want.  This could probably still be done with minimal work or prep in a lot of cases.

 

 

The third level of complexity is building off an existing stat block, this is similar to the second but in a more in depth way.  In pathfinder or 3.5 this would be where adding templates comes in but could also just involve more extensive re-working that probably can’t be done tableside.  This is where you get stuff like skeletal champion trolls, half-demon giants and the like.  But it can also involve just adjusting from the existing monster, to result in something that ultimately doesn’t look much like the base at the end.  Maybe you started with a dragon stat block to build some kind of other flying magic using creature that you want to be some kind of mid to high level flying devil, and the dragon just gave you a base so you didn’t need to start entirely from scratch.  I have done this to come up with stuff like the Morkentor or the Farkember, but my various tauric monsters need their own post (or maybe even posts if I expand on ideas that have never been put to paper).  The level of complexity also includes adding class levels to a monster.  This can be a great way of keeping classic low level fantasy monsters relevant as players advance.  Yes sometimes at higher levels you want waves of basic orcs to bog down your players, but that tide of standard orcs is far more dangerous if a orc cleric or sorceror is way behind ranks of meat shields, or even if some rogues are sprinkled into the ranks of weaker orcs.  A campaign that uses a lot of low level monsters with class levels as players advance is going to feel very different from one that is mostly challenge rating appropriate monsters.  Though adding a base monster, templates and character classes can create some wildly unbalanced monsters that are not reflective of their theoretical challenge rating.  Build a random party of 12th level characters and fight a “challenge rating 12” fight involving a trio of half-dragon trolls (red of course for fire immunity) with some barbarian levels that spent some of their gold on some kind of acid resistance/immunity items/potions and tell me that is properly balanced thing for it’s official challenge rating.

I find this third level to often be the sweet spot for creating some really interesting stuff that players love to interact with.  One of my later blog posts will look at dragon steeds which are a very versatile monster I created at this complexity level that can be used as feral creatures or mounts for a cool order of knights.

 

 

The most complex is to build a monster entirely from scratch.  This will take by far the longest, but may be necessary if you want to create something very different from the existing source material or are hacking a system to do something different.  I had to do this when I was creating an X-com inspired campaign that used a hack of Only War, the 40k system for playing imperial guardsmen.  It was a lot of work initially but resulted in one of the most fun campaigns I have run as a GM.  This option is generally the hardest to balance as well which is something that can become a problem very quickly.

Hopefully you enjoyed this post and want to see more about new or modified monsters, if something I referenced particularly interested you let me know.