D&D 5E Change to how spellcasting monsters work in the MM and other monster books.

[Green DM]

I have struggled with using spellcasting monsters from the 5e monster manual, volo’s, etc., due to how long their spell lists are. So I have made a general process to make them better. This is focused purely on combat, so keep that in mind if you throw out everything you may have wanted for a social encounter with the creature in question.

Nomenclature
I am breaking down spells a monster has into 3 categories: Offensive, Defensive, and Control, with one spells being specified as the Nuke option for the Offensive or Control category and as the Escape for the Defensive Category. Not all spellcasting masters will have a Nuke or Escape. Some might not even have one of the 3 major categories.

Offensive
The Offensive category includes all straightforward damage dealing spells, your fireballs, your guiding bolts, all the way up to power word kill, which would be a monsters Nuke option in my opinion.

The Nuke is the strongest ability a creature has, and it shouldn’t be used first. This is saved for when the monster needs to turn the tide of a battle back in their favor or want to show off their power. It’s a massive damage dealer, to quickly wipe out the enemy, or perhaps a powerful condition effect to try to remove someone from the fight instantly.

Defensive
The Defensive category is a lot more nebulous. This can include AC buffs like shield, moving away from an enemy to avoid damage like misty step, or escaping a deadly situation all together with teleport. Teleport might be the Escape option though, so keep that in mind when gaging how to use spells.

Escape is going to be the final act or nearly final act of a creature in distress. At low levels this might be freedom of movement or even haste to run as fast as possible from a combat. At higher levels this is something like dimension door, or teleport. This will most likely happen when a monster is at or below 25% of its maximum health, but if it has low maximum hit points or is cowardly, feel free to bring their Escape option out when they hit 50% of their maximum hit points. Neither the escape nor the nuke option lends itself well to being a big defensive play, unless perhaps its Greater Invisibility, which is sort of offensive and defensive and helps with escaping.

Control
The final category, Control is for spells that help control the battlefield. This includes condition generating spells like fear and hold person, but also those things which restrict movement, such as wall of force and plant growth.

The Process
I will explain the big steps that need to be taken for any monster and how to think about working through them below. Then I will go through an example.

1. Split the monster’s spells into combat, and non combat spells.
2. Break the combat spells into 3 categories, Offensive, Defensive, and Control. In addition, note a specific spell as the Nuke option or Escape option, if applicable. This will give you a feel as to whether a monster has too many of one category and see if it is worth eliminating some of the lower level spells from that category. In addition, see what actions the monster has besides spells and see how they fit in these categories. Incorporating some of those may allow you to eliminate some spells. For example, the lich stat block already has a strong close-range attack with Paralyzing Touch, so it doesn’t need weak close range damage spells like thunderwave.
3. List out all the combat spells and abilities of the monster by their casting time, be it Action, Bonus Action, or Reaction. This coupled with the categories of Offensive, Defensive, and Control will show you where you need to either swap out a spell for one that falls into the same category, but different casting time, or modify some of the spells you already have to bring more variety to the monster’s action economy. This step is especially important, because most spellcasting monsters have way too many spells that take an Action to cast. Which means most wont be seen in a combat that lasts 3-5 rounds, as that only gives the monster 3-5 actions to cast all those spells.
4. Stand back and marvel at your work. And put the monster into an encounter that works with your campaign.

Example: Priest
Now that I have explained the general steps, lets look at an example: the Priest statblock from the MM page 348.

Priest Offense
For Offensive spells, the Priest has sacred flame, guiding bolt, spiritual weapon, and spirit guardians. That is a lot of attack options, not even including its normal mace attack. Which can also have Divine Eminence to boost it. Every round having to think about all of these would be a pain, so lets drop sacred flame all together, and make guiding bolt at will. I doubt they would get to use guiding bolt more than once or twice anyway. Spiritual weapon and spirit guardians will be once per day. Finally, I will just lump Divine Eminence into the Mace attack, making it Divine Mace, which does 1d6 bludgeoning and 4d6 radiant, the same as using divine eminence with a 2nd level slot. This will be recharge 6. So now they only have 3 possible offensive actions, and one bonus action attack.

Priest Defense
Moving on to defensive spells, I have these as cure wounds and sanctuary. Lesser restoration could be here as well, but I like the thematic idea of priests doing lesser restoration more as a ritual than in the middle of combat. So that has been moved to the out of combat group.

Priest Control
For control spells, the only thing I put in this list was dispel magic. I am kind of on the fence about whether this should be an out of combat only spell, but I think a priest could dispel magic almost like an exorcist with it, so it stays in.

The priest has no nuke or escape options in my opinion. Spirit guardians could be the nuke option, but I think that needs to be used early on to have good effect.

Priest Action Economy
So currently the priest has 5 possible actions, with 3 being attacks, and two being at least somewhat defensive, only 1 bonus action, and no reactions. This is very lop sided towards actions. So let’s try to smooth this out a little.

First let’s swap cure wounds for healing word, giving the priest a new bonus action and dropping one action. Second let’s take sanctuary and rework it to be a reaction.

To make sanctuary a reaction, I reworked it to be more like shield. So, it is triggered by an enemy attacking, only lasts 1 round, and it no longer fades if the warded creature attacks. Let’s give it a recharge so can’t be spammed all combat long. Now the priest is starting to look like a cool monster with lots of special abilities that work well with 5e’s action economy.


New Statblock

Wow that is a way bigger statblock! It is far less compacted, but much less reliant on outside reference, is a lot easier to figure out for combat purposes and utilizes the action economy to a better extent. I left in the priest’s non-combat spells as a little list, because out of combat there will probably be a lot more time to look them up or have time to decide which is needed.

Conclusion
The basic strategy for this new priest is very straight forward compared to the vanilla stat block. Enemy at range? Guiding Bolt. Enemy close, Divine Mace if you have it, spiritual weapon if you don’t or need more damage. Several enemies? Spirit Guardians. Someone under attack the priest likes? Healing word and/or sanctuary. Much easier to understand and know when to use.

Hope you find this helpful! I have also made a video to explain this topic, but do not wish to post it outside the media section and ignore any rules. If you want a video version of this guide, just google “Spellcasting Monsters Suck” and it will probably come up.

 

[Charlaquin]

Very nice! I do something similar, though I haven’t gone as far as to split up spells into these categories. Mostly, I pick a few spells I think the creature is most likely to use and do them up as actions much like you’ve done here. I know I’m not going to remember all the stuff my monsters can do, and unless they’re Legendary, they’re not likely to live long enough to use more than about 3 abilities anyway. But this is a very cool approach! Props indeed.

 

[MNblockhead]

While I really like your reworking of the statblock, I think you hit on why it won't be adopted in your following comment: "Wow that is a way bigger statblock!"

For the same reason WotC doesn't interlineate statblock in the content of adventures so you don't have to reference the back of the book or other books, they are not going to increase the size of the current stat blocks.

It is unfortunate, because I use mostly DnD Beyond, which obviates the issue of not having statblocks in the text of the adventure. I can just hover over the hyperlink, or right-click it and open it in another page. It would be cool if DnD Beyond would allow some customization in how statblocks are displayed, but the only way I could see this is with some of the VTT plug-ins (e.g. VTT Assets for Foundry) that import DnD Beyond statblocks into the VTTs object. I'm not sure, however, that there is enough of a demand for anyone to make the effort to code this. Rather, everyone seems to focus on making the VTT statblocks look very similar in format to the WotC standard.

 

[dave2008]

I have struggled with using spellcasting monsters from the 5e monster manual, volo’s, etc., due to how long their spell lists are. So I have made a general process to make them better. This is focused purely on combat, so keep that in mind if you throw out everything you may have wanted for a social encounter with the creature in question.

Nomenclature
I am breaking down spells a monster has into 3 categories: Offensive, Defensive, and Control, with one spells being specified as the Nuke option for the Offensive or Control category and as the Escape for the Defensive Category. Not all spellcasting masters will have a Nuke or Escape. Some might not even have one of the 3 major categories.

Offensive
The Offensive category includes all straightforward damage dealing spells, your fireballs, your guiding bolts, all the way up to power word kill, which would be a monsters Nuke option in my opinion.

The Nuke is the strongest ability a creature has, and it shouldn’t be used first. This is saved for when the monster needs to turn the tide of a battle back in their favor or want to show off their power. It’s a massive damage dealer, to quickly wipe out the enemy, or perhaps a powerful condition effect to try to remove someone from the fight instantly.

Defensive
The Defensive category is a lot more nebulous. This can include AC buffs like shield, moving away from an enemy to avoid damage like misty step, or escaping a deadly situation all together with teleport. Teleport might be the Escape option though, so keep that in mind when gaging how to use spells.

Escape is going to be the final act or nearly final act of a creature in distress. At low levels this might be freedom of movement or even haste to run as fast as possible from a combat. At higher levels this is something like dimension door, or teleport. This will most likely happen when a monster is at or below 25% of its maximum health, but if it has low maximum hit points or is cowardly, feel free to bring their Escape option out when they hit 50% of their maximum hit points. Neither the escape nor the nuke option lends itself well to being a big defensive play, unless perhaps its Greater Invisibility, which is sort of offensive and defensive and helps with escaping.

Control
The final category, Control is for spells that help control the battlefield. This includes condition generating spells like fear and hold person, but also those things which restrict movement, such as wall of force and plant growth.

The Process
I will explain the big steps that need to be taken for any monster and how to think about working through them below. Then I will go through an example.

1. Split the monster’s spells into combat, and non combat spells.
2. Break the combat spells into 3 categories, Offensive, Defensive, and Control. In addition, note a specific spell as the Nuke option or Escape option, if applicable. This will give you a feel as to whether a monster has too many of one category and see if it is worth eliminating some of the lower level spells from that category. In addition, see what actions the monster has besides spells and see how they fit in these categories. Incorporating some of those may allow you to eliminate some spells. For example, the lich stat block already has a strong close-range attack with Paralyzing Touch, so it doesn’t need weak close range damage spells like thunderwave.
3. List out all the combat spells and abilities of the monster by their casting time, be it Action, Bonus Action, or Reaction. This coupled with the categories of Offensive, Defensive, and Control will show you where you need to either swap out a spell for one that falls into the same category, but different casting time, or modify some of the spells you already have to bring more variety to the monster’s action economy. This step is especially important, because most spellcasting monsters have way too many spells that take an Action to cast. Which means most wont be seen in a combat that lasts 3-5 rounds, as that only gives the monster 3-5 actions to cast all those spells.
4. Stand back and marvel at your work. And put the monster into an encounter that works with your campaign.

Example: Priest
Now that I have explained the general steps, lets look at an example: the Priest statblock from the MM page 348.
View attachment 128141

Priest Offense
For Offensive spells, the Priest has sacred flame, guiding bolt, spiritual weapon, and spirit guardians. That is a lot of attack options, not even including its normal mace attack. Which can also have Divine Eminence to boost it. Every round having to think about all of these would be a pain, so lets drop sacred flame all together, and make guiding bolt at will. I doubt they would get to use guiding bolt more than once or twice anyway. Spiritual weapon and spirit guardians will be once per day. Finally, I will just lump Divine Eminence into the Mace attack, making it Divine Mace, which does 1d6 bludgeoning and 4d6 radiant, the same as using divine eminence with a 2nd level slot. This will be recharge 6. So now they only have 3 possible offensive actions, and one bonus action attack.

Priest Defense
Moving on to defensive spells, I have these as cure wounds and sanctuary. Lesser restoration could be here as well, but I like the thematic idea of priests doing lesser restoration more as a ritual than in the middle of combat. So that has been moved to the out of combat group.

Priest Control
For control spells, the only thing I put in this list was dispel magic. I am kind of on the fence about whether this should be an out of combat only spell, but I think a priest could dispel magic almost like an exorcist with it, so it stays in.

The priest has no nuke or escape options in my opinion. Spirit guardians could be the nuke option, but I think that needs to be used early on to have good effect.

Priest Action Economy
So currently the priest has 5 possible actions, with 3 being attacks, and two being at least somewhat defensive, only 1 bonus action, and no reactions. This is very lop sided towards actions. So let’s try to smooth this out a little.

First let’s swap cure wounds for healing word, giving the priest a new bonus action and dropping one action. Second let’s take sanctuary and rework it to be a reaction.

To make sanctuary a reaction, I reworked it to be more like shield. So, it is triggered by an enemy attacking, only lasts 1 round, and it no longer fades if the warded creature attacks. Let’s give it a recharge so can’t be spammed all combat long. Now the priest is starting to look like a cool monster with lots of special abilities that work well with 5e’s action economy.


New Statblock
View attachment 128142

Wow that is a way bigger statblock! It is far less compacted, but much less reliant on outside reference, is a lot easier to figure out for combat purposes and utilizes the action economy to a better extent. I left in the priest’s non-combat spells as a little list, because out of combat there will probably be a lot more time to look them up or have time to decide which is needed.

Conclusion
The basic strategy for this new priest is very straight forward compared to the vanilla stat block. Enemy at range? Guiding Bolt. Enemy close, Divine Mace if you have it, spiritual weapon if you don’t or need more damage. Several enemies? Spirit Guardians. Someone under attack the priest likes? Healing word and/or sanctuary. Much easier to understand and know when to use.

Hope you find this helpful! I have also made a video to explain this topic, but do not wish to post it outside the media section and ignore any rules. If you want a video version of this guide, just google “Spellcasting Monsters Suck” and it will probably come up.

For primary spell casting monsters I think that is acceptable. For secondary spell casters I typically leave the spells as extra's if I want to use them, not essential to the monster's combat ability. Interestingly, some of the newer WotC designs include a description of one spell from their spell list in the stat block. That is what I would like to see with yours to: full spell list + 1-3 typical spells described in the stat block.

FYI, you also might be interested in the one-stop stat blocks. Which provides stat blocks with spell descriptions for all of the MM spell casting monsters

 

[R_J_K75]

Wow that is a way bigger statblock! It is far less compacted, but much less reliant on outside reference, is a lot easier to figure out for combat purposes and utilizes the action economy to a better extent.

While I really like your reworking of the statblock, I think you hit on why it won't be adopted in your following comment: "Wow that is a way bigger statblock!"

I have the same problem when running an encounter with a spellcasting NPC or monster. Without some substantial prep of reading the spell beforehand, making notes, unless you have the spells memorized, its next to impossible to run a monster without looking up the spell in the PHB. Then the spell descriptions are just too long. I think the big picture problem here is how spell descriptions are written. If they truncated them, and broke them down to their lowest common denominator into an "At-A-Glance" format (somewhere, maybe not the PHB) running encounters would be a lot easier. I know they have spell cards but Id think they'd be pretty unwieldy after buying a few sets at one spell per card.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I have the same problem when running an encounter with a spellcasting NPC or monster. Without some substantial prep of reading the spell beforehand, making notes, unless you have the spells memorized, its next to impossible to run a monster without looking up the spell in the PHB. Then the spell descriptions are just too long. I think the big picture problem here is how spell descriptions are written. If they truncated them, and broke them down to their lowest common denominator into an "At-A-Glance" format (somewhere, maybe not the PHB) running encounters would be a lot easier. I know they have spell cards but Id think they'd be pretty unwieldy after buying a few sets at one spell per card.

This is where every DM (or some enterprising author on DMs Guild) spends an hour or two off-game and writes up condensed spell blocks for all the main spells in the game, taking out unnecessary information (and a lot of the flavor text) that does not matter in the middle of an encounter. Keep range, duration, type of action if its a Bonus or Reaction, attack or save type, damage, and additional effects, then dump everything else.

That way the DM has a quick list of most of the spells they are going to need and when they are going to use a monster which casts spells (especially ones from the Basic Rules or SRD that they have in PDF form and can capture/paste the monster statblock images)... the DM can also paste the shortened spell blocks along with them.

But the DM does have to spend some time beforehand doing that busywork for themselves if they think they'll need it.

 

[R_J_K75]

This is where every DM (or some enterprising author on DMs Guild) spends an hour or two off-game and writes up condensed spell blocks for all the main spells in the game, taking out unnecessary information (and a lot of the flavor text) that does not matter in the middle of an encounter. Keep range, duration, type of action if its a Bonus or Reaction, attack or save type, damage, and additional effects, then dump everything else.

That way the DM has a quick list of most of the spells they are going to need and when they are going to use a monster which casts spells (especially ones from the Basic Rules or SRD that they have in PDF form and can capture/paste the monster statblock images)... the DM can also paste the shortened spell blocks along with them.

But the DM does have to spend some time beforehand doing that busywork for themselves if they think they'll need it.

I've usually looked at only the spells I need for any given session. I never gave it much thought until reading this thread to create a condensed spell block for notebook of spells. Classifying spells similar to OP then determining which components of the spell is variable by caster level, which are static and which are used solely for non combat purposes i.e. "fly" and need flavor text. I think I might give it some thought and see what I come up with.

 

[Blue]

I like your basic premise. One of the things I liked a lot from 4e that you may want to include is a basic per-round tactics. Like "first round, will cast (X defensive spell)", "if engaged in melee, will Y". Not as anything locked in, but just as an aid for you at the table to reduce time you need to devote to tactics.

I'm a big fan of not limiting NPCs to classes so this is up my alley. However, this will have a very different feel than any cleric being played. It doesn't respect a basic of spellcasting with slots that can be used for any spell, which is true for every single casting class.

Also, you really need to indicate these are spells, otherwise so much breaks down:

1. They would pay no attention to the rules about if you cast a bonus action spell you can only cast a cantrip. So they get to break a rule of spell action economy that the players must follow.
2. Many/all of these wouldn't be affected by spell-specific things such as Counterspell, Dispel Magic or the Oath of the Ancients resistance to spell damage.
3. If they don't follow component rules so there is no way to safely capture and tie up + gag them, leading to the feeling that they are just here for a combat with the implication they are expected to be killed, not treated as a person and potentially captured. (As a side note, treating combat + non-combat spells like Cure Wounds as combat only also reinforces this feel.)

This can be fixed with some additional wording that these are all spells and follow the same rules, both in general but also in the Bonus Action section.

 

[Quickleaf]

For me personally, you're headed in the right direction. Creative adaptation of spells, like you did for sanctuary, is a good step. Just a couple thoughts/tweaks:

1. You've removed the Concentration component from spirit guardians, which is a key method to breaking the spell. Yes, an experienced DM might know, but the point of writing out the spells is to avoid having to memorize / lookup, right?

2. I think your attempt to include all/most of the priest's spells in your revised stats is working against you. With such a burly radiant mace attack, does it really need both spiritual weapon and spirit guardians?

3. Incorporating multiple recharge conditions in one creature makes it a pain to run more than one of said monster. That's why in 4e you rarely saw a monster with more than one recharge power, and when you did it was typically a solo. Think: Is it easier to just tick off spell slots or is it easier to keep track of 3 separate recharge conditions? Personally, I'd say the former is easier.

4. When creatively adapting spells – such as sanctuary – for NPC use, I try not to just make it an overt power-up but also to include some interesting weakness. The reaction is a power-up, right? So how might this particular priest's version of sanctuary have an interesting workaround? Maybe anyone bearing a holy symbol of the priest's deity automatically succeeds their save or outright cannot be targeted?

5. Writing spells out in long-form is a sure way to bloat a stat block. I use an abbreviated form, like this: Action; 60 ft; Conc. 1 min; 20-ft radius sphere; Dex save; 4d6 fire (half).

 

[R_J_K75]

5. Writing spells out in long-form is a sure way to bloat a stat block. I use an abbreviated form, like this: Action; 60 ft; Conc. 1 min; 20-ft radius sphere; Dex save; 4d6 fire (half).

I like this. I was thinking to myself of trying to make something similar, maybe breaking spells up into 3 categories, offense, defense and utility.

Any idea where I can get a template for a spell description like you'd find in the phb? DMs Guild?