Marvelous Monsters: A Guide to Monster Creation

[Tequila Sunrise]

Need help writing a homebrew monster, or tweaking an official one? Well here's the place to talk about all your monster needs! So what do my guidelines help you do?

• Know what's important to a fun monster, and what's not.
• Know which are the easy roles to write, which are the hard ones, and what they should do.
• Give your monsters the stats they need to scare your players, including expanded damage charts for monsters of all types.
• Design or modify monsters of all castes, without needing a lot of unique powers and traits. (Minion, goon, standard, elite, solo.)

I've attached the rough draft of my guidelines, so feel free to download and tell me what you think. And if you want a whole lot of black dragon stat blocks plus Falazure the Unliving Wyrm, check out my blog.

 

[Rune]

Nifty, but it does not give elites or solos the means to deal with the primary tools used to lock them down--effects that saves don't end.

As these elites and solos stand now, most groups would just lock them down with "until end of next turn" effects.

 

[Hussar]

Hrm, interesting.

 

[the Jester]

Just at a glance, it looks like you haven't updated your damage values to MM3/MV standards.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Nifty, but it does not give elites or solos the means to deal with the primary tools used to lock them down--effects that saves don't end.

As these elites and solos stand now, most groups would just lock them down with "until end of next turn" effects.

Oh my mistake; I'll clarify that elite and solo extra saves can end UENT effects.

Just at a glance, it looks like you haven't updated your damage values to MM3/MV standards.

I did update to the new damage standards, I just didn't use exactly the same dice and bonuses.

 

[willows]

I did update to the new damage standards, I just didn't use exactly the same dice and bonuses.

What led you to that decision?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Convenience, mostly. To extrapolate damage beyond the official chart, it was easiest to tweak the official chart to be more consistent. All of my values are about 50% bonus and 50% variable damage, like the official chart.

 

[willows]

Cool.

 

[Ferdil]

Nifty, but it does not give elites or solos the means to deal with the primary tools used to lock them down--effects that saves don't end.

As these elites and solos stand now, most groups would just lock them down with "until end of next turn" effects.

Wrong, because on the Caste section it says that all solos get 4 saves every turn against any effect.

EDIT: oh, whoops, skipped the post where he said he corrected that afterwards. my bad.