D&D 5E Redoing existing monsters?

[Blue]

I will often muck with monsters.

Just a comment - usually when monsters have those blanket B/P/S resistances, they have lower HPs as well. I noticed that you took those defenses away from the Peryton but didn't increase the HPs. That makes me wonder if it's not as noticable for you -- are most of your players are avoiding the Resistances in the first place?

 

[Quickleaf]

I will often muck with monsters.

Just a comment - usually when monsters have those blanket B/P/S resistances, they have lower HPs as well. I noticed that you took those defenses away from the Peryton but didn't increase the HPs. That makes me wonder if it's not as noticable for you -- are most of your players are avoiding the Resistances in the first place?

Great question! Personally, I don’t care for blanket weapon resistance - in most cases I do not find it tells a compelling story. With many monsters that would have those resistances, I replace it with a different defensive feature. But for the peryton it flies and has fly by attack, making it an unlikely melee target… which in and of itself is a good defense. When I get to run some perytons I may tweak that defensive capacity a bit, depending on how it plays.

As an additional observation, I’ll add that many monsters in fifth edition have hit point bloat, so when I’m doing these changes, I am very cautious about doubling or increasing hit points. For larger monsters, like the peryton I am less concerned about this, so I think you could double it’s HP without affecting the game much. But it is something in the back of my mind whenever I’m designing monsters.

 

[el-remmen]

A not very efficient stat block. I do remove all that stuff about reach or number of targets. Since the vast majority have a reach of 5' and only effect one target at a time, when I write stat blocks I assume that as default unless otherwise stated.

 

[Quickleaf]

Nice edits @el-remmen ! Yeah, organization is a tricky one. I think with the example monster – peryton – we've been using, that's a case of a relatively simple monster that we have been ADDING onto.

I'd like to pivot and look at the reverse case. A very complex / large stat-block monster that could use simplifying. I think there's a sweet spot to stat block complexity / length, right?

I'm not yet sure which monster to use as an example of too much complexity / length... if anyone has suggestions I'm all ears.

Complexity/length seems to come in a couple forms, roughly from the more common cases to the rarer cases:

• Redundant attacks with identical/nearly-identical damage and attack, only the damage type is different
• Language which is self-evident yet oft repeated (e.g. general disease mechanics associated with otyugh's Bite, or Unusual Nature of many undead monsters in later books)
• Overly wordy powers (e.g. umber hulk's Confusing Gaze, vampire's Shapechange)
• Legendary Monsters
• Excessive spellcasting (e.g. I forget which monster had two separate spell lists - Spellcasting & Innate Spellcasting)
• Monsters with random powers (e.g. beholder, flail snail, kobold inventor)

 

[el-remmen]

I don't remember now which stat block it was, but recently a friend who proofreads my HOW-I-RUN-IT.com stuff mentioned how redundant info in a stat block can be when he was comparing what I wrote to something in a rule book. The example from the book was something like "When ally makes an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check, it may roll 1d4 and add the result to the attack roll, saving throw, or ability check."

There is no need for "attack roll, saving throw, or ability check" to be repeated.