Repeat after me: there is no spoon.
4e is all about re-skinning monsters to suit your tastes. Those kruthiks and swordwings are whatever you want them to be. Hell, they can be orcs. Remove all the identifying marks from the stats and use the raw stats to create your own monsters.
For example, let's look at the Kobold Wyrmpriest, some Level 3 Artillery. Keep all the basic stats as they are: hit points, defenses, initiative, even the skills.
I'm going to create an Orc Mystic. Most of those powers translate to an orc or any other humanoid. Spear attack? Orcs use spears. Energy Orb? Nothing particularly kobold-ish about that; my orc has it too. Incite Faith? Perfectly generic addition to my new orc. It seems that orcs have a different racial ability than kobolds (Warrior's Surge v. Shifty). Alright, so I swap out the Wyrmpriests's Shifty for the orcish Warrior's Surge.
What's left? The Wyrmpriest's Dragon Breath. Hmmm. Orcs don't have the whole fire-breathing shtick. This is where a DM's muscle must be felt. Stripped of its "kobold skin", the Dragon Breath is nothing more than a close blast 3 that does some typed damage. Well, we're already comfortable with an orcish mystic throwing Energy Orbs, so we just need a way to re-skin Dragon Breath. It's an encounter power, so it'll only be used once. I'm going to choose a shamanistic approach for my orcish mystic. Now the power is called Ancestral Scream. The Mystic delivers psychic damage that's described as a primal scream that summons the spirits of the dead to tear at the minds of everyone in the blast. To finish things off, maybe I shift the kobold's stats around so that they're more like the orcs that I find in the Manual. Since changing stats doesn't influence the combat numbers, it's no big deal.
And we're done. Now I have a level 3 Artillery orc to use against my players.
But why stop at adapting one humanoid into another? What other options do I have for Level 3 artillery? There's a Bugbear Archer, but I've already done a humanoid conversion. Let's take on the other Level 3 Artillery monster in the Manual: the Spitting Drake.
This one's a bit tougher to turn into an Orc Mystic. But all I really want is some orc-flavored artillery. The Drake is much more straighforward. He's got a Bite, which is just a melee attack that does 1d6+2. Well, let's just turn that into an Axe that does 1d6+2. Now what about the Caustic Spit? Again, strip out the flavor: it's a standard, at-will, ranged 10 for 1d10+4 acid damage.
There's two ways to go on this one. First, you could have some kind of bizarre mutant orc that's been altered to have acidic spit. If that's the case, then there's nothing else to do. The Spitting Drake's 10 acid resistance fits with that theme. All finished.
But you may not want a mutant acid orc. You want a regular orc, but with the ranged attack we find under the Spitting Drake. Easiest thing to do is change the damage type to something we're comfortable with. We should make it something that we can pair with the resistance, so that we can keep that part of the Drake. Off-hand, why not make it poison? Let's make him an Orcish Blowgunner. He delivers vicious, barbed, feather darts that are coated with a nasty poison. It's not a poison with ongoing damage, since that wasn't part of the Spitting Drake's power. It just delivers a short jolt of poison. The Blowgunner's developed 10 poison resistance after years of handling poison. Throw the traditional orcish Warrior Surge on top and another masterpiece rolls off the assembly line.
Since we've added the Warrior's Surge to the Blowgunner, you, as the DM, will have to keep a sharper eye on encounter design. These blowgunners have a Second Wind, so maybe they go from level 3 to 4? If you want to keep them at level 3, consider stepping down their damage to 1d6+4, roughly in line with the suggestions on DMG pg. 185 (from Medium to Low damage for a level 1-3 monster).
So, my central message is to stop shoehorning your adventures and ideas into the ranges that the Manual gives you. For example, I love yuan-ti but, according to the Manual, I can't use them until I get to the Paragon tier.
that. If I want to use them at level 1, I'll just give them kobold stats and yuan-ti "skins". I'm in control of this game, not those wankers at WotC!
You think that your problem is that you don't have a lot of monster variety available to squeeze into your xp budget. At any given level, there’s a narrow band of monsters listed in a table in the back of the Manual that limits your flavor options. Let’s say that you need some undead and don’t want to use the standard undead for your party’s level. Let’s assume that you have a low-level party and want to have an undead heavy campaign. Are your options limited? Let's look at the Monster Manual's low-level undead to see what's available.
At first glance, you're correct. There's only one Level 1 undead monster: the Decrepit Skeleton, which is a minion. There's only one Level 2 undead monster: the Zombie, which is a Brute. At Level 3, we get a bit more variety: a Skeleton (Soldier), a Gravehound (Brute), and a Zombie Rotter (Minion). Looking out at those choices, they aren't very inspiring. They're also very bland. We've just got Soldiers, Brutes, and Minions. Hardly an exciting 4e encounter, since there are no Controllers, Leaders, or Lurkers to make things fun on the DM's side.
You have XP budget problems. 4e encourages a base encounter of 500xp at first level which should be five Level 1 monsters. The trouble is that we don't have any 100xp Level 1 undead in the Monster Manual. We only have the 25xp Decrepit Minion to work with. No problem. We'll just fill the XP budget with higher level critters. After all, the XP budget is supposed to be flexible.
Now we run into a different problem. We could pick 4 Zombies, which would give us 500 XP. We could choose 3 Gravehounds and 2 Decrepit Skeletons to hit 500 XP. If we want something more exciting, like an undead Controller, we could try a Deathlock Wight, a Level 4 Controller. But that's 175 XP from our 500 XP budget. Throw in a pair of Gravehounds and that's 475 XP. Three monsters and we've filled up the XP budget.
The problem becomes obvious. If you want to center your campaign around undead, you've got to use these very specific undead at the low levels. You've got to use Zombies, Skeletons, Gravehounds, and Decrepit Skeletons.
You would prefer a large selection of 100 XP undead that you can use to provide interesting, five-monster encounters for your players. You want 100 XP Undead Artillery, 100 XP Undead Controllers, and 100 XP Undead Soldiers. These monsters exist in the Monster Manual, if you're willing to do 5 minutes of work.
In fact, there are two Level 1 Undead Artillery, three Level 1 Undead Brutes, two Level 1 Undead Lurkers, four Level 1 Undead Minions, three Level 1 Undead Skirmishers, and one Level 1 Undead Soldier in the Monster Manual. Each of these Undead monsters is worth 100 XP.
If you flip to the back of your Monster Manual, you'll realize that I just copied the contents of pg. 284, which lists every Level 1 monster in the Manual. All you need to do is change the "skin" of each monster entry in the Manual to make the monsters into Undead. I'll give you a brief example.
Let's make a Level 1 Undead Lurker. Let's assume that your adventure calls for Zombies. There is no Level 1 Zombie Lurker officially listed in the Monster Manual, but you've got a great idea for an evocative encounter that involves Zombie Lurkers. So we're going to quickly make one.
Instead of making up a whole new stat block for a Level 1 Zombie Lurker, I'm going to use one of the stat blocks that WotC provided for a Level 1 Lurker and turn that Level 1 Lurker into a Zombie. WotC gives us two Level 1 Lurkers: Goblin Blackblade and Stirge. I'm going to use the Stirge.
I'm going to keep as much of the Stirge's stats as I can. I'm just going to change the flavor so that it becomes a Zombie. We take a quick look at the actual Zombies that WotC gives us. They have the following traits in common:
- Speed 4
- Immune: disease, poison
- Resist 10 necrotic
- Vulnerable 5 radiant
So those are things I'm going to add to the Stirge's stat block. It's still a Small flying monster, with the same Initiative, Perception, Skills, Ability Scores, Hit Points, and Defenses as a Stirge. It's now just a "Stirge" with Immunity to disease and poison, Necrotic Resistance, and Vulnerability to Radiant.
What should we do about Speed, though? This is where you need to use the Art of DMing, rather than the Science. The regular Stirge's Speed is 2, fly 6 (hover). It seems like Zombies are characterized by their slowness. They all have Speed 4. Having a Speed 6 flying Zombie goes against the idea of a slow, shambling Zombie. You have three choices. You can lower the Stirge's flying speed to 4 (hover) and make it a slow flying Zombie. You can leave the Stirge's flying speed unchanged, since Lurkers are supposed to be fast. Slowing down the "Zombie Stirge" might make it too vulnerable to PC attack. Finally, you might leave the Speed at 6, but make the Stirge a "clumsy" flyer, instead of a "hover" flier. I'd go with the third option.
Alright, so what's left to do? Nothing. The Stirge has a Bite attack. We can give our Zombie Lurker exactly the same attack. As DM, you describe exactly the same attack being delivered by a flying Zombie Lurker. Use the same attack, damage, and special conditions from the Stirge stat block. It's as if you take all of the text below the line that says "Bite" and use it in exactly the same way. You could call it "Claws" if you wanted, instead of "Bite." Instead of a Stirge's familiar blood-draining Bite attack description, you just change the description so that it's a Zombie holds the target with one hand (the "grab" portion of the Zombie's attack which we find in the Stirge stat block) and slashes with the filthy, sharp Claws of his free hand.
That's it. You're done. New Zombie Lurker worth 100 XP for your party to destroy. I can create an enounter with 5 Zombie Lurkers (which are "really" 5 Stirges with different Zombie "skins" stretched over them) worth 500 XP. What if you don't want a Small, flying Zombie Lurker? A small, flying Zombie Lurker could be some hideous undead bat or crow or worse. But what if you're designing an encounter with Zombies animated from the corpses of humans? No big deal. Just change the Zombie from Small to Medium and get rid of the flying. Flying is a big advantage in combat, since you can avoid difficult terrain with it. The Stirge was probably designed with that benefit in mind. If you get rid of the Stirge's flying ability, you should find a way to insert it back into the Zombie version's stat block. Reduce the Zombie's Speed to 4, but decide that it ignores the movement penalty imposed by difficult terrain. Now you've got a Medium, humanoid Zombie Lurker with Speed 4 ("all-terrain" walk, instead of "forest walk" or "ice walk").
You can do the same thing to make a Level 2 Undead Skirmisher or a Level 3 Undead Controller, examples I'd be happy to provide if you're interested. All I'm doing is relying on WotC's work in creating balanced monsters for each level. I'm letting them do all the work with the stat blocks and then I'm just putting new "clothing" on the stat blocks so that each monster the PCs face has the right "decoration".
