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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6071334" data-attributes="member: 1465">What would you like from 5e in terms of supporting design of your own monsters or customizing existing monsters?I have never really created a monster from scratch in D&D, but I have definitely customized them, especially adding class levels to humanoids.I'm thinking that I don't necessarily need to add levels, but at least I want to be able to create an ogre barbarian or a lizardfolk druid and so on, in the same way I can easily create them for playable races, and even if the base monster has many hit dice to start with. The main flaw of 3e system about adding levels is that you can only make monsters that are stronger than their base version, so if you make a frost giant wizard, it's not on par with a default frost giant, it's always more powerful. But for spellcasting classes this has the weird effect that adding class levels to an already high-level creature means you add low-level spells, which are probably irrelevant at this stage (a problem similar to that of multiclassed characters).Instead, I would like something that would allow "replacing" hit dice with class levels, so that e.g. a minotaur (6HD) can be given any amount of cleric levels up to 6 and still end up being a creature of similar power level. (note that this language is based on 3ed way of doing monsters, so it doesn't literally apply to 5e of course!)---Second, I would also like to be able to just slap an additional ability or more upon a creature from the monster manual, and I want the book to tell me how much it changes the overall power of the creature.For example, I think it's really cool that the current playtest packet offers some monsters with optional additional abilities, and tells the DM the XP value of such monsters with and without the additions.Yesterday's article about dragons mentions that they are supposed to be all unique creatures, but to make this true in your campaign definitely requires some simple system for adding special features (changing stats or other plain numbers doesn't really make them noticeably different, just stronger/weaker), but it definitely needs guidelines on how to calculate the resulting XP value. I would really like something like that!I think such system would also solve problems related to some (in)famous monster abilities that are endlessly debated, such as energy drain. We could have different versions of this, some of which as mild as additional damage on attacks and others as dramatic as true permanent level drain, but if each of them had an "XP incrase" associated, it would be totally easy for each DM to choose her preferred version and slap it on top of whatever undead is featured in the adventure.</blockquote>

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