Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dog Moon" data-source="post: 5329989" data-attributes="member: 23023">There are three ways that I tend to make monsters:1) Add a template and class or two.  Or more depending on my mood at the time.  I use this method to try to create similar, but stranger, versions of normal creatures.  A lizardfolk with draconic template and a level in ranger is NOT what I mean.  An example of one creature I did was a Medium-sized Multiheaded [cryo] Monster of Legend Stirge.  Now, that may sound odd, but my players definitely became scared of the huge stirge flying around breathing cold on people and sucking blood for like 1d6 Con per head.2) Reskinning.  This is usually the simplest.  It usually involves taking a creature and modifying/adding just a couple of abilities and perhaps some of the flavor of the creature.  Take a Giant, make it an Elemental and turn Stone Throwing into Magma Hurl and have it deal fire damage and you got a different creature with minimal work.  I did this to good effect when I took a Goblin, made it a Plant creature.  I even made a 1d10 chart with vegetable flavors.  If you took a bite of the Veggie Goblin, you could taste onion, mushroom, etc.3) Using only the Base.  Now this, this takes a little bit of work.  I think of a creature I want to make.  I have a couple of ideas in mind.  I don't try to create the creature from scratch.  No, what I do is I look in the Monster Manual for a creature of the appropriate type/CR.  I then strip it to the bare bones.  I then go through, modify a couple of skills or feats as appropriate, and things like environment and alignment, making sure those match as well.  Then I give it the abilities that I want.  Then, I take a glance at the ability scores.  I modify these as needed.  Sometimes I think "This creature has more combat skills and could use a slight up in Strength.  Perhaps it isn't quite as Dextrous as this creature and could subtract a couple."  Or something along those lines.Those are my three processes.As for worrying about TPKing the party... well, you're bound to possibly run into the problem no matter what creatures you use, homemade or wotc-created.  Just remember to keep an eye on how its doing during combat.  I have definitely modified abilities on the fly in order to prevent TPKs or to make a creature actually a challenge instead of a pushover with an impressive hit point buffer.  Playtesting the creature is the biggest thing with a created monster.  I have frequently created monster abilities as Standard Actions, for example, and then during combat realized I would NEVER spend the action to use it as a Standard Action, but found it actually was useful and yet not gamebreaking to make it a Move Action.So I suggest reminding yourself that even once the creature is on paper, don't fear to make any more changes.Edit: In my sig, there's a link to some monsters that I've created.  While the first couple don't really have any explanations, after that, I usually posted a comment about what I did in my monster creation.  For example, the Fire Wolf creature I made:"Okay, for this, I took a Winter Wolf, changed it to a fire wolf [partly by adding the Half-Elemental Template to it], advanced it a little bit, and added the Shapelessness quality from the Amorphous Template. IMO, it's the only thing about that template that is fitting for this creature. As for the Winter Wolf itself, I removed the natural bonus to hide checks, you know, cause it's like made of FIRE. Also, it doesn't gain a bonus to hide in snow or whatever like it used to for previously mentioned reason, although I am giving it a bonus when hiding in fires."</blockquote>

Verification