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Legend
I want to share my "bounded complexity" principles to making monsters for 5th edition / 5e-adjacent games, not because I think it's a perfect 1:1 translation for your gaming, but because there might be bits that you can adopt or that might inspire your own creations.
What this is not: I'm focusing on the big picture principles, rather than extreme detail – I recommend The Lazy GM's Forge of Foes (and the CC link that Mike generously shared) for a deep dive. Also, I favor a "bounded complexity" approach – LevelUp A5e, Tales of the Valiant, Tome of Beasts, and others have great high complexity stat blocks already. And if you're looking for imagination fuel / random tables to come up with monster concepts, I recommend the monster section of Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design or other similar books. Instead, I'm sharing distilled principles from my own experience that I haven't seen out in the wild. Some of my ideas are individually echoed in Dungeon Dudes or Matt Colville's videos about "action oriented monsters", and I've shared conversations about some of these individually, but this is my first time laying them out in an organized way.
1) An Ecosystem of Rules and Imagination
A monster neither begins nor ends with its stat block. It may be connected to the terrain, other monsters, certain narrative aspects or character features (e.g. ghouls not paralyzing elves due to lore reasons), spells (e.g. helmed horror selective spell immunities), exploiting certain conditions, etc. Powers work their best when interacting with other aspects of the game and/or inspiring the GM to use those powers creatively or improvise their own based on the strong feel those powers convey.
Example 1: Skeletons that appear as piles of bones, but then reassemble into hostile undead under certain conditions – expanding the palette of creativity for the GM to play with how to present the skeletons and what triggers them.
Example 2: A yugoloth (yagnoloth) creating darkness that it itself cannot see in is a missed opportunity. Let's say, for whatever reason, we want to maintain the "it cannot see." One way to maintain the "it cannot see in the darkness" while merging with other powers might be to allow the yagnoloth to teleport the darkness area of effect along with it! Or it deals extra damage in darkness if it hits! This is telling a story about this yugoloth's relationship to the theme of "darkness", so maybe we're talking "spiritual darkness", and this implies its taunting voice during combat echoing within the utter blackness surrounding a PC, or maybe gives the GM an anchor for how to convey this particular brand of magical darkness.
2) Minimum Effective Rules
A slimmer stat block actually helps me find info faster at the table & gives me a holistic sense of the monster faster (in my case that also helps me improv because I get the "big picture" faster). Instead, depending on the "spotlight" the monster gets (i.e. minions need less rules than "spotlighted" solos), I aim for roughly 2 to 8 things the monster does. Here's a guideline (which can be deviated from judiciously):
If I have more going on than that, I try to cut what's unnecessary, consolidate (e.g. merge 2 powers), create a spellcasting section, get creative about the encounter presentation / terrain / lair actions, or even reference another rules bit (e.g. siege weapons).
Similarly, if I'm writing a monster's power with multiple paragraphs or with convoluted language to convey its meaning, that's a sign I need to either reference another part of the rules (see the change to "Emanation" language in 2024 instead of the wordy approach in 2014) or I need to rework the idea / refine my language.
Example: When designing a Pyromancer, instead of getting bogged down with picking spells emulating "casts as a 7th-level wizard", I might select one offensive spell (Melf's minute meteors) and a few other "side spells", and create a monster focused around how it uses meteors both as a defensive "screen" and it can teleport to where its meteors impact.
3) Challenge Rating Ratios & Flow of Play
Challenge Rating is A factor, but it is not THE most important factor. How the monster feels & how it flows without bogging down play are more important. One mechanical way to evaluate this is the ratio between the monster's Defensive CR and its Offensive CR. Generally speaking I do not want Defensive CR to be significantly higher than Offensive CR, because that will lead to grind; though there are a few exceptions – significant guardian type monster, some puzzle monsters with special weaknesses, etc.
At lower levels of play (1st-3rd), I want the ratio of Defensive CR and Offensive CR to be closer to 1:1, though if I'm going to err, I don't boost Offensive CR dramatically due to PC's being squishier. However, as we get into higher levels of play, I can really crank up the Offensive CR ratio – this both helps speed up play and maintain some of that threat/suspense.
Also, "stun locking" conditions contribute to slower flow of play. These can be used to control pacing, but in general are better addressed by building in unique countermeasures for PCs to break free, or incorporating them into other more active powers.
Example: Jeremy Crawford said 6 years ago in the podcast Dungeon Deep Dive #18 that (paraphrasing) "a ghoul's paralyzation power is roughly equivalent to a 2nd level spell, which can be translated into effective damage on par with the 2nd level spell scorching ray" – This will give you the monster's CR. However, it will not tell you that paralyzation is a pain point for "flow of play." Another method of evaluation – e.g. calculating paralyzation toward the ghoul's Defensive CR as additional hit points for "foregone damage that would have been dealt by the (paralyzed) PC" paints a different picture.
4) Solo/Boss Monsters
I design my solo monsters around these principles:
5) How Much Damage?
While there are charts in DMG and Forge of Foes, one of the lenses I use to evaluate monster damage boils down to 2 questions:
1) Can the monster, in one turn, deal enough damage to outright kill (i.e. reduce to negative max HP) a fresh PC of that level?
2) Can the monster, in one turn, deal enough damage to knock out an entire party of fresh PCs at that level?
If the answer to either of these questions is "yes", that's a big yellow flag for me to slow down, pay attention, and either reduce the damage or think more holistically about the scenario I'm presenting. The reason this is a yellow flag is because it strips players of too much agency, denying them the ability to save themselves or their friend.
6) Monsters That "Break The Roles"
Two types of monsters deserve special attention – those with False Appearance (e.g. mimic) & those that circumvent Hit Point attrition (e.g. shadow) – because they tend to defy our usual thinking about "monster roles" and how combat works. We might think "oh a mimic is obviously an ambusher", but what about a gargoyle that also has False Appearance? It's actually built more like a Guardian/Soldier! These sorts of monsters require a bit more care and thought about how they are implemented – You can't go wrong with foreshadowing them!
Generally, I loosely think of normal non-solo monsters as having certain combat roles (or sometimes a merger of two roles) – these are likely familiar to you from 4e or Flee Mortals: Ambusher/Lurker, Artillery, Brute, Controller, Guardian/Soldiers, Leader, Skirmisher. However, I try to be more nuanced than just falling back on these terms.
With solo monsters, however, there is a necessary "bleed" between these categories; while a solo might lean towards one of these categories, it needs to cover certain competencies in other "roles" in order to present a decent challenges.
Example: Gargoyles are the classic "ok GM we can see the cards you're holding here", so either the monster leans into that (i.e. used in the adventure as a deterrent / puzzle to solve) OR the monster is written differently to be more of a surprise. For example, a gargoyle... that resembles a bas relief of a satyr in the temple of a nature god... might not be assumed to be a threat by players. Another example leaning into the gargoyle as guardian/soldier... maybe the gargoyle is immune to conventional damage while using its False Appearance, but holds a brass key the PCs need in its stony grasp, so the trick is getting it to become active like tormenting the King's Guard at Buckingham Palace.
7) The Functional Description
With most of my monsters, I push myself to distill the monster's essence down to a single sentence. This touches on the narrative but focuses on the monster's function in combat without getting lost in rules language. In my process, this ends up coming last most of the time, as I work out the kinks and pain points of the monster's design, honing in on exactly what I want it to be.
Example 1: Guardian Familiar = Fey cat with nine lives guarding wizard’s treasure, returning bigger and badder with each death
Example 2: Cinderhaunt = Heat-seeking undead from Plane of Ash that leeches off of, and utilizes, those whom it petrifies
* * * * *
That's everything I can think of in one sitting. If I remember more, I'll come back to add it later. Hope this helps someone!
What this is not: I'm focusing on the big picture principles, rather than extreme detail – I recommend The Lazy GM's Forge of Foes (and the CC link that Mike generously shared) for a deep dive. Also, I favor a "bounded complexity" approach – LevelUp A5e, Tales of the Valiant, Tome of Beasts, and others have great high complexity stat blocks already. And if you're looking for imagination fuel / random tables to come up with monster concepts, I recommend the monster section of Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design or other similar books. Instead, I'm sharing distilled principles from my own experience that I haven't seen out in the wild. Some of my ideas are individually echoed in Dungeon Dudes or Matt Colville's videos about "action oriented monsters", and I've shared conversations about some of these individually, but this is my first time laying them out in an organized way.
1) An Ecosystem of Rules and Imagination
A monster neither begins nor ends with its stat block. It may be connected to the terrain, other monsters, certain narrative aspects or character features (e.g. ghouls not paralyzing elves due to lore reasons), spells (e.g. helmed horror selective spell immunities), exploiting certain conditions, etc. Powers work their best when interacting with other aspects of the game and/or inspiring the GM to use those powers creatively or improvise their own based on the strong feel those powers convey.
Example 1: Skeletons that appear as piles of bones, but then reassemble into hostile undead under certain conditions – expanding the palette of creativity for the GM to play with how to present the skeletons and what triggers them.
Example 2: A yugoloth (yagnoloth) creating darkness that it itself cannot see in is a missed opportunity. Let's say, for whatever reason, we want to maintain the "it cannot see." One way to maintain the "it cannot see in the darkness" while merging with other powers might be to allow the yagnoloth to teleport the darkness area of effect along with it! Or it deals extra damage in darkness if it hits! This is telling a story about this yugoloth's relationship to the theme of "darkness", so maybe we're talking "spiritual darkness", and this implies its taunting voice during combat echoing within the utter blackness surrounding a PC, or maybe gives the GM an anchor for how to convey this particular brand of magical darkness.
2) Minimum Effective Rules
A slimmer stat block actually helps me find info faster at the table & gives me a holistic sense of the monster faster (in my case that also helps me improv because I get the "big picture" faster). Instead, depending on the "spotlight" the monster gets (i.e. minions need less rules than "spotlighted" solos), I aim for roughly 2 to 8 things the monster does. Here's a guideline (which can be deviated from judiciously):
- 1-4 offensive things
- 1-2 defensive things
- 1-2 other things (movement, battlefield control, charming)
If I have more going on than that, I try to cut what's unnecessary, consolidate (e.g. merge 2 powers), create a spellcasting section, get creative about the encounter presentation / terrain / lair actions, or even reference another rules bit (e.g. siege weapons).
Similarly, if I'm writing a monster's power with multiple paragraphs or with convoluted language to convey its meaning, that's a sign I need to either reference another part of the rules (see the change to "Emanation" language in 2024 instead of the wordy approach in 2014) or I need to rework the idea / refine my language.
Example: When designing a Pyromancer, instead of getting bogged down with picking spells emulating "casts as a 7th-level wizard", I might select one offensive spell (Melf's minute meteors) and a few other "side spells", and create a monster focused around how it uses meteors both as a defensive "screen" and it can teleport to where its meteors impact.
3) Challenge Rating Ratios & Flow of Play
Challenge Rating is A factor, but it is not THE most important factor. How the monster feels & how it flows without bogging down play are more important. One mechanical way to evaluate this is the ratio between the monster's Defensive CR and its Offensive CR. Generally speaking I do not want Defensive CR to be significantly higher than Offensive CR, because that will lead to grind; though there are a few exceptions – significant guardian type monster, some puzzle monsters with special weaknesses, etc.
At lower levels of play (1st-3rd), I want the ratio of Defensive CR and Offensive CR to be closer to 1:1, though if I'm going to err, I don't boost Offensive CR dramatically due to PC's being squishier. However, as we get into higher levels of play, I can really crank up the Offensive CR ratio – this both helps speed up play and maintain some of that threat/suspense.
Also, "stun locking" conditions contribute to slower flow of play. These can be used to control pacing, but in general are better addressed by building in unique countermeasures for PCs to break free, or incorporating them into other more active powers.
Example: Jeremy Crawford said 6 years ago in the podcast Dungeon Deep Dive #18 that (paraphrasing) "a ghoul's paralyzation power is roughly equivalent to a 2nd level spell, which can be translated into effective damage on par with the 2nd level spell scorching ray" – This will give you the monster's CR. However, it will not tell you that paralyzation is a pain point for "flow of play." Another method of evaluation – e.g. calculating paralyzation toward the ghoul's Defensive CR as additional hit points for "foregone damage that would have been dealt by the (paralyzed) PC" paints a different picture.
4) Solo/Boss Monsters
I design my solo monsters around these principles:
- It needs to be able to take a beating long enough to do some cool stuff. This may be boosted Hit Points, but it could also be a decoy double, an ongoing mirror image spell, or special phylacteries restoring it each round. You can read about my thoughts on how legendary monsters were treated in AD&D Planescape for more ideas about cool special defenses: Planescape - Secret Planescape Origin of Legendary/Solo Monsters?
- It needs to be able to avoid, mitigate, and/or shake-off "stun locking."
- It needs to threaten most or all of the party consistently round-after-round. A common mistake is making a brute solo that only has melee attacks and no ranged capability / no way to rapidly close distance.
- It needs to have some ability to respond outside of its usual turn such as Multiple Initiative Counts, Reactions, Legendary Actions, a Trait/Aura that triggers, a Boss Phase State Shift, Controlling a PC, a Dramatic Environmental Change, etc.
- (optional) It benefits from having something dramatically CHANGE during the encounter (as the combat may be a bit longer) to keep the players on their toes and avoid grind setting in. This can range from the floor collapsing to special "actions" the monster responds with at certain HP thresholds.
5) How Much Damage?
While there are charts in DMG and Forge of Foes, one of the lenses I use to evaluate monster damage boils down to 2 questions:
1) Can the monster, in one turn, deal enough damage to outright kill (i.e. reduce to negative max HP) a fresh PC of that level?
2) Can the monster, in one turn, deal enough damage to knock out an entire party of fresh PCs at that level?
If the answer to either of these questions is "yes", that's a big yellow flag for me to slow down, pay attention, and either reduce the damage or think more holistically about the scenario I'm presenting. The reason this is a yellow flag is because it strips players of too much agency, denying them the ability to save themselves or their friend.
6) Monsters That "Break The Roles"
Two types of monsters deserve special attention – those with False Appearance (e.g. mimic) & those that circumvent Hit Point attrition (e.g. shadow) – because they tend to defy our usual thinking about "monster roles" and how combat works. We might think "oh a mimic is obviously an ambusher", but what about a gargoyle that also has False Appearance? It's actually built more like a Guardian/Soldier! These sorts of monsters require a bit more care and thought about how they are implemented – You can't go wrong with foreshadowing them!
Generally, I loosely think of normal non-solo monsters as having certain combat roles (or sometimes a merger of two roles) – these are likely familiar to you from 4e or Flee Mortals: Ambusher/Lurker, Artillery, Brute, Controller, Guardian/Soldiers, Leader, Skirmisher. However, I try to be more nuanced than just falling back on these terms.
With solo monsters, however, there is a necessary "bleed" between these categories; while a solo might lean towards one of these categories, it needs to cover certain competencies in other "roles" in order to present a decent challenges.
Example: Gargoyles are the classic "ok GM we can see the cards you're holding here", so either the monster leans into that (i.e. used in the adventure as a deterrent / puzzle to solve) OR the monster is written differently to be more of a surprise. For example, a gargoyle... that resembles a bas relief of a satyr in the temple of a nature god... might not be assumed to be a threat by players. Another example leaning into the gargoyle as guardian/soldier... maybe the gargoyle is immune to conventional damage while using its False Appearance, but holds a brass key the PCs need in its stony grasp, so the trick is getting it to become active like tormenting the King's Guard at Buckingham Palace.
7) The Functional Description
With most of my monsters, I push myself to distill the monster's essence down to a single sentence. This touches on the narrative but focuses on the monster's function in combat without getting lost in rules language. In my process, this ends up coming last most of the time, as I work out the kinks and pain points of the monster's design, honing in on exactly what I want it to be.
Example 1: Guardian Familiar = Fey cat with nine lives guarding wizard’s treasure, returning bigger and badder with each death
Example 2: Cinderhaunt = Heat-seeking undead from Plane of Ash that leeches off of, and utilizes, those whom it petrifies
* * * * *
That's everything I can think of in one sitting. If I remember more, I'll come back to add it later. Hope this helps someone!
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