D&D 5E Monster Manual Question.
- Thread starter Evenglare
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Thaumaturge
Wandering. Not lost. (He/they)
Appendix B: Nonplayer Characters
With a little bit about how to customize them by swapping races or spells or adding magic items.
Thaumaturge.
- Acolyte
- Archmage
- Assassin
- Bandit
- Bandit Captain
- Berserker
- Commoner
- Cultist
- Cult Fanatic
- Druid
- Gladiator
- Guard
- Knight
- Mage
- Noble
- Priest
- Scout
- Spy
- Thug
- Tribal Warrior
- Veteran
With a little bit about how to customize them by swapping races or spells or adding magic items.
Thaumaturge.
doctorhook
Legend
I can't speak about the Monster Manual (since I haven't seen one yet) but we've heard that the Dungeon Master's Guide will have racial options for specific campaign settings (Warforged for Eberron, Kender for some boring thing that others enjoy for reasons inexplicable to me, etc.). It's not a stretch to imagine other races in the DMG, NPC races in particular.
There have been a few threads regarding making PCs out of other races. While Warforged and Kender characters are slated for the DMG and lycanthropy and vampirism are mentioned in the MM I believe, there are not the notes that the 3.5 MM had to make a PC out of almost any race.
My suggestion would be for the DM and player to work together to come up with a story based reason for this PC of another race. Then they need to figure out what the racial traits and abilities would be.
All non-human PCs should have +2 increase to 1 ability and +1 to another. The MM will give you stuff like speed, darkvision and suggested alignments. It also will give ideas of which abilities to increase (choose the top two abilities in the stat block) as well as what features they have.
We have a half-gnoll paladin in our current campaign. He is the child of the player's human druid from our last campaign and a good aligned gnoll. We gave him +2 str/ +1 dex, darkvision, a bonus action to attack another enemy when he knocks an enemy unconscious and proficiency in intimidation from the half-orc page. Given all of that, it is still less than what most PC races in the PHB get. We decided to stop there so that gnolls did not become too awesome and get in the way of the story. The player still does a great job of playing up his gnoll characteristics, but no one is jealous of him because he gets better stats.
I would also recommend sticking with medium and small creatures until we get more info on tiny and large creatures. You can search for the minotaur thread to look at what we discussed about that kind of PC.
My suggestion would be for the DM and player to work together to come up with a story based reason for this PC of another race. Then they need to figure out what the racial traits and abilities would be.
All non-human PCs should have +2 increase to 1 ability and +1 to another. The MM will give you stuff like speed, darkvision and suggested alignments. It also will give ideas of which abilities to increase (choose the top two abilities in the stat block) as well as what features they have.
We have a half-gnoll paladin in our current campaign. He is the child of the player's human druid from our last campaign and a good aligned gnoll. We gave him +2 str/ +1 dex, darkvision, a bonus action to attack another enemy when he knocks an enemy unconscious and proficiency in intimidation from the half-orc page. Given all of that, it is still less than what most PC races in the PHB get. We decided to stop there so that gnolls did not become too awesome and get in the way of the story. The player still does a great job of playing up his gnoll characteristics, but no one is jealous of him because he gets better stats.
I would also recommend sticking with medium and small creatures until we get more info on tiny and large creatures. You can search for the minotaur thread to look at what we discussed about that kind of PC.
Thaumaturge
Wandering. Not lost. (He/they)
The previous two posts pretty much cover it. There are half-dragon and vampire templates. Otherwise, the MM is not a player resource. It doesn't have anything for making PCs. I expect the DMG to have all of that.
Thaumaturge.
Does the MM provide different CRs or "levels" for these NPCs, or just a single example of each?
I have not seen a monster manual yet, but I keep on hearing that there are not examples of different levels when this question has been raised in the past. In the HotDQ supplement it says that adding racial traits to a NPC or changing its spells does not change the CR but changing weapons/armor/magic items can. Which is not what you are looking for.
The best thing I can say is to use what you have so far, pick an NPC, change it as necessary, and guess at the new CR if significant changes have been made. The HotDQ book has a few pages of additional named NPCs, but I whether spending $20+ on that is worth it for you is up to you. I have used several of the entries in that book in my prep for the upcoming chapter of my campaign (which is not HotDQ).
Between the starter set, basic DMG pdf, HotDQ pdf and HotDQ book there are a few examples out there. Most NPCs of a given CR are within a few hit dice of each other. If you increased their armor, you could drop a hit die or vice versa. Wizard NPCs have fewer hit dice than other classes of the same CR. Wizards are also much higher level than their CR. CR5 cleric can be a 9th level spellcaster. A CR6 wizard is a 9th level spellcaster. This is a far cry from 3.0/3.5 where NPC character levels pretty much matched their CR. I had to make a CR4 lizardfolk druid. So I used the 5th level cleric mentioned before (from the HotDQ book) dropped her hit dice down to something appropriate for CR4 made her a 7th level spellcaster instead of 9th level and added the lizardfolk traits. The last thing I had to do was figure out what additional spells would be appropriate for her since I was converting the 3.5 NPC to 5e and she went from being a 3rd level druid to a 7th level druid.
If you have any specific questions on making an appropriate NPC, I am sure there are plenty of people here who could help. Remember, the NPCs don't have to be statted perfectly. They just have to be close enough. When the DMG comes out, this will be easier and we will have the guidance we are looking for.
Thaumaturge
Wandering. Not lost. (He/they)
[MENTION=6776887]Tormyr[/MENTION] 's answer is much more helpful than my simple "no" would have been. 
Thaumaturge.
Thaumaturge.
evilbob
Adventurer
So there are templates for making PCs into half dragons or vampires, or are those just for other monsters?
Yeah, I figured the DMG would have a lot more - just wondering if they had put any of it in the MM as well. Seems like they're trying to be more organized, which is fine (but means we'll just be waiting longer...).
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