Question Re: Your 4e Adventure Design

[the Jester]

I was working on some adventure design for my 4e campaign, and I realized that almost all fully half of the monsters in the planned encounters are homebrews.

To be precise, the adventure is basically the journey to a faraway foreign nation. Along the way, I expect that there will be several random encounters (I'm using an encounter deck I constructed), where almost all the monsters are from one book or t'other.

There are also 6 planned encounters which will take place if the pcs take the most direct, obvious route to the nation in question. Without going into too much detail, these are:

Encounter 1- Designed as a likely skill challenge although it could turn into combat. 3 types of monsters, no homebrews.

Encounter 2- Homebrewed solo monster (the pcs may skip this, but they already know about it and it's on their list): the radioactive hydra!

Encounter 3- The pcs are likely to avoid the area this is in, but if they go into the cursed woods, there's a skill challenge to get out again. No monsters at all.

Encounter 4- 2 types of monsters, 1 type of hazard. All the monsters are homebrews, the hazards are from the DSCC.

Encounter 5- Homebrewed (well, converted from Sanstorm) solo monster.

Encounter 6- Roleplaying encounter. Should the pcs get aggressive and attack, there are 3 types of monsters, of which 1 is a batch homebrewed minions.

So of the ten types of monsters I'm using, half are homebrewed, and that seems to be about typical for my adventure design in 4e (and in 3.x, too!).

How about you? How much do you homebrew your monsters?

 

[SoulsFury]

I rarely use any of the monster as printed in the books. As far as completely original races, I probably average one new monster race every session or two.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

It depends on what you consider homebrewed.

The majority of my elites and solos are homebrewed (basically anything that isn't iconic), but normal monsters and minions I tend to just pull from the compendium and refluff.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Yeah, I refluff monsters all the time and give them minor stat and power changes to make them more interesting and help dictate the course of a fight.


I like putting a curveball in the fight, so the party has to make choices. Last night I gave a monster a fire aura that does 5 damage when the character starts a turn adjacent or does 5 damage when the creature is damaged. But 10 fire when the character left the aura. So the party was trying to keep it away from them rather desperately. It was fun.

 

[malraux]

For me, it varies from ~50% to 90% homebrew/substantially changed.

 

[the Jester]

I like putting a curveball in the fight, so the party has to make choices. Last night I gave a monster a fire aura that does 5 damage when the character starts a turn adjacent or does 5 damage when the creature is damaged. But 10 fire when the character left the aura. So the party was trying to keep it away from them rather desperately. It was fun.

Nice one!

Yeah, when I'm talking about homebrewed, I'm not counting refluffed unless there is a major rewrite involved. I'm talking about (in my case) writing up the Giant Yellow Scorpion, Enormous Yellow Scorpion, Crawling Apocalypse Terror, etc.

 

[radja]

homebrew.. nothing bad about it but I often dont have the time. I do use a lot of monsters straight from monster manuals, but I do a lot of reskinning. most monsters are not directly recognizable. reskinning is easy and your friend (or at least MY friend).

 

[the Jester]

homebrew.. nothing bad about it but I often dont have the time. I do use a lot of monsters straight from monster manuals, but I do a lot of reskinning. most monsters are not directly recognizable. reskinning is easy and your friend (or at least MY friend).

Oh, I absolutely agree- in fact, the same adventure has some reskinned lvl 7 hobgoblin minions that I'm using as goblin bandits instead with a simple "swap racial powers" note. I didn't mean my earlier comments to sound like I was disparaging reskinning at all.

I think I have a fetish for making new monsters though... I remember in the 1e days having 2 or 3 spiral notebooks that were just homebrewed monsters (or write ups of monsters from other sources than D&D, such as the evil carnies in Something Wicked This Way Comes and a number of bad horror film monsters). (That's probably also why the loss of a good Monster Builder from DDI stings me so much.)

 

[Robtheman]

I alter nearly all the monsters my PCs face. Typical reasons include:

- De-Leveling to fit the challenge level, but still use thematically appropriate or interesting monsters.

- Adding powers to make the creature more dynamic and threatening without dropping huge damage bombs all the time.

- Adjusting the monsters to fit the combat setting. How would this orc tribe have adapted to living on top of massive rocks in a swamp? What strategies would help them survive.

- Making minions less lame. They are supposed to be bad guys, even if they are extras. Giving them a Trait that supports or fits with their boss just makes sense. Perhaps they run at the first sign of defeat, but their vicious bandit lord definitely taught them some tricks.

 

[surfarcher]

To be honest I can't remember the last time I used a monster right out of the book!

I put all my critters into masterplan and tamper with them incessantly... Even the bog standard Orcs, Goblins, etc tend to get tinkered with... Even on the fly I'll tend to apply a template to a critter I've never used before so...

I guess I love monster building, it's something I do in my idle moments and with the tools I use it's really a breeze to get most of them right (solos aside). My PCs seem to enjoy them tho!