D&D General Reskinning for fun and profit

[Reynard]

"The quill-badger is the result of an unholy union between a porcupine and the world's angriest six legged giant rat. It attacks with long slicing teeth and claws, or can launch its spines with deadly accuracy. If cornered it can skitter deftly away and its dark, mottled fur is perfect camouflage. Quill badgers are nocturnal and can see well in the dark."

This is, of course, just a goblin with a different description.

What is your favorite use of reskinning to inject wonder (or terror) in PCs without having to do a lot of actual statblock work?

 

[prabe]

Probably where my high-level (17th) party is now, a former temple to a forgotten god of safe travels corrupted and bent long ago to the service of a deity of cold and death, where there are lots of otherwise conventional undead reskinned to fit the theme. Mummies, mostly--the players haven't (yet) twigged to what these cold lurching things are, mechanically.

 

[Jer]

I think my personal favorite was a scenario where the PCs were in a village that was celebrating a local festival where a demonologist started secretly summoning up demons that would possess innocent festival goers and turn them into "rage demons" - morphing their hands into nasty claws, bulking them up like a smaller version of the Hulk, twisting their features into an ugly grimace and driving them to fight anyone near them. I just used orc stats but my players never came close to realizing it.

 

[LordEntrails]

Now I want someone to produce a new series of books "101 Reskinned Goblins", "101 Reskinned Orcs", "101 Reskinned..."

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I reskin stuff all the time, mostly because I'm lazy and am pretty tired of 5e's combat system - I mean, a bag of hp is a bag of hp, special stuff usually doesn't matter that much for meat and potatoes enemies. The only time I actually mod monsters in Beyond is for plot arch bosses, special NPCs and the like.

 

[Deset Gled]

Now I want someone to produce a new series of books "101 Reskinned Goblins", "101 Reskinned Orcs", "101 Reskinned..."

Naugas. 101 Reskinned Naugas.

 

[dave2008]

Love it! A great use of reskinning. It is always amazing how you can represent very different monsters with the same stat block.

I actually have a GM cheat sheet and I can just simulate virtually any monsters with just the tables in the DMG.

 

[Reynard]

Now I want someone to produce a new series of books "101 Reskinned Goblins", "101 Reskinned Orcs", "101 Reskinned..."

I want someone to rerelease the entire MM but it is reskinned. There's a prize for anyone that can name all the original monsters.

 

[Eltab]

I reskinned all the zombies in one dungeon as mummies, to better give a "sealed away for very long time" atmosphere.

I also took off the signature zombie ability, so as not to break the ambiance.