D&D 5E Reskinning monsters, how much are DMs using it to bulk up monster options?

[miniaturehoarder]

Since the monster palette is temporarily down to the MM1, I'm wondering what classic monsters DMs are reskinning current monsters for. MM points out this for explicitly similar monsters, but I'm wondering how far DMs are fleshing out the enemy rosters. Here's a couple ideas I've had...

Commoner and Bandit. Just describe them differently and bam!, classic humanoids without special abilities. This lets one save the harder hitting 5E versions with the special abilities for lesser leaders. Might freak out metagamers, since they'll see 10 'hobgoblins' and think, "Oh gods, we are going to get Ginsu'ed!", but having plenty of foes PCs can cut a bloody swath through IMHO is a good thing.

Giant Toad, change locomotion to burrowing and you'll have a serviceable stand in for a Caecillia worm. It hasn't been around much since Basic, but it's a smaller grey coloured purple worm without the stinger. Useful since a lot of worm miniatures out there are not impressive enough to be a gargantuan TPK machine.

Deer, give it the giant frog's standing leap and call it a Cave Cricket.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Thus far I've turned a manticore into a giant, disease-riddled, bone-spitting mutant rat; rhinos into dire rams; various gnolls, kuo-toa, and a hill giant into a variety of mutant neanderthals; and... One or two others I'm not recalling at the moment.

 

[JWO]

Thus far I've turned a manticore into a giant, disease-riddled, bone-spitting mutant rat; rhinos into dire rams; various gnolls, kuo-toa, and a hill giant into a variety of mutant neanderthals; and... One or two others I'm not recalling at the moment.

Sounds like a fun game!

 

[Shiroiken]

I generally disapprove of re-skinning, but with the limited number of monsters, it's much easier than making new ones that are similar to others. Currently the only thing I've re-skinned is the Giant Ravens in ToEE to be Blood Hawks (was going to use Giant Eagle, but that was too strong).

 

[trentonjoe]

I do it all the time....regardless of the edition or how many books are out.

Last couple sessions I have used:

Adult Black Dragon- Lizard Man King
Kou-Toa's Whips and Regulars, Human Bandits- Orc raiding party
Giant Octopus- Mythical Land o'puss
One of the Dinosaurs- Cave Troll

 

[trentonjoe]

I generally disapprove of re-skinning.

Why? Just curious.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm not, but then, I've little need to. My home players aren't die-hard D&D'ers for the most part, and I'm not allowed to make significant changes in adventurers league, so my AL table gets (almost exclusively) what's in the book.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I reskinned a spectator into a 2E-style gauth pretty much on the fly. Otherwise, as part of 1E feel for this campaign, I'm trying to stick to the published monsters.

That said, I am going to spend a bit of time converting over a few favourites for some upcoming sessions. I don't like the green hag in the MM, for example, so I will convert my own using the existing one as a base.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I do it all the time....regardless of the edition or how many books are out.

Last couple sessions I have used:

Adult Black Dragon- Lizard Man King
Kou-Toa's Whips and Regulars, Human Bandits- Orc raiding party

Uh why not use the actual Lizard Man King and Orc Stat blocks?

 

[Dausuul]

I dislike out-and-out reskinning, because I believe verisimilitude is served by creating THE ILLUSION of mechanics that map to actual stuff in the game world.

(You'll notice that I put "the illusion" in great big bold letters, because I have the naive hope that I can maybe avoid turning this thread into another round of the tired old argument about simulationism in D&D. Verisimilitude is not simulation. The goal is not to actually model the game world, but to create an illusion that the world is being modeled, good enough to pass at a glance even if it doesn't hold up under inspection. The mechanics are like the set for a play. Close up, they are obviously fake, but from where the audience is sitting, they look real enough to not distract from the play itself.)

So, I don't like merely swapping out the name and appearance of a monster while using the exact same mechanics. That said, I often practice what you might call "re-fleshing," where I take Monster X as a baseline and use it to create Monster Y with similar stats and comparable-but-not-identical mechanics. For instance, I might use a fire giant as the model for a half-ogre warlord; roughly similar hit points, attacks, and average damage, but with damage dice appropriate to the warlord's weapons and fire immunity replaced with some other middling-useful immunity or resistance. I expect to do a fair bit of that when I resume DMing 5E.