Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Runestar" data-source="post: 5110643" data-attributes="member: 72317">Except that optimizing one aspect of a monster seems like the best way of highlighting that specific role best. How else are you going to get your PCs' attention? I feel the impact of the feats has to be significant enough to actually make a difference in combat. You want your monster to be an effective brute? It has to excel at being a brute, and be sufficiently different enough from the same monster with a soldier-oriented feat selection, and not just being a brute in name only. For example, a troll has 23con and 8 wis. Steadfast determination seems like a no-brainer, improving its will save by a whooping +7. Tack on 1 lv of barb for rage + pounce and you have a choice brute (low AC, but lots of hp and decent damage from 2 claws+rend). And it won't be instantly knocked out by slow, deep slumber or glitterdust.That it may end up making the monster much stronger than its cr otherwise suggests is another issue. Truth be told, with all the splatbooks available, I think that the standard MM monsters are actually weak for their cr. So after optimizing their feat/eq choices, you may discover that they are now just right for their cr relative to the power level of your PCs. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The 3 extra hp from toughness certainly won't be making an impact. Most of the time, I doubt they will even notice it is there. Yes, some feats are so powerful they border on being their own class features, but you cannot deny that they do add a lot of flavour and the desired mechanical benefits to said monster. I am liking this thread more and more (also partly because I quite enjoy tinkering with monsters myself). Lets see how we can modify existing monsters. Any suggestions to get the ball rolling? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

Verification