Immediately after watching your episode on Defense, I gave my next boss creature a similar charge ability that would allow it to contest various things such as Concentration spells, lingering effects, among other things. As it was an incredibly intelligent hivemind source of sorts, I felt it had to be good at countering similar intelligence-based magic. Initially I was afraid that this would cause our party's Wizard to feel let down, like his spells were nerfed or I was purposefully targeting him, when really I wanted my creature to feel realistic and not simply cheese-able despite being so intelligent and powerful. What ensued was literally the best D&D moment our play group has EVER had in combat. They fight in a huge room with the boss and a bunch of its servants, when by round 3 the wizard (level 8) declares he's going to use Banishment, and tells me to read it carefully as if the creature is from another plane, then it will stay banished. He had every reason to think it was from another plane, and it was! I found this very clever, but I also didn't want it to go down without a fight. I rolled its save, and it was a 2 on the die! It failed! I describe the spell and everyone's in awe because this is the first level 4 spell casted by this party, so it's a pretty sick scene. This convinced him to think he had done it and completely cheesed the boss. On the following turn, ALL of the servants ran at him to attack him and disturb his concentration, but the rest of the party effectively played "protect the castle" and defended him from the attacks so he could hold his spell. Then, on his turn, I told him to make a concentration check. He asked why, and so I described the creature soaking into his mind and fighting back from the other side of the spell. He was confused, that's not how the spell works, but then he quickly realizes this creature is capable of some crazy magic itself, and I explain that it's dealt with other casters before, it's prepared for this kind of stuff. Holy shit though, it was absolutely wild. He rolls his first 4 concentration checks with advantage (since he has to survive 6 turns to completely banish it) because he has the feat that gives you advantage on them. To everyone else in the party, the suspense and tension is really wild, since they're trying to defend him to their best efforts, and he's just sitting there rolling dice and focusing his strength. On the fifth concentration check he fails, but because this has gone on so long, I decide to not just let the boss reappear. I ask him, nearly quoting "You can feel the creature on the other side is beginning to overwhelm your mind, it's beginning to completely overtake you, and you have a choice to make. Do you drop the spell or do you continue to hold it and suffer great consequence?" And he thinks about it for a moment. At first he says he'll probably drop the spell, but then we get this incredible character moment as he reconsiders then goes "(My character) wouldn't drop it. He'd power through. He'd say 'Fuck it' and try to hold it back even if it costed him." and everyone gets REALLY hyped up about this. So I tell him he loses all of his remaining spell slots, he won't have advantage until he takes a long rest, and he ended up taking some ridiculous damage, but he was still standing! He ends up having to make the save again as an attack gets through, and he barely holds it. Everyone's super hyped and while his character crumples partially to the ground, trying as hard as he can to hold it, he ends up making it to the last round of the spell, where he has to make the check without advantage, knowing that if he fails this could be catastrophic, and potentially even risk his character's death. He's aware of this though, and decides to push on. He rolls... it's a 21 total. The boss is successfully banished to the plane it came from, everybody celebrates as his character is about to pass out, and it was the most spectacularly cool moment we've had in our games. What could have been such a boring encounter due to the banishment spell, it ended up being incredibly memorable, all thanks to the idea that monsters should be able to defend against this kind of thing. Even though they successfully "cheesed" the boss, it wasn't without cost, and it wasn't without intense effort.
One of my favorite boss encounters I've ever seen was when the party fought agaisnt a chess themed boss with a trait that forced everybody to move like chess pieces in a 8×8 square board until the fight was over . The players rolled to determine their piece , the boss could change what piece it was with it's action and bonus action , altering it's movement , attacks and abilities ( the rook form making a heavy hitting single target attacks in straight lines and pushing back enemies , the bishop firing perpendicular laser that hit everybody within the attacks firing lane , knight allowing the boss to not trigger opportuny attacks much to the Sentinel Barbarians dismay , etc ) and it could also summon chess piece minions with legendary actions that had lesser veriations of the bosses abilities . This fight made the party of mostly martial level 13 PC's ( casters & half casters outside Artificer weren't allowed due to the campaign being set in the world of One Piece , where most magic was relegated to items that granted the users powers ) and an NPC rogue and healer wrack their brains about positioning so melee characters could still hit the boss and the healer couldn't be targeted
A pretty simple monster I did which worked really well was a zombie swarm which acted as a single enemy but if it ever took more than 50 damage in a turn cycle the zombies which broke off the horde would animate and join the fight
@@onepangaean3018 Skeletal Juggernaut from ghosts of saltmarsh Literally when it dies 12 skeletons rise. It got 142 hp does 2d8+3 damage 2 attacks and got a 4d8 recharage attack that makes whoever fail the dex save knock prone save for half.
This is uncanny, I was recently thinking of making a tarrasque that's adapted to fighting adventurers throughout the ages. The traits suggested fit that fantasy really well.
Getting weird (and somewhat complicated) with it can be fun sometimes provides you have enough time to prep it, and don’t intend for other DMs to run that encounter. I recently ran a combat where my players were fighting mutated monstrosities in a mad AI’s lair. It was a nearly unwinnable combat due to how powerful these mutants were. A round into the combat however, I sent all my players a link to a Google questionnaire polling them for suggestions to alter the monsters. Options like “add more arms”, “make it smaller and quicker”, etc. The AI wanted feedback to improve the monsters. It was a bonus action to fill out the form and submit your vote. Majority vote would win, and at initiative count 20, the monsters would be switched out for other monsters (at the same HP and active status conditions as the ones they were replacing) with these changes applied to them. The players quickly learned that the AI would take whatever they suggest at face value, even if they were actively sabotaging the monsters to be less threatening with their suggestions. The game then became a puzzle of the players trying to decide how to design the most dogshit monster they could, and they were having a blast. The players came out victorious in the end and it was a really fun encounter to run and the players responded really positively to the weirdness of it. I’d never write a module forcing another DM to run a combat like that, and I certainly won’t be running an encounter that weird for a little while, but it was a blast to run that one time since I had extra time to prep that week.
An incredibly simple homebrew I made was just an orc with a fire arm... It ended up being one of the more interesting fights in the campaign even though I didn't really intend as such. The orc had some special attacks tied to the arm, along with classic fire spellcasting (Burning hands, firebolt, etc). The main feature of the orc was vague, but was "If a target is currently being touched (such as a grapple or otherwise) by the arm at the start of their turn, they take X dice fire damage." Additionally, they had the ability to ignite the earth around them with an action, causing creatures that *Ended* their turn in the area to take damage. I liked the idea of being able to avoid either effect with the sandwiching of where they proc. These orcs only had a resistance to the effect, so they could withstand it, but not forever. The fight I ran with said monster involved a couple basic orcs that the fire one would boss around. The lesser orcs would be commanded and intimidated by the greater to just stand in the fire and help secure grapples for the thing while he burnt up the party. Overall, while incredibly simple, it ended up being one of my more fun monsters to run. And obvious melee powerhouse with a basic cantrip for ranged fighting who bossed around his minions to trade HP with the heroes.
Hands down my favorite Monster trait I made was "Playin' the Wheel!" Effectively, the whole one shot was themed after a game show, with a Brass Dragon promising prizes to the adventuring party that was the strongest, smartest, and wittiest, asking them to prove themselves with a combat encounter, a quiz show, and a puzzle, respectively. Eventually, it's revealed that the Dragon was actually a Mindflayer, trying to single out the single smartest person in a crowd so they could eat their brain. After some story stuff, the final boss encounter against Sarchak the Mind Flayer and his lovely assistant Vanna the Wight was effectively also a game show; whenever someone's turn came up, they had to roll a d20 to Play the Wheel, and it was effectively like a mini Wild Magic Surge, where 10 and down were negative effects, getting worse the further down you went, and 11 and up were progressively more positive effects. The intent was to add effects to the arena without making it too complex, but the kicker is that the bosses had to Play the Wheel too, which could result in them getting splashed with a Grease spell, blown around by a Gust of Wind, healed by a Cure Wounds, or targeted by a Magic Missile. The whole session was a Chaotic blast and everyone had a great time!
This advice is really important. especialy for new Dm. for example, I tried making a gunslinger boss but struglled making him engaging. so i used the fantasy of a gunsliger who never gives up as the ability "grit". as a reaction when taking damage, he can gain a point of grit. he had a max of 4 and could use them in the following ways: he can spend Up to 2 grit as a bonus action to heal hp(1d10+15 per grit) or spend grit up to 3 grit when getting hit to move up to 20ft per grit without provoking attacks. or spend 2 grit to gain a +5 to hit after the attack is rolled. in adition to legendary actions and 3 reactions per round, this boss, with it's glass canon stats(139 hp, 19 Ac against a party of 6 level 5 to 7 characters) made for a fun and challenging encounter. of curse if the players denay his reactions or just deal massive damage, they evantually ovewelm him. i highly reccomend grit if you want a boss that can survive for a long time(along with 2 turn per round) to give players a challenge. without engaging in the fantasy of gunslingers and action heroes the fight would have been very boring
that could work if they were the only enemy in the fight, but be wary of making too many things to keep track of in multiple monsters. we like to have options, but i’ve straight up forgotten key parts of monsters in a fight because there were too many enemies to keep track of
@@Hazel-xl8in Its a solo bossfight, it should'nt and is not desined to be used with other creatures. if you want to run multiple unique monsters, I suggest having only one gimik per monster. grit is a bossfight mechanic ment to give bosses a fighting chance against strong or large parties. even when it was the only complex ability the boss had it was still kind of hard to run.
Ah man.. if i had these tips before i ran a boss fight, it would have been so much easier! The BBEG in question was a mad scientist witch, and i gave her a lot of traits based on lore and specific things she could do... but when it came to the combat i realized I had accidentally given her only 3 offensive abilities in the midst of the 15 other non combat related things she could do! The start of the combat was pretty good, and the players where really scared of her because she is WAY to powerful for them and they knew it, but as soon as they realized she couldn't do much more than those abilities they managed to match her power level and drive her away with 3 players still standing. That was her first appearance, and she was *supposed* to face plant the entire party in the ground to show how much more they still need to grow, but in the end, she was more talk than action. In that combat, i stumbled over my notes and realized that, even though she was a strong foe to face against in paper, I was so disorganized that i didn't notice the lack of offensive strategies she had and i missed many things she could have done differently to change the outcome of the battle in her favor.. You live and you learn :/
On Point #3 I find as a player it also makes playing against the monster to be more fun if there's only a few mechanics that I need to keep in mind. Playing Chess for the first time is more interesting to figure out than it is to actually play the match itself. If you make a creature or encounter too complex or there are too many interactions or asterisks, then all the cognitive load goes into figuring out what the thing does and not how to win or how to interact with it in meaningful ways. I had this issue come up with my DM when he made a boss monster with tons of different status effects that each did different things based on certain conditions and I spent more time trying to figure out what the point of these mechanics were than I was actually trying to beat it. So eventually, we just decided to run face first into it and try to race to the bottom of its health bar and hope. Normally, he's a fantastic DM and after playing DND for 6 years, he is by far the best designer I've played with but this one went too far in terms of complexity and he learned from that. Now he has encounters that have 3 or 4 mechanics max and usually a core mechanic that affects the fantasy of the fight and is easy to identify and interact with.
I had a really interesting encounter once, when the players all got stuck in a hole deep in a cave with no light source against a monster that could move through the walls and floor. They couldn't climb fast enough to flee and had to use fire spells to generate light momentarilly so that they could defend and counter attack the monster. The creature had almost no health but the fight lasted for more than an hour and almost half of it was the players having to come up with the plan on the fly.
A little while back, I made some stat blocks for a few backgrounds that I thought would be cool, and by far my favorite I made was the gambler, which had the ability "Lucky Streak: When the gambler succeeds a skill check, saving throw, or attack roll, it has advantage on the next skill check, saving throw, or attack roll it makes." It was otherwise a normal commoner, but I'd like to slap that trait onto an important NPC in a campaign or maybe some final boss in a gambling-themed one shot. I could even turn it into a comedic encounter if I added the caveat "When the gambler fails a skill check, saving throw, or attack roll, it has disadvantage on the next skill check, saving throw, or attack roll it makes".
This is the best series for DMs who want to understand and manipulate the mechanics of 5e that I've seen on TH-cam. Also, I used your Firepower mechanic a couple weeks ago in a boss fight my players had with a balor, and it worked perfectly! They actually managed to get him down to 0 Firepower in like 3 rounds before killing him, but it was a very tense fight all the way through.
Personal favourite "homebrew mechanic" I've invented was a massive single-target middle finger made for a homebrew Cthulhu. It reads as follows: "Eldritch Horror - Cthulhu chooses a target within a mile's radius from him, they must make a 25 DC Wisdom saving through or be subjected to a condition of insanity, where everything around them turns non-Euclidian in their heads, effectively losing their proper senses and suffering blindness, deafness, and being frightened for one minute." What this effectively accomplished in practice was having player characters walk into certain death, get completely lost, lose track of date & time (first signs of insanity), etc. There is no legitimate immunity to this and it was designed as a targeted aspect of the pure horror that people experience when interacting with Elder Beings. It never outright killed anyone but it came close quite a few times and it heavily reinforced the idea that even resting in this realm without being watched over is a death sentence not just for you but for everyone else. Constant exposure to this gave characters permanent brain damage and twisted their perceptions of reality itself until one of them straight up tried to kills his allies because he saw them as devouring beasts during a meal.
Gave a solo monster a "get hurt get better" trait, with a single activation to start, two when at half HP and then three at 1/3 hp. Made for a very tense fight. And this was on a simple vampire spawn stat block.
Can you explain the "get hurt get better" mechanic a bit more? Like, do you mean it would negate damage as a legendary after getting hit? Or like, after being hit it would roll to gain a certain number of HP back like a "Cure Wounds" spell or something like that?
@@christopherdaurio2617 nah it literally just meant rather than acting once a turn i rolled initiative again for it and had it act twice.... And then three times as its movements got more frantic and aggressive as it neared death.
@@christopherdaurio2617 have got another monster that gains feats more it gets hurt, sentinel at half and misty step as a bonus at 1/3..mixs up the encounter some what
I think one of my favorite monsters I have run was a wraith who was trapped in a mirror. They were at first fighting as a golem of molten glass, then when the glass broke because the party had dealt enough damage, they became visible. A shadowy noblewoman with a calm fury, surrounded by shards of broken glass that allowed them to reflect all of the damage from a radiant attack at a target of their choice, as a reaction. The catch? Being made from living shadow, they were very vulnerable to radiant damage! The party attacked once to bait out her reflection, then hit with a second spell which ended up dealing the final blow!
There's a cool monster I've homebrewed that I'm yet to use. The blighted goblin. It's a goblin that was infected by a blight and essentially became an undedad (see the fungus that does the same to ants). His stat block doesn't change all that much, except for the fact that it's undead, but the goblin's attacks and it's behaviour change drastically. The blighted goblin can expel a thorny vine from it's body and make a ranged attack with it, if it hits the attack works like that one cantrip from the druid spell list: the target makes a dexterity saving throw, if it fails, it is pulled 5 feet closer to the goblin and knocked prone. If it lands prone in front of the goblin and doesn't get out until the goblin's next turn, the goblin explodes, launching infected thorns everywhere and dealing a small amount of damage, but any creature that's hit by this attack must make a constitution saving throw or be infected by the blight and, if that happens, you have very limited time to get yourself cured, otherwise you'll meet the same fate. This goblin is concerned with one thing: spreading the blight. It will take one of two approaches to do that: either the goblin nestles in the ceilings of dark, humid caves and holes in the ground and walls, waiting to drop onto unsuspecting victims, or it presents itself as being distracted, just in plain sight, waiting for some greedy adventurer to try sneaking up on him. Players can identify a blighted goblin by their fear of fire, but they have to learn that first.
Hey AHero, based on your serie and mainly on the episode "Defense". I went with the design of wizard foe with 3 or more orbs floating around him. each orbs is linked to an element and provides adequat resistance and spells of the school of magic. He can cracks orb as legendary resistances and when he uses a spell or an action the orbs act as echoes for a specific amount of damage (based on the calculation of your sheet). Players can then target the orbs or burn its legendary resistance + the orbs act as indicators on the wizard current power (the more I explain the more it sounds like you red dragon haha) What do you think? Should there be a refill mechanic on the orb, any idea flavor-wise? Anyway, love your vids Cheers
@Kevin Jackson cheers thanks for the input Very solid point on the foreshadowing and big baddy abilities (once again the episode "defense" really covers a lot of ground on my monster flaw :') ) Flavorwise I was thinking maybe he just conjure the orbs but idk i think it s a bit meh
I have a monster who is an ancient construct designed to obliterate trespassers. The creator was an old gnome wizard who had hoarded a massive amount of treasure in a vault in a desert that had a shit ton of lightning storms. He designed the weapon to be electrically charged into a sort of “turbo mode” where it becomes unstoppable for a brief period of time if it would take lighting damage from any source. Now I built this to as more of a puzzle boss, it’s literally known as “The Walking Howitzer” so trying to fight it is near impossible. The way my players beat it was by exploiting a flaw the original creator failed to recognize, the fact it could only see things touching the ground. They effectively made themselves hover off the ground and were able to pacify the weapon.
A recent thing i made was an entity called "The cosmic baby" it has an ability where the first element it takes damaged from is instead gets converted (basically absorbs the damage) into a sphere of pure energy. On its turn it can grab that sphere and hurl it at a target within 60 feet of it dealing damage equal to the damage it stored within the sphere. However, if any targeted attack hit the sphere it instead explodes on top of the cosmic baby dealing its full damage to it.
I haven't fully homwbrewed monster traits, but I have customized my monsters by adding existing traits from official sources. I also like to play around giving class levels to monsters to some extent, or use some traits and abilities to simulate class levels. I try to make my important encounters very deadly but not unwinnable unless it's specifically meant to be something to run away from, or survive for X number of Rounds. One of my personal favorites that I customized was an Ancient Green Dracolich that I gave not only Innate Spellcasting to, but also the 18th Level Spellcasting Ability of an Archdruid. That was my players' Boss Fight at Level 12 in my first campaign. In my second campaign I had my players fight a Succubus with Bard-like Abilities and 5th Level Bard Spellcasting. That was their Boss Fight at Level 2.
I made a one-shot where the party fought a super monster (which was actually 8 monsters). It ended up taking up like 12 pages for stats and abilities, one for each part and legendary abilities and stuff. I made my own app in JS to help run the thing. The battle sort of took forever, but I think it was a good encounter in the end. it helped that i tested the thing a few times so I knew what abilities it had and did.
A simple trait I apply to (almost) all my monsters is: A monster's physical (melee) attacks affect the same number of squares as the monster occupies, or 1 square, whichever is greater. So a 5e Large monster (2x2 squares, for a total of 4) hits 4 contiguous squares in any formation with each melee attack. It works well on a grid, but it works well in theater of the mind, too. The monster is big, so it swings big. It's really easy to track, hence why I use it for most monsters by default.
I spent about half an hour designing a giant hellhound for my party to face. They were traveling overland, and I gave them a hex map with points of interest on it. The beast had been summoned from a book of fairytales, and couldn't venture far from the shrine where it had been summoned. It was about the size of a bus, and breathed deep crimson flames that would scorch off max hp equal to a part of the damage it dealt with its breath. Even better, its bite attack caused an over-time bleeding effect that couldn't be staunched with magic, meaning they had to choose to spend actions bandaging up before they bled out, using healing to add a buffer, without addressing the source of the damage, or try to take the monster down. It was all about spending HP, and since they were traveling, and the max HP loss wouldn't be regained right away, their choices would have an impact on upcoming encounters. Anyway it got an absolutely garbage roll on its perception to find them and they just walked around it.
For a low level boss fight against a fighter wh was possesed by a gold dragon I wrote a couple simple traits that reflected alternating manifestations of different gold dragon abilities (although toned down), it could glimpse the future to get a raised AC for the round (inspired by focus from xenoblade 2, as cool as xenoblade 1's future sight works, theres no way to translate that to DnD simply), or he would have a flame bolt erupt from the brand on his forehead signifying he was possesed, and as a desperation attack it would erupt into scorching ray.
In terms of complexity, the most I’ve done was a little too advanced for me at first. After the first dozen oneshots, I branched out to bigger and more dangerous conflicts. Besides normal dungeon fare, I’ve also run four enemies at once, and four types of enemies in groups so far. The easiest way was to make two simple but badass monster sheets for the four enemies. Then you do nothing to the “four enemies” except they’re both swarms of two that share traits. For best results, make a large and a small version of both monster types. I cheated and ambushed with a Shadow Wolf from the crowd: a third monster based on one of the previous two. It was the glass cannon and nasty backstab from the bad guys. When using swarms, think of them as being equivalent to a monster one size larger than the base mob in your swarm. That’s now the size and hitpoints of a medium sized mook, so beef up the swarm’s stats while it’s above half hit points. *Morale saves at first sight, first blood, half hit points, etc. But swarms have resistance and immunities to certain damage and conditions, which the DM should compare to existing swarms.* Swarms rely on overrunning other pieces/icons on the map, or holding enemies outside of their space in a way most mobs can’t. Shared health pool, and more dudes doesn’t mean “more morale” if they aren’t able to stand and hit the threat harder than it hits them.* *Warning: Something is DEFINITELY going to TPK your party if it consistently beats your party’s HP pool in three rounds, even when you factor in healing options, party abilities, and damage potentials of all factions involved.
Loved this video! And I also did something similar to this with my Awakened Tree Level 1 boss. It has a trait called "Cat in Tree" which states: Cat in Leaves - There is a cat that is in the leaves of the tree, and it has 2 (1d4) hit points. If a ranged attack roll is made against the tree and the roll a total of 8 or less, the ranged attack will hit the cat instead. Along with that, any ranged attack that is a cone or radius will also affect the cat as well (refer to Monster Manual for stats.) Basically, the quest regarding the tree is about mainly rescuing a cat stuck in a tree, and ranged attacks are discouraged in this encounter, since I also changed the tree's speed to 0, but with an attack range of 10 feet. This means the optimal way to fight this monster is to get close and risk getting hit, to rescue the cat. I hope this example helps to make more interesting encounters!
Also, yup, tarrasque in 5e is so weak, I don't understand why they removed so much of what made the tarrasque terrifying. How I imagine it though is that when the adventurers "kill" the tarrasque, they didn't kill it. It is immortal, and will regenerate completely in an hour or so, because in the lore the tarrasque's regeneration is actually really slow compared to a troll or vampire. Along with that, in the lore, the tarrasque actually doesn't only awaken once every decade or century, but multiple times a year. The reason why people think it to be every century is because there is only one tarrasque, and it wanders throughout the Material Plane, so the odds a tarrasque will meet the same kingdom it ate within 100 years is unlikely. But yeah, the stat block is supper underwhelming. Give it back its 35 AC and 878 HP, and add other things like the ability to just eat through magic like force cage, and an ability it has in its lore, earth glide. The tarrasque actually slumber literally in the earth, it takes up the same space as a giant rock its size that is deep beneath the Material Plane, then whenever it awakens, it begins to feed. Because of this earth glide trait, the tarrasque cannot be tracked underground, because it leaves no trace, no holes it goes through, it literally phases through earth and stone. But even then, the tarrasque may not be as powerful as it once was, a smart and creative GM can still make it a terrifying force of nature.
I recently DMed a oneshot with my friends, where they faced Aliens X-COM Style. I had lots of fun making some alien statblocks, so here is what I made: I. Frontline raptor-like creatures. They had decent speed, AC of 14, low health. They had the ability to bite, but more importantly they had immunity to fall damage, and could do high and long jumps up to their speed. They were based on the RAW mechanic of sharing fall damage (DC15 Dex Save or split fall damage in half) but I didn't just let myself jump 40ft up and fall on the player next to them - I had them use the environment to find high places to jump to first, and then bounce from them. It was quite fun with the varied environment I made. II. Gem Octopus - Decent AD and medium health, low speed. They had False Appearance, mimicking objects, and stealth bonuses. Once they revealed themselves, they had two attacks, and multiattack that let them use them in any combination: 1. a 10ft tentacle slap that grapples on hit 2. a ranged blast of radiant energy from their eyes, that had advantage (even in 5ft) if it was used against a grappled target. The Gem Octopuses tried to ambush/pin down the players, or chose to become normal ranged attackers, based on the situation. III. Psychic Alien - similar to Sectoids form XCOM. Low health and AC, easy targets. Magic Resistance. I made them the "supports" of aliens. They had three abilities. 1. A bonus action that lets them point at an ally and make them attack. 2. A Recharge ability that granted up to 5 creatures 15 tempHP, but any damage lower than 15 would still take all of them away (basically, blocks one attack, but strong enough attacks could pierce through and deal some damage). Ability disconnects from all allies when this creature dies 3. Main attack - Wisdom Save, on fail you take damage, and have to make an attack against the closest target with disadvantage. That's frankly my favorite enemy. A support that boosts aliies' dps, shield that can be dealt with, they were very defensive, and the players could position themselves in such a way to make failed saves against them an upside. IV. Mechanical Snek - a Large miniboss with 4 possible actions, that could use any 2 different ones of them. High health and decent AC/Speed 1. A ranged Acid attack roll 2. A Con Save AoE Poison damage (4x4 square) and Poisoned Condition for 1 round when failed 3. a STR Save that only pulls 10ft. 15ft if failed by more than 5 4. A bite that deals heavy damage and Con Save for extra poison damage Maybe the least mechanically interesting, but it had enough variety and survivability to make for a decent miniboss. V. A brain inside an armor- The Boss - High stats captain with a plasma rifle, capable of Mind Domination. The boss was based on 2 gimmicks. His every turn was the same in principle, but the terrain let the players do some work. 1. The boss had 2 basic plasma rifle shots 2. The boss ended the plasma rifle shots with preparing a wind-up attack, targetting a line, which would shoot out at the start of his next turn. If you get hit, I gave it a high save of 23 (as you could walk away) and it dealt heavy damage, and broke terrain 3. Psychic Domination Bonus Action. Wisdom save. Duration: 1 round Concentration. If you fail, your initiative moves to right before the boss. The other players can try to break the boss's concentration to break you free (your initiative remained delayed for ease of keeping track of it tho). If it got to your turn, and the concentration wasn't broken, you take your turn as you would, but you see your allies as enemies, and the boss as your ally. Because we used Modern Guns, player's average DPR was higher than their max health. The players enjoyed being able to play out their turn with a Mini-PvP event going on every now and then. We had some almost oneshots coming from that mechanic.
something i’ve found based on advice i’ve heard and experimentation, is that you’re way more likely to remember something about the monster if it’s part of the action economy. you could say something happens at the start or end of the round, but if the monster doesn’t have a bonus action, you could just put it there. the MCDM Overmind is essentially their version of a beholder, and instead of a 150 foot antimagic cone that’s either always on or always off, it has “The Great Eye”, a recharge bonus action that dispels all spells of its choice in a cone. this makes it much easier to use and keep track of, while still fulfilling the fantasy of “antimagic eye”. the more passive traits a monster has, the more things you have to keep track of when it’s not the monster’s turn. this gets exponentially worse the more monsters there are. making sure each important monster has a “default” attack action, a bonus action, a reaction, and a cool limited action will usually do the trick of making a monster feel the way it should while being both simple and dynamic. if you want to include multiple passive traits, go right ahead. just ask yourself: “does this need to take up space here? or could i make this part of its actions?”
I made an Iron Golem that had an arm mounted launcher that shot Black Puddings out. It was fun because the Golem’s goal was to destroy the massive boat the party was on so it shot the black puddings to eat the hull of the ship while it dealt with the party.
Few bits to add: 1) Granularity - A "high level" trait that the group didnt ecnounter prior such as Turn Immunity, Limited Spell Immunity or the shown homebrewed carapace upgrade of Inexorable are great for npcs or "RUN" situations (unless the party has gear/feats/features that circumvent or alter the use of the thing thats blocked), but can also serve as your DM side idea of what the capstone version of a series of 3-4 prior weaker versions of that trait would be. E.g. Turn Immunity can start on the lowest point actually as Turn Reduction (If the creature fails its save vs turn undead by 5 or less, it can take a action other than the attack or cast a spell action after it moves a number of feet equal to its speed on its turn) before adding on Turn Resistance (Advantage on save), Improved Turn Resistance (if the save has advantage, undead can reroll once per turn), Limited Turn Immunity (something like Unless x/y/z was used as the holy symbol, the undead succeeds on the saving throw and is immune to the effect of turn undead used by the creature for 1 minute or until the undead damages or harms the creature) before slapping the final version. Same can/should have been done to magic resistance (splitting it into advantage on x type of saves vs spells, x vs spells+magic, advantage on saves+1/2 cover vs spell attacks, advantage+cover+resistance to damage from spells, etc) IMO to not make it feel as boring on the monster side with a variant/green box that says all these features can just be swapped for regular magic resist if you just want the "quickly drop in monster feel and resolve fight in 20 min. 2) Interactivity can be just as easily added via environment options as via boss like monster traits, but combining both (either as a way to fuel effects for the party or to shut down the boss' option) tends to be worth more than the sum of its parts if its not a arc villain as it lets the player(s) that figure it out feel really smart meta side even if it doesnt give you the fun of using a statblock to its full potential if the group do it in the first or by the end of the second round (golem whose power is tied to a setup of windchimes or a food processing in the lair of hags that go full Crones of Crookback Bog, skeletons that gain bodyguard/warding bond/shared suffering from the second spellcasting focus the necromancer is holding, a church which becomes a empty box if a sacred item is dirtied or a "eternal fire" cant provide light to it, etc).Oh and for the 3 trait bit, while ok for personal note version of a fight, id still encourage a "every feature is its own effect source" style to make things like a monster book with tips saying "this weak poison suppresses the regeneration feature of a enemy, but a chill touch or wounding weapon can prevent other forms of recovery" point out the worth of small scale vs large scale RPS.
I'm really loving this series. Glad I was recommended the first one, and hope to see your channel grow as you make more of these very informative videos 😎
I think the only monster I ever homebrewed so far was a kind of angel. I took the deva stat block and essentially gave it two phases. One was a superbuffed version, and one was a weaker one. The plan was that before the encounter the bad guy would kill an NPC with a powerful artifact, absorb its power and become the superbuffed angel. The party would fight him and die quickly. He had disadvantage on attack rolls that would down a PC, as the soul of the NPC he killed tried to restrain him from killing her friends. The plan was that, once the entire party was downed/ killed, the NPC's soul would tear free, revive the party and leave the bad guy in a weakened state that the party would be able to handle. I actually really liked this idea, even though it never happened. In the end, the party somehow managed to kill him with only one PC dying (who was revived at the end of the fight). I essentially just slightly altered the original stat block, and while the second phase never came up, it was still a really fun fight that suited the story, or at least I like to think so. Anyway, I really enjoyed the video. It seems like great advice, and I'm really looking forward to making some more homebrew monsters, once I'm back to DMing my homebrew campaign.
When I wrote monsters I always come up with the lore for them before their abilities, unless I had some cool abilities in mind. So then I write the monster according to the lore and balance it afterwards. Quick tip: throw immutable form on your tarrasque and give it a recharge 5-6 ability to roar that knocks creatures prone, while flying have disadvantage
I made a crystal dragon with a design somewhat similar to your fire power, I call it fatigue. Certain actions cost (more) fatigue, and I had the dragon be able to teleport, detect creatures and blast creatures with psionic attacks from different towers on the battlemap, which the players can actually destroy to hinder said abilities.
I recently introduced a boss in my campaign with a plethora of interesting mechanics for the party to work around. He telegraphed his attacks, legendary actions, lair actions, and reactions before his turn with flashing symbols (marked by tokens on roll20) and there were rocks the players could use to negate some of this effects. It was a total flop. Because as much as I thought I had spelled it out for my players, even going so far as to give them an in-game handout written by a scholar describing what his symbols meant and the rocks that correlated to them; they still managed to read way to far into it and not understand anything that was going on. To all my fellow DMs: PLEASE EXPLAIN THINGS TO YOUR PLAYERS
I made a zombie Tarrasque that vomits acidic blood and with a stomach that explodes spreading carrion beetles everywhere. I was inspired by that show Primal, and the sheer will to traumatize my players
Great video man! I saved it and will very certainly rewatch it before designing my bosses for my upcoming Runeterra-based campaign (Runeterra is League of Legend's universe, which is why I'll have to homebrew quite a bit)
This video has helped me a lot realising some of what has been wrong with the thematic enemies in my games, besides what I already discovered from my own experience. I thank you both for that, Great video. Here's an enemy I thought was interesting when I made him: A monk who would take the way of the "exploding hand" as I called it. He was a student of a very old monk (immortal) who lived in the mountains, and took him in when he climbed it on his own. However, he became dissatisfied with the master's teachings of finding balance, and instead preferred to take hold of his own destiny. Somewhat inspired from one punch man, this monk could take advantage of one of his hits connecting to roll for another attack. If that one hit, he could roll again, indefinitely. When any of the rolls crit, he would deal all damage accumulated in a single strike, (10 attacks would deal the average * 10) for a devastating amount. My downfall was making him an actual monk and not giving him any extra HP.
Nailed it - Make the traits simple and keep it moving. You don't want to have to juggle that many cooldown bars on a creature that is using the squishy meat math of your brain. Buffing monsters is what I end up having to do 90% of the time when it comes to 5e and it usually comes down to: 1. Action economy management 2. Trimming the fat off of "monster has spells" and just giving them unique abilities in their place 3. HP Buffing I like my players to hit my monsters so I typically let the AC alone and have the monster "no sell" a hit as "you sink your weapon into it and it laughs" to get across that hitting it may not be the way to beat this particular creature.
So, what I typically do for the tarrasque is add a paralyzing roar feature which removes concentration knocks falling creatures out of the sky and reduces enemy speed to zero. I also double it’s speed and give it the magical entity ability which makes its attacks magical for overcoming resistances.
Why not give it a thrown area-of-effect attack that’s flavored to be it picking up debris and tossing it at an area like a shotgun? Give it a high Reflex save to take half damage and full damage drops the target’s speed to zero. Seems simple enough.
One of my favourite ideas for if I ever DM is a monster that buffs and/or heals itself via cannibalism, fun decision making (and just a really sick vibe). Do you kill one and give another a chance to feast and make itself an even bigger threat or try to coordinate and kill the pack all at once?
I ran the Tarrasque having nerfed its attack power but giving it a 600 ft cone breath weapon (inhale rather than exhale) and an instant death stomach that heals him. I didn't feel like making my players roll level 20 characters for a one-shot, so I let them play as a team of monsters. The Tarrasque died in 4 rounds and never got the instant death stomach to proc. On round 1, he rolled a nat 2 on the bite and got parried by a death knight (he couldn't chomp as a legendary action because I took away the chomp legendary action and replaced it with an incapacitating effect, which incidentally failed). On round 2, he hit, but the target escaped with Freedom of Movement. On round 3, he hit someone else. On round 4, he was finally allowed to swallow, but instant death stomach only procs at the start of the swallowed creature's turn. There was no round 5.
I find these videos very interesting, but as a DM I tend to go in a relatively opposite direction to "fix" things. I'm keeping it **very** clean and simple by scribbling on either a piece of paper or txt file (depending on whether I'm on a table or online) a few things that I want my monster to do. No complicated rule-writing (which, anyway, my players wouldn't get to see the stat blocks, so it doesn't make much of a difference), and I can fill in the gaps with narration. With the example of a Tarrasque, I'd probably add some characteristics like 'immune to damage made by all weapons, except a specific type', which could become a plot point in having the players seek weapons able to damage it Combined to a similar thing for magic so that I don't cripple half the party while the other is fine. Have it destroy buildings and ignore terrain, I don't really need rules for that. The monster just does it. (and if there are players inside such buildings, that makes for more tension as the building gets destroyed around them, it's the kind of moment where I could give an action to the player so that they can find an inventive way to get out of this) That's the jist of it. I know it's a risky method (which kinda needs experience if you want to get your damage outputs or verisimilitude right), but it has served me way better over the years than actually writing rules for these actions, which often feel way too restrictive to me once they're written down. Doing it this way also allows for more improvisation on the DM's side, as it sometimes happen that I come up with a nice idea in the middle of a fight.
I personally don't really like the idea of the Blackjack since it makes the Tabletop RPG experience *much* more videogamey. A player character should have no concept of "Hit Points" or "Damage Numbers". Meanwhile, a giant force of nature that is essentially Godzilla ignoring Crowd Control and destroying nonmagical terrain and structures is wonderful both flavor-wise and in that a player character has a reasonable understanding in that these just make sense as features. Edit: Since you asked about cool monster trait ideas in the comments: I ran into a monster at a table that had *Reactive Armor Plates*- its AC would go up the more successful attacks were landed on it in a round, so it encouraged us as a party to focus on helping to provide buffs and advantages for our main damage dealers.
Was about to head here to comment exactly this! Takes a bit away from the point of "identity fantasy" abilities if they end up not making any sense in-world. Still an awesome video though!
I've had fun with Undead by turning them into a Swarm of Zombies. Each zombie only has 2 hps so everyone feels like they're mowing through a Hoard of Zombies and I get to roll more Undead Fortitude rolls. It's hard to keep track of them but they're mostly fodder so I don't mind losing track of how many zombies remain.
Id love a sample set of monsters and encounters. Id pay top dollar to see your ideas and systems in action. Like you make a few homebrew monsters, and add an explanation of the thought process behind it.
I will point out that your tarrasque is just as vulnerable to "flying archer man" as before, its just that they need to do more damage per round, and need a wizard to pop around the corner with a wish when they bring it down. Outside of that the tarrasque is still vulnerable to the most classic cheese of them all
I was thinking about an assassin called just “The Sponsor”, his design (appearance and even name) ripped from Arcane Odyssey (Roblox). I imagined in his description that first, as said earlier he’s an assassin. But not any, THE BEST. A lawful neutral… undead. Like, when paid, he’s gonna do the job, no question ask. So he would go as follow : step 1 is to know who is the target(s) (usually powerful groups of adventurers), step 2 is to gather informations. Knowing your enemy is the best strategy, after all. So let’s make him having this 7th battle master feature, except it’s instantaneous. And make it way better. Then 3rd step : preparation. Making straight up a plan. Step 4 : kill them. Like, if they are in a dungeon, quietly follow them and waiting to strike when it’s the best moment. It’s an hard encounter if you have spellcasters, as well… it obviously have to deal with a lot of them. Like, just dodge with a better version of invasion that would be named “uncanny dodge” because any dexterity saving throw automatically succeed and it’s also fused with evasion. So will never take damages from spells like fireball. But also is immune to basically most spells as it will just dodge them (if possible). So few possibilities : banish it to the shadowfell, cast daylight, or just have a martial class (light cleric is also a choice). Realized this is a mess… but at least I tried my best…
BlackSkull, first creations of the god. Otherwise would have been just your average lich if it wasn’t that he was given magic, not spellcasting, but directly able to bend reality to his will. And so he became a lich (his phylactery being his heart, literally). It’s mentioned that when the dark power (got recently the Ravenloft guide) trapped him in his domain, he became so angry that every mortal felt it, and it was so intense the whole human race stopped worshiping their gods (making them all die) and the other gods caused a whole continent to be reshaped. All because of someone feeling emotions. So I think it would go as follow: Black skull, lawful evil titan (undead) Since he’s not a scrawny wizard, he isn’t easy to kill. After all, he has god-like powers. And with the fact he can share a bit of his magic (which make the receiver powerful enough to be able to quite literally make the said person nearly kill 15th level character just by rushing into them), and it’s not at all limited to the same rules as players… because I’m the dm lol. Well, I know that… this statblock is a mess I won’t bother do. So yeah, no chance to affront it on their own, they will need a whole bunch of npcs with them! It will end in anime right, and I love imagining that.
Great advice and awesome Video. Please do more! Just wanted to ad, that in Dungeon World The Tarrasque do not has a statblock because your player can not kill it, it is just to powerfull.
I read through the "terrible tarrasque" stat block. Not only would it be a nightmare to run as the DM, I don't think it would be fun at all to fight for the players.
Made a bbeg who summons construct mooks but can also rez at 1hp with some thp at the cost of its legendary actions. And by can I mean he must. And he has these tiny drones he will spawn more more of if his actions are free before his turn. And he fights alongside a unique, moderately dangerous construct. So players need to choose which small drones they would fight some more, and whether to damage the big, dangerous robot which would prolly not die until some turns in or clean up some of the small drones.
I made an u balanced godzilla off of the terask.... I recommend not using that draft. Giving the behemoth the equivalent of three fireballs per turn, with three turn cool down wasn't enough to keep the mock party alive. And I was the one controlling them! XD
I decided to design a creature that is cloaked in darkness and annoying to hit, due to its exact location being hard to pin down, it has a higher ac against attacks that do piercing damage than other attacks, and can temporarily blind someone who hit it close up as a reaction. Also its abilities can be negated using magical light and/or radiant damage.
The problem with 5e is the it's made for the lowest common denominator, basically D&D with training wheels. Because WotC wanted to make the game as "accessible" as possible to the widest audience possible. Is this a bad thing? Well, it's complicated. It means that lots of casual players can dip their toes into D&D and have fun. But it also means that hardcore players and long time fans are left with a rather hollow experience, when playing the game "as intended". It means DM's have to do a ton of leg work to bring encounters in-line with all the power creep that has been piled on to modern character classes.
Very simple trait I use: Godly Resistance. Against a god or god-like creature (such as the Tarrasque, Fey Lords, Archfiends, etc.), their sheer power makes mortal means of defeating them ineffective. The creature with this trait only takes 30% damage dealt, unless the damage source is blessed by or is from a god or god-like being of equal or greater power. This trait also compounds on resistance and vulnerability, meaning damage dealt to the creature is 15% if resisted or 60% if vulnerable. At DM's choosing (because bookkeeping), this trait may be applied multiple times over, depending on the strength of the creature: 1 time for Demigods/God-like, 2 times for Lesser Deities, 3 times for Moderate Deities, 4 times for Greater Deities, and 5 times for Overdeities. If applied this way, an enemy with Godly Resistance negates another's Godly Resistance by its value, so a Lesser Deity treats a Greater Deity as if they had 2 Godly Resistances. Word of recommendation: nobody should punch up more than 1 Godly Resistance above them, as even 2 Godly Resistances reduces non-vulnerable damage to less than 10%, and gods oft aren't vulnerable to damage. I sometimes use this in tandem with Godly Initiative, which lets them take top initiatve against all lessers, only rolling against equally-strong or greater beings. Occasionally, I have them still roll and use Godly Initiative as a second turn in the initiatve to refresh Legendary Actions and do more against the players.
Fantastic advice that I really appreciate and will be using in my games going forward! I have a followup question though: do you let you players know in advance about these added traits, or let them discover them in the moment?
The way of doing this is probably to reveal as you go, make it surprising to both old and new players. Perhaps it's like Intel on other monsters, that with libraries or survivors of other attacks you'll receive a flash of what the monster is capable of. Importantly if you have metagamers or DMs at the table is to preface that above game knowledge isn't always accurate and you're running homebrew for certain monsters.
Iv made a tiny Poisonous toad thats hard to catch because it hides and leaps as bonus action and reactions if you Touch it barehanded it deals a huge amout of poison damage and it ignores resistance to it It tho have only 8 hit points Im exited to swing One at My players 😅
"How to make interesting encounter with a Tarrasque and not just get it cheesed by the players?" I threw it at a lvl 5 party. There is no rule saying your encounters have to be fair or balanced. ...I let it ravage the capital city and continue on it's way bringing on the collapse of a civilization - leaving them behind to pick up the pieces. It walked away, ate through a few kingdoms and went back to sleep. If you want to use a monster whose appearance is considered an apocalyptic event - don't be a wimp and make it an actual apocalypse. You want to throw it at your lvl 17 party? Sure, go ahead. Just don't make it rise right in front of them so they can slap it around. Oh the BBEG had planned all this time to wake up the Tarrasque and unleash it upon the world? The party has confronted him? You can pull "the Watchmen" - have him monologue about it and when the players inevitably go: "No! We will stop you!" he can answer "You can't, the ritual happened yesterday on the other side of the realm. I've lured you here so you can't interfere." And have them then race back to try and save as much of the realm as they can. Have them walk through the ashes of the world they knew. Something like Tarrasque is not meant to be just a combat encounter. It is meant to change the world. It's something they should not face right away but first come to understand it's power in contrast with those who do not have the power the players possess. Tarrasque is not a threat to experienced players - he doesn't feel like one. So if he can't be a threat - he can be a catastrophe. Who says players have to anticipate and prevent everything...
Rule one one of creature design- if it has hp, it can and will be killed by the players. It's the reason why gods and avengers level threats dont feel as so in 5e.
My monsters suck because even when I give them a ton of cool features, traits, actions etc. When it comes time to use them I just dont... idk what my problem is. Lol
the whole "10th level wizards can just polymorph it" thing is mostly just due to the issue of how 5e works in the first place. 5e kinda sees Bounded Accuracy as a Religion. Now, Bounded Accuracy does have some advantages, since 3.5 had an issue that at high levels, some things would be literally impossible without someone specialized in it (like the Bastion of Broken Souls Adventure having a DC 35 Knowledge (Planes) check. Which someone would be physically incapable of doing without a bare minimum of a +15 just to be able to succeed on a natural 20, which for something more reliable you might need to be a significantly higher level in order to get access to a specific thing. However, there is one problem with this design philosophy that is basically why 5e monsters SUCK. because bounded accuracy is on both sides of the pool. (For example, a 3.5 tarrasque, ignoring the immunity to magic, has a +20 will save (3.5's equivalent to Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma Saves), meaning the bare minimum it can roll on such a save is 21. While a 10th level wizard with polymorph and 20 intelligence would be throwing around a DC 19 save, and even if they Heighten it to 5th level and use Spell Focus, that's only a DC 21 saving throw. Meanwhile, 5e's bounded accuracy with the same parameters means a 10th level wizard has a DC 17 saving throw, which allows the tarrasque to fail a saving throw on a 7 or worse. The idea that something would be *Just Impossible* for a character of a given level isn't something that 5e could imagine because of how low its numbers are. Hell, the new design of One D&D made it that Attacks AND Skill Checks can auto-succeed on a natural 20, even further pointing out that they think "Yea, a country bumpkin totally could hurt a 20th level monster or solve theoretical physics if they got reeeeally lucky" (Also a fun fact, the maximum DC a wizard in 5e will usually have actually is a 19, which again basically means there's nothing that is guaranteed to fail because even a level 1 peasant with a +0 to every stat and no proficiencies can still succeed on a 20 (Though a nat 20 is an auto-succeed anyway in many cases). Pathfinder 2nd edition actually took the bounded accuracy problem in an interesting direction that while I think it has its own problems is still worth noting. Everyone had a proficiency bonus equal to their level which would apply to both their attacks and armor class and saving throws. Meaning that eventually monsters and other such things WOULD be strong enough that a commoner would have no hope of hurting them, while still having a certain amount of standardizing.
Terrask getting meta gamed is an easy solution just homebrew adjust your world/enemies if your players meta game... it pretty easy to learn balance for your group after a while...
![Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 -Tactical VS Inferno, Solo [Lethal difficulty]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5xntAqN9wIY/mqdefault.jpg)
They go cower, we devour...💪
put in the work, put in the hour and take what's ours!
Immediately after watching your episode on Defense, I gave my next boss creature a similar charge ability that would allow it to contest various things such as Concentration spells, lingering effects, among other things. As it was an incredibly intelligent hivemind source of sorts, I felt it had to be good at countering similar intelligence-based magic. Initially I was afraid that this would cause our party's Wizard to feel let down, like his spells were nerfed or I was purposefully targeting him, when really I wanted my creature to feel realistic and not simply cheese-able despite being so intelligent and powerful.
What ensued was literally the best D&D moment our play group has EVER had in combat.
They fight in a huge room with the boss and a bunch of its servants, when by round 3 the wizard (level 8) declares he's going to use Banishment, and tells me to read it carefully as if the creature is from another plane, then it will stay banished. He had every reason to think it was from another plane, and it was! I found this very clever, but I also didn't want it to go down without a fight. I rolled its save, and it was a 2 on the die! It failed! I describe the spell and everyone's in awe because this is the first level 4 spell casted by this party, so it's a pretty sick scene.
This convinced him to think he had done it and completely cheesed the boss. On the following turn, ALL of the servants ran at him to attack him and disturb his concentration, but the rest of the party effectively played "protect the castle" and defended him from the attacks so he could hold his spell.
Then, on his turn, I told him to make a concentration check. He asked why, and so I described the creature soaking into his mind and fighting back from the other side of the spell. He was confused, that's not how the spell works, but then he quickly realizes this creature is capable of some crazy magic itself, and I explain that it's dealt with other casters before, it's prepared for this kind of stuff.
Holy shit though, it was absolutely wild. He rolls his first 4 concentration checks with advantage (since he has to survive 6 turns to completely banish it) because he has the feat that gives you advantage on them. To everyone else in the party, the suspense and tension is really wild, since they're trying to defend him to their best efforts, and he's just sitting there rolling dice and focusing his strength. On the fifth concentration check he fails, but because this has gone on so long, I decide to not just let the boss reappear. I ask him, nearly quoting "You can feel the creature on the other side is beginning to overwhelm your mind, it's beginning to completely overtake you, and you have a choice to make. Do you drop the spell or do you continue to hold it and suffer great consequence?" And he thinks about it for a moment. At first he says he'll probably drop the spell, but then we get this incredible character moment as he reconsiders then goes "(My character) wouldn't drop it. He'd power through. He'd say 'Fuck it' and try to hold it back even if it costed him." and everyone gets REALLY hyped up about this.
So I tell him he loses all of his remaining spell slots, he won't have advantage until he takes a long rest, and he ended up taking some ridiculous damage, but he was still standing! He ends up having to make the save again as an attack gets through, and he barely holds it. Everyone's super hyped and while his character crumples partially to the ground, trying as hard as he can to hold it, he ends up making it to the last round of the spell, where he has to make the check without advantage, knowing that if he fails this could be catastrophic, and potentially even risk his character's death. He's aware of this though, and decides to push on.
He rolls... it's a 21 total.
The boss is successfully banished to the plane it came from, everybody celebrates as his character is about to pass out, and it was the most spectacularly cool moment we've had in our games. What could have been such a boring encounter due to the banishment spell, it ended up being incredibly memorable, all thanks to the idea that monsters should be able to defend against this kind of thing. Even though they successfully "cheesed" the boss, it wasn't without cost, and it wasn't without intense effort.
they go cower, we devour :D
One of my favorite boss encounters I've ever seen was when the party fought agaisnt a chess themed boss with a trait that forced everybody to move like chess pieces in a 8×8 square board until the fight was over . The players rolled to determine their piece , the boss could change what piece it was with it's action and bonus action , altering it's movement , attacks and abilities ( the rook form making a heavy hitting single target attacks in straight lines and pushing back enemies , the bishop firing perpendicular laser that hit everybody within the attacks firing lane , knight allowing the boss to not trigger opportuny attacks much to the Sentinel Barbarians dismay , etc ) and it could also summon chess piece minions with legendary actions that had lesser veriations of the bosses abilities . This fight made the party of mostly martial level 13 PC's ( casters & half casters outside Artificer weren't allowed due to the campaign being set in the world of One Piece , where most magic was relegated to items that granted the users powers ) and an NPC rogue and healer wrack their brains about positioning so melee characters could still hit the boss and the healer couldn't be targeted
That Fight was great i agree! its nice to see another one piece DnD fan
that campaign sounds wild and cool
@@elsanto2401 you can watch it in rustage2 youtube channel
A pretty simple monster I did which worked really well was a zombie swarm which acted as a single enemy but if it ever took more than 50 damage in a turn cycle the zombies which broke off the horde would animate and join the fight
So the skeleton mass that's already in a book?
@@WhyYouMadBoi you sound insufferable
So if it takes damage it spawns a zombie? And what book is the skeleton mass in?
@@onepangaean3018 Skeletal Juggernaut from ghosts of saltmarsh
Literally when it dies 12 skeletons rise. It got 142 hp does 2d8+3 damage 2 attacks and got a 4d8 recharage attack that makes whoever fail the dex save knock prone save for half.
This is uncanny, I was recently thinking of making a tarrasque that's adapted to fighting adventurers throughout the ages. The traits suggested fit that fantasy really well.
Sounds like Bloodbath Diablos
As a joke, I homebrewed a monster that was just a commoner with 1 casting of meteor swarm. He was CR 6.
Getting weird (and somewhat complicated) with it can be fun sometimes provides you have enough time to prep it, and don’t intend for other DMs to run that encounter. I recently ran a combat where my players were fighting mutated monstrosities in a mad AI’s lair. It was a nearly unwinnable combat due to how powerful these mutants were.
A round into the combat however, I sent all my players a link to a Google questionnaire polling them for suggestions to alter the monsters. Options like “add more arms”, “make it smaller and quicker”, etc. The AI wanted feedback to improve the monsters.
It was a bonus action to fill out the form and submit your vote. Majority vote would win, and at initiative count 20, the monsters would be switched out for other monsters (at the same HP and active status conditions as the ones they were replacing) with these changes applied to them.
The players quickly learned that the AI would take whatever they suggest at face value, even if they were actively sabotaging the monsters to be less threatening with their suggestions. The game then became a puzzle of the players trying to decide how to design the most dogshit monster they could, and they were having a blast.
The players came out victorious in the end and it was a really fun encounter to run and the players responded really positively to the weirdness of it. I’d never write a module forcing another DM to run a combat like that, and I certainly won’t be running an encounter that weird for a little while, but it was a blast to run that one time since I had extra time to prep that week.
An incredibly simple homebrew I made was just an orc with a fire arm... It ended up being one of the more interesting fights in the campaign even though I didn't really intend as such. The orc had some special attacks tied to the arm, along with classic fire spellcasting (Burning hands, firebolt, etc). The main feature of the orc was vague, but was "If a target is currently being touched (such as a grapple or otherwise) by the arm at the start of their turn, they take X dice fire damage."
Additionally, they had the ability to ignite the earth around them with an action, causing creatures that *Ended* their turn in the area to take damage. I liked the idea of being able to avoid either effect with the sandwiching of where they proc. These orcs only had a resistance to the effect, so they could withstand it, but not forever. The fight I ran with said monster involved a couple basic orcs that the fire one would boss around. The lesser orcs would be commanded and intimidated by the greater to just stand in the fire and help secure grapples for the thing while he burnt up the party.
Overall, while incredibly simple, it ended up being one of my more fun monsters to run. And obvious melee powerhouse with a basic cantrip for ranged fighting who bossed around his minions to trade HP with the heroes.
Hands down my favorite Monster trait I made was "Playin' the Wheel!"
Effectively, the whole one shot was themed after a game show, with a Brass Dragon promising prizes to the adventuring party that was the strongest, smartest, and wittiest, asking them to prove themselves with a combat encounter, a quiz show, and a puzzle, respectively. Eventually, it's revealed that the Dragon was actually a Mindflayer, trying to single out the single smartest person in a crowd so they could eat their brain.
After some story stuff, the final boss encounter against Sarchak the Mind Flayer and his lovely assistant Vanna the Wight was effectively also a game show; whenever someone's turn came up, they had to roll a d20 to Play the Wheel, and it was effectively like a mini Wild Magic Surge, where 10 and down were negative effects, getting worse the further down you went, and 11 and up were progressively more positive effects. The intent was to add effects to the arena without making it too complex, but the kicker is that the bosses had to Play the Wheel too, which could result in them getting splashed with a Grease spell, blown around by a Gust of Wind, healed by a Cure Wounds, or targeted by a Magic Missile. The whole session was a Chaotic blast and everyone had a great time!
This advice is really important. especialy for new Dm. for example, I tried making a gunslinger boss but struglled making him engaging. so i used the fantasy of a gunsliger who never gives up as the ability "grit". as a reaction when taking damage, he can gain a point of grit. he had a max of 4 and could use them in the following ways: he can spend Up to 2 grit as a bonus action to heal hp(1d10+15 per grit) or spend grit up to 3 grit when getting hit to move up to 20ft per grit without provoking attacks. or spend 2 grit to gain a +5 to hit after the attack is rolled. in adition to legendary actions and 3 reactions per round, this boss, with it's glass canon stats(139 hp, 19 Ac against a party of 6 level 5 to 7 characters) made for a fun and challenging encounter. of curse if the players denay his reactions or just deal massive damage, they evantually ovewelm him. i highly reccomend grit if you want a boss that can survive for a long time(along with 2 turn per round) to give players a challenge. without engaging in the fantasy of gunslingers and action heroes the fight would have been very boring
that could work if they were the only enemy in the fight, but be wary of making too many things to keep track of in multiple monsters. we like to have options, but i’ve straight up forgotten key parts of monsters in a fight because there were too many enemies to keep track of
@@Hazel-xl8in Its a solo bossfight, it should'nt and is not desined to be used with other creatures. if you want to run multiple unique monsters, I suggest having only one gimik per monster. grit is a bossfight mechanic ment to give bosses a fighting chance against strong or large parties. even when it was the only complex ability the boss had it was still kind of hard to run.
Ah man.. if i had these tips before i ran a boss fight, it would have been so much easier!
The BBEG in question was a mad scientist witch, and i gave her a lot of traits based on lore and specific things she could do... but when it came to the combat i realized I had accidentally given her only 3 offensive abilities in the midst of the 15 other non combat related things she could do! The start of the combat was pretty good, and the players where really scared of her because she is WAY to powerful for them and they knew it, but as soon as they realized she couldn't do much more than those abilities they managed to match her power level and drive her away with 3 players still standing.
That was her first appearance, and she was *supposed* to face plant the entire party in the ground to show how much more they still need to grow, but in the end, she was more talk than action. In that combat, i stumbled over my notes and realized that, even though she was a strong foe to face against in paper, I was so disorganized that i didn't notice the lack of offensive strategies she had and i missed many things she could have done differently to change the outcome of the battle in her favor..
You live and you learn :/
Ah yes my favorite monster Trait that solves everything... Spellcasting
On Point #3
I find as a player it also makes playing against the monster to be more fun if there's only a few mechanics that I need to keep in mind. Playing Chess for the first time is more interesting to figure out than it is to actually play the match itself. If you make a creature or encounter too complex or there are too many interactions or asterisks, then all the cognitive load goes into figuring out what the thing does and not how to win or how to interact with it in meaningful ways.
I had this issue come up with my DM when he made a boss monster with tons of different status effects that each did different things based on certain conditions and I spent more time trying to figure out what the point of these mechanics were than I was actually trying to beat it. So eventually, we just decided to run face first into it and try to race to the bottom of its health bar and hope.
Normally, he's a fantastic DM and after playing DND for 6 years, he is by far the best designer I've played with but this one went too far in terms of complexity and he learned from that. Now he has encounters that have 3 or 4 mechanics max and usually a core mechanic that affects the fantasy of the fight and is easy to identify and interact with.
I had a really interesting encounter once, when the players all got stuck in a hole deep in a cave with no light source against a monster that could move through the walls and floor. They couldn't climb fast enough to flee and had to use fire spells to generate light momentarilly so that they could defend and counter attack the monster. The creature had almost no health but the fight lasted for more than an hour and almost half of it was the players having to come up with the plan on the fly.
A little while back, I made some stat blocks for a few backgrounds that I thought would be cool, and by far my favorite I made was the gambler, which had the ability "Lucky Streak: When the gambler succeeds a skill check, saving throw, or attack roll, it has advantage on the next skill check, saving throw, or attack roll it makes." It was otherwise a normal commoner, but I'd like to slap that trait onto an important NPC in a campaign or maybe some final boss in a gambling-themed one shot. I could even turn it into a comedic encounter if I added the caveat "When the gambler fails a skill check, saving throw, or attack roll, it has disadvantage on the next skill check, saving throw, or attack roll it makes".
This is the best series for DMs who want to understand and manipulate the mechanics of 5e that I've seen on TH-cam. Also, I used your Firepower mechanic a couple weeks ago in a boss fight my players had with a balor, and it worked perfectly! They actually managed to get him down to 0 Firepower in like 3 rounds before killing him, but it was a very tense fight all the way through.
Personal favourite "homebrew mechanic" I've invented was a massive single-target middle finger made for a homebrew Cthulhu.
It reads as follows:
"Eldritch Horror - Cthulhu chooses a target within a mile's radius from him, they must make a 25 DC Wisdom saving through or be subjected to a condition of insanity, where everything around them turns non-Euclidian in their heads, effectively losing their proper senses and suffering blindness, deafness, and being frightened for one minute."
What this effectively accomplished in practice was having player characters walk into certain death, get completely lost, lose track of date & time (first signs of insanity), etc. There is no legitimate immunity to this and it was designed as a targeted aspect of the pure horror that people experience when interacting with Elder Beings. It never outright killed anyone but it came close quite a few times and it heavily reinforced the idea that even resting in this realm without being watched over is a death sentence not just for you but for everyone else. Constant exposure to this gave characters permanent brain damage and twisted their perceptions of reality itself until one of them straight up tried to kills his allies because he saw them as devouring beasts during a meal.
Just make the tarrasqur a humongous barbarian with 100% crowd control immunity
Gave a solo monster a "get hurt get better" trait, with a single activation to start, two when at half HP and then three at 1/3 hp. Made for a very tense fight. And this was on a simple vampire spawn stat block.
Can you explain the "get hurt get better" mechanic a bit more? Like, do you mean it would negate damage as a legendary after getting hit? Or like, after being hit it would roll to gain a certain number of HP back like a "Cure Wounds" spell or something like that?
@@christopherdaurio2617 nah it literally just meant rather than acting once a turn i rolled initiative again for it and had it act twice.... And then three times as its movements got more frantic and aggressive as it neared death.
Oh I see what see what you mean. Sounds like an awesome idea for a fight with ramping difficulty 👍 (might have to steal it for a future encounter 😄)
@@christopherdaurio2617 have got another monster that gains feats more it gets hurt, sentinel at half and misty step as a bonus at 1/3..mixs up the encounter some what
I think one of my favorite monsters I have run was a wraith who was trapped in a mirror. They were at first fighting as a golem of molten glass, then when the glass broke because the party had dealt enough damage, they became visible. A shadowy noblewoman with a calm fury, surrounded by shards of broken glass that allowed them to reflect all of the damage from a radiant attack at a target of their choice, as a reaction. The catch? Being made from living shadow, they were very vulnerable to radiant damage! The party attacked once to bait out her reflection, then hit with a second spell which ended up dealing the final blow!
Absolutely wild that the CR 13 Rakshasa has more magical defenses than the CR 30 Tarrasque
There's a cool monster I've homebrewed that I'm yet to use. The blighted goblin. It's a goblin that was infected by a blight and essentially became an undedad (see the fungus that does the same to ants). His stat block doesn't change all that much, except for the fact that it's undead, but the goblin's attacks and it's behaviour change drastically. The blighted goblin can expel a thorny vine from it's body and make a ranged attack with it, if it hits the attack works like that one cantrip from the druid spell list: the target makes a dexterity saving throw, if it fails, it is pulled 5 feet closer to the goblin and knocked prone. If it lands prone in front of the goblin and doesn't get out until the goblin's next turn, the goblin explodes, launching infected thorns everywhere and dealing a small amount of damage, but any creature that's hit by this attack must make a constitution saving throw or be infected by the blight and, if that happens, you have very limited time to get yourself cured, otherwise you'll meet the same fate. This goblin is concerned with one thing: spreading the blight. It will take one of two approaches to do that: either the goblin nestles in the ceilings of dark, humid caves and holes in the ground and walls, waiting to drop onto unsuspecting victims, or it presents itself as being distracted, just in plain sight, waiting for some greedy adventurer to try sneaking up on him. Players can identify a blighted goblin by their fear of fire, but they have to learn that first.
Maybe if I ever run a colossal monster, I'll give each limb it's own stats, making it feel larger-than-life to fight.
Hey AHero,
based on your serie and mainly on the episode "Defense".
I went with the design of wizard foe with 3 or more orbs floating around him.
each orbs is linked to an element and provides adequat resistance and spells of the school of magic.
He can cracks orb as legendary resistances and when he uses a spell or an action the orbs act as echoes for a specific amount of damage (based on the calculation of your sheet).
Players can then target the orbs or burn its legendary resistance + the orbs act as indicators on the wizard current power (the more I explain the more it sounds like you red dragon haha)
What do you think? Should there be a refill mechanic on the orb, any idea flavor-wise?
Anyway, love your vids
Cheers
@Kevin Jackson cheers thanks for the input
Very solid point on the foreshadowing and big baddy abilities (once again the episode "defense" really covers a lot of ground on my monster flaw :') )
Flavorwise I was thinking maybe he just conjure the orbs but idk i think it s a bit meh
I have a monster who is an ancient construct designed to obliterate trespassers. The creator was an old gnome wizard who had hoarded a massive amount of treasure in a vault in a desert that had a shit ton of lightning storms. He designed the weapon to be electrically charged into a sort of “turbo mode” where it becomes unstoppable for a brief period of time if it would take lighting damage from any source.
Now I built this to as more of a puzzle boss, it’s literally known as “The Walking Howitzer” so trying to fight it is near impossible. The way my players beat it was by exploiting a flaw the original creator failed to recognize, the fact it could only see things touching the ground. They effectively made themselves hover off the ground and were able to pacify the weapon.
A recent thing i made was an entity called "The cosmic baby" it has an ability where the first element it takes damaged from is instead gets converted (basically absorbs the damage) into a sphere of pure energy. On its turn it can grab that sphere and hurl it at a target within 60 feet of it dealing damage equal to the damage it stored within the sphere. However, if any targeted attack hit the sphere it instead explodes on top of the cosmic baby dealing its full damage to it.
Congrats on 10k. The content is really good, I think you just need to get a bit of algorithm luck and you'll blow up.
I haven't fully homwbrewed monster traits, but I have customized my monsters by adding existing traits from official sources. I also like to play around giving class levels to monsters to some extent, or use some traits and abilities to simulate class levels. I try to make my important encounters very deadly but not unwinnable unless it's specifically meant to be something to run away from, or survive for X number of Rounds.
One of my personal favorites that I customized was an Ancient Green Dracolich that I gave not only Innate Spellcasting to, but also the 18th Level Spellcasting Ability of an Archdruid. That was my players' Boss Fight at Level 12 in my first campaign.
In my second campaign I had my players fight a Succubus with Bard-like Abilities and 5th Level Bard Spellcasting. That was their Boss Fight at Level 2.
I made a one-shot where the party fought a super monster (which was actually 8 monsters). It ended up taking up like 12 pages for stats and abilities, one for each part and legendary abilities and stuff. I made my own app in JS to help run the thing. The battle sort of took forever, but I think it was a good encounter in the end. it helped that i tested the thing a few times so I knew what abilities it had and did.
A simple trait I apply to (almost) all my monsters is: A monster's physical (melee) attacks affect the same number of squares as the monster occupies, or 1 square, whichever is greater. So a 5e Large monster (2x2 squares, for a total of 4) hits 4 contiguous squares in any formation with each melee attack. It works well on a grid, but it works well in theater of the mind, too. The monster is big, so it swings big. It's really easy to track, hence why I use it for most monsters by default.
I spent about half an hour designing a giant hellhound for my party to face. They were traveling overland, and I gave them a hex map with points of interest on it. The beast had been summoned from a book of fairytales, and couldn't venture far from the shrine where it had been summoned. It was about the size of a bus, and breathed deep crimson flames that would scorch off max hp equal to a part of the damage it dealt with its breath. Even better, its bite attack caused an over-time bleeding effect that couldn't be staunched with magic, meaning they had to choose to spend actions bandaging up before they bled out, using healing to add a buffer, without addressing the source of the damage, or try to take the monster down. It was all about spending HP, and since they were traveling, and the max HP loss wouldn't be regained right away, their choices would have an impact on upcoming encounters.
Anyway it got an absolutely garbage roll on its perception to find them and they just walked around it.
One thing I did was up the speed of the tarrasque to 60, so that way it couldn’t be outrun by a mule and could match more horses.
For a low level boss fight against a fighter wh was possesed by a gold dragon I wrote a couple simple traits that reflected alternating manifestations of different gold dragon abilities (although toned down), it could glimpse the future to get a raised AC for the round (inspired by focus from xenoblade 2, as cool as xenoblade 1's future sight works, theres no way to translate that to DnD simply), or he would have a flame bolt erupt from the brand on his forehead signifying he was possesed, and as a desperation attack it would erupt into scorching ray.
In terms of complexity, the most I’ve done was a little too advanced for me at first. After the first dozen oneshots, I branched out to bigger and more dangerous conflicts. Besides normal dungeon fare, I’ve also run four enemies at once, and four types of enemies in groups so far. The easiest way was to make two simple but badass monster sheets for the four enemies. Then you do nothing to the “four enemies” except they’re both swarms of two that share traits. For best results, make a large and a small version of both monster types.
I cheated and ambushed with a Shadow Wolf from the crowd: a third monster based on one of the previous two. It was the glass cannon and nasty backstab from the bad guys.
When using swarms, think of them as being equivalent to a monster one size larger than the base mob in your swarm. That’s now the size and hitpoints of a medium sized mook, so beef up the swarm’s stats while it’s above half hit points. *Morale saves at first sight, first blood, half hit points, etc. But swarms have resistance and immunities to certain damage and conditions, which the DM should compare to existing swarms.*
Swarms rely on overrunning other pieces/icons on the map, or holding enemies outside of their space in a way most mobs can’t. Shared health pool, and more dudes doesn’t mean “more morale” if they aren’t able to stand and hit the threat harder than it hits them.*
*Warning: Something is DEFINITELY going to TPK your party if it consistently beats your party’s HP pool in three rounds, even when you factor in healing options, party abilities, and damage potentials of all factions involved.
Loved this video! And I also did something similar to this with my Awakened Tree Level 1 boss. It has a trait called "Cat in Tree" which states:
Cat in Leaves - There is a cat that is in the leaves of the tree, and it has 2 (1d4) hit points. If a ranged attack roll is made against the tree and the roll a total of 8 or less, the ranged attack will hit the cat instead. Along with that, any ranged attack that is a cone or radius will also affect the cat as well (refer to Monster Manual for stats.)
Basically, the quest regarding the tree is about mainly rescuing a cat stuck in a tree, and ranged attacks are discouraged in this encounter, since I also changed the tree's speed to 0, but with an attack range of 10 feet. This means the optimal way to fight this monster is to get close and risk getting hit, to rescue the cat. I hope this example helps to make more interesting encounters!
Also, yup, tarrasque in 5e is so weak, I don't understand why they removed so much of what made the tarrasque terrifying. How I imagine it though is that when the adventurers "kill" the tarrasque, they didn't kill it. It is immortal, and will regenerate completely in an hour or so, because in the lore the tarrasque's regeneration is actually really slow compared to a troll or vampire. Along with that, in the lore, the tarrasque actually doesn't only awaken once every decade or century, but multiple times a year. The reason why people think it to be every century is because there is only one tarrasque, and it wanders throughout the Material Plane, so the odds a tarrasque will meet the same kingdom it ate within 100 years is unlikely. But yeah, the stat block is supper underwhelming. Give it back its 35 AC and 878 HP, and add other things like the ability to just eat through magic like force cage, and an ability it has in its lore, earth glide. The tarrasque actually slumber literally in the earth, it takes up the same space as a giant rock its size that is deep beneath the Material Plane, then whenever it awakens, it begins to feed. Because of this earth glide trait, the tarrasque cannot be tracked underground, because it leaves no trace, no holes it goes through, it literally phases through earth and stone. But even then, the tarrasque may not be as powerful as it once was, a smart and creative GM can still make it a terrifying force of nature.
Interesting video, I feel this can be very instructive to those with little experience in home-brewing. Magic items series next?
I recently DMed a oneshot with my friends, where they faced Aliens X-COM Style.
I had lots of fun making some alien statblocks, so here is what I made:
I. Frontline raptor-like creatures. They had decent speed, AC of 14, low health.
They had the ability to bite, but more importantly they had immunity to fall damage, and could do high and long jumps up to their speed. They were based on the RAW mechanic of sharing fall damage (DC15 Dex Save or split fall damage in half) but I didn't just let myself jump 40ft up and fall on the player next to them - I had them use the environment to find high places to jump to first, and then bounce from them. It was quite fun with the varied environment I made.
II. Gem Octopus - Decent AD and medium health, low speed.
They had False Appearance, mimicking objects, and stealth bonuses.
Once they revealed themselves, they had two attacks, and multiattack that let them use them in any combination:
1. a 10ft tentacle slap that grapples on hit
2. a ranged blast of radiant energy from their eyes, that had advantage (even in 5ft) if it was used against a grappled target.
The Gem Octopuses tried to ambush/pin down the players, or chose to become normal ranged attackers, based on the situation.
III. Psychic Alien - similar to Sectoids form XCOM. Low health and AC, easy targets. Magic Resistance. I made them the "supports" of aliens.
They had three abilities.
1. A bonus action that lets them point at an ally and make them attack.
2. A Recharge ability that granted up to 5 creatures 15 tempHP, but any damage lower than 15 would still take all of them away (basically, blocks one attack, but strong enough attacks could pierce through and deal some damage). Ability disconnects from all allies when this creature dies
3. Main attack - Wisdom Save, on fail you take damage, and have to make an attack against the closest target with disadvantage.
That's frankly my favorite enemy. A support that boosts aliies' dps, shield that can be dealt with, they were very defensive, and the players could position themselves in such a way to make failed saves against them an upside.
IV. Mechanical Snek - a Large miniboss with 4 possible actions, that could use any 2 different ones of them. High health and decent AC/Speed
1. A ranged Acid attack roll
2. A Con Save AoE Poison damage (4x4 square) and Poisoned Condition for 1 round when failed
3. a STR Save that only pulls 10ft. 15ft if failed by more than 5
4. A bite that deals heavy damage and Con Save for extra poison damage
Maybe the least mechanically interesting, but it had enough variety and survivability to make for a decent miniboss.
V. A brain inside an armor- The Boss - High stats captain with a plasma rifle, capable of Mind Domination.
The boss was based on 2 gimmicks. His every turn was the same in principle, but the terrain let the players do some work.
1. The boss had 2 basic plasma rifle shots
2. The boss ended the plasma rifle shots with preparing a wind-up attack, targetting a line, which would shoot out at the start of his next turn. If you get hit, I gave it a high save of 23 (as you could walk away) and it dealt heavy damage, and broke terrain
3. Psychic Domination Bonus Action. Wisdom save. Duration: 1 round Concentration. If you fail, your initiative moves to right before the boss. The other players can try to break the boss's concentration to break you free (your initiative remained delayed for ease of keeping track of it tho). If it got to your turn, and the concentration wasn't broken, you take your turn as you would, but you see your allies as enemies, and the boss as your ally.
Because we used Modern Guns, player's average DPR was higher than their max health. The players enjoyed being able to play out their turn with a Mini-PvP event going on every now and then. We had some almost oneshots coming from that mechanic.
something i’ve found based on advice i’ve heard and experimentation, is that you’re way more likely to remember something about the monster if it’s part of the action economy. you could say something happens at the start or end of the round, but if the monster doesn’t have a bonus action, you could just put it there.
the MCDM Overmind is essentially their version of a beholder, and instead of a 150 foot antimagic cone that’s either always on or always off, it has “The Great Eye”, a recharge bonus action that dispels all spells of its choice in a cone. this makes it much easier to use and keep track of, while still fulfilling the fantasy of “antimagic eye”.
the more passive traits a monster has, the more things you have to keep track of when it’s not the monster’s turn. this gets exponentially worse the more monsters there are. making sure each important monster has a “default” attack action, a bonus action, a reaction, and a cool limited action will usually do the trick of making a monster feel the way it should while being both simple and dynamic.
if you want to include multiple passive traits, go right ahead. just ask yourself: “does this need to take up space here? or could i make this part of its actions?”
I made an Iron Golem that had an arm mounted launcher that shot Black Puddings out. It was fun because the Golem’s goal was to destroy the massive boat the party was on so it shot the black puddings to eat the hull of the ship while it dealt with the party.
Few bits to add:
1) Granularity - A "high level" trait that the group didnt ecnounter prior such as Turn Immunity, Limited Spell Immunity or the shown homebrewed carapace upgrade of Inexorable are great for npcs or "RUN" situations (unless the party has gear/feats/features that circumvent or alter the use of the thing thats blocked), but can also serve as your DM side idea of what the capstone version of a series of 3-4 prior weaker versions of that trait would be. E.g. Turn Immunity can start on the lowest point actually as Turn Reduction (If the creature fails its save vs turn undead by 5 or less, it can take a action other than the attack or cast a spell action after it moves a number of feet equal to its speed on its turn) before adding on Turn Resistance (Advantage on save), Improved Turn Resistance (if the save has advantage, undead can reroll once per turn), Limited Turn Immunity (something like Unless x/y/z was used as the holy symbol, the undead succeeds on the saving throw and is immune to the effect of turn undead used by the creature for 1 minute or until the undead damages or harms the creature) before slapping the final version.
Same can/should have been done to magic resistance (splitting it into advantage on x type of saves vs spells, x vs spells+magic, advantage on saves+1/2 cover vs spell attacks, advantage+cover+resistance to damage from spells, etc) IMO to not make it feel as boring on the monster side with a variant/green box that says all these features can just be swapped for regular magic resist if you just want the "quickly drop in monster feel and resolve fight in 20 min.
2) Interactivity can be just as easily added via environment options as via boss like monster traits, but combining both (either as a way to fuel effects for the party or to shut down the boss' option) tends to be worth more than the sum of its parts if its not a arc villain as it lets the player(s) that figure it out feel really smart meta side even if it doesnt give you the fun of using a statblock to its full potential if the group do it in the first or by the end of the second round (golem whose power is tied to a setup of windchimes or a food processing in the lair of hags that go full Crones of Crookback Bog, skeletons that gain bodyguard/warding bond/shared suffering from the second spellcasting focus the necromancer is holding, a church which becomes a empty box if a sacred item is dirtied or a "eternal fire" cant provide light to it, etc).Oh and for the 3 trait bit, while ok for personal note version of a fight, id still encourage a "every feature is its own effect source" style to make things like a monster book with tips saying "this weak poison suppresses the regeneration feature of a enemy, but a chill touch or wounding weapon can prevent other forms of recovery" point out the worth of small scale vs large scale RPS.
This is such a satisfying continuation of the first video of the series.
I'm really loving this series. Glad I was recommended the first one, and hope to see your channel grow as you make more of these very informative videos 😎
I think the only monster I ever homebrewed so far was a kind of angel.
I took the deva stat block and essentially gave it two phases. One was a superbuffed version, and one was a weaker one.
The plan was that before the encounter the bad guy would kill an NPC with a powerful artifact, absorb its power and become the superbuffed angel.
The party would fight him and die quickly. He had disadvantage on attack rolls that would down a PC, as the soul of the NPC he killed tried to restrain him from killing her friends.
The plan was that, once the entire party was downed/ killed, the NPC's soul would tear free, revive the party and leave the bad guy in a weakened state that the party would be able to handle.
I actually really liked this idea, even though it never happened. In the end, the party somehow managed to kill him with only one PC dying (who was revived at the end of the fight).
I essentially just slightly altered the original stat block, and while the second phase never came up, it was still a really fun fight that suited the story, or at least I like to think so.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the video. It seems like great advice, and I'm really looking forward to making some more homebrew monsters, once I'm back to DMing my homebrew campaign.
When I wrote monsters I always come up with the lore for them before their abilities, unless I had some cool abilities in mind. So then I write the monster according to the lore and balance it afterwards.
Quick tip: throw immutable form on your tarrasque and give it a recharge 5-6 ability to roar that knocks creatures prone, while flying have disadvantage
I made a crystal dragon with a design somewhat similar to your fire power, I call it fatigue. Certain actions cost (more) fatigue, and I had the dragon be able to teleport, detect creatures and blast creatures with psionic attacks from different towers on the battlemap, which the players can actually destroy to hinder said abilities.
I look at title and think "well, it probably some bard fault"
Quick aside, the iconic thing about the tarrasque was regeneration/fast healing that couldn't shut it off.
I recently introduced a boss in my campaign with a plethora of interesting mechanics for the party to work around. He telegraphed his attacks, legendary actions, lair actions, and reactions before his turn with flashing symbols (marked by tokens on roll20) and there were rocks the players could use to negate some of this effects.
It was a total flop. Because as much as I thought I had spelled it out for my players, even going so far as to give them an in-game handout written by a scholar describing what his symbols meant and the rocks that correlated to them; they still managed to read way to far into it and not understand anything that was going on.
To all my fellow DMs: PLEASE EXPLAIN THINGS TO YOUR PLAYERS
All of this keeps reminding of how a guy called Arcadum would run his enemies. Those enemies could get stupidly complicated at times
I made a zombie Tarrasque that vomits acidic blood and with a stomach that explodes spreading carrion beetles everywhere.
I was inspired by that show Primal, and the sheer will to traumatize my players
Great video man! I saved it and will very certainly rewatch it before designing my bosses for my upcoming Runeterra-based campaign (Runeterra is League of Legend's universe, which is why I'll have to homebrew quite a bit)
This video has helped me a lot realising some of what has been wrong with the thematic enemies in my games, besides what I already discovered from my own experience. I thank you both for that, Great video. Here's an enemy I thought was interesting when I made him:
A monk who would take the way of the "exploding hand" as I called it. He was a student of a very old monk (immortal) who lived in the mountains, and took him in when he climbed it on his own. However, he became dissatisfied with the master's teachings of finding balance, and instead preferred to take hold of his own destiny.
Somewhat inspired from one punch man, this monk could take advantage of one of his hits connecting to roll for another attack. If that one hit, he could roll again, indefinitely. When any of the rolls crit, he would deal all damage accumulated in a single strike, (10 attacks would deal the average * 10) for a devastating amount. My downfall was making him an actual monk and not giving him any extra HP.
Inspiring!
Nailed it - Make the traits simple and keep it moving.
You don't want to have to juggle that many cooldown bars on a creature that is using the squishy meat math of your brain. Buffing monsters is what I end up having to do 90% of the time when it comes to 5e and it usually comes down to:
1. Action economy management
2. Trimming the fat off of "monster has spells" and just giving them unique abilities in their place
3. HP Buffing
I like my players to hit my monsters so I typically let the AC alone and have the monster "no sell" a hit as "you sink your weapon into it and it laughs" to get across that hitting it may not be the way to beat this particular creature.
You're one of the best dnd youtubers. Very good video structure.
So, what I typically do for the tarrasque is add a paralyzing roar feature which removes concentration knocks falling creatures out of the sky and reduces enemy speed to zero. I also double it’s speed and give it the magical entity ability which makes its attacks magical for overcoming resistances.
Why not give it a thrown area-of-effect attack that’s flavored to be it picking up debris and tossing it at an area like a shotgun?
Give it a high Reflex save to take half damage and full damage drops the target’s speed to zero.
Seems simple enough.
I love the focus on realizing the fantasy! It's a great mantra to keep in mind
I think my favorite idea was a non utonian ooze which had a inverse ac
One of my favourite ideas for if I ever DM is a monster that buffs and/or heals itself via cannibalism, fun decision making (and just a really sick vibe). Do you kill one and give another a chance to feast and make itself an even bigger threat or try to coordinate and kill the pack all at once?
(this probably already exists, I just haven't played a whole lot yet and hqven't encountered it :p)
So glad pack tactics made a post about this channel, these videos are truly amazing. Keep up the great work and I'm sure you'll get a big following
I ran the Tarrasque having nerfed its attack power but giving it a 600 ft cone breath weapon (inhale rather than exhale) and an instant death stomach that heals him. I didn't feel like making my players roll level 20 characters for a one-shot, so I let them play as a team of monsters. The Tarrasque died in 4 rounds and never got the instant death stomach to proc. On round 1, he rolled a nat 2 on the bite and got parried by a death knight (he couldn't chomp as a legendary action because I took away the chomp legendary action and replaced it with an incapacitating effect, which incidentally failed). On round 2, he hit, but the target escaped with Freedom of Movement. On round 3, he hit someone else. On round 4, he was finally allowed to swallow, but instant death stomach only procs at the start of the swallowed creature's turn. There was no round 5.
Another brilliant video, hook, editing, and excellent advice! I'll have to change up Big T's stats the same way when I run it
I find these videos very interesting, but as a DM I tend to go in a relatively opposite direction to "fix" things. I'm keeping it **very** clean and simple by scribbling on either a piece of paper or txt file (depending on whether I'm on a table or online) a few things that I want my monster to do. No complicated rule-writing (which, anyway, my players wouldn't get to see the stat blocks, so it doesn't make much of a difference), and I can fill in the gaps with narration.
With the example of a Tarrasque, I'd probably add some characteristics like 'immune to damage made by all weapons, except a specific type', which could become a plot point in having the players seek weapons able to damage it Combined to a similar thing for magic so that I don't cripple half the party while the other is fine.
Have it destroy buildings and ignore terrain, I don't really need rules for that. The monster just does it. (and if there are players inside such buildings, that makes for more tension as the building gets destroyed around them, it's the kind of moment where I could give an action to the player so that they can find an inventive way to get out of this)
That's the jist of it. I know it's a risky method (which kinda needs experience if you want to get your damage outputs or verisimilitude right), but it has served me way better over the years than actually writing rules for these actions, which often feel way too restrictive to me once they're written down. Doing it this way also allows for more improvisation on the DM's side, as it sometimes happen that I come up with a nice idea in the middle of a fight.
I personally don't really like the idea of the Blackjack since it makes the Tabletop RPG experience *much* more videogamey. A player character should have no concept of "Hit Points" or "Damage Numbers". Meanwhile, a giant force of nature that is essentially Godzilla ignoring Crowd Control and destroying nonmagical terrain and structures is wonderful both flavor-wise and in that a player character has a reasonable understanding in that these just make sense as features.
Edit: Since you asked about cool monster trait ideas in the comments: I ran into a monster at a table that had *Reactive Armor Plates*- its AC would go up the more successful attacks were landed on it in a round, so it encouraged us as a party to focus on helping to provide buffs and advantages for our main damage dealers.
Was about to head here to comment exactly this! Takes a bit away from the point of "identity fantasy" abilities if they end up not making any sense in-world. Still an awesome video though!
Sheesh...now I have to figure out how to send this to my DM.
I've had fun with Undead by turning them into a Swarm of Zombies. Each zombie only has 2 hps so everyone feels like they're mowing through a Hoard of Zombies and I get to roll more Undead Fortitude rolls. It's hard to keep track of them but they're mostly fodder so I don't mind losing track of how many zombies remain.
fun fact, your reworked terrasque can still be bag of holding gimped, and thus wisked away for on avarage 1d4 day's
Id love a sample set of monsters and encounters. Id pay top dollar to see your ideas and systems in action.
Like you make a few homebrew monsters, and add an explanation of the thought process behind it.
Me before watching this video: I am something of a dm myself
Me after watching this video: what is wrong with me, why cant I just be a good dm?
I will point out that your tarrasque is just as vulnerable to "flying archer man" as before, its just that they need to do more damage per round, and need a wizard to pop around the corner with a wish when they bring it down. Outside of that the tarrasque is still vulnerable to the most classic cheese of them all
I was thinking about an assassin called just “The Sponsor”, his design (appearance and even name) ripped from Arcane Odyssey (Roblox). I imagined in his description that first, as said earlier he’s an assassin. But not any, THE BEST. A lawful neutral… undead. Like, when paid, he’s gonna do the job, no question ask.
So he would go as follow : step 1 is to know who is the target(s) (usually powerful groups of adventurers), step 2 is to gather informations. Knowing your enemy is the best strategy, after all. So let’s make him having this 7th battle master feature, except it’s instantaneous. And make it way better.
Then 3rd step : preparation. Making straight up a plan.
Step 4 : kill them. Like, if they are in a dungeon, quietly follow them and waiting to strike when it’s the best moment. It’s an hard encounter if you have spellcasters, as well… it obviously have to deal with a lot of them. Like, just dodge with a better version of invasion that would be named “uncanny dodge” because any dexterity saving throw automatically succeed and it’s also fused with evasion. So will never take damages from spells like fireball. But also is immune to basically most spells as it will just dodge them (if possible). So few possibilities : banish it to the shadowfell, cast daylight, or just have a martial class (light cleric is also a choice).
Realized this is a mess… but at least I tried my best…
BlackSkull, first creations of the god. Otherwise would have been just your average lich if it wasn’t that he was given magic, not spellcasting, but directly able to bend reality to his will. And so he became a lich (his phylactery being his heart, literally).
It’s mentioned that when the dark power (got recently the Ravenloft guide) trapped him in his domain, he became so angry that every mortal felt it, and it was so intense the whole human race stopped worshiping their gods (making them all die) and the other gods caused a whole continent to be reshaped. All because of someone feeling emotions.
So I think it would go as follow:
Black skull, lawful evil titan (undead)
Since he’s not a scrawny wizard, he isn’t easy to kill. After all, he has god-like powers. And with the fact he can share a bit of his magic (which make the receiver powerful enough to be able to quite literally make the said person nearly kill 15th level character just by rushing into them), and it’s not at all limited to the same rules as players… because I’m the dm lol. Well, I know that… this statblock is a mess I won’t bother do. So yeah, no chance to affront it on their own, they will need a whole bunch of npcs with them!
It will end in anime right, and I love imagining that.
Great advice and awesome Video. Please do more!
Just wanted to ad, that in Dungeon World The Tarrasque do not has a statblock because your player can not kill it, it is just to powerfull.
Good content man!! Always creative and helpful advice!
I read through the "terrible tarrasque" stat block. Not only would it be a nightmare to run as the DM, I don't think it would be fun at all to fight for the players.
Made a bbeg who summons construct mooks but can also rez at 1hp with some thp at the cost of its legendary actions. And by can I mean he must. And he has these tiny drones he will spawn more more of if his actions are free before his turn. And he fights alongside a unique, moderately dangerous construct. So players need to choose which small drones they would fight some more, and whether to damage the big, dangerous robot which would prolly not die until some turns in or clean up some of the small drones.
I made an u balanced godzilla off of the terask.... I recommend not using that draft. Giving the behemoth the equivalent of three fireballs per turn, with three turn cool down wasn't enough to keep the mock party alive. And I was the one controlling them! XD
I decided to design a creature that is cloaked in darkness and annoying to hit, due to its exact location being hard to pin down, it has a higher ac against attacks that do piercing damage than other attacks, and can temporarily blind someone who hit it close up as a reaction. Also its abilities can be negated using magical light and/or radiant damage.
The problem with 5e is the it's made for the lowest common denominator, basically D&D with training wheels. Because WotC wanted to make the game as "accessible" as possible to the widest audience possible. Is this a bad thing? Well, it's complicated. It means that lots of casual players can dip their toes into D&D and have fun. But it also means that hardcore players and long time fans are left with a rather hollow experience, when playing the game "as intended". It means DM's have to do a ton of leg work to bring encounters in-line with all the power creep that has been piled on to modern character classes.
Very simple trait I use: Godly Resistance.
Against a god or god-like creature (such as the Tarrasque, Fey Lords, Archfiends, etc.), their sheer power makes mortal means of defeating them ineffective. The creature with this trait only takes 30% damage dealt, unless the damage source is blessed by or is from a god or god-like being of equal or greater power. This trait also compounds on resistance and vulnerability, meaning damage dealt to the creature is 15% if resisted or 60% if vulnerable.
At DM's choosing (because bookkeeping), this trait may be applied multiple times over, depending on the strength of the creature: 1 time for Demigods/God-like, 2 times for Lesser Deities, 3 times for Moderate Deities, 4 times for Greater Deities, and 5 times for Overdeities. If applied this way, an enemy with Godly Resistance negates another's Godly Resistance by its value, so a Lesser Deity treats a Greater Deity as if they had 2 Godly Resistances.
Word of recommendation: nobody should punch up more than 1 Godly Resistance above them, as even 2 Godly Resistances reduces non-vulnerable damage to less than 10%, and gods oft aren't vulnerable to damage.
I sometimes use this in tandem with Godly Initiative, which lets them take top initiatve against all lessers, only rolling against equally-strong or greater beings. Occasionally, I have them still roll and use Godly Initiative as a second turn in the initiatve to refresh Legendary Actions and do more against the players.
Hey dude, nice videos. Keep up the good work
Although being also a mtg player, I'm fine with the solution of turning it into a frog. That's something a blue mage would do xD
Fantastic advice that I really appreciate and will be using in my games going forward! I have a followup question though: do you let you players know in advance about these added traits, or let them discover them in the moment?
The way of doing this is probably to reveal as you go, make it surprising to both old and new players. Perhaps it's like Intel on other monsters, that with libraries or survivors of other attacks you'll receive a flash of what the monster is capable of.
Importantly if you have metagamers or DMs at the table is to preface that above game knowledge isn't always accurate and you're running homebrew for certain monsters.
@AHero What’s the song you used at 0:13? I really like it.
Iv made a tiny Poisonous toad thats hard to catch because it hides and leaps as bonus action and reactions if you Touch it barehanded it deals a huge amout of poison damage and it ignores resistance to it
It tho have only 8 hit points Im exited to swing One at My players 😅
Have you looked at the battlezoo bestiary (from Kickstarter)?
"How to make interesting encounter with a Tarrasque and not just get it cheesed by the players?"
I threw it at a lvl 5 party. There is no rule saying your encounters have to be fair or balanced.
...I let it ravage the capital city and continue on it's way bringing on the collapse of a civilization - leaving them behind to pick up the pieces. It walked away, ate through a few kingdoms and went back to sleep.
If you want to use a monster whose appearance is considered an apocalyptic event - don't be a wimp and make it an actual apocalypse. You want to throw it at your lvl 17 party? Sure, go ahead. Just don't make it rise right in front of them so they can slap it around.
Oh the BBEG had planned all this time to wake up the Tarrasque and unleash it upon the world?
The party has confronted him?
You can pull "the Watchmen" - have him monologue about it and when the players inevitably go:
"No! We will stop you!"
he can answer
"You can't, the ritual happened yesterday on the other side of the realm. I've lured you here so you can't interfere."
And have them then race back to try and save as much of the realm as they can. Have them walk through the ashes of the world they knew.
Something like Tarrasque is not meant to be just a combat encounter. It is meant to change the world. It's something they should not face right away but first come to understand it's power in contrast with those who do not have the power the players possess. Tarrasque is not a threat to experienced players - he doesn't feel like one. So if he can't be a threat - he can be a catastrophe. Who says players have to anticipate and prevent everything...
Very cool video, with great advice. Though I have to ask, what's with the pronunciation of "halve" at 2:07? Haha
Could you please do a "Why your worlds suck"?
and I will say people just suck at running the Tarrasque if that flying cheese happens, sure in a whiteroom it is possible, but in actual game no
The tarrasque in my world is the size of a mountain range, git gud RAW tarrasque...
Rule one one of creature design- if it has hp, it can and will be killed by the players. It's the reason why gods and avengers level threats dont feel as so in 5e.
Yet another Banger
Where do we find that Blackjack monster haha
My monsters suck because even when I give them a ton of cool features, traits, actions etc. When it comes time to use them I just dont... idk what my problem is. Lol
SUPPORT COMMENT IS SUPPORTING.
the whole "10th level wizards can just polymorph it" thing is mostly just due to the issue of how 5e works in the first place. 5e kinda sees Bounded Accuracy as a Religion.
Now, Bounded Accuracy does have some advantages, since 3.5 had an issue that at high levels, some things would be literally impossible without someone specialized in it (like the Bastion of Broken Souls Adventure having a DC 35 Knowledge (Planes) check. Which someone would be physically incapable of doing without a bare minimum of a +15 just to be able to succeed on a natural 20, which for something more reliable you might need to be a significantly higher level in order to get access to a specific thing.
However, there is one problem with this design philosophy that is basically why 5e monsters SUCK. because bounded accuracy is on both sides of the pool. (For example, a 3.5 tarrasque, ignoring the immunity to magic, has a +20 will save (3.5's equivalent to Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma Saves), meaning the bare minimum it can roll on such a save is 21. While a 10th level wizard with polymorph and 20 intelligence would be throwing around a DC 19 save, and even if they Heighten it to 5th level and use Spell Focus, that's only a DC 21 saving throw. Meanwhile, 5e's bounded accuracy with the same parameters means a 10th level wizard has a DC 17 saving throw, which allows the tarrasque to fail a saving throw on a 7 or worse. The idea that something would be *Just Impossible* for a character of a given level isn't something that 5e could imagine because of how low its numbers are. Hell, the new design of One D&D made it that Attacks AND Skill Checks can auto-succeed on a natural 20, even further pointing out that they think "Yea, a country bumpkin totally could hurt a 20th level monster or solve theoretical physics if they got reeeeally lucky" (Also a fun fact, the maximum DC a wizard in 5e will usually have actually is a 19, which again basically means there's nothing that is guaranteed to fail because even a level 1 peasant with a +0 to every stat and no proficiencies can still succeed on a 20 (Though a nat 20 is an auto-succeed anyway in many cases).
Pathfinder 2nd edition actually took the bounded accuracy problem in an interesting direction that while I think it has its own problems is still worth noting. Everyone had a proficiency bonus equal to their level which would apply to both their attacks and armor class and saving throws. Meaning that eventually monsters and other such things WOULD be strong enough that a commoner would have no hope of hurting them, while still having a certain amount of standardizing.
It's worth it to steal monsters from Pathfinder. They are more reactive and entertaining to fight
Terrask getting meta gamed is an easy solution just homebrew adjust your world/enemies if your players meta game... it pretty easy to learn balance for your group after a while...
seems like it can still get black-hole bombed >.
Why do I need to get a PHD in game design to fix WotC's damn game...
ay yo anyone got sauce for those sick drums at the start ?