Building a Monster: Skeleton Centaur

The Dungeon Master’s Guide explains all of the tools you can use to build your own custom monster in D&D 5e. However, they don’t actually provide an example of a custom created monster.

Today I’m going to show you how I came up with the stats and CR for the Rider of Oneros, or the Skeleton Centaur from Trash Mob Minis’ picture.

Looks like a lovely lady. Think she's friendly? (c) TrashMobMinis

For starters, D&D 5e has mostly done away with monster templates. Instead of having a skeleton template, they just provide a few skeletons that you can use. This means that we’ll have to create our own monster from scratch then, right? Well, you can do that, but there’s a much easier way.

Reskinning a monster is when you take that stats from one monster (a troll for example) and just present it as another creature (a human with alchemical infusions that greatly increase his strength and healing factors). This is how I created the Rider of Oneros. When you reskin a monster, you can make little changes to it that creature a new, unique monster.

For statistics, let’s just take the existing Centaur stat block. We can keep the size, but need to change the type to undead (for obvious reasons). Let’s also change the alignment while we’re at it, chaotic evil sounds better for the skeletal guardians of an evil demigod.

Now we can make minor teaks to customize the monster for our tastes. I see the riders as being more nimble than strong, avoiding melee combat to focus on ranged attacks. To emphasize this, I’ve switched the Strength and Dexterity scores. Because our monster is a skeleton, I don’t see it being as charming as a normal centaur, so I reduced the Charisma to 8.

Let’s move down to skills. It’s fine to keep these, but since the riders are undead I figure that they don’t need Survival anymore. Just remember to modify Athletics due to the lower Strength score. Adding or removing skills is an easy way to personalize a monster, but keep in mind that monsters don’t usually use skills (with Perception being an exception).

Now on to vulnerabilities and immunities. There’s a lot to unpack here, being undead an all. What we can do is look at the Skeleton stat block and use what that says. A skeleton has vulnerability to bludgeoning damage, so let’s keep that. They also have a wide range of damage and condition immunities. Start with all of those as a baseline, and add or remove things as needed. Most undead are immune to poison damage and the poisoned condition, for example.

Let’s skip abilities for now, and move on to the attacks. The centaur can make two attacks, but we want our centaur to focus on ranged attacks. Let’s take away the pike entirely, and just give it a hoof attack and the longbow.

Now we can look at the abilities. This is what really makes your monster unique. The centaur has a charge, but since our riders are going to pelt their foes with ranged weapons, that doesn’t really fit. Let’s take it out.

I still want to add something cool and unique to these riders though. I take a look at the picture for inspiration. The green tail and hair is a cool feature, maybe we can do something with that? I imagine the riders as guardians for a corrupting demigod that has taken over a forest, what fits that theme?

I decided to go with the Trail of Death. Each rider creates a trail of necrotic energy behind them that causes damage to living creatures that pass through it. This gives the riders a cool visual (think Tron), as well as a unique ability that compliments their playstyle. The riders have a speed advantage on most enemies, and by focusing on ranged attacks they can stay out of reach. With this ability, a pair of riders can run in a circle around their targets, pelting them with arrows at a distance and automatically hurting them if they enter the trail of decay.

In order to have this cool visual of a ring of decay and rotating skeletal centaurs, they need to not be affected by their own trail of death. You could add a line in the ability saying that they’re immune to their own effects, but it’s shorter and easier to just give them blanket immunity to necrotic damage.

The only other thing we need to calculate is the CR of this monster. Taking a look at the rules and tables in the Dungeon Master’s Guide is important here. First we’ll look at the HP and AC of the rider, which is low at 1 / 2. Next we look at the damage and accuracy, factoring in the two longbow attacks plus the damage from the Trail of Death, which gives us a 3. Average these two numbers for 1.75. The normal centaur is CR 2, so let’s just round the rider to CR 2 as well.

Playtesting is an important feature for making sure your CR is accurate, but we shouldn’t be far off. Our rider is built on the centaur chassis, with some features from the skeletons and our own ideas thrown in for diversification.

You can check out the monster we created here!

The Book of the Dead Update

The Book of the Dead is nearly complete!

This has been the largest project I’ve ever worked on, and I’m proud with how it turned out.

I enjoy creating monster stat blocks for Dungeons and Dragons, and I learned a lot about the 5th edition system and how monsters work. My little Pokemon conversion showed me a lot of tips and tricks that I was able to apply to this book.

This isn’t just a straight conversion either; I tried to bring the undead in line with the 5th edition mechanics and style. Sometimes a monster’s CR is very different than what it was in a previous edition, and maybe it has some new abilities!

This book also introduces a number of new monster templates! You can apply a deathknight or swarm-shifter template to existing monsters! Unfortunately you will need to recalculate the CR, but now you can have a Gnoll Deathknight!

The Book of the Dead will be available on the DMs Guild soon!

What Happened to Level Drain?

In previous editions of D&D and Pathfinder, certain undead were an absolute nightmare to fight. I’m talking about the dreaded level drain and level damage.

These abilities would temporarily (or permanently) reduce a creature’s statistics, rendering them progressively less useful as the affliction piled up. This was, in short, terrible.

Negative levels brought an increased amount of editing and bookkeeping on a character sheet. At the same time, your effectiveness was lowered, which also made you less likely to avoid future negative levels or contribute to the party’s advancement. If one hero was affected by numerous level drains, they could be effectively useless for a period of time.

This is not fun.

I’m not saying that negative levels weren’t effective at conveying a level of fear, or making something a big threat. I’m saying that being affected by negative levels is not fun for a player.

Level drain, as it existed in previous editions, is not present in D&D 5th edition. What happened? Is it a causality of dumbing down the game, making it easier for the players to just do whatever they want?

In my day, we walked uphill BOTH ways to the dungeon!

No, level drain changed to make the experience more enjoyable for the players.

A number of creatures and abilities temporarily lower a target’s hit point maximum, like a vampire’s bite attack. There’s usually not a saving throw involved, which keeps combat moving. And a hit point maximum reduction doesn’t immediately effect the usefulness of a character. The ability is insidious in nature. One bite usually isn’t bad; you can keep on going. But if those bites start piling up, you quickly realize that your ability to continue adventuring is more perilous. Suddenly, a few good hits could knock you out.

Your effectiveness is the same. You deal the same amount of damage, have the same ability scores, etc. What changes is your long term planning. You have options now. Do you push your luck, or call it quits and rest?

Another thing to notice is that this reduction to your hit point maximum at most lasts until you finish a long rest. You’re not going to be walking around with a reduced hit point maximum until you find a spellcaster, a good night’s rest will fix you up.

Level drain in 5th edition is closer to a life drain effect, and I think that works better. What do you think? Do you like the old version of level drain, or would something else work better? Let me know in the comments!

Simplifying Enemy Spellcasters: Eliminating Spells

When I’m the Game Master for a game of D&D, running monsters for the heroes to fight against is difficult. Tracking hit points, initiative, attacks, it all adds up. This becomes even worse when you add a monster or NPC with spellcasting.

You can get into character by memorizing spells just like the Wizard does! (C) WOTC

With a regular monster, like a goblin, the stat block for the monster contains all the information you need to use the monster in a fight. You’ve got hit points, AC, attacks, etc. With spellcasters, this gets more complicated. The stat blocks just list the spells the creature knows or has access to. In order to find out what they actually do, you need to use another resource, either the Player’s Handbook or another link if you’re using the creature online.

I don’t have all of the spells in D&D memorized, and I doubt that many of us do. I want my games to move quickly, and I dislike looking up multiple things when I run a game. How do I deal with this?

I change the spells to actions.

Combat in D&D tends to go quickly, and spellcasters only have a few chances to use any spells. They’re probably going to use their most damaging or debilitating ability. They may not even get a chance to use multiple spells. So just pick the ones that are the most effective or thematic, and make them actions.

If you’re fighting a pyromancer, it doesn’t need all of the spells a wizard or sorcerer would know. Give it fireball on an easy recharge and the firebolt cantrip. Now you know what spells it will use, can have then ready, and don’t need to look up anything else! You don’t need to build your NPCs or monsters like player characters, so go wild!

If you like making custom monsters, like me, you can create custom abilities that mimic other spells. Take an avatar of the Lightning God for example. Give it a recharging line attack for a lightning bolt, a ranged lightning attack, and a melee attack that deals thunder damage for a thunderous smite. Done! All of the flavor of multiple spells, none of the actual spells.

Creating or modifying creatures may take some upfront time, but overall it should save you time at the table, and make combats flow more efficiently for you.

Do you have any other tricks you use for running spellcasters in combat? Let me know!

Commandeer Other Mechanics: Escalation Die (13th Age)

When playing different games, you might come across a feature and think “man, this would be cool to use in a different game.”

13th Age has a ton of great mechanics, but today I want to focus on the Escalation Die.

In 13th Age, during combat you put aside a special d6. Each round, you increase the number showing on the die by one. Each player in the combat gets a bonus to their attack rolls equal to the escalation die, maxing out at a +6.

Kazekami's photocube escalation die templates

 This mechanic ratchets up the intensity of a fight the longer it goes on. Sometimes combat can be a drag if the players get a series of bad rolls. The escalation die helps avoid this problem and speeds up combats as they go.

This is a really easy mechanic to implement into existing games, and can be done with little to no modification. You can use it in some fights or all fights, your choice.

You can play around with the escalation die a bit as well. Perhaps the deadly boss monster also can utilize the benefits of the escalation die. Maybe a trap goes off when it hits a certain number, or arcane casters gain a boost when the die is odd.

13th Age’s escalation die is a great mechanic to use and is super easy to incorporate. Let me know how it works for you!