D&D: Customizing Your Own Monster With the New Dungeon Master’s Guide is a Question of Traits
The upcoming Dungeon Master’s Guide has a suite of rules for modifying a monster so you can build your own customized creature.
In the new Dungeon Master’s Guide, monsters play an important role. They’re the backbones of encounters, after all. And one of the more interesting tools DMs have to play with comes early on in the Dungeon Master’s Guide: monster customization.
With the Dungeon Master’s Guide monster rules you can tweak an existing stat block to look differently. Butif you’re looking for guidelines on makingy our own monster from scratch, that’s not in the DM’s Toolbox. I am hoping that that’s because it’s slated for the Monster Manual. But I wouldn’t hold my breath, necessarily.
Dungeon Master’s Guide: Monster Modifications – Change Size, Senses, Damage Types Freely, Then Add Traits
Still, while the monster modification rules in the DMG don’t have the full “give it this many HP” toolset, you will find some interesting guidelines for changinge existing creatures. By and large, it’s “mix it up” without needing to increase the creature’s Challenge Rating. A fact which may come as a surprise to DMs.
For instance, according to the new Dungeon Master’s Guide, a monster’s CR isn’t altered at all by:
- Adding a special sense like Blindsight, Darkvision, Tremorsense, and Truesight
- Changing a creature’s size and/or creature type—they suggest a Large Ogre could easily be a Medium Humanoid with the same stats
- Changing a nonspellcaster’s Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma scores—so those intelligent Oozes you’ve been making need no adjusting
- Changing the damage type and flavor of attacks—the example given is a skeleton that does ice damage instead of slashing
- Altered Spell lists—”If a stat block has spells, you can replace any of its spells with a different spell of the same level. Avoid replacing a spell that deals damage with one that doesn’t, and vice versa.”D
- Damage Resistances or Immunities—Swap existing resistances or immunities, or give R/I to up to two types of damage, according to the guidelines
- Skill proficiencies/Expertise—Which can freely be given to things like Stealth or Perception
Monster Traits in the DMG
All told, there are plenty of levers you can play around with. But my favorite section in this part of the rules might just be the new “Traits” section. In the new Dungeon Master’s Guide, monster traits are little flourishes you can use to give your monster some personality.
These are things like, “this creature has an aversion to fire, if it takes fire damage, it’s at Disadvantage until the end of its next turn.” Or possibly, “this creature causes dimensional disruption in a 30 foot field around it, teleportation doesn’t work in that field”. So it’s not just little ribbons of flavor with no mechanical effect.
I like these because they’re an example of how you can add some narrative flavor using game mechanics. One of my favorite examples is the “when this creature dies it spits out another creature from its corpse.” There are examples for Slaad tadpoles, Ochre Jellies, Imps – all which might come clawing out of a defeated monster.
You can even give a creature a Cantrip that it can cast without components. So if you’re looking to make a monster “remix” so to speak, the creature customization rules in the new Dungeon Master’s Guide may help you on your way.
Happy adventuring!
