Making a Monster

Monsters are an essential part of Dungeons and Dragons and all like games. They provide something for players to experience combat with that provides a creature beyond that of normal wildlife or people. Creating a monster can range from easy to hard depending on what you want to do. Either way this page will aim to assist in teaching the basics of monster creation.

"The first step in the process is coming up with the concept for your monster. What makes it unique? Where does it live? What role do you want it to serve in your adventure, your campaign, or your world? What does it look like? Does it have any weird abilities? Once you have the answers to these questions, you can start figuring out how to represent your monster in the game."—Mearls 273

When making a monster a few things need to be kept in mind; where does this monster live; what type of monster is it; how big is the monster; what are its stats; what is the monster's purpose in the world; what is the monster's purpose for the campaign; what does it look like; is it cool? To help with the monster creating process I've made a series of tables to assist in forming ideas. The tables aren't needed of course; however, it might save some headaches as a G.M. once writer's block inevitably hits.

Roll	Terrain
1d8
1	Arctic
2	Coast
3	Desert
4	Forest
5	Grasslands
6	Mountains
7	Swamp
8	Urban

Roll	Type
1d20
1	Aberration
2	Beast Land)
3	Celestial
4	Construct
5	Dragon
6	Elemental
7	Fey
8	Fiend
9	Giant
10	Monstrosity
11	Ooze
12	Shapechanger
13	Undead
14	Humanoid
15	Devil
16	Plant
17	Swarm
18	Beast(Flying)
19	Demon
20	Adventurer

Roll	Size
1d4
1	Small
2	Medium
3	Large
4	Gigantic

The above three tables should assist in forming an idea for your monster. Environment helps with appearance and behavior, e.g. an arctic monster might have a lot of fur or blubber and even be resistant to cold damage. Type also helps with this e.g. devils are usually lawful evil, intelligent and have some connection to the ethereal planes. Size finishes off appearance e.g. a small monster might try hiding in small crevices while a gigantic monster such as the Kraken causes an environmental effects on the whole region.

Stats are a bit trickier. The best method is to modify a preexisting monster's stats. This method is most common in my games as I will modify humanoids by giving them a health increase, or different weapons and armor. Minor modifications like that are key to helping keep combat engaging, but I digress. You can create stats from scratch, a good rule of thumb is what an ability score means about the monster. Cyclopses have a strength score of 22 [+6 Strength Modifier] that means they are incredibly strong, stronger than even the toughest player could be; however, their intelligence is 8 [- Intelligence Modifier] that means they are dumber than the average person, which is 10 intelligence. Those stats indicate the Cyclopse is not a monster that employs cunning in its day to day life or combat, most likely relying on brute force.

Now why did you make this monster? "I wanted something cool" or "just to try" are fine reasons so don't worry. You don't always have to give much backstory to the creature, yet it gives an extra bit of depth to the monster. The Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual understands this by having segments of text that describe some of a monster's personality. Appearance is necessary because you will need to describe the creature to people, understanding how it acts, monster type, size, and environment will help give you an idea of its appearance.

Finally, is it cool? Everything else can be ignored if it's to make the monster interesting for your party. A great example is 5:00–6:12 in the above video. Matthew Colville is a veteran D.M. and he explains quite rightly here that he built a troll shaman for his players based off what would be good to use without actually making the monster based off a strict set of rules. Focusing on rough guidelines and ideas is more important in the long term as that puts a focus on play.

Monster creation focuses on figuring out how it looks, behaves, interacts, why you have it in the campaign, why it exists in the world, and how is it engaging to the players to deal with.

Works Cited

Colville, Matthew. "Campaign Diary #17: More Trolls!". Youtube, uploaded by Matthew Colville, 3 October  2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OidO5Fy-Yw&index=20&list=PLlUk42GiU2gsOmx21QPMuBmsP3Rs9N_6q.

Mike Mearls et al. Dungeon Master's Guide. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.