“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
How to Tweak Monsters
What if one small change, one little tweak to your monsters made all the difference between a fast-paced fight and a painful slog?
Today you will learn how to make small but impactful changes to monsters that improve their combat speed and effectiveness. You’ll learn to identify problem monster
mechanics, learn what some simple and effective monster tweaks are, and finally put it all into practice at the end of the lesson.
Why Tweak Monsters?
Scanning monsters for problem mechanics is important so you can make better monster selections and tweak monsters to make them more turn efficient for their role in combat.
Problem Monster Mechanics
Understanding the amount of moving parts between the monsters and combat scenarios in your combats (see Lesson 2.06) is important because it gives you a quick sense of the complexity of both the monsters and the encounter itself.
Beyond those two guidelines, it’s important to look deeper at each monster in your combat. How complex are their abilities and attacks? How many steps, phases,
keywords, triggers, conditions and rules are involved in a single power, ability or attack? Avoid or minimize the amount of monsters with the following problem mechanics:
• Timing issues, including multiple timing checkpoints for saves or special attacks or abilities
• Attacks with multiple components, such as secondary or multiple attacks • Damage with multiple components, such as condition-based or situational
differences
• Complicated auras or buffs, such as multiple sizes, areas, bonus types, conditions and timing
• Multiple or conditional movement abilities • Multiple trigger-based abilities and attacks
• Complicated or multiple applied conditions or debuffs
• Lengthy or multi-phase special abilities or attacks (5+ lines of text)
Turn Efficiency Tweaks
Here’s how you can turn up the efficiency on your monsters by role.
Toughs
To keep the feel of toughs but increase their turn efficiency, tweak yours as follows: • Increase defenses, decrease hit points
• Increase defenses or hit points, remove special resistances • Increase defenses or hit points, reduce movement and initiative • Increase defenses or hit points, remove a complex special attack
• Remove opportunity attacks and add a bonus of +2 to +5 to attacks and/or damage
• Add or amplify a vulnerability (increase numbers and/or add negative conditions or effects)
• Remove a complex special defensive ability and add the ability to halve damage from a single attack once per encounter
Melee or Ranged
Tweak melee or ranged monsters as follows:
• Increase attack bonus, decrease hit points or defenses • Increase damage, decrease hit points or defenses
• Increase movement and initiative, reduce hit points or defenses
• Remove opportunity attacks and add a bonus of +2 to +5 to attacks and/or damage
• Remove a complex special attack and add ability to deal double damage from a single attack once per encounter
Area Effect
Area effect specialist monsters can be tweaked as follows:
• Increase attack bonus, decrease hit points or defenses • Increase damage, decrease hit points or defenses
• Increase area effect size, decrease hit points or defenses
• Remove a complex area attack and add the ability to strike an additional target to the monster’s other attacks
Healers/Buffers
And to maintain the feel of healers/buffers but keep decision making and turn speed crisp, tweak them as follows:
• Increase attack and damage buffs, decrease hit points or defenses • Increase attack and damage buffs, decrease healing ability dice or totals • Remove a complex buff, aura, or heal and add the ability for the monster to
grant a small attack and damage bonus to all allies for one round
• Remove a complex buff, aura, or heal and add the ability for the monster to heal 33-50% of a monster’s maximum hit points once per encounter
Other Monster Roles
Two additional monster roles – cannon fodder and boss monsters – include the weakest and strongest of monsters. How do you tweak them towards greater turn efficiency while fulfilling their special roles?
Cannon Fodder
Weak, minion-like monsters that can be killed in just one or two hits are becoming a staple of many campaigns. By default, they’re very efficient. Increasing their number will have only a marginal impact on turn efficiency as their attacks are straightforward and their hit points are poor.
Still, here are a few tweaks where you’ll have to less to track and less to roll: • Reduce quantity of cannon fodder
• Add flat or average damage to all attacks (if not already included)
Boss Monsters
Named champion monsters significantly stronger than standard monsters are usually featured as the main antagonists and in the most challenging combats of an adventure. They also tend to be more complex in roles than a standard monster.
For example, elite bodyguards, tribal chiefs or shaman, the white dragon that rules the glacial island.
• Use the suggested tweaks for Toughs.
• Carefully review the monster’s attacks and abilities, and choose one or two
tweaks from the other lists (Melee or Ranged, Area Effect or
Healers/Buffers).
• Simplify or remove special attacks and abilities that have multiple parts, steps, triggers or requirements. (See suggested tweaks for all roles above.)
You’ve Created a Monster!
Well done! You’ve learned how to make small but meaningful adjustments to monsters that improve their turn efficiency. You’ve learned what problem monster mechanics you need to look for, and how to tweak them based on monster role and type.
What’s Next?
Next, you will learn how to re-use familiar monsters in new and interesting ways. You’ll learn how to save both session prep and combat time while adding engaging twists to monsters you’ve already used in your combats and campaigns.
Resources
You’ll find more at Roleplaying Tips: 6 Tips For Making Monsters Meaner, 11 Monstrous Tips, 10 Monstrous Tips, 7 More Monstrous Tips and Don’t Be Afraid to Modify Your Monsters.
And more at Leonine Roar: Opportunity Attacks: 6 Better Executions, Stop Rolling Your Bonus Crit Dice, Monster Complexity and Selection, Global Encounter Elements, Faster Combat: Rule of Three and Six Ways to Scale Back Immediate Actions.