Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Brain Problems]

When any of you guys make custom/new monsters for 5E stuff, what's your general philosophy? Do you reskin current monsters while adding/removing abilities/AC/HD/spells? Do you have a sense of what's a reasonable challenge for your PCs from just raw experience or do you try to Kobold Fight Klub them as a test? Just curious what peoples' thoughts are when they do this. Or maybe you don't even make new stuff, I dunno.

I have a general idea of what things you can add to enemies to make them deadly without going over-the-top but it seems like it's such a fine balancing act due to just how random the game is. One scenario leads to a TPK, another to a total rout.

 

[Corn Flakes]

When any of you guys make custom/new monsters for 5E stuff, what's your general philosophy? Do you reskin current monsters while adding/removing abilities/AC/HD/spells? Do you have a sense of what's a reasonable challenge for your PCs from just raw experience or do you try to Kobold Fight Klub them as a test? Just curious what peoples' thoughts are when they do this. Or maybe you don't even make new stuff, I dunno.

I have a general idea of what things you can add to enemies to make them deadly without going over-the-top but it seems like it's such a fine balancing act due to just how random the game is. One scenario leads to a TPK, another to a total rout.

My GM's philosophy is to grab an existing statblock and re-skin using the basic numbers, then make it special with unusual abilities and attacks, adjusting as needed, and sometimes to the point there's barely anything left of the original statblock.

For example: there was a gothic horror-themed event at our LGS around Halloween last year, and we brewed up a fun little "hunting a mad doctor" adventure to demo there (he did the monster stats, I put together the maps). The GM wanted to use flesh golems, but those are way too powerful for a level 3 party to take on as a "common" monster, even on a short crawl like what we had in mind. So he took the basic bitch Orc statblock (mostly for HP and stats) and mashed it with some of the Flesh Golem abilities until he had something he was happy with. In the end we had a reasonably bulky "mook" type flesh golem the players would be fighting through the dungeon, and learning shit like lightning heals these golems, so they'd know to disable the mad doctor's galvanic device in the middle of the arena when it was time for them to fight the "real" Flesh Golem at the end.

It worked out pretty well. We still had to adjust enemy group sizes since the party we ran through the adventure in the afternoon took a TPK pretty early on and the GM gave them a mulligan, but the group we ran in the evening had a pretty good time overall.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

That's cause they're Malay and (until recently) were extremely chill. Part of this is that that historically they were 100% Sunni. No Shiites to slapfight with, no radically shit-stirring sects started by guys craving political power and using religion to justify its acquisition. They got a very boiled-to-the-bones version of islam.

In the past ten years or so there has an injection of extremist thought (thanks internet) into the communities in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Even Muhammad covered this, where in the Muslim IDEAL is to pray 5 times a day in the direction of Mecca after washing. If you can't hit the Ideal, do your best - if you are in battle or doing a task its ok to miss a prayer or three. If there is no water you don't need to waste your limited supply washing. If you have no idea where Mecca is, just pray anyway. (If there is nothing else to eat, you're allowed to eat pork)

Yeah, there's an interesting practical thread that crops up sometimes in Islam: that a sin of commission is not the same as a sin of omission, and if you can't get it exactly right, try to get as close as you can.

There's a funny bit about a guy who goes to visit a Sufi mystic, and he asks which way he should pray if the sky is cloudy, once he's completed his ablutions (bathing). The Sufi replies, 'In the direction of your clothes, so they won't be stolen.'

 

[Ghostse]

When any of you guys make custom/new monsters for 5E stuff, what's your general philosophy? Do you reskin current monsters while adding/removing abilities/AC/HD/spells? Do you have a sense of what's a reasonable challenge for your PCs from just raw experience or do you try to Kobold Fight Klub them as a test? Just curious what peoples' thoughts are when they do this. Or maybe you don't even make new stuff, I dunno.

I have a general idea of what things you can add to enemies to make them deadly without going over-the-top but it seems like it's such a fine balancing act due to just how random the game is. One scenario leads to a TPK, another to a total rout.

My general philosophy is 5E is for queers and fags.

serious answer:
For 4e, I just use the 'business card' to build custom monsters. In my current campaign, since I've been running modules, I've just been reskinning/flavoring the existing monster. (They were supposed to fight a venom-eye basilisk, but the on-going big bad is a necromancer not the Zehir cultist in the module, so I reskinned the basilisk to be a green dragon zombie instead)

But I've never had a reasonable sense of challenge. They'll mop the floor with the big bad in 3 rounds after nearly getting TPK'd by the "low threat to apply a level of urgency" monsters. I just ballpark it and when it goes wrong decide if I should scale it back because I miscalulated or if I should let the players experience the consequences of their actions because they are to blame.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

My general philosophy is 5E is for queers and fags.

I mean, certainly since 2020. That’s when the shift became too obtrusive to miss.

After reading the complete and total fuck story that is “Shadow of the Dragon Queen” my new philosophy is “I hope you fuckers like Greyhawk.”

serious answer:
For 4e, I just use the 'business card' to build custom monsters. In my current campaign, since I've been running modules, I've just been reskinning/flavoring the existing monster. (They were supposed to fight a venom-eye basilisk, but the on-going big bad is a necromancer not the Zehir cultist in the module, so I reskinned the basilisk to be a green dragon zombie instead)

But I've never had a reasonable sense of challenge. They'll mop the floor with the big bad in 3 rounds after nearly getting TPK'd by the "low threat to apply a level of urgency" monsters. I just ballpark it and when it goes wrong decide if I should scale it back because I miscalulated or if I should let the players experience the consequences of their actions because they are to blame.

I refer to this as the hydra curve: I throw the players an encounter that I think will be challenging and then scale it up is they walk all over it.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

 

[Kane Lives]

That's cause they're Malay and (until recently) were extremely chill. Part of this is that that historically they were 100% Sunni. No Shiites to slapfight with, no radically shit-stirring sects started by guys craving political power and using religion to justify its acquisition. They got a very boiled-to-the-bones version of islam.

In the past ten years or so there has an injection of extremist thought (thanks internet) into the communities in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Even Muhammad covered this, where in the Muslim IDEAL is to pray 5 times a day in the direction of Mecca after washing. If you can't hit the Ideal, do your best - if you are in battle or doing a task its ok to miss a prayer or three. If there is no water you don't need to waste your limited supply washing. If you have no idea where Mecca is, just pray anyway. (If there is nothing else to eat, you're allowed to eat pork)

A tangent, but the extremist strain of Islam you see being formented over in Malaysia and Indonesia was ongoing way before the internet. Since the 90s at least. A big part of this was how the Sauds started funding a lot of Islamic schools in the region and naturally exported their own shitty brand of Wahabbism. (Thanks greatest ally)

To be fair, it is still a pretty chill place for most part (don't believe the alarmist rhetoric from the local chinks), but the ongoing radicalisation of the local Malays is a very real threat.

 

[Hikaru86]

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Monkey's paw strikes again. Now WoTC want to milk the old D&D Cartoon too. I think they show up in the new D&D movie too.

 

[Ghostse]

A tangent, but the extremist strain of Islam you see being formented over in Malaysia and Indonesia was ongoing way before the internet. Since the 90s at least. A big part of this was how the Sauds started funding a lot of Islamic schools in the region and naturally exported their own shitty brand of Wahabbism. (Thanks greatest ally)

To be fair, it is still a pretty chill place for most part (don't believe the alarmist rhetoric from the local chinks), but the ongoing radicalisation of the local Malays is a very real threat.

You are correct, but the penetration was very small/slow until the internet started letting Malay incels find the teachings and get instruction from radicals outside the country; neither the Malay and ESPECIALLY the Indonesian governments like Islamic Extremists because they threaten the current establishment. And as you point out, in especially in Malaysia, you've got the multiple hands of "Muslims" "Chistians" "Buddists" "Hindis" all holding up the orb of "Fuck the Chinese".

The Saudis have been funding Wahabi construction of international mosques and madrasas for a while as a method of internal appeasement "see? we are using our power to spread islam" and also sending off the the most angry Wahabi imams to go preach violent muslim overthrow to someone else's population. Which TBCF if the countries these mosques & schools were built in weren't completely cucked they would be arresting and expelling the Wahabi preachers after 3 days.

 

[ComStar]

His HP isn't even the thing, it's the whole clusterfuck of every weird completely unfair ability he has so that he's practically unkillable. He's like every shitty boss fight in every vidya ever that you can't possibly beat, rolled up into one bitch-ass skelly.

To be fair (and late), Acererak is always unfair because Gygax made him so. For example, in the 3.5 version Acererak's soul suck is a DC 23 Fortitude save. For level 9 characters that's way too harsh, but hey, ToH.

ToH 3.5 has one of my favorite traps though, a broken Staff Of The Magi in an antimagic room. I think it was our rogue who took the pieces outside of the antimagic field and destroyed half the hall of pillars in a cataclysmic explosion. he blew his reflex save and took 400 damage.

good times.

 

[Judge Dredd]

When any of you guys make custom/new monsters for 5E stuff, what's your general philosophy?

Reskin, reskin, and reskin some more. There was a meme among various OSR YouTubers that was "just use bears" since it's a great stat block for almost any kind of monster.

That said, I heard some advice that you basically just need AC and a to-hit bonus. I never thought of this for DnD, which is odd because Savage Worlds has the concept of the d4 fodder, the d6 mook, and the d8 elite which is the same concept. For DnD, you might want to add some spell effects or vulnerabilities or something, but really anything like that should jump out at you.

Do you have a sense of what's a reasonable challenge for your PCs from just raw experience

Raw experience and a few near misses. I only had one TPK, but that was from a published adventure.

I think difficulty isn't really the point. You want to challenge the players, obviously, but I find adding a location specific modifier does that well enough. Difficult terrain, wild magic, sight blocks, environmental hazard, etc. The goal is to make it so they aren't using the same tactic all the time (most of the time is fine though). It doesn't take much either. eg. If the fighters strategy is running in a straight line to get into melee, it'll really fuck up his day to put the enemy up a tree, on the other side of a pit, or even on the other side of a bar. Got a guy who stands in the back throwing ranged attacks? Fog or heavy rain can obscure his vision. Even if it's just "you're attacks have disadvantage past 20ft" it might be enough for him to try something else.

One I had good luck with was weak monsters that come back to life some turns after they're killed. Another was a fight in a theater where the performers use illusion magic for the show. When the fight started there were walls of flame everywhere that messed up the PCs tactics until they realised it was all illusions. A memorable encounter was when the party had lots of magic items, I made an entire session take place in a wild magic zone.


Even if you roll in the open, you can still fudge things by not using powerful abilities you had planned, or lowering that AC a point a two provided there hasn't been a near miss.

You can also have a get-out-of-jail-free card in your back pocket. Most DMs call it railroading, but your players don't need to know.

In one game, I set up a rumour early on that drow slavers were seen. If there was a TPK they'd be saved by the drow, just to be taken into slavery and the next adventure would be a jail break. You can also have monsters flee just as they're about to deal the killing blow because of something big happening like a dragon roar or a bell tolling, like this scene.

You can't pull this all the time, but if it makes sense, this safety net allows you to not worry about balance since the end result is the same, the players just don't know it.


And worst case scenario, you can come clean and admit things are poorly balanced.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

They'll mop the floor with the big bad in 3 rounds after nearly getting TPK'd by the "low threat to apply a level of urgency" monsters.

Are you my DM?

 

[Big Nasty]

I do not think that there actually are "tons of money" to be made off tabletop RPGs and wargames.

 

[Ghostse]

I do not think that there actually are "tons of money" to be made off tabletop RPGs and wargames.

Gamesworkshop would like a word.

 

[Big Nasty]

Gamesworkshop would like a word.

They are the only ones making any significant amount of money.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

I do not think that there actually are "tons of money" to be made off tabletop RPGs and wargames.

Depends on your definition.

I knew people who made a couple grand a month off of their stuff. They've since moved on to other things.

Oh, and Paizo, White Wolf, ENPublishing, and a few others make good money.

So does Palladium.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

Today, I shall tell you the tale of Why Captain Bellum Hates His Wife.

Captain Bellum was a Grippli swashbuckler of moderate repute. If you can imagine Kermit in Muppet Treasure Island played deadly straight, that was Bellum. His airship, the Serenity, had acquired a bit of inverse infamy for having "gone legit", but the Captain was still feared in criminal circles for his skill with the blade and his fearsome demeanor. (You don't know fear until you've had a giant anthropomorphic frog launched at you at 20 mph waving a sword and shouting REEEEEEEEEEEE!) He, the wizard, and the rogue had happened across clandestine advertisements for a no-holds-barred to-the-death fighting ring beneath a tavern. To their great surprise, when they arrived there they found that the barbarian was in the lists and the cleric was seeded in the crowd as a plant for the Inquisition. (That august institution had previously lost a team investigating the premises.) Since the Captain was in possession of a Hat of Disguise, he used it to assume the form of an elderly halfling and affected an air of senility. Throughout the night, the only refreshment he called for was glasses of milk and large bowls of applesauce.

The cleric and the barbarian eventually managed to work out a grudge match storyline which ended up with the """dead""" cleric getting thrown down the corpse chute to find out what exactly they were doing with the bodies. Meanwhile, up above (I forget exactly how), events degenerated to the point that there was mass hysteria and the party was forced into combat with the fighting ring operators, who turned out to be demonic cultists. Captain Bellum kept up his façade as a senile halfling throughout, wandering about the battlefield asking whoever was nearest to him, "Are you my wife?" The first cultist he confronted responded with confusion at this simple request, whereupon the elderly halfling stabbed him with his rapier, rolled and confirmed a critical hit (killing the man instantly), and loudly proclaimed in an old man voice, "I hate my wife!"

That was a year and a half ago of real time. Captain Bellum isn't even with the party anymore, but references to hating one's wife are still the best in-joke we've got. It's even come up in-character since then. At a fancy masquerade, (when the cleric's subtle attempts at scriptural innuendo failed) the barbarian was able to insinuate to an inquisitor that we were allies by telling him that a mutual friend wished to convey that he hated his wife.

 

[Rendang]

To be fair, it is still a pretty chill place for most part (don't believe the alarmist rhetoric from the local chinks),

Most of the Chinese alarmist rhetoric stem from Suharto's reign in Indonesia. Using foreigners for administrators is the classic move for a unpopular ruler, and Suharto was one. Much of the businesses his family had hands in were majority ethnic Chinese, who already owned a significant portion of the economy during the colonial era. Because of this, Chinese-Indonesians now own 60% of the largest businesses in Indonesia, despite being only 1.2%-3.3% of the population.

As a consequence, he stifled any real economic development for the ethnic Indonesians (despite his nationalist rhetoric) and that produce further resent to the Chinese. Suharto even harnessed this, passing laws in the 1960s to try and aggressively assimilate them, while supporting his Chinese conglomerates.

It is still true that the Chinese-Indonesians will Jew you, but an ethic Indonesian will Basketball American you. Being actively hindered of economic development has failed to stifle a culture of entrepreneurship for the ethnic Indo. Because of this, keep your Indonesian acquaintances as friends, but avoid them for workers.


tl;dr Sukarno hired the Jews while Jewing them to allow his family to out Jew the Jews

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

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It's such awful art, the pink women looks like she is cut in two since her huge belt the same color as the tree. In general it took me a few seconds to understand what's happening because it's an explosion of colors and poses.

 

[Kane Lives]

Why is this being shilled so highly?