D&D 5E Redoing existing monsters?

[Quickleaf]

I've noticed with 5e that I've been redoing most of the monsters I run – for ease of running, to minimize repetitive abilities, to replace prolific "bludg, pierc, slash" resistances & add vulnerabilities, and to get the mechanics to reinforce the narrative better. Often, I look to older editions' lore for inspiration and/or try to envision how to bring more social & exploration elements into the stat block (or just the presentation of the monster in my games).

Has anyone else been doing this themselves? Or using other sources to model the classic D&D / Monster Manual monsters?

What do you think of these changes to the peryton stat block, as an example?

 

[aco175]

The revised statblock does add more gameplay elements and opportunity for further adventure. You should also clarify a few things though.

Cursed Nature- does remove curse transform it permanently or just for some amount of time? If it is an eagle now, why does the other part still matter about a humanoid heart? Does this part even need to be listed here or move it to the Devour Heart part?

Devour Heart- It uses an action and regains all of its HP. That is a cool reason to stomp a down PC. Might be worth thinking if it should be healing up to the dead PCs HP instead of a full heal on the peryton. If the PC is restored to life, say next week when the party gets to town, does the peryton know somehow it is back alive?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The revised one is mostly weaker in this case.

Anyway I like revised Monsters, and frequently edit them myself. The revised Monsters are one of the things I am most looking forward to with One D&D.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I rewrite monsters all the time.

In this case, whether or not it's an improvement depends on usage. It has a lot more lore embedded into it than the vanilla version, so if you build it up a little bit before hand, such that players go in afraid of getting their hearts snatched when they fall unconscious (and maybe preparing remove curse if they rolled high on the Arcana check), it'll be great. If you just drop it into a combat and suddenly the players unexpectedly have an enemy who has heavy incentive to prioritize killing downed players, it might be a very unfortunate surprise. The great thing about redesigning for your own use is that you know how that particular version of the creature is meant to be played, whereas when WotC makes their version it should be designed with being foolproof in mind, which is part of how their monsters end up so samey.

 

[Jon Gaunt]

I often modify mine. I also look at the A5E versions. They’re typically better than those in the WoTC books.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Cool. You’d want to telegraph the bit about Devour Heart somehow. Maybe a rumor the party hears in town. And/or they stumble upon a body with its heart devoured right before encountering a peryton with blood around its mouth. I really like remove curse as an alternate way to defeat one as well.

 

[Quickleaf]

The revised one is mostly weaker in this case.

Anyway I like revised Monsters, and frequently edit them myself. The revised Monsters are one of the things I am most looking forward to with One D&D.

I rewrite monsters all the time.

In this case, whether or not it's an improvement depends on usage. It has a lot more lore embedded into it than the vanilla version, so if you build it up a little bit before hand, such that players go in afraid of getting their hearts snatched when they fall unconscious (and maybe preparing remove curse if they rolled high on the Arcana check), it'll be great. If you just drop it into a combat and suddenly the players unexpectedly have an enemy who has heavy incentive to prioritize killing downed players, it might be a very unfortunate surprise. The great thing about redesigning for your own use is that you know how that particular version of the creature is meant to be played, whereas when WotC makes their version it should be designed with being foolproof in mind, which is part of how their monsters end up so samey.

I wanted to respond to you both first, because @Benjamin Olson if I understood you right, you're saying that officially published monsters NEED to be conservatively designed with less lore embedded in stat blocks... whereas @MonsterEnvy if I understood you right, you're saying the reason you're looking forward to the officially published monsters in OneD&D is that you're hoping for revisions in line with the "more lore in stat block" example I gave? Am I accurate in saying those two views are in tension?

 

[Quickleaf]

The revised statblock does add more gameplay elements and opportunity for further adventure. You should also clarify a few things though.

Cursed Nature- does remove curse transform it permanently or just for some amount of time? If it is an eagle now, why does the other part still matter about a humanoid heart? Does this part even need to be listed here or move it to the Devour Heart part?

That's meant to be permanent. I'm pretty confident in saying that in 5e the omission of any timeline defaults to permanency (i.e. things like "you're dead" or "petrified").

I originally had it under Devour Heart, but was playing around with things. I think you're right, it's better placed there.

Devour Heart- It uses an action and regains all of its HP. That is a cool reason to stomp a down PC. Might be worth thinking if it should be healing up to the dead PCs HP instead of a full heal on the peryton. If the PC is restored to life, say next week when the party gets to town, does the peryton know somehow it is back alive?

One of my goals is making monsters easier to run – or in this case, as I'm adding a bit more complexity, not making that a burden on the GM. Tracking how many HP a PC has and doing the healing math just seemed like unnecessarily burdening the GM... especially when a peryton only has ~33 hp and 2nd level PC has ~15 HP.

Like @MonsterEnvy said, the stat block (due to removal of resistances and HP remaining equal) is a bit weaker than the original just looking at the straight maths. So I'm ok making Devour Heart a bit nastier.

A more poetic way to phrase this is that it's not about the "strength" of the heart, but it's the malicious act of tearing a sentient being's heart from their chest and eating it.

Cool. You’d want to telegraph the bit about Devour Heart somehow. Maybe a rumor the party hears in town. And/or they stumble upon a body with its heart devoured right before encountering a peryton with blood around its mouth. I really like remove curse as an alternate way to defeat one as well.

Yeah, that's definitely worth pointing out. That kind of foreshadowing has become instinctual for me as a GM, but absolutely.

The remove curse idea I'm playing with are that there are a handful of D&D monsters who are described as the result of a curse, so why not make an "offensive" use for that spell embedded right into the monster writeup?

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I wanted to respond to you both first, because @Benjamin Olson if I understood you right, you're saying that officially published monsters NEED to be conservatively designed with less lore embedded in stat blocks... whereas @MonsterEnvy if I understood you right, you're saying the reason you're looking forward to the officially published monsters in OneD&D is that you're hoping for revisions in line with the "more lore in stat block" example I gave? Am I accurate in saying those two views are in tension?

Yes, to an extent. But I would say there is room with the creatures in the 5e monster manual (a rushed product, at least given its scale, designed for a game they didn't really understand the balance of yet and that had to be worked on while the rules were in serious flux) to add more lore to the stat blocks and still be considerably more conservative than your revision.

I have no particular theories as to whether that is something WotC will do, as I am not someone who has scoured the Monsters of the Multiverse updates to try to triangulate current WotC design shifts. My guess based what I've seen of the direction of OneD&D would be even more homogenized stat-blocks on the whole, but even if that is the case overall it doesn't mean that it will necessarily be the case for any particular monster.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I wanted to respond to you both first, because @Benjamin Olson if I understood you right, you're saying that officially published monsters NEED to be conservatively designed with less lore embedded in stat blocks... whereas @MonsterEnvy if I understood you right, you're saying the reason you're looking forward to the officially published monsters in OneD&D is that you're hoping for revisions in line with the "more lore in stat block" example I gave? Am I accurate in saying those two views are in tension?

Semi right, I like monsters being more unique. Though I don’t outright hope for more lore in statblock stuff. Like for me if I really cared to do so I would personally keep the peryton more like the MM statblock but give it a cool down power so it would do more than just dive bomb every turn. (I don’t know what it is because I have largely been content with Perytons as they are)