In this next part of the Behind the Screen series, I'll be looking at homebrewing monsters. I know, not as original as making cultures, but you can never have too many viewpoints.
In this first part I will be going over the most simple way to create a homebrew monster with which to terrify your players. This method follows the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), and it requires no playtesting balance issues, carefully adjusting AC or HP or CR, or possibly any mechanical aspects at all.
The first way to create a homebrew monster is to not actually create a new monster. Just reflavor a monster that has already been created, maybe change the creature type. I will use a mindflayer and a lich as examples of reflavored monsters.
Mindflayer
Jacob's players have read the Monster Manual back and forth, they have memorized each entry to the last period. His players are therefor not being intimidated by any of the monsters that he uses. For his D&D 3.5 Halloween one-shot, Jacob decides to do a murder mystery with a big boss fight at the end.
To avoid the players from breaking the mood when the boss fight begins, Jacob decides to throw a monster at them that they've never seen. He has an idea for a wailing undead-like creature that he's named a Khanar. It isn't actually undead, but is instead an aberration. Looking through the Monster Manual for something to use as a base, Jacob finds that the mindflayer entry is perfect for his needs. The mind blast could be described as a piercing shriek that cuts to the soul, and he knows just the sound file to use.
The big night comes, and none of Jacob's players have any clue what they are facing. The cleric's attempts to use cure spells to damage the undead have the opposite effect, none of their undead-bane weapons are working, and yet the rouge's sneak attacks are still failing. The long, claw like finger nails punch through the barbarian's hide armor and he dies when the boss literally rips out his heart.
Lich
Tom is in the early stages of designing a campaign that takes place in the far north of his world. He wants the big bad to be a recurring villain, yet most PCs have a tendency to give villains a bad case of death. Looking through the Monster Manual for ideas, he comes across the entry for lich. Taking some time to think about it, the lich seems perfect from a mechanical perspective. However with the over abundance of undead big bads in a frozen wasteland (see World of Warcraft and Game of Thrones) he decides to make a few tweaks.
Looking through Inuit mythology, he finds a perfect creature to provide the skin over the lich's bones: wendigo. Changing the creature type from undead to fey, Tom's mechanical changes are done. There are plenty of images on the internet of various interpretations of wendigo, so Tom picks one that he likes and downloads it to have a printout to show to his players when they come across the seven foot monstrosity hunched over the friendly bartender, maw bloody and the bartender's intestine being slurped up like a piece of spaghetti.
The PCs butcher the surprised wendigo, only for it to go after their families a week later. Thus prompting a hunt to find out just how to kill a wendigo for good.
And there you have it! With just a different description, you can unsettle veteran players or build entire campaigns around a single monster.
*There are more changes than just the creature type, but the wendigo example given is basically my current campaign and both I and my players are loving it!
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