Dmg Monster Guide Creation 5e
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Use Roll20?
Install Roll20 Enhancement Suite and Tampermonkey (Chrome/Firefox), and get the betteR20 script using this link.
As a player, you can import character options, spells, and items to quickly fill out a sheet. As a GM, you can additionally import monsters, tables, and adventures.
To import monsters, your game must have a default character sheet. We strongly recommend using OGL when importing, then switching to another afterwards if desired. (When switching to the Shaped sheet, be sure to open up NPC sheets after import to let them convert.)
Generate random magic shops with items from the DMG. Random Treasure Generator. Coins, gems, jewelry, and magic items. Generate a dungeon with monsters and traps from the d20 SRD. List spells by class, level, school, etc. Let's create some custom content this week! Using the DMG as a guide, we'll be exploring how to modify existing content (or create brand new stuff!) from the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual. Due to licensing issues, we were forced to remove all non-SRD content, if you have questions about what is and is not SRD content please see the the 5e SRD.If you would like to see the non-SRD content added back to OrcPub please sign our petition here at change.org.
Check the installation guide on the wiki, and check the Help page for some basic pointers on how to use the script.
FAQ
Is there a wiki?Here. Contributions are welcome.
Is it free? Yes! You can download the source at get.5e.tools. See the README or the wiki for help.
Can I contribute? A copy of the source is available on GitHub. Note that this is a secondary mirror, and so is not guaranteed to be up-to-date.
Browser and device support? The latest desktop versions of Chrome and Firefox.
Anything else I should know? Hold SHIFT when hovering to lock a window in place. Everything has tooltips. You will always be the DM.
Dnd 5e Monster Creation
I'm new to DMing! How do I start?
First, congratulations on running a game! You'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. The easiest way to build an encounter is to pick an enemy from the Monster Manual with a CR around the same as the level of PCs in your party, maybe one higher if you want them to have a tough fight. This won't always be perfect, but it's a good place to start. You'll find that this method mostly generates Medium or Hard difficulty encounters, which is about what you are aiming for.
To spice things up, increase the number of enemies. Either go for a group of lower-level mooks, or a second bad guy of around the same CR, or mix and match. Don't go too wild with this, though - the PCs can only take on so many enemies at once. In 5th Edition, outnumbering your opponent can be quite an advantage. Be very careful before putting your PCs up against a Deadly encounter, especially against lots of enemies.
Why are my players finding encounters so easy?
If you're using this calculator a lot, you may have found it can seem to overstate the difficulty of encounters. First I'll explain why this happens, and then how you can fix this.
The biggest culprit for easy encounters is the party resting too much. If you're like me, your parties tend to have maybe two or three encounters per long rest, often with short rests in between - this makes more sense for some play styles, but causes balance problems.
The way 5th Edition balances resources assumes that parties will have at least a couple of medium-difficulty encounters between each short rest, and maybe two or three short rests between each long rest. This forces characters to be conservative with their limited resources (spell slots, class features, hit dice, and so forth), making each individual encounter tougher. A party that can approach an encounter fresh, with no worries about saving resources, will often find that encounter relatively easy.
Dmg 5e Pdf
How do you fix this? You have two choices.
5e Monster Creation Rules
- Don't let your party rest as often. There are a couple of ways of doing this - you could have encounters happen closer together without any chance for a break between each (maybe putting the characters on a timer, or make it dangerous to rest), or use the 'Gritty Realism' rest model as described in the DMG (page 267) which makes rests take longer. I have started using Gritty Realism in my games and I've found that it makes designing adventures substantially easier, and stops the party attempting to rest at every opportunity.
- Make the encounters harder. You can probably make the Adjusted Difficulty Rating of an encounter up to double or maybe even triple (for very experienced parties) the XP* rating of a Deadly encounter, and the fight will be more challenging and risky, but not impossible for a prepared party. There are some downsides to this approach, however. Fights become much more dangerous as an encounter can quickly snowball from challenging to deadly if one or two of the PCs are dropped. This is especially pronounced at lower levels where a single hit can be enough to put someone on the floor. If you use this method, you may need to increase the difficulty slowly until you get to the level of challenge you want.
*Note for those who use CR, this scales differently. You may only want to increase the CR of encounters by 1 or 2.