Dragon Encounters

Introduction to Homebrewing Races

The 2024 Monster Manual chose the remove humanoid races like the drow, the orcs, and the duergar. In their place, they suggest using various NPC stat blocks. In the case of the drow elite warrior, they chose the gladiator, which is an extremely bad choice.

The gladiator is a STR based stat block. Even if you swap the DEX and STR around and change to weapon to a DEX weapon, you still have to rename shield bash. That won’t be easy, as it’s clearly a STR based skill. [Rename as trip?]

This also leaves aside the fact that the drow no longer has any of the things that characterize it as a drow. Previously, the drow had long-ranged darkvision, stealth, and several cantrips and low-level spells. The gladiator’s skill proficiencies are in athletics and performance.

Building a Solid Foundation

What you want to do is build a proper template for your race. Don’t just adapt it from the gladiator or another monster stat block. There are plenty of tools for creating custom stat blocks, and while making one from scratch takes a little more time than quickly converting an existing monster, the extra effort is worth it.

As DM, you control the pace of play. If you’re constantly pausing to adjust or look things up, your players will do the same — and it’s almost inevitable that interest at the table will slip.

A good starting point is to copy a monster with the same CR and size, and with physical attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution) that match the creature you’re building. Mental stats (Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma) usually matter less, since they mostly affect saving throws, so you can assign those more freely.

Trait Selection: What Sets Your Race Apart

The basic formula followed and suggested for homebrewing by the 2014 Monster Manual was to choose a few minor attributes, such as superior darkvision for the drow, attach those to the NPC stat block, and leave it at that.

This works well enough, but if you want to build a number of different stat blocks, I might suggest coming up with a number of different significant abilities, and giving two of them to each enemy NPC type. This will give you a number of very different elite fighters, all of whom are both different and somewhat similar at the same time, as benefits different units of the same race.

Drow Trait Ideas

For the drow, I would suggest –

• Sneak Attack: The drow has stealth, and is skilled at taking players by surprise. (See below for some ideas). I considered the extra damage of the rouge’s sneak attack. You could do it, but it felt like overkill.
• Superior Archery: The Players’ Handbook gives players with this skill +2 to hit, but 50% more damage might be about the same, and be more noticeable to the players. Elves are famous for Archery.
• Rapid Retreat: Disengage as a bonus action is a bit strong, so make a single attack while disengaging, and move an extra ten feet when retreating. This will create hit-and-run enemies.
• Poisoned Weapons: A successful hit means they need a saving throw to avoid being poisoned for one round. Poisoned is a nasty condition, which is why I limited it so much.
• Nets and Snares: The drow is capable of quickly placing basic snares. I suggest limiting it to tripwires and maybe falling nets. Spiders are trappers.

Mixing and Matching Traits

Not everyone will agree with me—some DMs may prefer to use ideas individually—but combining traits creates more options. Instead of five isolated concepts, you end up with ten unique builds, and the overlap keeps the stat blocks from feeling repetitive.

It’s also easy to create very different builds via such combinations. For example:

• Superior Archery + Rapid Retreat = shadowy marksmen.

• Superior Archery + Poisoned Weapons = heavy archers.

• Poisoned Weapons + Rapid Retreat = light scouts or elite skirmishers.

• Nets and Snares + Rapid Retreat = ambushers who lure players into trouble.

• Nets and Snares + Surprise = trappers who lock down foes.

Shift Flavor Through Descriptions

Where possible, vary how you describe different drow units, so the party immediately understands what they’re facing. Avoid introducing too many new units or abilities too quickly. D&D combats are most engaging when players have some sense of what they’re up against (I discuss this further in my Geek Native article).

Finally, even when using shifting stat blocks, don’t rely too heavily on one race for all your combats. Mix in other monsters, and design a good number of encounters where drow aren’t present at all. Players crave variety, and even the most interesting idea grows stale if it’s overused.

Designing NPC Spellcasters

Edition 2014 would handle spellcasters by giving them a large number of spells whose description (not effects) seemed to fit thematically. Edition 2024 reduces the spell variety greatly (which I fully approve), but doesn’t do any different when selecting which spells to give the NPCs.

Choosing Spells for your NPC Wizards

I suggest to instead choose according to type. Pick one, or at most two, schools of magic that fit the race’s theme, and draw most of the spells from there. Then add a simple ranged attack themed as magic—like a cantrip but with better damage—for moments when you just want them to deal damage without slowing down the game.

Avoid Overlap: If you recently had, and plan to have, a different race using the same school of magic, you might want to split the school up further so that each race has different spells. Some overlap is okay, but you don’t want too much overlap.

Keep in mind that your caster is judged by the spells your players see them use, and how often, not the spells assigned to them or put aside for the race.

That said, don’t keep the selection too narrow. If all the spells you give a race impose the poison effect, for example, your spellcasters will feel ridiculously limited.

Reskin Spells: Finally, it is often quite easy to fit spells to races simply by keeping the rules and changing the description. Provided the spell isn’t a very popular one, there’s a good chance your players won’t recognize it, and even if they do change the theme will still keep a decent part of its effect. Thanks to Tasha’s, changing the description is even RAW.

Matching Spells to Races – Examples

A necromancer is likely to seem an obvious choice for most evil races, I’ll mention that necromancer in D&D isn’t just raising the dead, it’s all forms of evil magic such as curses and dark energies. Especially with redescription, it’s easy to see many evil races favoring other schools.

For example, I’d probably give the drow illusion and/or enchantment, because trickery fits drow so well and enchantment feels like an elven magic. I’d give orcs evocation, as they tend to favor brute attacks, and hobgoblins abjuration, as there’re tactical.

Even hags and liches, for whom curse magic and animating the dead might seem natural respectively, might well have specialties that aren’t necromancer. Hags are known for transforming people (transmutation) and unexpected knowledge (divination), a lich might consort with demons (conjuration), and have a specialty from before he became a lich.

For a simpler homebrew method, meant for an individual monster instead of a race, see Needle Blight.

How to Use the Drow Elite Warrior: Tactics & Encounters

The second half of this article will deal with the drow elite warrior as they’re presented in the 2014 Monster Manual, and how to use them.

Examining the Elite Warrior’s Stats

Let me start by noting that the drow elite warriors are incredibly weak for a CR 5. They have low AC, low HP, and only average damage. Parry increases their AC somewhat, but only against one attack a round, not much when most melee PCs can make two attacks a turn. This leaves them with two useful skills.

Hand crossbow can poison and even knock PCs unconsious. Poison isn’t weak, but that assumes that the drow uses it to poison all the PCs at the beginning of the battle, and inflicting an unavoidable significant debuff for an entire battle very seldom leads to a fun game. The second effect of unconsciousness is probably too unpredictable and too easy to negate to make for a good game.

The leaves the elite warrior with its other skill, stealth. The warrior has not just proficiency but expertise in stealth. Combined with its poor traits, the conclusion is that the elite warrior is, in fact, an assassin.

Which is something that makes sense for a people as notourious for backstabbing as drow.

Combat Encounter 1: Masters of Suprise (difficulty 6)

Below are a number of ways in which the drow elite warrior should be able to get the jump on your players. It is up to you to decide whether they run and regroup after a few rounds, or whether they let it continue and become a normal fight. The first would fit them better, but I suspect the second will be better for your game.

Clever Ambush Tactics

• Decoy and Bait: The drow hit them, with range or melee, and then run. As the players are chasing, they won’t be able to examine the area around them, or passages leading off. More drow jump them from one or the other, and the ones they’re chasing run around and attack.
• Revisiting the Room: Players might check a room once, but they’ll rarely think to check the room again after they’ve already been through it. A tripwire can be used to alert the drow (and leave the players trying to figure out why no trap triggered), and a dead end will ensure the PCs return. Put something up the dead end for them to investigate, so the drow have time to move into place.
• Similar to the last, if the players have to go back to get something to bridge a chasm, they probably won’t investigate when they return. In the meantime, the drow climb up from the chasm via grappling ropes. Something high out of reach can also work, but is less dependable, as the players might find a different way to bring it down. As a plus, this means that they’re hands will be full when they’re ambushed.
• Having a few obvious places to check might cause them to move past the less obvious places, or the players that one doesn’t except to be used in D&D, such as under the beds. This works best if something is pushing the players to move fast, such as the room slowly flooding.
• Dropping on ropes from the ceiling or from higher up a cliff is a traditional but worthy tactic. Send in a drow to talk to them in order to get them to turn their backs to the cliff. When ready, he’ll join the attack.

Ways to Exploit Suprise

And here are a couple of ways to exploit the surprise.

• The most obvious is to attack the vulnerable spellcasters. I would like to mention that placing 1-2 drow between the spellcasters and the melee and having them take the dodge action makes them very hard to hit. Parry will help here, and they can set the ambush in a place too narrow for the players to go around them.
• Other moves would be to have one drow use the trip action, and another drow grapple so that they can’t get up, or throw a net. Nets don’t feel so much like drow style, but you could have a giant spider web them instead. The only downside is that since trip doesn’t gain advantage with surprise in the 2024 rules (I still say this is a mistake), the surprise will be the entire point.
• Similar to the last, you can use a push attack to knock them off cliffs. I recommend not knocking them so far that they can’t rejoin the fight in a round or two, as that’s unfair to the players who aren’t able to participate.
• Even without any fancy moves, having one PC be attacked by several drow is nasty. Put a monster or two that the drow don’t mind losing in between the PC being jumped and the rest.
• Surprise can also be used to let one drow grab a quest item that they’ll have to get back and flee with it. This is story tool more than a fight tactic, but can be used in combination with one of the previous ideas.

For more ambush ideas, see Bugbear. Also, see All Monster Tactics, including ambushers

Combat Encounter 2: Attack at Night (difficulty 7)

The most obvious way to use assassins is to strike while the party sleeps. The problem is that even if the players notice in time, they’ll still start the fight half-prepared: low HP from before their long rest, casters with spent resources, and melee fighters caught without armor.

Worse, repeated night ambushes encourage the players to rest after every skirmish, just in case. That slows the campaign to a crawl.

A better option is to strike at the end of the night, after they’ve gained the benefits of their long rest. The players wake to find enemies already among them. As an immiediate attack will just be action without strategy, have the enemies distracted by something:

• inspecting runes, worried they might trigger a trap,

• eyeing a treasure pile,

• debating whether to take the PCs prisoner, for interragation or ritual sacrifice.

This keeps the tension high but avoids punishing them unfairly.

Stealth and Choices

The players have reasons to be sneaky:

• Whoever moves first risks getting mobbed.

• The melee are still unarmored.

• Spellcasters are dangerously close to the enemy.

You can decide whether to tell them outright or let them learn the hard way. Either way, the fight feels tense and balanced, because every character type has vulnerabilities.

Disadvantageous Beginning Positions

You can decide whether to have all the players wake up due to the invasion, or whether to have them roll perception and only wake up the ones who roll high enough. Even if you don’t have everyone wake up, the scene will probably be interesting enough to keep all the players interested, and it will give one more motive for the awake players to be sneaky.

While lying down, they’ll have limited view of they’re surroundings. If you give the players notes describing what they see, you can set it up so that no player sees all the enemies. Then, as long as you’re somewhat careful in your descriptions, they’ll get a shock when they finally get up and see that the number of enemies is more than they expected. This is easier to make work when each PC sees at least two enemies, as then you don’t have to worry avoiding plurals when talking.

Dealing with Sentries

What if the party posts a guard?

• With an NPC companion: The attackers quietly disable or outmaneuver the NPC. Players are far more forgiving of an NPC mistake than a forced PC failure.

• Without an NPC: Create a distraction. If he investigates, one enemy can lure them away while the others sneak in. Since the sentry can’t charge in without endangering the rest, you have almost the same outcome as above. If he wakes the others, the attackers might slip off and try again later, costing the party the benefits of a long rest.

• If nothing else works: Overwhelm the sentry directly. The other PCs will leap up to defend their companion, leading to a straight fight—but one that starts with enemies already in the camp.

Combat Encounter 3: Surrounded in the night (difficulty 6)

The other method enemies at night might use, especially if the first attempt failed, is to block the entrance/exit to the camp, making it hard for the players to get out.

Players will tend to favor a sheltered cave, especially once they’ve been attacked at night before, and that means the enemy can make it hard for the players to get out. A narrow exit, whether naturally or because the enemy rolled boulders into place, means that only one PC can exit at a time, and the enemies can have multiple people waiting to hit the first one out.

Nor do the players have room to maneuver and get around them in this circumstance.

I would let the players have the time to figure a way out of their trouble, but if they’re procrastinating or if they try to wait the enemy out, you could have the enemies smoke them out. (Have them create a fire where the smoke will enter the players’ cave, either naturally or because it’s being fanned in. This will force the players to fight their way out if they don’t want to suffocate.)

Summary: Six Ideas for Using Drow Elite Warriors

1. The drow elite warrior is weak on defense (AC and HP) but has expertise in stealth. This suggests an assassin profile. Have them attack by setting up decoys and ambushing the players when they investigate.
2. Have 1-2 drow elite warriors attack and then run. When the players follow, they’ll be led straight into other drow warriors waiting in ambush.
3. Players rarely check a room they’ve already been in. Have the drow elite warriors enter a room they went through and which they’ll have to backtrack into, as the other side of the room leads to a dead end.
4. The drow elite warriors can Use ropes to let themselves down a cliffside in order to ambush the players from above. If you want to shake up the combat further, have them use the push option to knock some of the PCs off and further down the cliff.
5. The dodge action combines will with parry. Have 1-2 drow elite warriors slip out of hiding and into the middle of the party, and then stop the melee from moving back to rescue the spellcasters from other attackers.
6. The drow elite warrior, with its stealth, is adept at sneaking up on people. Have the PCs discover, upon waking up, that their NPC sentry was captured and the drow standing in their midst plotting to get rid of them.