difficulty 7
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DROW ELITE WARRIOR & Homebrewing D&D Races
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… Continue reading
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WATER ELEMENTAL: Flowing Out of Control
How to Use: Keeping the Overwhelming Elemental in Check The water elemental’s stat block has a problem: its special attack is overwhelmingly strong. When it uses Water-Surge/Whelm and captures a PC, that PC is basically helpless. Then it just dives back into the water. With 90 feet of movement, the other players have no hope… Continue reading
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FIRE ELEMENTAL: As Everything Around Burns Down
How to Use: Basic Fire Elemental Tactics The fire elemental’s behavior is motivated by a liking to setting things on fire. Like the other elementals, it isn’t trying to hurt them; it’s trying to share its flame element with them. This should result in the fire elemental constantly attacking the PCs who aren’t on fire… Continue reading
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AIR ELEMENTAL: Four Ways to Disrupt the Party with Whirlwind
How to Use: Whirlwind Looking at the air elemental’s stat block, its most potent attack is probably supposed to be whirlwind attack, judging by the fact that it’s on a recharge. However, the whirlwind attack doesn’t seem worth it unless the air elemental can capture at least two PCs in its affect, preferably more, and… Continue reading
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YOUNG BRASS DRAGON: Battles of Lies and Fire
How to Use – Avoiding an Overpowered Ally And so, after twenty-seven articles, we come to the good dragons. As is my typical style for good-alignment monsters, we’ll start with the reasons why the PCs are the ones getting sent on the quest, and why the much more powerful good monster isn’t doing it for… Continue reading
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Prisoners of a Dragon:
Low-level PCs vrs adult chromatic dragon, Number 1. This is the first of a series of articles presenting encounters involving low-level PCs and an adult chromatic dragon. There will be one of these articles to go along with almost every chromatic dragon in the Monster Manual. In setting this encounter, an NPC has been taken… Continue reading
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TYRANNASAURES REX: A Dumb Beast, and an Epic Boss
The tyrannosaurus rex is an exciting boss to face, given its rep. In fact, it’s one of those rare monsters that will be exciting encounter just on the strength of their name, or reputation. With other monsters, there are various ways to make them exciting, but they won’t measure up to the reputation that the… Continue reading
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TRICERATOPS: Charge of the Triceratops
Have the players enter a clearing, ringed about by dead thorns, possibly as high as their waists, possibly higher than their heads. Continue reading
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BEARDED DEVIL: Basic Tactics, and Strategic Positions
The bearded devil is the first monster I have encountered since starting this blog that does not require any special setting to make using it interesting. Continue reading
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VROCK: A Harrying Attacker and a Treasure Raider
Let’s start with basic strategy. The vrock will perch on a high peak, or other high point, and whenever its spores are available it will fly just low enough to use them before flying back up. Continue reading
About Me
I’ve been a DM since I was about 10 years old. (Not of D&D, admittedly, but still.) After growing bored of fights that were all the same, dungeons heavily populated by one monster type, and a general shortage of ideas, I figured I’d embark on my own trip through the Monster Manual, one monster at a time. Feel free to join the quest.