If a NPC focuses on spellcasting as its main feature and doesn’t get past 3rd-level, do a quick damage calculation based on its biggest spell. If you’re looking at 3rd-level spells and higher, double the highest level of spellcasting and add that to the CR calculation.
To adjust a monster’s CR, enter the expected CR, fill in the HP, AC, and other defensive attributes, and fill in offensive attributes. DPR is averaged over three rounds. Add any special Monster Features of the creature.
To increase a monster’s CR, use a druid statblock from the MM and replace the spells with wizard spells. If subtracting CR from a spell casting block, you may need to reduce the highest level spell they can cast. If increasing CR by 2 or more, add 1 to the AC.
For an NPC with class levels, the CR calculation is the same as the CR calculation for a custom monster. When adapting characters of a certain character level, they usually end up with a lower CR but it depends on a lot of factors. Give party opportunity to prepare, as monsters are busy and party knows about them in advance.
NPC spellcasters use the same spellcasting rules as player characters. They have a spell list and spell slots, sometimes lots of them. Find XP for CR = level, divide that by four, and see what the CR for a creature with that XP would be. Usually, a CR X NPC ally’s Deadly limit should be 1/2 its XP. Extrapolate from that for the lower difficulty thresholds.
In summary, the “CR” of a player is essentially 1/4th of the party level, while the CR of a PC should be 1/4th of their level.
📹 Use This Simple Hack to Improve D&D Monsters
How do you level up NPCS in D&D?
The accumulation of experience, training, and knowledge can facilitate the development of expertise and capabilities. The accumulation of power is not contingent upon the passage of time; rather, it is the result of a combination of endurance and years of dedication. The process of training a commoner to become a guard is neither straightforward nor a simple undertaking. Moreover, it should be noted that JavaScript may be disabled or blocked by extensions or browsers that do not support cookies.
How to lower CR of a Monster DnD?
To determine a monster’s defensive CR, first calculate its HP on a table and consult the target AC for that line. If the AC is different, move the CR up or down by 1 for every 2 points of AC. For example, if a monster has 110 HP and 15 AC, its defensive CR is 3, which has target AC 13. Special abilities may increase this, and some monsters are glass cannons with high offense but low defensive CR, while others are tanks.
To adjust the HP, find the new HP total and step up or down if the AC is not in line. Determine how much the difference is from the original defensive CR and adjust the monster’s CR by half the difference, as you’re averaging the offensive CR.
How to decrease cr?
To achieve a natural reduction in creatinine levels, it is recommended to avoid creatine supplements, reduce protein intake, increase fiber consumption, and consult with a healthcare professional regarding fluid intake. Additionally, it is advised to lower salt intake, avoid overusing nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), refrain from smoking, and limit alcohol intake. It is also essential to seek guidance from a healthcare professional.
What CR is a level 3 player?
This supplement provides a guide on how to mix-and-match monster levels (ML) with challenge ratings (CR) in encounters. It uses Monster Levels as a quick and easy way to gauge a monster’s power, while also highlighting the importance of comparing challenge ratings with monster levels. This helps balance creatures and encounters more easily, ensuring that players can effectively utilize both monster levels and CR in their gameplay.
How to calculate offensive CR?
The CR of a custom monster is determined by two key factors: its offensive CR and its defensive CR. The offensive CR incorporates the monster’s proficiency bonus, attack bonus, and average damage per round, while the defensive CR encompasses the monster’s AC, hit points, resistances, and immunities.
What CR would a level 20 PC be?
In my experience, the CR is approximately 70, which equates to a level 20 character having a CR of approximately 14. A level 130 character is approximately equivalent to a 13th-level character, and player characters in D&D do not possess a challenge rating.
How do I get NPC Corekeeper?
In order to retrieve the individual, it is necessary to identify an appropriate oil for the circumstances and to situate it in a room that is no larger than eight tiles away.
What determines CR in D&D?
Challenge Rating (CR) in DnD 5e is a number that indicates the relative combat difficulty of a monster. A higher CR indicates a more difficult encounter. CR is calculated as an average of two measurements: the Offensive Challenge and the Defensive Challenge, each with specific elements that impact the final score. On the Offensive side, CR includes a monster’s total number of attacks, damage it deals, special abilities, and legendary or lair actions. On the Defensive side, CR includes a monster’s hit points, armor class, saving throws, and resistance to specific damage types.
In theory, determining a Challenge Rating of an encounter is simple. In the 2014 Monster Manual, Wizards of the Coast states that an appropriately equipped and well-rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster with a challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths. However, Challenge Rating is far from precise and should be viewed by Dungeon Masters as a loose approximation of a monster’s difficulty due to numerous outside factors that can impact difficulty beyond the CR score.
Should NPCs level up?
The author proposes that non-player character (NPC) ally members in a group should be levelled up, with a focus on player levels rather than a generic creature stat block. This approach is recommended to enhance combat scaling and create more engaging encounters, particularly if the ally is likely to remain in the group for an extended period.
What is DR vs CR?
Debit (DR) and credit (CR) are terms with Latin roots, meaning “what is due” and “something entrusted to another or a loan”. Debits increase liabilities or shareholders’ equity, while credits decrease liabilities. Bookkeepers use the double-entry method to enter debits and credits in two places on a company’s balance sheet. Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan monk, developed double-entry accounting, which became the basis for modern-day accounting.
He warned against ending a workday until debits equal credits to reduce errors of principle. Assets are equal to liabilities plus shareholders’ equity on a balance sheet or ledger, with an increase in asset value indicating a debit and a decrease as a credit.
How to reduce cr?
Chemical precipitation is effective for removing trivalent chromium (Cr(III)), but it is more complex for hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) streams, requiring an additional reduction step. This involves adding a reduction agent like sodium bisulfate, sodium metabisulfate, iron sulfate, or gaseous sulfur dioxide to reduce Cr(VI) to Cr(III). Facilities must also consider factors like stream pH, precipitating agent type and quantity, and flow type to assess system performance.
PH is especially important for chromium reduction, as the reaction is sensitive to it and faster under acidic conditions. However, for streams with a pH over 5, the reduction reaction is too slow for most industrial settings, making chemical precipitation unsuitable for facilities with slightly acidic, neutral, or alkaline wastewater streams.
Ion exchange (IX) is a physical-chemical process that selectively removes contaminants from a solution by swapping out ions of similar electrical charges. IX offers advantages such as cost-effectiveness, convenience, and reversibility, making it an excellent choice for recovering and reusing chromium from waste streams.
📹 Five Tips For Homebrewing Battle Ready NPCs
A special thanks to our Patron Terris Mayweather for inspiring this episode in our Discord server! TIME STAMPS 2:59 – Start With …
So it’s actually more of a group than a single Npc, but one of my current projects in my setting is a necromancer, who was once an adventurer but was driven mad by an eldritch horror, then then murdered his party mates, and raised them as powerful undead under his thrall, he’s in the process of becoming a Lich, and his party mates are a ranger, a Paladin, and a divine soul sorcerer. The ranger is now a wight, the paladin is a death knight, and the sorcerer is a wraith, they were once very well renowned heroes of the realm, and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
One of the things I like to do for adversarial NPC’s in 5e is to go back through 4e content for the different classes, and pick out a couple of cool Powers that a similar class would have there to use as a Recharge 5-6 or 6 ability, or a Legendary action. There are some great attack options in those books for some epic moments, like giving a Fighter-style character an ability where they dash at a target and attacks then, and then runs over to another target within 25-30 feet and attacking them also, and then yet a third target, all without provoking opportunity attacks and within the same action. Nothing scares your party more than seeing a big greatsword wielder attack your tank, and then immediately plow through to your squishies hiding in the back all in one fell swoop.
I love how you still give page numbers from the real books! Some Youtubers just give the chapter name or whatever because they present everything on D&DBeyond. I find that annoying because if you use D&DBeyond, it’s easy to search anyhow, but if you have the books, the page number is super super useful. Thanks guys 🙂
I prioritize how much flavor and RP potential an NPC can give to the campaign. My favorite NPC: A winter wolf tasked by her pack to escort the PCs out of their region. She did fight alongside the party a couple times, but her main role ended up being throwing dead-pan, sarcastic insults at the PCs the entire journey.
As far as modifying existing stat blocks go, I have found that the Mummy Lord in the MM makes for a great lower-level reskinned Lich if you want to have your players fight one but they are not high enough level for it yet. Just replace its spells with a curated list of the Lich’s most iconic spells and re-flavor the rest of its abilities in the battle and you’re good to go. It even has a phylactery equivalent with the canopic jars.
What I do is basically what you guys suggest, but I dont even limit myself to using basic templates. Once I wanted a group of street kids that would attack the party, so I actually used the stat blocks for kobolds even though they were a bunch of Drow teens. I chose kobolds cause of pack tactics, which would help them feel like they had strength in numbers above all else. You can use stat blocks for virtually any monster for virtually any kind of NPC so long as you’re able to flavor the abilities in a way that makes sense, and if ability doesnt make sense, just swap it out or get rid of it.
I was once holding a Haste on our Barbarian, as a Vengeance Paladin and we were fighting multiple high level spell-casters (we were like 17th level or so) and took three Fingers of Death to the face, survived and held concentration. Only had the help of one Portent from another party member. It was badass.
In our Dragon of Icespire Peak game, the players were more powerful than they were “supposed” to be so I created a sub-category of dragon and made a “Young Adult” version of Cryovain. Most of the white dragon stats between young and adult were easy to just split the difference and making hybrid legendary actions and resistences was a TON of fun!
Oh and one of the staples you can always give an NPC …. spellscrolls for stuff like finger of death, teleport etc. You dont have to give the pcs those scrolls if the NPC uses them and sometimes even an not so magical NPC can use them. Also the players are less likely to complain if they dont get them and you can avoid powercreep that could happen with Magic items.
My experience with the DM process (as a new DM): a) Find something awesome = for example, cool NPC concept such as a rogue-like villain who is actually only a low-level rogue and instead gains most his power from being sorcerer using a subtle spell b) Plan and create bunch of stats for the monster/NPC c) Realize I made it overly complicated and lost the original idea in the process d) Simplify the NPC tremendously Really there is so much you can do just with MM + Volo’s and a few ajustments. That cool concept? After building a weird Rogue/Sorcerer hybrid I instead picked up the mage stat block from MM, added metamagic, evasion, uncanny dodge and some proficiencies.
I used a messy glop of methods similar to what y’all talked about to make my BBEG for a campaign I run based loosely off of the ghost stat block (with some augmented possession rules and a healthy dose of uncanny magical spears). The players have just been introduced to it, but I used the modified rule to also build a simple little “tutorial” character on the modified mechanic for them to meet so they can get the ropes on how possession works in my setting (it’s up in the air if they’ll try to kill the poor guy, but hey, such is life for a D&D NPC). I get that posession’s a super easy to mess up mechanic, but oh do I wish more than one monster got it sometimes. That said, great content! For anyone who, like me, gets a bit too chaotic with the ingredients, I’d definitely recommend using some CR calculators if you’re lazy on the math. Someone down below also mentioned DND Beyond’s homebrew creator, which is a great way to cleanly line up the material you need, especially if you pay attention to the html coding in the block editor! Happy homebrewing, everyone! >:)c
Not a D&D player nor a DM but if NPCs have healing spells then there ought to be a party of villains to face off against the PCs. Having a villain party consist of a cleric, bard, barbarian, druid, fighter, and paladin would be a solid enemy party since the druid and bard act as backup healers and make hitting the melee fighters tougher.
I did something I’m pretty proud of. I made a NPC that was actually not that strong but was quite literally unkillable. He would just get beaten up, pass out, then heal up in a few hours no matter what was done to him. He wasn’t a villain, though. It was just that later on the players found out why he was immortal and had to fight the thing keeping him alive after getting it out. It was a fun thing and something I felt didn’t take away from the players enjoying combat.
Ah yes, cloudkill. I used that on my level 6 pcs this past week and they almost shit themselves. This was after they managed to counter spell a circle of death (they were fighting a drow mage and necromancer) by rolling a 19 on the arcana check. Also, I put them against an aboleth a few weeks ago and I gave it legendary resistance, and when one of them tried casting a cc spell on it (don’t remember the actual spell), and I play on roll20 and show my pcs all my rolls. He failed the roll, and I said he passed. One of my pcs was losing his shit and another realized immediately what I did and said “that’s one down.
haha jep spells that reshape the battle field is good and fun 🙂 remember making a Palamaster for 5e. (Necromancer) though it where the players that put down the spell wall of water, and i just ran around it, making the players chase the fragile caster, with a few zombies and a bone golem to mess with them 😀 made the Palamaster as a player subclass, but it needs some tweaking 🙂
The favorite monster I ever created was twin half-ogre guard slaves thst had a psyhic connection. They were chained to a wall and although they counted as a single creature, each had their own hit points and moved independantly, their multiattack was two greatclub attacks, but each was made by one of them, they had legendary actions (they were made to fight a party of ten players), which were 1 – they made a single attack against one player, that if hit, dealt double the damage of a greatclub, I flavored it as they linking their mind and attacking one from each side, trying to crush the player between both of their attacks. 2 – One of the ogres would attack all the creatures in range of them, and if hit all of the enemies, the ogre could walk his speed without provoking op attacks and then attack one player once. 3 – one of the ogres would make all players in attack range of him make a wisdom saving throw DC15, frightening the ones that failed, then he would proceed to attack all of the players around him, only that the players that failed the saving throw would get attacked twice. It also had a special ability that if one of the ogres died, it refreshed its legendary actions and could imediately use one, except the first. It was an amazing fight, and although the ogres downed two of my players, none died, I was very happy ^.^
So, you say not to use healing spells to increase difficulty because they alter the action economy and generally just don’t work very well – which I definitely agree with. But… what do you think about “nurse” side-NPCs that buff up the main villain for example? I feel like this can be a fun mechanic because the party has to choose between trying to focus down the villain heedless of any abjuration or healing effects the nurses can provide, or taking out said nurses so they can’t keep providing these effects (which can split the party up a bit and provide some extra tactics). Thoughts?
for spells, i recommend mostly ignoring the spellcasting system once the players hit 5th-7th level. spellcasting templates and monsters tend to have far more spells than you’ll ever use. for villain magic users, priests, or shamans i tend to just look through the spells and pick the ones i like. give a monster three or four spells that they can use, following a similar mindset that kelly and monty said. then you don’t have to worry about how many second level spell slots they have, because they weren’t ever going to cast Melf’s Acid Arrow anyway.
On roll20 they have a Charactermancer program which is super useful. My current campaign is full of friendly and hostile DM PCs at varying levels. The biggest problem I face is awarding XP to my players after the battle. For example, last week they defeated four 4th level DM PCs. If I did character XP method it would be 2700 × 4 = 10800 ÷ 5 = 2160 per player. If I considered it a Challange Rating level 8 encounter (assassins) thats 3900 ÷ 5 = 780 per person. And that’s not even getting into my maths where I reduced the XP becayse they didn’t kill the assassins, they grappled then tied them up after a short brawl in a hallway.
My personal addition to this conversation are these two things: I love the variant dragon spell casting as a good rule of thumb to add innate spell casting. I added that to a kraken and just uses intelligence instead of charisma. Past that one amazing resource I found is the side kick template in the d and d essentials kit, pretty much custom made to stream line npc creation as it is like a abridged playerish npc making guide.
One thing that I’ve learned from designing NPC spellcasters is to be careful about giving them access to Magic Missile. Sure, it’s not a very strong spell, but it’s a base-level auto-3-hit attack that’s extremely dangerous to any PCs dropped to 0 HP (and little else feels worse than getting picked off like that by a level 1 spell). Had this happen to a barbarian in one of my sessions. The group was taxed for spells and the barbarian did an amazing job absorbing damage for them. That said, when he did finally go down, the other players just left him down for the round and then my spellcaster got his turn. They quickly realized how much of a mistake that was. (And because it was his first game of D&D ever, I flipped a coin to see if the barbarian lived or died. He won the coin toss, so my spellcaster get “distracted” by something else)
Not a dm, but I like to play around on DnDBeyond, and decide to make a monster just for fun. Decided to create a “werepyre” from Adventure Quest and Adventure Quest Worlds. The result was really just a buffed vampire, but I added some more flavor with things like dealing extra dmg when there is a full moon. I actually think it worked out quite well in the end, though I’m not sure what the CR is yet.
You may have saved me sometime because I was about to make 5 npc’s based off character classes, and it took forever. I didn’t mind but it was a lot. I’ll toggle though to see what I like more. Also as for favorite npc’s, I’ve only made a few but there is this flirtatious tiefling bar maid that is going to fun to play. Very fun and bold
I have a half-Goblin Draconic Sorcerer (probably around level 6) that nuked the party (level 3 party) from across a river with a fireball before using a ring to teleport away on the next turn – rolled 33 on the Fireball with a +4 on the hit, half the party went down (the front line and the healer) Remainder of the party has to deal with a few goblins and some machines that haven’t powered up yet (not in melee range yet). – This was the first encounter where an enemy actually spoke Common, as well (“Die filthy humans!”, before proceeding to laugh maniacally) Thinking of giving her “Potent Spellcasting” from Cleric for my planned final encounter with this character (planned encounter is probably level 8/9 for the party) – a spicy +10 on her Firebolt basically
One mean trick is just having an enemy Wizard specialize in Necromancy and then cast Danse Macabre. The zombies/skeletons raised will have an increase in HP equal to the caster’s Wizard level, a bonus to attack rolls equal to their spell casting modifier, and damage rolls will be boosted by both proficiency bonus and the spellcasting modifier. With their Shortbows they’re able to strike effectively from 80 feet away; and likely with +9 to the attack rolls. Depending on the level of the baddie they might have standard Animate Dead up, ghouls from Create Undead, or other stronger entities captured via Command Undead.
A thing I like to do for NPCs beyond just adding a class feature or two is to give them a feat. Usually, it doesn’t boost their CR at all (Pole-arm Mastery notwithstanding) and so long as it isn’t something lame like Linguist, it really adds to the flavor. The Monster Manual actually does this a lot by giving Defensive Duelist to NPCs that have a formal martial training background. If they have the Parry reaction, it’s just that feat slapped on.
At lower levely magic items can work too: One of my NPC Guards had a metal shortstaff that had 6 Charges of shocking grasp (useable from the staff) … like cattle prod. It recharges 1d4 charges. Since my players are lowlevel it is still usefull and it does level with playerlevel. Apart from that there will be some items that consume a spellslot to cast an imprinted spell. Like a swordhandle that creates a flameblade if it consumes a slot. Things like this give options for a price. As for spellcasters … Armor of aghastis can be a very good retributive and buffing spell without concentration.
I recently used this first tip to create a Robin Hood-like npc. I wanted something like a wererat, but they’re kinda evil to the purpose and not cool enough… so, why not a werecapybara?? It’s basically a good, stronger and more charismatic (and good looking) version of the wererat, but I think it’s really cool and hope my players like it!
I’ve had a recurring NPC. SIR David Attenborough himself! The party randomly stumble upon him whilst travelling between towns and it is always funny and memorable. Like having his assistance mauled to death whilst David narrates or my newest one where he is narrating Koala bears in mating season and the one male has crafted a shiv to get rid of the competition so that he can take the female for himself.
Somehow I found myself using a “cult”, really just people enthusiastically devoted to an evil nature god of destruction. Now I’m stuck with the Cleric (de)buff caster class and melee cultists. I’ve added some Druid encounters to the gang but for Clerics no teleport, no AoE’s, only Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapon and maybe Inflict Wounds :'( Hold Person is the alternative xd Guess I’ll throw in a Flame strike, that’s roughly the same as Fireball anyway..
I’m not sure why putting random abilities like Divine Smite on the Gladiator stat block, or switching the mage to a sorcerer and giving them some metamagic has never occurred to me. I watch all of y’alls articles but this is one of the best for DMs that you guys have made. Thanks for helping out the community so much!
Great article as ever! This came a little bit too late for me! I’ve been running antagonistic NPCs based on the Hunters from Bloodborne and at first I was using PC stats for them. A couple of weeks ago I started using monster stat blocks for NPCs and realised I should do that for the Hunters too. (Yesterday I had a Warlord as a party ally, flavoured as a vampire hunter named Elrikka Coppergard, that was weird, but a DM controlled NPC works way better as a monster than as a PC) Today I made 5 Hunters based mostly on stuff in Volo’s. And Simon (based on the Archer) managed to kill a PC with his Bowblade, and the help of a Blood Elemental that he had made by robbing the graves of a town for years. Great article though, can’t wait to apply the ideas to improving my NPCs and making more!
In the campaign I’m running now, I made a “rival adventuring party”, which ended up on the other side of the civil war as my PCs. While all of them are really cool characters in my opinion, I especially love the Open Hand Monk/Barbarian, who focuses on Grappling. Always trying to flank the party, uses the open hand feature with flurry of blows to knock the PC prone and then grapple them. That makes them unable to move completely and forces the party to prioritize saving their friend.
One of my favorites was a battle master demon slave who on a hit had a 50% chance of doing a 1d4 damage rebuttal of his weapon type almost as though each strike that was dealt to him in close combat (his prominent style of coliseum battle) was close enough for him to knick a small cut to my Player’s characters aswell. This made all my happy brutish players think carefully on how to approach this threat and gave a fun style of play to one of my players who chose range build. These were first time players so it was a hidden spotlight. Lots of environment made cover a thing and in general this fight made my players so excited and very threatened. In the end he fled, leaving the players with a bomb to take care of. They actually are planning on a hunt for this Npc in a session we hope to have soon… it’s been hard to get the table together again
Caos reflex an 8th level spell within 200 ft any concentration spell broken and not dismissed will trigger a wild magic surge. If you cast this spell instantaneously it lasts an hour and can be moved at the castors travel speed. If however you use the eight hour cast it’s permanent and has a fixed location.
I’m trying to build a head of a thieves guild who is a dural female I want her to be a high-level beef priestess type thing may be a female version of Jarl Axel, but she has a mask of disguise, so nobody knows that she’s a Drow they think she’s just a normal human female, who is head of the Steve’s guild but the hints that she is something more is the drawl magic she uses and her drawl Ken trips
And here we go again. I hate it, the NPC creation in DnD 3.5 and 4 was a pain. I build NPCs in Pathfinder 1 and 2 and thought, “oh DnD 5e can´t be so drasticly different from them”, but I am wrong. No really description in the core Books to create a NPC out of nothing. The Esssence I got from the article is that just use a existing template and adjust it. But with that I can build that NPC I want. Enough Rant against the System. You article is good and understandable. Thank for that.
I really like the black viper statblock from waterdeep dragon heist for a crimelord type npc Also one spell I like to have villains prepare is cloudkill (terrible spell for a player because by the time you pick it up the majority of enemies will be resistant or immune to poison damage but for the same reason it’s great for a necromancer or a conjurer who summons fiends)
i have the habit of turning old PC ideas i’ve had, into bosses by just doubling HP, giving a couple legendary resistances, & then having some legendary actions. I also run bosses like article game bosses where players could figure out how to shut down lair mechanics or disrupt legendary actions (usually by dealing a specific type of damage, the way fire shuts down a trolls regen)
For me i winced through most of this article. It is important for DM’s to be able to create challenges without wasting too much time. However the encounter’s i remember fondest are the one’s were i overcame a NPC that was built with the same rules and abilities that i had access to when building a character. The multiplication of HP and damage was also one of the biggest things that caused me to throw away my 4.E D&D books, i hated the idea of a ‘Boss monster’ template that just augmented a human character to have 2-3 times the HP they would have for their Hit Dice. One of the most epic encounters i have ever had in D&D was a tournament where i was faced off against another PC in the final round. I was playing a Cleric with storm powers, and my opponent was a gunslinger type character using magical pistols. It probably took us a solid two to three hours to run through that fight, since out DM double-checked every single environmental effect and spell so there would be no mistakes. Honestly there wasn’t even much story purpose for the battle, the enemy NPC had been dealt with during an earlier round… but fight was cinematic, tense, and very close. It is my strongest memory of that character bar none. In my experience there is an element of dramatic tension unrivaled by monsters in facing down a well-built party with a diverse skill set, of similar level, and with similar gear… there is nothing more intimidating that a equal threat where every choice you make, every action you take, matters!
I have been creating a whole campaign for a dm friend of mine. I use to write in college and wanted to bring that flavor to his group so they can enjoy it and at the moment I’m in the party where my character will eventually become one of the generals of the embodiment of death himself (the hand of the vail) and betray the party as I become the bbeg behind it all so I can do a large portion of the dming. Each general have their own duty to the lord of darkness. One is the gate keeper of his astral realm, one makes death knights, one loves the battle field and is a mercenary that collects souls with his blade, and one is the keeper of their lords book (backstory and big plot device for later) in his temple library, and my character will eventually be tasked with conquering the realm in the name of my new lord and the only way to nerf my character to stop me is to defeat all the generals and the lord of darkness. Then they will finally see my character that will probably be out of the story for a long period of time. This is a really quick summary of the story but making the npc’s has been the best part. Can’t wait to see the look on the players faces after going through everything with them.
Great article… One of my best NPCs was a tiefling who had a magic dagger that gave him advantage and extra damage on creatures charmed or Friends-ed by him. He also had innate spellcasting for the charm effects. He is treated like a son by the party and helps them while staying out of danger(he is basically 1st level)
I modified the archmage for my campaign that I plan on playing to make it be a major villain in the campaign and this was really helpful in telling me what challenging rating I need to make it as I wasn’t sure if I should have made it 13 or 14 and I feel safe making it a challenge rating 14 now after what I have done.
Im giving cryovain the snow camouflage and pounce ability (and maybe even the spell frostbite) to make the white dragon that is infomes for being a hunter a little more of a challange- gonna make these changes only when the pcs get to level 5 or 6 since these changes are gonna be damaging, i will also make it so instead of catching the dragon sleeping in its layer it will follow the players in secret the momment they get to the mountains
Can I ask what your experience is about balancing CR after spells prepared by the NPC? I am especially worried about Greater Invisibility or giving NPC enemies strong bonus action spells like Spiritual Weapon potentially very problematic. How often do you feel like you need to recalculate the CR of a NPC from scratch after changing its spells (besides some obvious absurd power jumps like Archmage knowing Meteor Swarm instead of Time Stop to one-shot the party).
I made a Frost Giant Princess who thought she was a Air Genasi… she was wearing “Bracers of Diminution” which reduce a creatures size by two categories. it was originally made for an Elf to better communicate with Pixies and Sprites. anyway this “Air Genasi” was a Frost Giant and an Assassin statblock shoved together with a few weapon changes, she thought she was using dex but it was STR all along… group has never seen her in a fight and it was scary when I simulated the fight a few times… She won 5 times out of 10 against the group which were level 6 at the time…
The MOST useful D&D article Ive ever watched. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I had no idea how to make a cool NPC ally for my party and this helped so much. And helped my plan for my BBEGs I’m the future. You made it so clear on how to customize, which books and pages to check out. Awesome. SERIOUSLY THANK YOU !! 😂