The Benefits of a Well-Designed Monster (Part 1)

Today's post, along with its upcoming brothers and sisters, will give you the tools you need to run your monsters better and easier by examining the benefits of having a well-designed monster laid out before you play.

Next week we'll be revisiting the Grumpkin (he's in the crate for a tune-up), and we'll also be looking at the Burning Heart Golem, a CR 6ish U20 original critter. For now, enjoy the first of the "Benefits of a well-designed monster" posts.

1. Well-designed monsters are easier to match against your players.

We've all been there--the battle has turned deadly for one side or the other, too soon, and reinforcements arrive to shore up the losing team. This can be a great tool to fall back on as a DM to keep players interested, motivated, and challenged, but having the right, light touch to do so without it feeling like Deus Ex Machina is hard. Players who are saved by NPC X, especially if they've never met her before now, can feel like they're less involved in the game's direction, or are sidekicks to your NPCs and plotline. Also, Players being forced to fight the same battle two or three times as you add bad guys will grow bored with the combat and be removed from the reality of your game world as the enemies seem to "respawn" before their eyes.

Ideally you'd never have to modify an encounter mid-fight (good luck). While this isn't the reality of running tabletop RPGs, it's helpful to be able to guage how difficult an encounter will be for your players before play, and a well-designed monster offers you that. Well-designed monsters will let you examine, at a glance, not only their basic challenge rating, but will also let you pit their unique abilities and combat style against that of your players. This will mean more consistent challenges for your game, and fewer reasons to step in and save one side, or the other.

In consideration of a monster's abilities and challenge rating, it can be helpful to visualize an encounter before it begins (preferably the night before a session). Challenge Rating aside, your party makeup might make the fight too easy, too hard, or just right. A well-designed monster will help to make that clear before you call for initiative.