7 Benefits of Running Well-Designed Monsters

While designing our own monsters, and through decades of play, we’ve learned that there are many benefits to be had by having a well-designed monster laid out in front of you during play. This article is designed to help you run your monsters easier and better by examining those benefits and teaching you how to transform the ordinary critters in any given book into extraordinarily well-designed monsters.

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 gauge 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, combat style, and behavior 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.

2. Well-designed monsters are more fun to run, and more fun to fight.

Running powerful monsters is one of the great joys of being a DM. Hopefully, I don't have to tell you to imagine stomping around the battlefield as a 10-ton treant, or strafing puny PCs with your iron tail spikes as a manticore. (If you have to imagine this, try DMing as soon as you can!)

The problem is that sometimes the rules for trampling enemies aren't laid out very well, or worse yet, the rules for flight aren't even in the monster book you have in front of you. Many (maybe most) battles include special cases that aren't explicitly covered by the rules—for example, what if the party being trampled is wearing spiked armour?

Even for seasoned players and DMs, having to search for a rule elsewhere slows the game to a dead stop. Worse, page-flipping can sometimes result in discussions (which can be healthy, but they always ruin the flow), or even arguments, neither of which are as fun as resolving the action and continuing play. (The trample example above would likely have the players looking up armour spikes in the PH and the Trample special attack in the MM and DMG—three books for one rule!)

A well-designed monster will have all but the most basic rules at your fingertips, reducing page-flipping, discussions, and arguments, and maintaining the flow of the game. You get back to the fun quickly, if you ever left it at all.

If your critter has any special abilities, know the rules in advance so you can ask for the appropriate rolls and present the players with their options. A simple shorthand version of the attack form, like "Trample: (3.5DMG P.316) Move 40 feet, 1D10+12 damage, DC 20 Ref Save for half *OR* Take AoO (AC 24)" can speed up the actions on your side of the screen and will let you resolve any unforeseen issues as quickly as possible.

3. Well-designed monsters provide much less worry about running the critter "wrong."

A DM has a whole world to run, so it should surprise no one when he makes a mistake, forgets an important detail, or (commonly) omits relevant critter ability during combat. Hopefully we will forgive the DM his transgressions.

Complex critters often have much more than just deep motivations; they have multiple attacks, defences, and multi-stage spell-like abilities. Keeping it all straight is hard, but it's easy to use the "wrong" abilities, or the "right" ones poorly. No one wants to stifle creativity, but having a plan is often much more effective than something you develop off-the-cuff (and honestly, while we all enjoy a bit of successful creative play, you're more likely to make one of those aforementioned mistakes than to discover creative perfection). The most recent versions of the MM have some very basic round-by-round tactics for some critters, which is good, but it would be far better to have your plans in place well in advance of the battle, for longer battles, and for multiple situations.

What does your critter do when everyone makes their saving throws? Does he have a backup plan in case he can't reach the PCs? What if he needs to escape? How does he react when backed into a corner? A well-designed monster provides the answers to these questions, and more, so you're as prepared to run the critter, as the critter is to fight for its life.

No one expects a DM to have all these questions answered, but better for your ingenious villains to act like they've been in a battle or two, rather then being stumped at the first sign of resourcefulness from the PCs.

Once again, take a look at your monster ahead of time and be sure to earmark useful go-to abilities for certain situations. Then, take a look at those you've found less useful at-a-glance, and come up with uses for them. You might be surprised how helpful those "useless" abilities can be, and you'll never have to worry about playing the monster at less than its potential, which will make combat more enjoyable for you, and victories more satisfying for your players.

4. Well-designed monsters give you practice with the rules which makes you a better GM.

No one wants to reduce one of the most creative and varied hobbies around to repeating the same tactics, rules, and rolls again and again, but let's face it; fighters like to power attack, wizards like to fireball, and DMs employ many claws, bites, and improved grabs. It can be refreshing, and a lot of fun, to run a monster designed with a few different rules in mind, and the more exposure you have to new rules and unusual situations, the better you'll be at adjudicating and maintaining the flow of the game.

Looking into the critter crate at the Verdant Reclaimer, you'll see we created a very specific set of special attacks that work one right after the other to force a creature to enter the monster's square. We wanted to do this without the usual grapple checks (since grappling is common, narrowly-focused, and sometimes messy to adjudicate), and we didn't want to resort to the roper's Attach ability (which didn't logically fit with the Reclaimer's vines). So we came up with grab, drag, and smother, each of which allows the PC to use rules other than their grapple or escape artist checks to defeat the reclaimer's deadly pull. This rewards slippery characters, characters with high strength scores, characters with specific weapons and the ability to deal good damage with them, and also characters with the skill points to escape the grab, or avoid it in the first place.

The next time you design a monster, keep in mind a wide range skills and abilities, and don't be afraid to design whole new abilities to accommodate them. The next time you run a monster, try bending the rules in logical ways without interrupting the flow. This will keep combat varied and interesting for everyone involved.

5. Well-designed monsters help you roleplay dynamically, offering richer stories.

We aren't all method actors, but even the most jaded munchkin gamer enjoys it when a monster or villainous NPC acts in character (preferably while being converted to XP and treasure). Multi-dimensional characters are more interesting than cardboard cutouts, and well-designed monsters include all that information for when you want it, without forcing you to read it when you don't.

A well-designed monster, with the tactics, abilities, and important-but-uninteresting math bits at your fingertips, lets you focus on bringing that monster to life and maintaining flow; a key to keeping your players interested and viscerally involved in their battles. This will result not only in better, richer stories for the PCs to tell in-game as they expound on their exploits, but also in more stories that your players will bring up for years afterwards away from the table.

You're probably seeing a trend here, but we at U20 believe that planning is important for encounters, and a big part of encounter planning is knowing your monster well. As I've brought up in the blog a few times before, I think 4e lacks a lot of the detail that lets you really get to know your critters, which makes it harder for a DM to roleplay them dynamically.

Earlier editions were better, but regardless of the numbers on your core books it pays to spend a few minutes considering a monster's physical and emotional traits. This leads organically into how they sound, giving them a voice you can emulate, which leads you to act a certain way. Your players will probably react to that, and suddenly you've got a richer game.

You might be surprised what just a few minutes will do for you.

6. Well-designed monsters save you session preparation time.

The most common complaint of DMs and GMs everywhere is that it takes a long time to prepare sessions, and unfortunately, DM burnout will kill a campaign faster and deader than any TPK. How to save preparation time is the subject of much discussion. U20 believes a great place to start is with a well-designed monster.

We have made great strides over the past few years with the streamlined statistics blocks seen in the Monster Manual IV, and those that followed. with D&D 4e, monsters have never been simpler to run in combat, but what if you want some real depth in your combat, with multi-stage tactics or special manoeuvres? What do you do if the monster's actions outside of combat are as important as those after you've rolled initiative? How can you get the crunchy and fluffy bits at the same time?

A well-designed monster will save you prep time by combining easy-to-read statistics and detailed, situational combat tactics (so you don't have to develop tactics of your own) with the ecology, history, and colourful bits that let you build a rich world and story around the players. And wouldn't it be nice if you had several versions of the critter to choose from to better suit your group, without having to modify it yourself?

Designing your own tactics is easy if you focus on the three big combat situations: before combat, when combat is going well, and when combat is going poorly. This will let you review a monster's arsenal, put together ideal tactics, and then develop an escape/contingency plan (even if it is just sprinting and screaming), all in just a few minutes. This will make the combat smoother, and the tactics and ideas you form here will likely transfer to other creatures, as well.

7. A well-designed monster won't leave you guessing.

A well-designed monster sets you up as a great DM with all the answers, before and during a game session. You're never left wondering how best to incorporate the monster into your campaign, and you're always ready when the players ask those questions you haven't planned for.

With all the monsters we have at our disposal it's a wonder we can settle on those that fit our campaigns or game styles at all. Well-designed monsters make those choices easy by including origin stories, ecologies, histories, and whatever else makes that critter breathe in the game world it's brought into.

Likewise, you never have to worry about having no answers to the toughest questions your players might ask. Common examples include:

* Can I use anything in its body to make a potion, a weapon, or to strengthen a spell?

* What was it doing down here? What did it eat?

* It must have a lair. Where does it live?

There are also those questions you don't want to answer directly to the players, but you'll need to know those answers as the DM.

* Based on its intelligence, what does it do when the environment changes?

* What does it do when it's hurt? When it's frightened?

* Is it smart enough to use magic items?

* Can it use tools?

* Will it develop tactics as a fight progresses?

Obviously it's a lot of work to answer all of these questions for every critter you run, but for those that are centrally important to the game you can count on needing those answers sometime.

You should be running well-designed monsters in your game.

So there you have it; 7 major benefits to running well-designed monsters.

With each iteration of the core rules we get closer to the ideal monster, but if you’re ready to reap the many benefits of truly well-designed monsters—less preparation time, fewer worries, a better, smoother, more alive game that will suck in your players like never before—than keep your eyes open for the launch of the Unnatural20 store later this month.