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100 ALLIE BRIGGS WHAT MAKES A GREAT MONSTER? You flip through a monster book, seeking a foe for your next gaming session. But what should you look for? This section is all about breaking down the characteristics that can help identify a great monster. But it can also help guide you when customizing a monster, letting you correct any lackluster aspects—by making use of the guidance found elsewhere in this book—and turning an okay monster into a great one. FUN, ENGAGING, AND MEMORABLE A monster’s presence in an encounter should be fun for both the GM and players, built on exciting features that engage the characters. When a monster is both fun and engaging, the encounter is more likely to be memorable, worth looking back on and retelling over time. FUN TO PREPARE A fun monster feels fun even as you read over their details prior to the game. They have exciting combat or noncombat features that jump off the page, making you look forward to surprising the players. EXCITING DURING PLAY Consider a hypothetical stat block for an enemy knight, with a Greatsword attack and a high AC to reflect their formidable armor. Although those baseline details fit the concept, they’re not particularly exciting. Now imagine a similar stat block, but the knight can use a reaction to perform a shield bash and push an approaching creature away. That second stat block will likely provide more excitement for the players. Consider another hypothetical stat block meant to represent an NPC rogue, and which features a recharging bonus action to apply poison to a weapon and deal extra poison damage until the end of the rogue’s turn. In addition to its mechanical benefit, that bonus action is something you can roleplay, describing the sickly gleam of poison to make the players understand that this foe just became a greater threat. FACILITATES ENGAGEMENT When reviewing creatures, look for features that create obvious interactions with the environment, other creatures, or the characters. The examples of the hypothetical knight and rogue aren’t just potentially exciting—they also create engagement that way. Because of the Shield Bash reaction you created for the knight, you might decide to add a pit to the encounter area, forcing the players to change their characters’ typical tactics to avoid being pushed in. Characters might focus on attacking the knight from range, or drawing them away from the side of the pit. Similarly, observing the rogue using their custom-created Poison Weapon bonus action might inspire the characters to focus fire, trying to defeat the rogue before they can once more add deadly poison to their blade. Great monsters can create different types of engagement. Undead who explode in waves of necrotic energy encourage characters to spread out across the battlefield. A creature who strikes and then goes invisible encourages the characters to locate the creature or ready actions for the foe’s next attack. DISTINGUISHING FEATURES Consider working up a fight against giants. What makes that combat potentially memorable? What features do

101 giants have that can provide a foundation for an engaging fight? In general, giants have a lot of hit points, have low AC, and hit hard. But to build on that foundation, you might imagine that a giant can stomp the ground to knock characters prone, or hits so hard that every blow can push a target across the encounter area. Maybe you want your giants to hurl furniture, driving home their incredible size and strength. You can use the table in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4) to quickly improvise the attack modifier and damage for any new action you want to give a creature, or use one of the common monster powers in that section. “Monster Powers” (page 15) and “Monster Roles” (page 22) have even more powers you can consider, whether to use as is or to reskin to make them an even better fit for a specific concept. CONCEPT AND LORE A great monster’s description provides concepts and lore that can inspire you as you design encounters. By grasping the nature of a foe and their place in the world, you can best fit that foe into your campaign plans, making the monster far more than just a set of statistics. For example, you might be planning an encounter in a swamp, and choosing a creature whose lore says they dwell in such locations. So look at how well the creature’s nature reflects this, and how their capabilities reinforce the concept and lore. An amphibious frog-like creature with a huge mouth, a grasping tongue, and the ability to swallow prey whole nicely fits a swamp encounter. Likewise, monster lore related to hiding underwater and ambushing creatures as they pass reinforces the concept of your encounter. In addition to ecology, story lore works great to build an encounter concept. For example, many myths and legends talk about hags as creatures of the swamps. So when you decide to make your frog-like monstrosity the pet of a green hag who rides that pet through the swamp she rules, the concept really comes together. EASY TO RUN WELL Many encounters work fine with simple monsters, such as when you imagine a group of gnome contract killers stabbing at the heroes. But there are times when you want a more complex monster, such as a dragon who can take on the whole party. In both cases, though, you want the stat blocks to be easy to run well. So when assessing how easily a monster can be run, keep the following points in mind. APPROPRIATE CHALLENGE First and foremost, a monster who runs well is typically one chosen to be a suitable challenge for a specific encounter. “Assessing a Published Encounter” (page 83), “What Are Challenge Ratings?” (page 99), and “Defining Challenge Level” (page 105) all talk about the process of assessing how well a monster can challenge a party. THE RIGHT COMPLEXITY Most foes last 2 to 5 rounds in combat, so they don’t need more than a few actions and features to be interesting. Consider the classic goblin stat block, with one melee and one ranged attack, plus the simple but memorable ability to slip out of combat or easily hide. It’s possible for a monster to be simple to the point where they fail to be interesting. But even then, they might make a perfect choice for followers or minions of more interesting foes. A creature such as a dragon should be more complex, because you want their features and actions to provide you with options you can use in response to the characters. As such, having multiple actions and features lets you fine-tune a combat encounter to create the best challenge. INTUITIVE A great monster does their job intuitively, with just the right number of actions and features for use in combat. In turn, those intuitive actions let you run monsters well, granting a level of confidence that comes from monster features and actions making sense. For example, when a creature can use a bonus action to knock a target prone, you’ll understand that doing so grants that creature advantage on its follow-up melee attack action. A great monster also establishes why they have the features they do, based on the creature’s lore and their place in the world. For example, an agile flying creature might have a flyby attack in combat, letting them attack and move without provoking opportunity attacks, which reflects their normal method of hunting prey. Likewise, a creature resembling a turtle might be able to retreat into their shell, with that defensive response making perfect sense in the context of the creature’s place in the world. IN DEFENSE OF THE KNIGHT Scott and Mike both point out that there’s nothing wrong with just loving a creature who hits hard and is simple to run. You can often look to the narrative for other ways to make an encounter engaging (as discussed in “Building Engaging Encounters” on page 76), so don’t forget that narrative can be as powerful a tool as an interesting stat block. BALANCING MONSTER AND ENCOUNTER COMPLEXITY Scott notes that simple monsters can create interesting encounters when paired with great environments, novel tactics, and compelling goals (see “Building Engaging Encounters” on page 76 and “Building Engaging Environments” on page 79). Complex monsters, however, are made to create interesting encounters just by virtue of their features and capabilities.

102 READING THE MONSTER STAT BLOCK A stat block is the window through which a GM can understand all of a creature’s intricacies. How does a monster perceive the world and react to threats? What are their capabilities and preferences? Are a creature’s tactics fearsome or lackluster? This section discusses what a stat block can tell you about those things and more. Each section of the standard 5e stat block provides different insights into a creature, helping you better represent that creature tactically and to breathe life into them through roleplaying. If you’re designing an encounter, review monster stat blocks to ensure they work well with the encounter’s theme, goals, and dynamics. And even if you’re using an encounter from a published adventure, you should review monster stat blocks before your game session, giving yourself enough time to make the most of those monsters during play. BROAD STROKES The first two lines of a stat block define a monster at their most basic level, and are the clearest parameters you can share with players. NAME In many cases, a creature’s name can be informative and evocative. A shambling mound. A mummy. A spy. Unless a creature’s name should be unknown, say it aloud often to personify the creature. SIZE AND TYPE Whether humanoid or giant, aberration or fey, monstrosity or undead, a creature’s type helps define how they fit into the world. Likewise, a creature’s size can help you roleplay how they interact with other creatures and the environment. ALIGNMENT Whether alignment plays a big part in your game or not, a creature’s alignment in their stat block can help you understand their moral outlook and how organized and logic-oriented they might be. A lawful creature follows the rules and conventions of their society, works in organized teams, and embraces dependable tactics and planning. A chaotic creature thinks for themself, improvises, easily breaks with social conventions, and might behave arbitrarily. A good creature looks for kindness and compassion in the world, values fair exchanges, and tries to help others. An evil creature seeks personal gain and is largely bereft of compassion. Creatures who are neutral or unaligned are uniformly unpredictable, and often more likely to flee a fight they can’t win than more dogmatic foes. Every creature is an individual, but a creature’s default alignment can help guide how they react to situations, including how likely they are to offer to cease combat and negotiate, or to run away from battle and leave their friends behind. BASELINE STATS Roughly half of most stat blocks lies above the Actions section, and contains the baseline information necessary for running a foe in combat. ARMOR CLASS Armor Class tells you how easy it is to break through a creature’s defenses. AC is a function of size, Dexterity, and the toughness of a creature’s armor or hide. A small or quick creature is generally harder to hit than a large or slow creature, except where large creatures are protected by scales or skin that is as tough as metal—or is sometimes actually made of metal. Take a moment to think through what a creature’s Armor Class represents. Does a slow brute plod along and barely bother to dodge? Does a rogue parry and twist away from every blow? Is a villain’s armor nigh impenetrable? Bringing AC to life can be a lot of fun for GMs and players. AC is also important because of how tangibly it impacts the play experience. It influences how often attacks hit or miss, which can feel frustrating or rewarding. High AC tells a story of a mighty combatant capable of outlasting opponents through resilience or cunning. Describing this can help establish expectations and increase the payoff when a character finally lands a blow. HIT POINTS Hit points represent a creature’s health, linearly determining how long a foe can remain in an encounter. They typically represent how physically fit a creature is. The combination of Armor Class and hit points is important, since a foe with both high AC and hit points can last a long time, defining a creature who can wade into the action, take risks, and provoke opportunity attacks without worry. When AC and hit points are low, a creature falls quickly no matter how much damage they dish out, instilling players with confidence. When AC is low and hit points are medium or high, the players feel great while hitting often, but the foe can still endure long enough to make trouble. High AC and low hit points are a wildcard, defining a monster who might last a long time or go down quickly to a few lucky blows. SPEED Speed doesn’t vary tremendously among monsters, but having additional movement types such as flying, climbing, or burrowing can grant tactical advantages, and can be used to surprise players and drive engagement. Take a moment to assess a monster’s traits (see below), as these might interact with speed in the form of special capabilities such as charging, stealth, or teleportation.

103 ABILITY SCORES Ability scores tell the story of a foe’s assets and weaknesses. They help you describe a creature as quick or plodding, hardy or weak, dull or brilliant, uncouth or compelling. Combined with a creature’s proficiencies, ability scores determine the skills that foes feel most confident using, such as Athletics or Stealth. Strength. Strong creatures often engage with the environment and physical challenges. They are more likely to try climbing a cliff to reach an opponent, jump across a pit, or break through a wooden barrier. A weaker creature shies away from such trials, and might avoid the front lines of battle unless they can dart in and out of danger. Dexterity. Dexterous creatures are quick, often acting first in combat, and looking for ways to seize the advantage over stronger foes. They might favor ranged weapons or skirmish tactics, and might bypass challenges by swinging on ropes, dodging out of danger, or hiding. Constitution. A creature with a high Constitution has a strong measure of health and hardiness. They can easily take physical risks and expect to survive, where a more fragile creature will be cautious and seek cover or other ways to improve their chances. Intelligence. Creatures of high Intelligence are often analytical or experienced. They might have studied or faced similar challenges in the past, and are thus able to make good choices regarding future opportunities. Creatures with lower Intelligence might take longer to fully assess their options, and might make mistakes or be fooled easily. Wisdom. A wise creature is aware of their surroundings and can read situations accurately. They understand other creatures and how they behave, with the insight to potentially guide that behavior. An unwise creature misunderstands situations, potentially acting contrary to available information. Charisma. A high Charisma is a boon in directing others and preserving strong bonds. A charismatic creature can keep their allies from fleeing, or help negotiate favorable terms with others. They can be intimidating or manipulative, covering up lies capably. Creatures with low Charisma might try to avoid social interactions or could end up on the defensive in such situations, easily giving away their intentions. SAVING THROWS AND SKILLS Saving throws and skills highlight which abilities a creature uses most confidently. Proficiency in certain saving throws might define how easily a creature throws themself into specific types of peril, while skill proficiencies can determine how a creature acts outside of combat. Because these lines in the stat block can be easy to overlook or forget—and because many creatures don’t have proficient saving throws or skills called out—make note of these things. You might highlight or circle ability scores that are a creature’s best saving throws, or jot down the names of skills that a creature is likely to use, particularly skills that interact with traits or actions. VULNERABILITIES, RESISTANCES, AND IMMUNITIES Beyond their importance in combat, vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities are also amazing opportunities for encounter and story design. They let you look for ways to bring story to the forefront during combat, highlighting the interaction between the nature of a creature, the characters, and the environment. You can lean into a creature’s weaknesses to make combat easier for the characters, as with a troll marauder fighting in a burning forest. Not only does such a scenario make the troll easier to defeat, you get to explain how the creature came to be there, and to roleplay them appropriately. Resistances and immunities can likewise easily heighten a challenge. For example, in an encounter with a black dragon, you can add acid pools linked by submerged tunnels, providing the dragon with a refuge and the means to surprise the heroes. SENSES If every foe in an encounter has the ability to fight in the dark (whether through darkvision, tremorsense, or other means), that might be an advantage worth incorporating into your encounter design. Tremorsense, truesight, and blindsight defeat most of the ways in which characters can hide. Even a few creatures with special senses can work well in that regard as they provide information to their allies. LANGUAGES It’s important to note whether foes can understand or be understood by the characters. When kobold brigands shout tactics in their own language and one character understands them, that’s fun! If a giant shouts at the characters and no one understands what they’re saying, it leaves the players to determine whether combat can be avoided. Language differences highlight the importance of spells such as comprehend languages or features such as telepathy. CHALLENGE RATING A creature’s challenge rating (and the XP reward assigned to that challenge) is a rough measure of that creature’s power compared to the characters. By the 5e core rules, a creature of a particular challenge rating should present a medium encounter when fought by four characters whose level is the same as that challenge rating—but there’s a lot more to creating encounters than that simple formula. You can find more on that topic in “Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge” (page 67), “The Lazy Encounter Benchmark” (page 70), “Building Challenging High-Level Encounters” (page 86), “What Are Challenge Ratings?” (page 99), and “Defining Challenge Level” (page 105).

104 TRAITS A creature’s traits represent important features, advantages, and characteristics, all of which are important to review before play begins. Unlike actions, which must be chosen round to round, traits are typically “always on” and thus easy to forget during play. Make special note of traits you expect to come up during play to make them easier to remember. Traits can drive monster behavior and encounter design. A grick’s Stone Camouflage grants advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide in rocky terrain, so let that monster make the most of it to set up an ambush encounter. An otyugh’s Limited Telepathy creates an interesting roleplaying encounter if the characters can figure out what the creature wants—or a combat encounter if they can’t. Traits can likewise determine how a creature approaches combat. A tiger uses their Pounce trait whenever possible, as does a minotaur with their Charge trait, because they deal much more damage that way. A wolf ’s use of Pack Tactics provides advantage on attack rolls, causing wolves to instinctively gang up on foes. Whether a monster will risk an opportunity attack to move into position to use a combat-focused trait can depend on their ability to judge risk and choose caution over opportunity, perhaps as indicated by their Wisdom, Intelligence, or alignment. Some traits require careful attention because the moment when they trigger is easy to overlook. Examples include remembering to use a gnoll’s Rampage trait, or determining whether a troll’s Regeneration trait functions on their turn. If possible, avoid using more than a couple of monsters with hard-to-track traits in an encounter. In some stat blocks, spellcasting and innate spellcasting is included in traits, requiring special review. “Running Spellcasting Monsters” (page 58) has lots more information on this topic. ACTIONS Although some traits can deal damage in their own right, a creature’s primary damage output comes from their actions. Actions are the dynamic means by which a creature engages the characters, challenging and potentially defeating them. The nature of each action provides tactical advantages, as well as a means by which you portray the creature and their threat. In some cases, lore and statistics suggest that certain monsters don’t often experience combat, or that they lack tactical acumen. For such monsters, you don’t need to worry about optimal combat choices, and having foes making obvious mistakes can delight players. Roleplay the creature’s confusion, frustration, or other signs that they lack combat experience. Clever players might try to goad such creatures into making poor choices, creating a fun play experience. For the most part, though, monsters in a fantasy world must periodically face combat in order to survive. For such monsters, their actions represent the tactics they have honed over time, and they use the most favorable of those tactics when possible. Reviewing a stat block’s actions can reveal superior choices to use whenever possible, let you dismiss choices you can ignore, and highlight actions dependent upon other actions or specific situations. For example, a chimera’s Multiattack action allows three attacks, but it almost always makes sense to substitute the higher-damage Fire Breath for one of those attacks whenever it’s available. Whenever an attack imposes a condition that makes subsequent attacks easier, a creature knows instinctively to use that attack first. For example, an otyugh’s Multiattack allows one bite and two tentacle attacks, but a hit with a tentacle can restrain a foe to make them grant advantage, so tentacle attacks should be used first. Actions with a recharge are almost always superior to actions lacking them, but there can be situational advantages to waiting to use such actions. For example, a dragon who recharges their breath weapon will wait to use it again until they have enough targets lined up. Creatures with spell attacks or complex actions can be hard to run, requiring tactical assessment and comparing damage output to determine the options the creature should naturally favor. For example, a drider can cast faerie fire to help their allies, or can cast darkness to prepare an ambush or escape from battle. They otherwise deal more damage with three Longbow attacks, but should instead use two Longsword attacks and a Bite attack if pressed to melee. This complex creature’s optimal attacks aren’t immediately obvious, however, so reading the stat block carefully is important. PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS Encounters typically run better when you play to your own strengths as a GM. If you enjoy discovering a complex monster’s perfect attack sequence, then the time spent reviewing attack options will be rewarding. But if you prefer a simpler game, running complex monsters could result in frustration—so when you review monster stat blocks, choosing the simpler options will be more effective and rewarding. If a published encounter has a complex monster, consider replacing their most complex actions or traits with simpler options, either from another creature stat block or from the range of monster powers presented in this book (in “Building a Quick Monster” on page 4, “Monster Powers” on page 15, or “Monster Roles” on page 22). ROLEPLAYING ACTIONS Actions are the primary way that creatures engage with other creatures in a combat encounter. As such, your monsters will resonate more fully with the players when you bring their actions to life through roleplaying. A drider scout might cast their spells in a hissing voice, or dip their arrows in poison before nocking and loosing them. An otyugh might send telepathic images of food as they attack, revealing their simple goal.

105 DEFINING CHALLENGE LEVEL As GMs, we all want to design for a specific challenge level at different points. Though we understand that the players and their characters will often surprise us, we want to be able to shape a thrilling final encounter that pushes the heroes to their limits, or a series of easy encounters that let players build confidence. GMs using challenge levels might find that the definitions of challenge in the 5e core rules—the idea of breaking encounters out as easy, medium, hard, or deadly—don’t match their expectations, or that the definitions are unclear. This section can help with that, by discussing the key factors that establish a particular challenge level. Using these criteria, you can then provide an alternative definition of the easy, medium, hard, and deadly challenge levels used for encounter building. WHAT DETERMINES CHALLENGE LEVEL? Challenge levels are useful because they can help craft specific experiences for the players. Understanding the factors that differentiate challenge levels can thus help GMs select the right challenge for a particular play experience. The following elements, all related to monster challenge rating, establish the baseline challenge level of an encounter. HITS AND DAMAGE Characters are challenged the more often they are hit by attacks and the more damage they take from those hits. This is true even if the characters are not close to dying. Hits and damage is the easiest key factor to assess before an encounter begins, and also the easiest to adjust during play. RESOURCE EXPENDITURE When the challenge level feels high, players expend their character’s resources to achieve victory or prevent defeat. Resources include class features or magic items with a specified number of uses, consumable magic items, spell slots, and other limited-use capabilities. Resource expenditure feels important to players, even if they know the encounter is to be followed by a long rest. FORMIDABLE FOES Foes feel formidable when they hit harder than expected, hit more often than usual, have special tricks, control the battlefield, or are particularly well suited to the encounter environment. This often translates to monsters of higher challenge rating, but not always. A fearsome description and great roleplaying can make a foe feel formidable to the players and their characters alike. DYING CHARACTERS When a character is brought to 0 hit points, all the players notice. The tenor of an encounter often changes immediately, creating the feeling that the characters are losing even if they actually have the upper hand. A similar effect takes place when characters are rendered unconscious by other means, stunned, paralyzed, or otherwise unable to act, though running out of hit points feels far more dangerous. ABILITY TO PRESS ON After the fight ends, do the heroes feel they can continue adventuring and face future encounters? The most challenging encounters erode the confidence of an adventuring party, hastening the point when the characters stop for a short or long rest, and therefore impacting the length of the adventuring day. (“On Encounters per Day” on page 93 talks more about rests and the concept of the adventuring day.) CHALLENGE LEVELS By using these key criteria, you can define each challenge level—easy, medium, hard, or deadly—in a way that replaces the definitions found in the core rules. You can still use your current tools or the core XP-based rules to determine an encounter’s challenge level. But the tips and guidelines found throughout this book will help your encounters meet these new definitions. (In particular, “Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge” on page 67 has specific guidelines for achieving a hard challenge level with different groups of foes. “The Lazy Encounter Benchmark” on page 70 talks about how to avoid a hard challenge level crossing over into deadly.) EASY CHALLENGE LEVEL An easy encounter is relaxing and empowering for the players, as their characters show off their capabilities. Because no characters should take significant damage or be in danger, players have the freedom to be creative, trying unusual or inefficient tactics for the sake of roleplaying or fun. IF YOU DON’T USE CHALLENGE LEVELS Mike tends not to aim encounters at particular challenge levels, instead letting the challenge of an encounter shape itself as a result of the story and the pacing of the game. Sometimes that creates an encounter with two half-drunk bandits playing cards in the woods. Sometimes it’s a squad of merregon devils conducting phalanx training. Using the information in “The Lazy Encounter Benchmark” (page 70), Mike determines if a battle might be inadvertently deadly after he’s decided on the number and types of creatures to drop into an encounter. This is a less exact but much faster approach to encounter building, which Mike favors. For your own games, try different approaches for designing combat encounters and see which work best for you and your group. Keep all the options in your GM’s toolbox, and use whichever works best for the moment.

106 CARLOS EULEFÍ Use easy encounters as warm-ups, to provide respite or confidence, or in a dungeon or other area that works best with many short encounters. Hits and Damage: Low Resource Expenditure: None Formidable Foes: Stock creatures, dispatched quickly Dying Characters: None Ability to Press On: High. Characters can easily face eight to ten easy encounters in an adventuring day. MEDIUM CHALLENGE LEVEL At the medium challenge level, monsters are of a high enough CR to provide some measure of threat, and one formidable foe could be grouped with weaker foes. The encounter allows for moments when both characters and monsters shine, but the characters are expected to have the upper hand throughout the battle by expending a few resources. Characters are unlikely to drop to 0 hit points, unless they began the battle with fewer than half their normal hit points. Use medium encounters when you want game play to be engaging but not high pressure. After the battle, the characters are left less capable than when they began, but should still be inclined to continue unless previous battles have depleted their resources. Hits and Damage: Average Resource Expenditure: Low Formidable Foes: Stock creatures, dispatched quickly Dying Characters: None, though one in four characters might run low on hit points. Ability to Press On: High. Characters should be able to face four medium encounters in an adventuring day. HARD CHALLENGE LEVEL A hard encounter features one or more formidable foes who can function effectively, hitting reliably and dealing damage that causes characters and players to take notice. Hit point levels can go up and down as healing resources are consumed, driving characters to adjust tactics and expend vital resources to counter the threat. Most of the characters might lose from a quarter to one-half of their hit points as a result of their foes’ high damage output. One or two characters might end up dying and unconscious, and there could be moments when the battle looks like it could go either way, even as the heroes are expected to emerge victorious. Losing the fight is a slim possibility, but the challenge level of the encounter means the characters are likely in a position to negotiate or retreat to avoid dying en masse. After a hard battle, the characters can continue, but might decide to rest if they’ve had previous encounters. Use hard encounters to wake up the players, underscore the stakes and peril in an adventure, deplete resources, or present a strong challenge that the characters will enjoy overcoming. Hits and Damage: High Resource Expenditure: Moderate to high Formidable Foes: One or more Dying Characters: One or two, and several characters might run low on hit points. Character death is possible, though rare. Ability to Press On: Moderate. Characters can face two to three hard encounters in an adventuring day. DEADLY CHALLENGE LEVEL In a deadly encounter, most or all of the foes are formidable, feeling stronger than the characters even if they actually aren’t. They hit often and hard. In addition to damage, higher-CR monsters often have features and other capabilities that add pressure to the encounter. Players should be on the edge of their seats as they carefully consider and reconsider tactics while the battle progresses. Resource expenditure is ongoing, as characters dig deep and use their strongest class features and magic. A deadly encounter is dangerous, but isn’t aiming to be a slaughter or a TPK—a disastrous encounter that ends in a total party kill. Most characters should lose half or more of their hit points in a deadly encounter. Several characters might be temporarily taken out of the fight by conditions or other effects, and there’s a chance for one or more characters to take enough damage to drop to 0 hit points. The pressures of combat might also result in characters dying outright by failing death saving throws, especially from critical hits or taking damage while unconscious and dying. Deadly encounters are particularly challenging when the party is already low on hit points and resources. After a deadly encounter, characters who began the encounter fully rested will typically take a short rest to spend Hit Dice and regain a few resources. Characters who began the encounter without their full hit points or resources usually choose to take a long rest. Use deadly encounters to introduce key foes, surprise players with a thrilling challenge, or provide an exciting conclusion to a gaming session or adventure. Hits and Damage: Very high Resource Expenditure: Very high

107 Formidable Foes: Most or all Dying Characters: Several, with a low-to-moderate chance of character death. Ability to Press On: Moderate. Characters can face one to two deadly encounters in an adventuring day. BEYOND DEADLY? The core rules set an XP value above which an encounter is deadly—and no amount of XP over that line changes the definition. This might seem strange, especially given that neither the core rules nor Forge of Foes use the term “deadly” to mean “everybody dies.” We don’t usually want a high chance of a total party kill in our games. We want the heroes to prevail because that’s fun for the players. A deadly challenge level already feels like high stakes, and going above that risks frustration and the end of a campaign. As such, it can be helpful to have a threshold that warns us when we’re at the upper level of deadly and veering into at TPK. To determine the upper end of a deadly encounter, take the difference between the XP thresholds of the deadly and hard columns in the core rules of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, then add that number to the deadly column. This new number becomes the end of the deadly threshold—meaning that above that number is where a TPK becomes likely. For example, if the hard encounter threshold is 3,000 XP and the deadly threshold is 4,400 XP for a party of four characters, then the upper threshold for deadly would be the difference (4,400 – 3,000 = 1,400) added to the deadly threshold (4,400 + 1,400 = 5,800). This tells you that using creatures in an encounter with a total XP value of 5,800 or higher takes you beyond the deadly threshold and puts you at risk of a TPK. ADDITIONAL FACTORS NOT RELATED TO CR The following factors aren’t directly related to challenge rating or challenge level, and therefore don’t appear in the discussion above. However, these factors are important to also keep in mind, as they can impact how you might need to modify the expected challenge level to make an encounter work as intended. (“The Lazy Encounter Benchmark” on page 70 talks about other considerations that can have an effect on challenge level.) TACTICS Your tactical decisions as a GM impact the challenge. You might make the enemy wizard obvious at the start of combat, or begin with them hidden behind a secret door. You might have monsters attack the rear ranks, forcing melee characters to choose between reinforcing their position and going after the boss ahead. TERRAIN Does reaching an enemy caster require crossing a rickety rope bridge, or swinging across a chasm? Are archers positioned far from the heroes and behind cover? You can easily use terrain to increase challenge level in ways that monster CR fails to capture. GOALS The characters might need to stop the cultists, but also to save a group of captives. A merchant trapped in a burning shop calls for help, distracting a hero from their goal of attacking an evil fire demon. A relic must be recovered before it falls into lava. Having specific goals in an encounter beyond simply defeating the foes increases the challenge level if those goals decrease the emphasis characters can place on combat. USING CHALLENGE LEVELS When you create encounters, use the challenge level that most closely fits your goals for the encounter. If you’re looking for a fun warm-up that shouldn’t use up resources or threaten the characters, then go for an easy challenge level. If the encounter should feature formidable foes dealing maximum damage and pushing the characters to their limits, with high resource expenditure and the chance of characters dropping to 0 hit points or dying outright, that’s a deadly encounter. As you create encounters, you’ll find yourself varying the challenge level to fit the story and to create different emotional responses from your players. This idea lends itself to a number of different approaches for filling out a party’s adventuring day. CLASSIC APPROACH This straightforward method of encounter building tells a satisfying story and has an easy-to-manage linear expenditure of resources. However, players can quickly become too accustomed to this approach. The classic approach features the following setup: • An easy challenge to warm up the characters and provide a fun start. • A set of medium or hard encounters to expend resources. • A deadly challenge as the climactic finish. Examples of the classic approach include: • Entering a cultist hideout to stop the ritual taking place in the final chamber. CHALLENGE LEVELS AS ANALYSIS POINTS Scott notes that we can use challenge levels to assess how closely our encounters hit the desired mark, and then adjust our approach accordingly. When you run a medium challenge level encounter, do the benchmarks hold true? This analysis lets you know the relative strength and weakness of the characters—and your style as a GM—compared to the default definition. You can then make adjustments to achieve the desired challenge more consistently.

108 • Overcoming several wilderness challenges, then facing off against a terrifying monster before reaching a specific destination. • Following leads in the city to find and confront a series of lesser members of the thieves’ guild, before battling the head of the guild. REVERSE APPROACH The reverse approach flips the script to surprise players who expect encounters to become more progressively difficult. Expending resources early on can shake the players’ confidence, though, requiring cues that the characters should press on. The reverse approach features the following setup: • A deadly challenge to start, knocking the characters back and surprising the players. • A set of medium or hard encounters to expend more resources. • An easy challenge to finish things off, allowing the characters to relax and celebrate their success. Examples of the reverse approach include: • Attacking a keep, which results in numerous defenders coming to stop the characters. Once past those defenses, the number of foes drops down to reflect the number of defenders that have been defeated or are unwilling to challenge the characters. • Deadly traps and terrible undead guardians have prevented anyone from making it into an ancient tomb. Once this initial chamber is cleared, the characters can explore the inner chambers, finding that they need only fight a few more undead and solve a relatively simple puzzle to gain the treasure they seek. HILL APPROACH In this approach, challenge is built up, then eased back down. This creates a nice tension, with roughly half the action taking place after vital resources have been spent. The hill approach features the following setup: • Two medium encounters to start, or an easy and a hard encounter. • A deadly challenge to anchor the action. • Medium or easy encounters to finish things off. Examples of the hill approach include: • The characters sneak their way into a keep, steal an item from a trap-and-guardian-filled central chamber, then must flee the site before the defenders are fully alerted. • A trek across the wilderness passes through a central highlight such as a lava field or a vast swamp. That central point offers potentially deadly challenges, but getting there and then getting away are relatively easy. VALLEY APPROACH This approach keeps the characters focused with both a strong start and a strong finish, but provides a respite in between. This style of encounter building works well when you want the middle scenes of an adventure or a session to focus less on combat and more on exploration or roleplaying. The valley approach features the following setup: • A deadly or hard encounter to start, ratcheting up the tension. • Two easy encounters, or one medium and one easy encounter, to allow the characters to regain their footing. • A deadly or hard encounter to maximize the tension and drama of the conclusion. Examples of the valley approach include: • Defeating bandits hiding out in ancient ruins is a tough challenge, but makes exploring the ruins easy. Then as night falls, the bandits rise as undead. • Secretly breaking into a bank is a dangerous operation, but once inside, the characters face only minor traps as they explore the vaults. Then when they emerge, they find that the city watch has been called to confront them. • The characters defeat a deadly monster in their lair, explore some low-threat caves at the back of the lair, and return to find that the monster’s enraged partner has just arrived. THE “ALL-OR-NOTHING” APPROACH Conventional wisdom suggests that if you want to challenge characters, you’ll want to wear them down first. Characters who enter a battle fully rested have a lot of resources at their disposal, and especially if they have the opportunity to use those resources all at once, they’re going to dominate the battle. Sometimes, whether by accident or design, the characters end up facing the boss monster fully rested. They haven’t been worn down first with a series of easy or medium battles, but can push straight toward the big climactic boss fight. When this happens, the hard encounter threshold probably isn’t enough to truly challenge a party. You have to go harder than hard— into the realm of deadly encounters, or even beyond. “Building and Running Boss Monsters” on page 31 talks about running waves of monsters, and that approach works great for an all-or-nothing battle. You can effectively set up the characters facing the easy and medium battles they missed out on—but they face those challenges one right after the other, or maybe even overlapping. Then in the final wave, the big boss and their guardians come out before the characters have any chance to rest. Alternatively, you might set up a seemingly overwhelming encounter, then dial it back by having many of the potential foes in the battle not focused on killing the characters. Some might be busy performing a ritual. They might be in the middle of a big vampire wedding ceremony. They might be getting ready to raid the headquarters of a rival. Even if such a battle is well beyond deadly, the characters can maintain the upper hand by picking and choosing their foes. Sure, things can still go sideways—but that’s where the real fun begins.

109 BALANCING MECHANICS AND STORY Monsters serve two purposes in tabletop RPGs. First, their stat block includes the rules and mechanics by which a GM can run that creature in the game—typically during combat, but not always. Secondly, monsters also serve the story of our games. It’s easy to focus on the mechanics of a foe when preparing to run them, but don’t forget the story of that foe. They have things they do mechanically, yes, but each monster also has a representation in the world. They have lore and flavor. Physical descriptions. History, motivations. The sounds they make. The smells … Game mechanics serve the story of each monster, not the other way around. But it’s easy to forget about a monster’s narrative when combat begins. Each creature in a fight moves their speed, makes their attacks, and deals their damage. They react to the characters’ actions, teleport, knock opponents prone, build articulated walls of fire, and so on. With so many rules, it’s no wonder GMs sometimes forget there’s a story going on in the background. It’s a lot to manage, and the more complicated the monster, the easier it is to forget what they’re like in the world. DON’T FORGET THE STORY When preparing, designing, and running monsters, don’t forget the role they play in the story of your game. First and foremost, every foe is an element of the story taking place at the table. A troll is often (though not always) a big, warty, green-skinned, regenerating giant who’s no stranger to combat. Only within the context of that description does the troll have a set of mechanics—their stat block—to support that story. Use the story of monsters to your advantage. Make foes unique and interesting by their descriptions, their mannerisms, their words, and their actions. A giant rat might be the most boring monster in the game—or could be the most horrific foe ever faced, based on the description a GM uses when that oily-furred, red-eyed horror slithers out of a slimy sewer pipe, screeching as they bare razor-sharp, plague-coated teeth. UNLIMITED NARRATIVE BUDGET The narrative surrounding a monster is limited only by imagination and time. You can describe monsters however you wish. Every ogre warrior’s club can be uniquely carved to shows their exploits in combat. Every elf knight’s suit of scale armor can show the details of the battles they fought before. You needn’t change the mechanics of every veteran in a squad to make each of them unique and interesting. The way they wear their armor, the scars across their hardened skin, the style of swords they wield—all these details can change without touching the stat block. You can jot these details down ahead of time if you want, or you can stretch your improvisational skills and describe such details each time a monster attacks or a character hits them. You don’t have to flood your description with details for every single monster. But every so often, when it feels right, mention the scar over a brass dragon’s left eye, or the creases in a bandit captain’s well-worn leather boots, or the rusty blade decorated with scalps wielded by a gnome murder cultist. ASK PLAYERS TO IDENTIFY MONSTROUS TRAITS A GM doesn’t need to be the only one responsible for filling in these details. During combat, you can ask the players to identify interesting physical characteristics of the foes they face. Use these characteristics not only to enrich the flavor of the foe, but to identify them when making attacks, applying damage, or otherwise targeting them. “The ogre bodyguard with the huge scar across their chest” and “the skeleton with the green mohawk” are far more interesting than “ogre number three” and “the skeleton on the left.” MORE THAN MECHANICS GMs often fall back on designing or implementing new mechanics when they want to change a monster from their default presentation, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (This book is filled with that sort of advice.) But you can also try changing the in-world description of a monster and their behavior to suit their fictional narrative. Tweak their description. Tweak their behavior. Tweak their history and their reaction to confrontation with the characters. Describe a creature’s unique armor or weapons. Talk about their tattoos or scars. Talk about the holy symbols around their necks. Every for can be as unique as you’re willing to describe them. WHEN TO CHANGE MECHANICS Alter the mechanics of a monster only when the default stat block doesn’t support the monster’s story in the world. If a troll warlord stands atop a bone-cluttered hill preparing to hurl the skulls of former victims at the characters, the troll stat block has no such ranged attack. So you improvise. Reskin the troll’s Claw attack into a Thrown Skull attack that uses the same attack bonus and deals the same damage, changing that damage from slashing to bludgeoning. Want to make that attack even more dangerous? Increase the damage by another 2d6. Becoming comfortable making such modifications right at the table can help you improvise monsters all throughout your games. “Monster Difficulty Dials” on page 27 offers more advice on making changes to monsters on the fly. Additionally, the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table (part of “Building a Quick Monster” on page 4) gives you a set of statistics to improvise new monster mechanics with little to no prep.

110 BUILDING THE STORY TO FIT THE MONSTER In many cases, we can choose monsters to fit the story of our adventures (as discussed at “Choosing Monsters Based on the Story” on page 113). Story matters the most in the long run, so it typically makes sense to start with a larger premise and stock our adventures with monsters who reinforce that story. But there are times when it’s even more fun to do the reverse. We start with monsters who excite us, then we build the story to fit them. MONSTERS FIRST While paging through any of the many monster books available for 5e games, you come across an amazing monster. Filled with excitement, you wish that creature could appear in your campaign. Or maybe a player mentions a type of monster during a game session, saying, “I’ve never fought one of those before!” Or you might have long had an idea for a fun encounter with different types of unusual creatures, but those creatures don’t fit the current locations in the campaign. In these and other similar situations, it makes sense to think about the monsters first and then build a story to validate their presence. VERISIMILITUDE Players have more fun when they can immerse themselves in a world that makes sense. They know that every aspect of the game’s setting is imaginary, but they can suspend that disbelief when it makes sense to do so. As such, it’s important to make monsters and their presence in the game make sense. Start by asking yourself whether a particular monster fits the environment and setting. A monster’s lore often includes rich information on the types of environments they favor, as well as the role they play in such environments. So as fantastic as creatures like water elementals are, they make the most sense when they’re encountered near a lake or other body of water. If you place a water elemental in the middle of a dungeon corridor with no explanation for why they came to be there, the players will likely find that jarring, making them less likely to enjoy the session. You also want to take care when combining different types of monsters, to make sure it makes sense for them to work together. GMs should select monsters for encounters the way a chef selects ingredients: choose a few skirmishers, add a beefy monster to take some hits, and done! But even though a squad of goblins fighting with a water elemental might be tactically sound, that combination will inevitably be jarring in the game. ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY When choosing monsters first and then selecting the story, you want to find a story that establishes verisimilitude. For some monsters, minor explanations can suffice. Players and their characters will likely believe that brigands have hired a bugbear from a nearby forest. Minor details such as the bugbear wearing a too-tight uniform can reinforce this already plausible story. Even the goblins and the water elemental can work, if at the start of the encounter, the goblins are arguing over who should use a magic item. When they see the characters, one of the goblins takes the item and uses it … to cause the water elemental to appear! FISH OUT OF WATER There are times when it can be fun to use monsters who don’t fit the situation, or monsters who shouldn’t be working together. Strange combinations can be surprising and intriguing, as long as you take some care to make the fish-out-of-water scenario plausible. When a monster is a figurative fish out of water, you’ll need to work a bit harder to establish verisimilitude. In this case, you want to explain how the monster came to be in its present environment, and make that a key part of the encounter. Start by asking yourself the following questions: • Where did this creature come from, and how could it have ended up here? • What would it take for this creature to be comfortable in this location? • In what ways is the creature changing or impacting the location? In what ways is the location impacting the creature? • What would this foe need or want to allow them to remain in this location? How could someone else keep the creature here? • How do the answers to the previous questions impact the current story and the other creatures in this location? • What can the characters notice or learn that explains the story of this monster? LORE AND STAT BLOCKS A monster’s stat block tells us a lot about them, as discussed in “Reading the Monster Stat Block” on page 102. Likewise, the lore that accompanies a stat block can provide ideas useful for thinking through a monster’s nature and what their story might be. As an example, wolves fight in packs, and they hunt prey. Their desire for prey could force them into a village. Maybe the first thing the characters see at night is a bush

MATT MORROW 111 moving. When they investigate, a deer bounds out from shelter. Moments later, the wolves that hunt the deer show up. Kobolds have a reputation for liking traps, so you can showcase their traps up front to foreshadow their presence in a location. You might also leave related clues in the form of notes written in Draconic. You can then set up a fun encounter where kobolds are trying to create or repair a big trap, with the final encounter reinforcing the earlier discoveries and providing confirmation for players who guessed what unseen foes they were facing. Novels and movies can also provide narrative ideas that can be combined with monster lore to set up plausible scenarios for a fish-out-of-water creature. A construct or undead could have escaped from their creator, creating a scenario that works with the expectation that players are familiar with the story of Frankenstein. Depending on how much you borrow from the novel, the players and characters might end up asking who is the true monster and villain in the story. EXAMPLE STORIES Like our larger campaign story, the story we create for our monsters is just a starting point. The real narrative is the one created by the intersection of the characters and that initial tale. A great monster story is therefore one that helps the characters engage with the scene as fully as they can, creating a fun adventure that the players will want to talk about for years to come. This section presents several types of stories that can explain the presence of a monster you want to use in an unusual environment or location. Use any of these setups and the example stories that come with them as is, or use them as starting points that you can alter as needed to fit your own game. SUMMONED, HIRED, OR CAPTURED A creature who doesn’t fit their environment could have been deliberately brought to that environment. Magic or other threats might bind the creature, or they might serve willingly in exchange for something. Bound Air Demon. An evil sorcerer binds an air demon, convincing the fiend to stay by constructing an area that has tall ceilings, many ledges, and is filled with smoke. The demon can speak of this as they attack, explaining why they deign to serve a mere humanoid. Water Guardian. A water creature could be bound to a fountain, cistern, or moat. The characters might meet an NPC carrying buckets of water, with the scars along their arms a sign of the dangers of reaching into the water. Runes of binding are hidden under the water’s surface, visible to a character who carefully peers over the edge, or could be noticed during battle. Oops, We Hired Swamp Creatures! A group of lizardfolk working as laborers in a village have been hidden away by the merchant who hired them, and have flooded the basement of the merchant’s home trying to make themselves comfortable. When the characters discover them, it’s clear that the lizardfolk are being taken advantage of, and pointing this out could turn the laborers against their employer. Spider Pet. Goblins feed giant spiders in a side tunnel near their lair, and the arachnids no longer attack creatures providing food. In an adjacent cavern, the goblins raise pigs, and are trying to drag one out of a cage to feed the spider when the characters happen by. SURPRISING PLAYERS Scott notes that intentionally using a fish-out-of-water scenario can sometimes work better than making use of monsters who are the perfect fit. Players expect goblins in the goblin tunnels, and might be less engaged when they see still more goblins in a larger cave. However, add another creature who doesn’t seem to belong, and the players become intrigued. They’ll still want to know why the monster is in a strange location, or why two seemingly incompatible creatures are working together, but those questions now tie to the encounter rather than undermining it.

112 And That’s Why We Locked Them Up. A prison holds an atypical creature, such as a mephit captured by bandits. The creature’s personality, as well as a possibly secret reason for their captivity, can then become a fun part of the adventure. Is the creature a potential ally and source of information, or a potential foe biding their time before they turn against the heroes? Are they especially obnoxious, or incessantly obsequious? Do they lie all too convincingly, then quickly turn against any ally or enemy who believes them? Another option is to have a captured creature seem mundane when they’re actually far more dangerous. That dog held captive in the crate? It’s a hell hound or death dog. The trophy case displaying two crossed swords? Those are flying swords. And of course, the empty cell holding nothing but a mundane-looking object might be a mimic, a cloaker, or a creature not normally known for camouflage fallen victim to a magical curse. MINI-BIOME A broader location might contain a small area where an out-of-place monster fits in, even when the rest of the location is not a typical lair. Magic can always be used to explain a mini-biome, though this might feel forced or trite. A more natural reason for a mini-biome usually works best. Localized Swamp. Lizardfolk and their pet giant frog dwell in a cavern where an underground river has eroded the rock, creating swamp-like conditions. Brackish Waters. A sea creature is attacking settlements along a freshwater river. A village elder tells the characters that during heavy rains, the sea floods the estuary and the waters turn brackish, explaining how a marine predator has found a new home. There Must Be a Volcano. A biome can sometimes be foreshadowed. Setting up the appearance of a fire elemental and magma mephits in a dungeon can be accomplished by first creating a chamber where crude drawings of volcanoes and fire creatures cover the walls. When the characters later come across a river of magma, the presence of fire creatures makes sense. ON A MISSION Sapient monsters might intentionally travel to an unfamiliar location, becoming explorers just like the characters. The reason for the monsters being there can be just as interesting as the monsters themselves. Give Us the Artifact! A band of drow seek a rumored artifact or lost lore. Their mission is vital, so they might negotiate with the characters to gain what they seek—or fight the characters if their mission is opposed. Meet the Neighbors. A group of creatures who would normally be more at home on a different dungeon level or in an adjacent biome have come to the area the characters are exploring with some purpose in mind. They might be meeting up with other creatures to establish an alliance, trying to claim (or reclaim) a valuable relic, or simply seeking conflict for its own sake. The appearance of such creatures can add richness to an encounter, even as it sets up new regions or dungeon levels the characters haven’t yet visited. What Dug This Hole? A burrowing creature has broken into a dungeon or city basement, seeking or escaping something. The broken wall or floor explains how the creature came to trade its former environment for a new one. A STORY WITHIN A STORY We can make the presence of a monster believable by telling that creature’s story and explaining how that telling fits into our larger story. Though discovering an explanation for a monster’s presence after the monster has been encountered sometimes works, providing at least a partial explanation up front can make the actual moment of meeting the monster feel more plausible. Inventor Lost Control. To make use of some awesome clockwork monsters within a larger dungeon, you can place a door barred from the inside with a “Keep Closed” warning sign. The door leads to a mini-lair for a gnome inventor. The first of three rooms holds her notes, indicating that her clockwork creations have gone out of control. The second and third rooms contain the aggressive creatures, and the third room also has the bound inventor. If freed, she can help turn the tide of battle. Long Cold Winter. You can establish that it’s been an unusually harsh winter in town, and that the townsfolk are afraid. This sets the players and characters up nicely for a yeti attack, which seems entirely plausible. They Have Eyepatches and Say Yar. To make use of some great bandit-type stat blocks while the characters are in a port town, simply reskin them as pirates. For extra fun, place wanted posters for the pirate captain that the characters can find before the encounter. They Scuttled Off That Way. A remorhaz is a fun monstrosity, but doesn’t quite fit a dungeon milieu. So set up a scene where the characters can overhear two ogres by a fire in a cave, talking about how a rock broke open and something nasty came out. Investigating the fire pit shows that some of the rocks around it appear to have cracked open like eggs. Later, the characters can encounter a young remorhaz—perhaps chewing on the remains of another dungeon denizen they surprised. BREAK AWAY FROM STEREOTYPES Mike notes that the act of building a story around an out-ofplace monster pushes us away from stereotypical situations. The very act of having to explain the weird occurrence of a creature’s existence forces a GM to come up with a creative explanation that they might never otherwise have come up with. Truly memorable encounters can arise from this process.

113 CHOOSING MONSTERS BASED ON THE STORY Rather than building combat encounters based on the level of the characters and the difficulty of the intended challenge, consider choosing monsters for your adventure based on the story and the situation in the world around the encounter. This idea isn’t always easy to understand, and it departs from a common approach toward preparation for fantasy RPGs—building adventures as a set of encapsulated and predefined scenes or encounters, with a bit of exploration, some roleplaying, and (usually) a lot of combat. As an alternative, write down a list of the monsters who might be encountered in a larger area depending on the situation taking place during the game. The seventh step of preparation from chapter 9 of Return of the Lazy DM describes how to abstract lists of monsters from the scenes and situations in which they might appear during an adventure. This lets GMs “cook at the table,” dropping in monsters who fit both the scene and the situation—and which make for the most fun in the moment as the GM improvises encounters based on what happens during the story and the game. UNDERSTANDING THE STORY Which monsters make sense given a particular story, situation, and location isn’t always clear. We must first understand the story of our adventure, which we can do by asking the following questions: • Where does it take place? • Who would inhabit this location? • What types of allies, followers, or symbiotic relationships exist alongside these primary inhabitants? • In what numbers do these inhabitants typically gather? • Do they wander alone? Do they travel in pairs or groups? As an example, red dragons are usually solitary creatures as regards living among other dragons—but they could certainly have allies. Some might have fire elementals who serve them unerringly, or hordes of kobold worshipers to do their daily menial work. They might have sworn knights or priests who serve them on far-reaching quests, or who protect the dragon as bodyguards and advisors. A particularly powerful red dragon spellcaster might summon and bind a demon to their service—a demon eager for a chance to break their bonds. UNDERSTANDING THE MONSTERS It always helps to have a deeper understanding of the lore behind monsters, whatever its original source. You might seek out this lore from old folktales and stories from thousands of years ago. You might take monsters from popular fiction. The D&D Monster Manual and the many other monster books available for fifth edition fantasy games offer excellent summaries of each of their creatures, including lore, environment, behaviors, and allies. When considering monsters to add to your adventure, start first with your favorite book of monsters. Many monster books and Gamemaster guides include lists of monsters by ecology, often sorted by challenge rating. These lists show what monsters typically reside in which environments, including forests, deserts, ruins, cities, and more. The challenge ratings in such lists are useful guides, but don’t be afraid to include weaker monsters to let higher-powered characters show off their skills. Likewise, you might choose a monster who’s technically too powerful for the characters, but you can give them a chance to see the creature from afar so they don’t simply wander in and get killed. (“Bosses and Minions” on page 61 offers suggestions on which monsters might serve other more powerful creatures, all keyed to environment. “Monsters by Adventure Location” on page 72 features lists of monsters keyed to specific locations.) REALISM AND FUN When considering what monsters might inhabit the locations of our adventures and in what numbers, consider the issue from two angles. What makes sense in relation to the fiction and location of the world? And what best entertains your players? Instead of balancing both ideas at the same time, though, consider focusing on realism first. What makes sense for the fiction of the game? If the characters delve into the ruins of an ancient crypt, all sorts of undead come to mind, including skeletons, specters, wights, wraiths, ghosts, mummies, vampires, and liches. But many other types of foes might also work in such a location, including cultists, necromancers, graverobbing bandits, or black puddings feasting on the flesh of the dead. Any such creatures can easily feel realistic given the location. So when preparing a game set in a crypt, list the various undead and other monsters who might show up in an encounter. Then when running the game, choose the type and number of monsters that feels like the best fit for the fun and pacing of the game. Since the inhabitants of a location can move around, you can decide what quantities and combinations of monsters might reside in or travel through any given area moment by moment. Did the party just finish a big battle with hard monsters? Maybe it’s time for a couple of weaklings to wander through. Have the characters been having an easy time so far? Maybe they stumble into a group of heavy hitters. Either scenario still makes sense given the larger story and situation, but you can choose

114 the scenario offering the right beat and the right element of pacing for the game. Such variability helps tremendously in pacing a game. You don’t ever have to throw your hands up and run an encounter as is just because it’s written that way. By choosing the number and types of monsters, you can easily tweak encounters toward what brings the right pacing and feeling to the overall game. WHAT ABOUT ENCOUNTER BALANCE? If we’re choosing monsters strictly by what makes sense for the scene, location, and situation, then improvising the number and combination of monsters during play, how do we ensure encounters are balanced? There’s one simple answer: We don’t. “Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge” (page 67) offers guidelines for building groups of monsters to challenge characters. But a story-focused approach toward encounters means not worrying about encounter balance. Instead, you can focus only on being aware of when an encounter might become inadvertently deadly, discussed in “The Lazy Encounter Benchmark” on page 70. CHOOSING TOKENS AND MINIATURES Whether you play in person or online, this free-flowing way of choosing monsters might challenge you if you make extensive use of tokens or miniatures. However, there are a few easy ways to make sure you can still use those tools even while running flexible story-based encounters. SELECT A SUBSET OF TOKENS OR MINIATURES If you know you’re going to be running an adventure in a crypt and you have an idea of the types and numbers of monsters who dwell there, you can sift through your collection and set aside the tokens or miniatures you might need. This can be a little time consuming, and you might not use every mini you pull out. But having them all on hand means you can pick what you need when you need it. For online play, you don’t have to worry about the number of tokens—just the style. You can keep a separate folder with the tokens you think you might need given the scenario, then copy and paste as many of those tokens as you need. USE GENERIC TOKENS A set of generic tokens is a fantastic lazy tool for online or in-person play. A generic token is either a physical or digital token with an abstract representation of various types of monsters, rather than specific art for only one type of monster. These abstractions might include a skull, a grim-looking humanoid, a wolf, a slime, a dragon, or any other general representation of creatures in the game. Numerous examples of generic tokens can be found online, which can be purchased or constructed at low cost. Some virtual tabletops even include generic monster tokens built in. For others, you might have to import the tokens into your VTT, but having a set of generic tokens on hand means never having to worry about having the exact right token at the exact right time. ORGANIZE FOR EASY RETRIEVAL When you organize your tokens or miniatures, either inperson or online, spend the time to organize them so you can easily find the ones you need when you need them. Find the right categories that make it easier to dig out the right ones. Keep your most-used tokens or miniatures close at hand, and let your least-used tokens or miniatures fall to the bottom of your organizational system. FIND A FAST METHOD FOR ONLINE TOKENS A number of online tools let you build a token from any image quickly and easily. Some virtual tabletops have built-in token making software. Find these tools and practice using them to quickly build tokens from the many monster images made available for purchase or free download online. Get good and fast at this process, and you’ll be able to build any monster token you need even in the middle of your game. CRAFT GENERIC TOKENS FOR IN-PERSON PLAY For playing in person, you can build a set of generic tokens with a little bit of crafting. Start by printing out black-and-white silhouettes of monsters, skeletons, knights, and other images. Search for royalty-free game icons online. Pick the ones you like and print them out at just under one inch in size. Then punch them out with a one-inch hole punch. Use one-inch magnets for the base of the token and one-inch clear epoxy stickers for the top. You can put together a couple of dozen such tokens for under $20. BUILD SITUATIONS AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS By abstracting monsters from encounters and choosing monsters who fit the scenes, story, locations, and situations in your adventures, you give yourself the freedom to let those adventures follow whatever directions they might take in the game. Keep these tools and guidelines in mind to help you facilitate the adventure—moving where the action takes you, and freely adjusting the pace to fit the fun of the table.

JACKIE MUSTO 115 ROMANCING MONSTERS It can happen in any campaign. Everybody’s focused on the endgame, dispensing with foes on every side, digging in deep to uncover ancient lore, and unraveling dire mysteries layer by layer. And then the player of the warlock says: “Hey. What if instead of trying to defeat the Shadow Sovereign and their Legions of Umbral Anguish, I just … you know … turn on the charm?” Whether it starts as a simple jest around the table at the end of a very late night, an ironic attempt at Twilight actual-play fan fiction, an homage to all the players’ favorite anime, or some other slow-burning urge, many campaigns come to the crossroads that is romancing the big bad. Whether that big bad is a feral monster, a wicked villain, a capricious deity, a malevolent antihero, or worse (which is to say, better), the characters’ ultimate goal of fiercely taking down their foe can suddenly remake itself as the new goal of … well, fiercely taking down their foe. If you catch the drift. Romancing monsters and villains is a trope that’s existed in human-told tales for millennia. It can be great fun if it fits the story your game is telling and the narrative sensibilities of the players. (Letting the game move in this direction also inevitably brings the roleplaying side of things into sharp focus, discussed in “Roleplaying Monsters” on page 48). But there are a few things to think about before taking your game to the delicious dark side. CONSENT Any narrative form—prose fiction, film or video, video game cut-scene, or tabletop roleplaying scenario—can veer toward romantic interactions between characters and all the things that can result from that. When this happens, showing consent within that narrative framework is the all-important first point in any checklist of tropes and narrative elements feeding the story. Always. There’s perhaps no more archetypal moment in a story revolving around an enemies-to-lovers reversal than the villain and their heroic foil fighting toe to toe, matching each other’s ferocity, pressing each other closer and closer in combat—and then having one or the other plant a physical or metaphorical kiss on their astonished foe. It’s a great scene. But no matter how innocent it seems, don’t ever confuse that momentary transition of violence into romance with a scenario in which romance is earned through violence, threats, or an imbalance of power. Especially in a roleplaying game, where our engagement with the story as the players creating it is so much stronger than as viewers or readers passively engaging with a book or film, the loss of agency for any character in a romantic storyline should be treated as narrative kryptonite. Many people talk about how there’s no wrong way to play the game, but in fact, there are many, many wrong ways to play the game. And invoking or alluding in any way to nonconsensual encounters of a romantic or passionate nature is one of the worst. CONSENT Wait, didn’t we already do this? Yes we did. But consent is such an important part of this topic that talking about it once isn’t enough. This time, though, we’re talking about player consent. Because even for a romancing-the-monster story that involves appropriate consent within the narrative, it’s important to recognize that this might not be a type of story all players want to engage in. Many players love a campaign that strays into romance and relationship side treks, whether between player characters, characters and NPCs, characters and emissaries from the Court of the Shadow Fey doomed to never find true love, or what have you. But lots of players find those topics uncomfortable when they engage them in games, even if they have no problem with them in other fictions. And it’s important to respect that. If a full-on villain romance is something that feels like it might come up in a campaign, GMs should make discussing that topic part of their session 0. If it comes

116 up without forethought or planning during a campaign, use your safety tools to take a pause in the game (whether during a session or as a conversation between sessions) to ask how that type of story fits with each player’s lines and veils. (You can get more information on RPG safety tools, including lines and veils, in The Lazy DM’s Companion and many places online.) Remember that this conversation includes the GM as well. A group of players dead set on having the bard seduce the Three-Tongued Death King should make sure that the GM is happy to run that particular scenario, and should ask whether that GM has any lines and veils of their own regarding that type of subject matter. ENEMIES TO LOVERS Part of the reason that so many games and campaigns can move in the direction of characters romancing their enemies is that characters romancing their enemies is a storytelling tradition as old as storytelling itself. The myths of Ancient Greece familiar to a great many fantasy fans are chock-full of such stories—though many are extremely problematic in their handling of character agency (to put it mildly) and should be approached with care if you’re looking to them for inspiration. Shakespeare did a much better job with Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet in that eponymous play, and other works. (Still, though: content warning for those plays falling far short of being feminist classics.) Even better was Jane Austen setting the bar for the enemies-to-lovers trope with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. And more recently, one can look to Daphne and the Duke of Hastings in the Bridgerton books and Netflix series, Ygritte and Jon Snow from the A Song of Ice and Fire books, Satan and Emilia from the anime The Devil Is a Part-Timer!—and of course, Han Solo and Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, with the frisson of adversarial tension carried between all those characters creating a narrative foundation that turns unlikely romance into compelling character story. LEVELS OF CONFLICT The power of the enemies-to-lovers trope lies in the way it upends the expectation for the conflict that drives the CAN’T WE JUST BE FRIENDS? Mike points out that even if romancing the monsters isn’t your thing (and especially if that kind of roleplaying isn’t a good fit for any member of your group), a lot of the issues discussed here work perfectly well for creating an enemies-to-friends scenario. Fiction, movies, and comics are full of examples of this sort of story, because that narrative packs a lot of punch. Think of the number of times in comics that villains have turned from their initial motivations to take a heroic turn (Bucky Barnes, Harley Quinn, and many more), or villains and heroes finding common ground to fight a mutual foe (one of the constant themes touched on by the X-Men comics and films). narrative. In the simplest terms of story analysis, character versus character is one of the foundational forms of dramatic tension and conflict, and is unsurprisingly the conflict linchpin in tales of fighting monsters. As such, stories built around battle and struggles for interpersonal domination fit perfectly into the combat-focused narrative framework of a fantasy roleplaying game. But at a level above the straightforward narrative tension of character versus character, the dramatic contract of character versus themself offers a more complex conflict framework. Essentially, a story built around the idea of a character fighting against their own instincts and nature implicitly raises the question of how the character can ever possibly win that battle. As such, whichever character in the enemies-to-lovers scenario is the one most surprised by the sudden turn of romantic events ends up in a much more dramatically interesting place, as the question of how to handle their enemy becomes increasingly complicated. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE A character’s attempt to romance a villain might start out as a ruse, intended to distract or confuse that foe, or to allow the character to get close enough to the villain to learn vital information. In a similar vein, a villain characterized as a cold, calculating despot might view caring for others as a fatal weakness—making their longignored ability to feel emotion into a flaw the characters decide to exploit. But in the course of what initially feels like contrived romantic attraction, a character might learn that their enemy is more than what they first appeared to be—or is perhaps even worthy of redemption. So if the character’s false overtures are returned by real emotion, real romance, and a chance to turn the foe away from their villainous path, what should they and their compatriots do? BAD BARGAIN Another angle that can play into a romancing-themonster scenario arises from the realization that both sides in that scenario can continue to have their own adversarial objectives even as the romance blooms. A player character who ends up drawn to the idea of romancing a villainous foe might initially do so with a particular goal in mind, even if that goal is just the baseline idea of not wanting to kill or incarcerate the villain in the normal way of things. However, in the course of roleplaying the scenario, the character and their allied party members might discover that the foe has goals of their own for the romance— perhaps including objectives the characters have a hard time accepting. This sort of setup can lend itself to strong roleplaying opportunities wrapped around moral dilemma, as the characters must decide whether having an enemy become a lover creates more problems than it solves.

117 THERE BE MONSTERS The rest of Forge of Foes is filled with all kinds of guidance for making monsters feel unique and memorable in your games. But most of that advice is built around the idea of adding on to a preexisting monster concept in some way. Whether you’re starting with an existing stat block and customizing it, or crunching the numbers underlying monster design to create the most effective attacks and traits, fine-tuning a known creature is a great way to match that creature to the fit and feel of your game. But what about creating new monsters from whole cloth, or thinking about reskinning a monster not with new stats and attacks but with a new story? Within the world of the 5e game with all its infinite fantasy possibilities, how do you come up with ideas for new monsters in the first place? THE OLD TALES The lists of monsters assembled for the earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons are an odd grab bag of creatures from European myth and folk tales, sprinkled through with equally fantastic creatures borrowed (usually with no acknowledgement, and often in problematic ways) from other cultures. For years, many fantasy RPG players have learned of the wiles of minotaurs, wyverns, harpies, and the tarrasque at the gaming table long before discovering the centuries-old tales in which those creatures first appeared—and learning how drastically the game lore for many monsters deviates from its classical roots. Just as the designers of the monsters in the earliest fantasy RPG rulebooks and periodicals did, you can create monsters from the fantasy stories that define your own personal journey through the genre. Were you awestruck by the sandworms of Dune? Pleasantly creeped out by the Children of the Forest in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels? Overwhelmed by the towering beasts in Shadow of the Colossus? Creatures from books, movies, TV, streaming shows, video games, comics, and other entertainments are ripe for rebuilding as part of your own games and campaigns, whether you want to perfectly clone a tabletop version of a favorite fictional or video game foe, or pick and choose bits of lore as a starting point. ROOTS IN STORY The most memorable monsters are often those whose inspiration doesn’t come first from cool attacks and other game mechanics, but from a creature’s place within the story of your game and campaign. The way that the interplay between players and GM, the characters and the game world, shapes a communal narrative stands at the heart of the unique experience of tabletop RPGs. So when thinking about a new monster, think about the place that monster might occupy in your story—physically, mythically, and thematically. Think about how you want the characters to feel when they first hear about the threat a monster presents. Think about how you want them to respond to rumors and evidence of the creature’s plots and attacks, and of the reaction you hope to see when they finally face the foe in combat. Then give thought to what mechanics can support that sense of the monster’s story. RUMORS AND WHISPERS Even as you draw inspiration from the story your game will tell, you can also think about the stories told within your game. How do the NPCs of your campaign or game world speak about the monster you’re creating? What tales do they tell about the creature’s depredations or reputation for evil? Have they grown up hearing legends of the monster from an early age? Do heralds or other minions appear as a warning of the monster’s own imminent arrival? What warnings do people give their children when rumors begin to spread that the creature you’re creating prowls among them once more? One great way to tap into this internal sense of story is to create short pieces of flash fiction for your campaign—a few hundred words written in character by specific or unnamed NPCs. You might eventually share your writing with your players, as part of setting the tone for the kind of story you want your monster to tell. But even if you don’t, the act of writing such fiction can help clarify the sense of the monster’s existence, helping bring them to life in your mind as you bring them to life in the world. MONSTER AS PUZZLE The nature of the stories surrounding many classic realworld monsters involve puzzles that people can solve to help deal with the monster. In some European folkloric traditions (not to mention Sesame Street), vampires are compelled to count grains or seeds spilled upon the ground, preventing them from wreaking havoc. A sphinx is a deadly guardian capable of destroying all trespassers—except for those who answer a challenging riddle. The original basilisk of Pliny the Elder was said to be fatally weakened by the odor of a common weasel. Creating a puzzle or a secret for a monster is a great story hook, revealing a creature’s vulnerabilities and providing the characters with a tangible reward as they gain some measure of control over the monster. UNIVERSAL FEARS Many monsters of myth and legend originated in the primal fears that kept our forebears huddled together in the dark of night or around the evolutionary leap forward that was the campfire. Even today, we often gravitate toward fiction whose antagonists—fantasy or otherwise— tap into those archetypal terrors. So when thinking about new monsters, you can keep in mind any of the following fundamental human(oid) fears as an origin point. (Content warning: As indicated by their titles, some of the following examples deal with themes that might be upsetting.)

118 DEATH AS THE END A fear of death is well understood and shared by most people. But that fear changes within the context of a game in which the more powerful the characters, the more likely they can treat death less as a final end to the journey of life, and more as a momentary detour to be overcome with magic and heirloom jewelry. As such, monsters in the game who have the ability to kill characters outright, leaving no chance of being raised or resurrected, pack a powerful punch that can let the characters truly share in the fear of death their players understand. BEING EATEN ALIVE One of the most horrific understandings that comes of observing nature in all its splendor and glory is the idea of how many animals come to their end inside other animals, consumed while still conscious, their last terrified awareness focused on their own inescapable demise. Monsters who have attacks allowing them to engulf characters or swallow them whole hit that primal fear hard, and can create truly horrific moments in a campaign. BLOOD AND LIFE Even before humans began to collate the earliest concepts of medicine and physiology, blood was seen as a precious commodity linked inextricably to the power of life. Creatures who drink blood have long been a mainstay of folklore, including vampires, demons, and evil spirits whose tales of exsanguination have existed since antiquity and can be found in countless cultures. In a game in which a character’s combat health is measured in hit points, a monster who drains blood or steals life force in other ways—reducing a character’s hit point maximum, reducing their Strength, and so forth—makes a formidable threat, with heroes forced to watch helplessly as their vitality and essence is drained away. LOSS OF IDENTITY The fear of being replaced and having one’s life taken over by another creature, whether evil shapeshifter or capricious changeling, is deeply connected to psychology and the concept of ego. This fear can work in two directions, causing characters to dread the thought of another creature stealing the thoughts, memories, and appearance that define them—as well as creating paranoia in those characters if they have reason to believe that a loved one or ally has already succumbed to that fate. LOSS OF AUTONOMY Losing one’s personal autonomy by succumbing to physical or mental helplessness, or by having the ability to make choices taken away, is a powerful fear for many people. As such, monsters who can shut down a character’s physical responses by immobilizing them, wreck their mental faculties by making it impossible to reason or assess the world, or take away their ability to act through mind control make powerful foes. Such creatures must be handled carefully, however, given the importance of character agency to the game. Character agency is the idea that players should always be able to make free, meaningful choices for their characters, and taking away those choices can drastically undermine the fun of a game. (This fear is thus one that can frustrate and anger players almost as much as it frustrates and angers their characters.) When monsters establish the kind of control that takes away a character’s purpose, it’s good to keep that control short term, and to give characters plenty of chances to break that control. If you ever find that repeated saving throws or the other regular mechanics of the game aren’t enough, you can think about options such as letting a character choose to take 1d8 psychic damage per two levels to end charm or domination effects. You can also have a monster control only some of a character’s actions, leaving the character free to act independently some of the time. TALK TO THE PLAYERS When thinking about these or any other personal fears as grist for your campaign story mill, it’s a great idea to talk to your players in a session 0 or an in-game checkin to make sure the fear you want to make use of isn’t something one or more players will find problematic. (Information on using safety tools in your game can be found in The Lazy DM’s Companion, and many places online.) Additionally, one universal fear to be wary of is the fear of “the other” that lies at the root of many myths and legends of the real world, and which has long fed imperialist and colonialist narratives. “Anticolonial Play” on page 119 has some thoughts on that particular trope and how to avoid having it undercut your game. MODERN FOLKLORE The history of D&D and its monsters often connects to old folktales and lore, but players and GMs today are all swimming in our own modern folklore. Movies, TV shows, books and comics, video games—all these entertainments can flood our minds with ideas for cool monsters to drop into our games. And as a bonus, many recent fictional works break away from the typical Eurocentric and male-dominated forms of fiction and lore that inspired many of the traditional monsters of D&D. As DMs and GMs, we can take our inspiration from all around us, including traditional folklore, modern fiction, real-world history, and current events. And when we do, we can easily combine inspiration to create a wholly new take. Vampire folklore goes back thousands of years, and yet we continually come up with new takes on those awesome creatures. Spacefaring vampires, good-guy vampires, vampire gunslingers, vampire governments—there’s no end to the mash-ups. So whether you’re diving back into lore from two thousand years ago or the latest episode of your favorite TV or online series, take your ideas from everywhere and use them to build the coolest monsters your players have ever seen.

119 ANTICOLONIAL PLAY In any family tree tracing out the evolution of modern fantasy roleplaying games, the source of that hierarchy isn’t a roleplaying game at all. Tabletop miniatures wargaming was the forebear of fantasy roleplaying in its earliest forms. In fact, the primal edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game made the explicit assumption that new players were already wargamers, and would automatically understand the lexicon and context of those games. Some fifty years later, D&D and other 5e fantasy games would be all but unrecognizable to the players of the game in its first wargame-adjacent incarnation. But despite that, the DNA of all the editions that led to 5e still lingers in the game’s rules and its worldview. And that worldview holds a starkly colonialist view of the relationships between the game’s heroes and too many of the other sapient peoples—humanoids and other creatures with intelligence, awareness, language, and culture—who often play the part of the game’s foes. The ongoing legacy of colonialism is the foundation of a great deal of what’s wrong with the world—and a book like this is clearly not the venue to try to fix what’s wrong with the world. However, as gamers, we can, should, and must think about how our experience of the real world feeds into the worlds we create together. We need to understand the ways in which the traditions of colonialism hardwired into common culture and media can easily make us embrace potentially hurtful ideas even without meaning to. A PROBLEM WORTH FIXING The topic of colonialism in fantasy gaming deserves far more discussion that any one section of a monster book can bring to bear. The sidebars in this section dig in just a little bit to the starting points of colonialist thought and its pervasiveness in the real world. But even those brief discussions aren’t the real point of us wanting to talk about decolonizing monsters in Forge of Foes. We want to have this discussion because being aware of and rejecting colonialist ideals in our fantasy roleplaying games makes those games better. Because the more interesting you make the peoples and sapient creatures of your world and their place in that world, the more interesting your story. And because in the end, building better stories with the help of a new perspective doesn’t take any more effort than building the same old stories that fantasy gaming has been working with for the past fifty years. A CHECKLIST FOR BETTER STORIES The point of this section isn’t to figure out how to fix colonialist thinking in the real world, as much as we’d all like to. It’s about acknowledging how the harmful roots of that worldview (talked about in the “Colonialism: The Short Version” sidebar) have long been a part of fantasy roleplaying, and the ongoing problems created by a pervasive “it’s just a game” moral setup in RPGs (talked about in the “Othering” sidebar below). Those deep historical faults at the heart of the games we love make for tired, derivative storytelling. But by keeping a handful of course corrections in mind, we can move away from those old faults as we build better game worlds: • Avoid monolithic ancestry cultures (“All elves/dwarves/ orcs are the same”) in favor of a broader cultural worldview. • Use ancestries as adjectives (“Gnoll bandits are attacking villages,” rather than “Gnolls are attacking villages”) to avoid forcing narrow morality onto sapient creatures. • Focus on villainy as a choice, not a biological or cultural imperative. • Avoid the trap of perceiving civilization from a single viewpoint (usually “Settled lands = civilized lands,” so that everywhere else is uncivilized). • Understand and move away from the trope of heroic characters as the saviors of “lesser” folk. • Make use of cultural inspirations from reliable sources, with the aim of centering other cultures and perspectives from a position of respect. The sections that follow explore this checklist in greater detail. Ultimately, none of the thoughts and suggestions presented here are anything like a complete fix for the harmful colonialist legacy of fantasy roleplaying, with COLONIALISM: THE SHORT VERSION Colonialism is a topic far too broad to be properly summed up in this or any other short treatise. But in a nutshell: The history of our modern age has been defined by specific groups of people laying claim to the entire world over centuries of exploration—and not caring that the rest of the world had other peoples living in it at the time. The history of colonialism is a history of conflict and warfare. Of groups clashing over control of wealth and natural resources. Of one group of people raiding into and claiming lands not their own, and treating the lives and livelihoods of folk living in those lands as plunder. And if any of the above sounds vaguely similar to any fantasy RPG you’ve ever played, you might get a sense of the problem. At its heart, every fantasy roleplaying game tells a story. Our stories take place in specific worlds, and often explore a lot of the negative aspects of those worlds in the course of showing off the best parts of those worlds. All heroes need evil to fight against, after all. But colonialism needs to be treated differently than many of the other negative aspects of our game narratives, because the harm of unexamined colonialism can hurt players and the people near them in very real ways. For many of us, the story of the game takes place entirely in our imaginations—both the good and the bad. But for just as many players, the bad aspects of a game’s narrative are made real in their own experiences, every day of their lives. For many of us, the stories of heroism and adventure we know best are stories of colonialism—and being aware of how colonialism in a game can harm others who play the game is the first step in addressing that harm.

120 OTHERING The earliest versions of D&D worked on the assumption that the world of the game was one in which sophisticated humans and demi-humans (to use the parlance of the original edition— elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and so forth) were locked into perpetual conflict with other peoples. Orcs and goblins, kobolds and lizardfolk, hobgoblins, bugbears, and more were the evil enemy, to be fought alongside more monstrous foes such as dragons, aberrations, and the undead. When one group of people—whether in our game worlds or in the real world—reduces another group of people to the status of default enemies, that’s a process called “othering.” As the name suggests, othering is about defining differences between ourselves and other people that allow us to eventually view those people as wholly different from ourselves. As less than us, deserving only of contempt and violence. As sometimes not even people at all. Unsurprisingly, othering plays a huge part in colonialist thinking, creating a mindset that allows one group of people to see other people merely as obstacles to be overcome on the path to conquest and control by way of conflict. Equally unsurprisingly, othering is the first order of business in warfare—and in the wargames that were inspired by the conflicts of history, originally created as a tool to teach the strategies of conflict and colonialism to European army officers. When playing a miniatures tactical skirmish a game, a player doesn’t think about the morality involved in attacking, defeating, and killing enemies on the other side. It’s just a game, after all. And as the earliest versions of fantasy roleplaying gaming evolved from wargaming, that “it’s just a game” sense of not caring about the morality of fighting and killing sapient humanoid peoples was locked in. It established a narrative baseline for fantasy RPGs that was rooted in othering. And so the idea that whole cultures of sapient humanoids can be painted as irredeemably evil has lingered within fantasy games, even fifty years and more than five editions of D&D later. that task sitting firmly in the hands of the designers working on 5e D&D and other modern fantasy games. But these are just some of the things we can do as GMs to help address that legacy—and to build better worlds and adventures as a result. BEWARE MONOLITHIC THINKING Though it’s part of a much broader conversation about culture in fiction, the idea of monolithic culture in fantasy owes a lot to the world-building of J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, which has long provided a bedrock foundation for fantasy fiction and RPGs. Monolithic culture is the idea that all members of a particular ancestry share a consistent set of outlooks, ideals, and behavior—to the point where any member of an ancestry who doesn’t show off their people’s acknowledged traits might be treated as abnormal. Even in fictions where that approach makes solid narrative sense and has benign intent (as with the elves and dwarves of The Lord of the Rings), monolithic culture can only ever tell a single story—and the best fantasy RPG campaigns tell stories in multitudes. We don’t have to look far to find monolithic culture in our games, as that concept is baked into the selection of ancestry that’s been front and center in every D&D Player’s Handbook, and in many of the games D&D has inspired. Our first entry point into the world of the game tells us that all dwarves are bonded by mining and forge craft, clan ties, and a hatred of specific other ancestries. All elves are lovers of art and nature, aloof and distant, detached and vengeful. All orcs are shaped by barbarism and fury, embracing violence as a first resort. As a steppingstone into roleplaying, monolithic culture serves a purpose. By focusing on common archetypes, players can quickly grasp the familiar feel of their elf wizard, their dwarf cleric, or their orc barbarian, and can start off with a useful sense of how their character fits into and views the world. But the line between archetypes and stereotypes is razor thin. And especially when the negative stereotypes of an in-game ancestry show stark and hurtful parallels to the stereotypes used for generations to attack the people of marginalized communities, the fantasy of the game gains the potential for harm. ANCESTRIES AS ADJECTIVES Instead of treating ancestries as nouns in the world of your game, and inevitably making use of the “all X are Y” trope created by monolithic thinking, think of ancestries as adjectives. An ancestry should be used to give flavor to conflict, not to define conflict across the board. One of the most standard adventure hooks in fantasy games goes something like this. “Goblins are attacking the village! The characters need to help!” It’s a straightforward setup. It’s fun. But as written, it embraces the explicit idea that the goblins are attacking the village simply because that’s what goblins do. So when that hook comes to mind or appears in a published adventure, put yourself in the frame of mind that attacking villages isn’t what goblins do across the board—then figure out what kinds of goblins might engage in that sort of behavior. For example: Goblin cultists are attacking the village. Or goblin bandits are attacking the village. Goblin refugees are attacking the village. Goblin men’s-rightsactivists are attacking the village. Any of these alternative scenarios sets up the same basic adventure—but in these other scenarios, goblins aren’t the noun. They aren’t the agents of conflict simply because they exist to create conflict. Rather, they’re the adjective giving more context to who the agents of conflict are, and letting you explore the story of why they’ve embraced conflict as a choice. Why are cultists or bandits or refugees or MRA activists attacking a village? You can probably come up with any number of good reasons on which you can hang a solid

JACKIE MUSTO 121 story. But none of those reasons have to revolve around the weak idea of: “Because that’s the way they are.” THE GANG’S ALL HERE As an additional side benefit, thinking of ancestries as adjectives makes it easier to move away from the habit of forging threats in homogenous groups. If all goblins aren’t sneaky thieves and reavers by biological or cultural necessity, maybe a goblin bandit gang in a published adventure consists of ne’er-do-wells from different ancestries led by a goblin? Or maybe a group of goblins looking for easy money have been seduced into a life of crime by a duplicitous dwarf con artist? In every way, moving your game away from the archetypes that feed stereotypes makes for better story. BUT I JUST WANT BAD GUYS TO FIGHT! When shaping heroic story, it’s a given that the heroes need to do heroic things. And if the story of your campaign involves conflict between different peoples, different kingdoms, different territories, different clans, it’s perfectly reasonable to want to make use of the wide range of creatures in the game as anchors for that conflict. (If that wasn’t the case, a lot of the rest of this book would be a waste of your time.) Nothing in this section is meant to make you stop using orcs, hobgoblins, giants, and other sapient folk as foes. But when you do, just ask yourself: “What is it that’s making these orcs, these hobgoblins, these bugbears, these giants, these hags drive the conflict?” And look for an answer more interesting than: “Because they’re evil.” Asking and answering that question lets us establish a more level playing field between the sapient creatures who fill the world of our games. You can move away from the notion that orcs, goblins, kobolds, giants, duergar, drow, hags, troglodytes, ogres, doppelgangers, and all the rest of the wide range of sapient creatures in the game are specifically prone to warmongering, casual violence, betrayal, humanoid sacrifice, and any of the other elements on your adventure-hook-conflict checklist. As GMs, we can move away from the idea that certain types of sapient creatures exist only as fodder for conflict. Rather than treating specific groups of sapient creatures as inherently violent and defined by the combat tactics hardwired into their ancestry traits and stat blocks, you can establish that those folk are no more likely to be violent or aggressive than the player characters and their own peoples. But if and when orcs, giants, goblins, doppelgangers, hags, and more are pushed to conflict, their combat tactics define the specific and different ways in which those foes will mess the characters up. LET JUSTICE BE DONE Consistent with the morality of their wargame roots, earlier editions of D&D made it very clear that the player characters were the arbiters of frontier justice in the game world. When evil arises, heroes are meant to deal with it, acting as judge, jury, and all-too-often executioner. Even in the 5e rules, it remains easier to kill a foe than to safely neutralize them while letting them live. Thankfully, not every combat in the game needs to be a fight to the death (as talked about in “Exit Strategies” on page 91, and “On Morale and Running Away” on page 125). However, many gaming groups—not to mention many published adventures—struggle with the idea of what the characters should do when a group of foes are left alive at the end of a fight. It’s a problem that becomes an even bigger problem in campaigns where every member of a specific ancestry is intrinsically amoral, creating the narratively grotesque idea that good characters should feel compelled to kill evil humanoids just because. YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO Mike, always seeking a lazy approach, likes to shake up monolithic thinking by changing the game’s traditionally ancestry-focused motivations into paths one chooses to follow. If hobgoblins are raiding nearby trade roads, it’s never just hobgoblins. It’s hobgoblin cultists of Krasar, demon prince of war and bloodshed. Mike also likes to provide a juxtaposition when making use of members of an ancestry traditionally coded as “evil” in the game by showing off explicitly good members of that ancestry. Those orcs of Thrasix might be a bunch of jerks, sure. But those orc paladins of Vorn? They’re good-hearted protectors of the land.

122 It’s quite telling that in so much fantasy world-building, the fictional justice system looks an awful lot like the worst parts of our broken real-world justice systems. Corrupt city guards looking out only for themselves. Robin Hood-style sheriffs brutalizing the people of vulnerable communities. So in the world of fantasy that you and your players create, don’t be afraid to engage in the ultimate fantasy of real justice for the people of your campaign. In settled lands, you can establish that the law functions along real lines of fairness, impartiality, and restitutionbased justice. Though if you do, be aware that for some players, that might look like an attempt to sugar-coat or mythologize real-world justice systems—and that many people have experienced trauma within those systems, making that topic a good one to discuss with safety tools in mind. (Information on using safety tools in your game can be found in The Lazy DM’s Companion, and many places online.) A better approach is to make use of the characters’ status as larger-than-life heroes to try to redress harm done in the world in ways that center the specific needs of the harmed. Then when the characters allow the bandits to surrender to them, or take a bunch of rankand-file cultists into custody after dispensing with their depraved and evil-by-choice leadership, you can let the players and characters alike work through the process of shaping restitution for victims, and convincing defeated wrongdoers to chart a new path in life. Being thoroughly thrashed in combat and then shown mercy can be a powerful and life-changing event for any sapient creature or NPC—particularly one whose life of hardship has been lacking in mercy. THE CIVILIZING DIVIDE The first incarnation of D&D made it clear that the baseline world of the game was a battleground between the forces of chaos and law, barbarism and civilization. As story tropes go, that archetypal clash between the solidity of civilization and forces dedicated to destruction and anarchy is pretty potent. But the concept of “civilization” at the center of that trope is straight from the colonialism playbook. It’s said that history is written by the victors—and when those victors write history, they’re usually quick to slap the “civilized” label onto their own side. It’s always been this way, whether we’re talking about the oldest historical conflicts, the world-changing wars of the modern age, or the less subtle but equally destructive cultural warfare that colonialism epitomizes. The root of the word “civilization” connects to the concept of living in towns and cities. But when those of us who’ve grown up unwittingly steeped in colonialist thought use the term, that’s usually not what we mean. We talk of civilized lands in our fantasy, and of characters dwelling among civilized folk, and of adventurers passing beyond the boundaries of civilization. And when we do so, we should ask ourselves: What are we actually saying? When defining the world of our games, we can create settled lands, filled with permanent farmsteads, villages, towns, and cities. We can shape wilderness, sparsely populated and filled with peril. We can talk about peoples and creatures who live in nomadic settlements, or who live under a tight code of law, or who are fiercely independent. But when we use the word “civilized” rather than “settled” to exclusively describe lands dotted by permanent towns and cities, we’re implicitly describing nomadic cultures as uncivilized. When we talk about the record of civilization being the written annals of a particular culture or ancestry, that can easily be heard as saying that histories recorded in story or song are the mark of less-civilized cultures. A conflict between a settled agrarian nation and a land of wilderness nomads could be a great setup for a campaign story. But avoiding the use of “civilization” to describe only the settled nation lets you easily make it clear that both lands are equally civilized with respect to their own specific cultures and histories. BARBARIAN RHAPSODY The other side of the “civilized” coin is the millennialong trope of labeling different groups of people with BIOESSENTIALISM “Bioessentialism” is a word that’s never appeared in any edition of D&D. But it’s the concept that underpins the game’s original colonialist worldview, and thus has been present in fantasy gaming, unnamed and unseen, since the beginning. Short for “biological essentialism,” it’s the idea that the core traits and behaviors of certain sapient peoples and creatures are biologically hardwired in—and as a result, can’t be changed by intent or will. For centuries, bioessentialism has been a foundational component of bigotry, racism, and dehumanizing behavior in the real world. But even as most people are quick to understand how abhorrent and wrong such beliefs in the real world are, putting a fantasy spin on it can make bioessentialism far too palatable in fiction and roleplaying games. The most obvious aspect of bioessentialism in fantasy games is ability score modifiers and suggested alignments based on ancestry, which once shoehorned characters into specific archetypal tropes. Dour, lawful, and hard-drinking dwarves with robust Constitution and penalized Charisma. Fragile and chaotic elves with heightened Dexterity and lowerthan-average Constitution. Half-orc characters established at character creation as strong, dull, and crude (as the third edition Player’s Handbook put it), and tending toward evil, with a bonus to Strength and a penalty to Intelligence and Charisma. Thankfully, ability score penalties disappeared before the release of 5e, and the current rules detach ability modifiers from a character’s ancestry altogether. But the idea of locking in behavior and morality for all creatures of a specific ancestry or type remains a problem in the representation of sapient creatures as potential foes on the GM’s side of the game.

123 descriptives such as “barbaric.” As many players are aware, 5e fantasy roleplaying and the many other games descended from D&D are somewhat unique in having a character class—the barbarian—named after what was originally an Ancient Greek cultural slur. But much more recently—and much more importantly—“barbaric” and similar terms have been used as epithets to harm the members of marginalized groups, and to reinforce the divide between colonizing peoples and the victims of colonialism. As with “civilized,” if the word “barbaric” ever comes to mind when describing a group of humanoids or other sapient creatures in your game, ask yourself what you actually mean by that. When looking for words to replace “barbaric” when talking about the worst behaviors sapient creatures can engage in—humanoid sacrifice, ritual murder, genocide, cannibalism, or what have you—“evil” remains a solid go-to. “Brutal” and “ruthless” are equally apt, with all three terms implying that a conscious choice underlies malevolent behavior. But if you’re instead talking about a more general mode, conduct, or worldview that clearly doesn’t push into evil territory, treat that as a sign that “barbaric” is a word to avoid. A group of nomadic peoples might live by a code of law whose unforgiving nature is viewed as a reflection of their harsh lives in the wilderness. But describing that code as barbaric creates an explicit contrast with the codes of other folk—and a sense that those other folk are morally or culturally superior. AVOIDING THE SAVIOR COMPLEX A trope as old as fiction itself, the savior complex refers to a narrative in which a group of people (or, in the case of a fantasy roleplaying game, any group of sapient creatures) faces significant peril—and is saved from that peril not by their own actions, but by the actions of another group of creatures. The savior complex is rooted deep in real-world colonialism, which was built for centuries on the idea that the peoples subjected to colonial conquest and cultural destruction were being “saved” by the beneficent actions of superior peoples and cultures. A common trope in the game involves the player characters stepping up to help NPCs unable to defend themselves. It’s a workable (if overworked) campaign hook. But be careful that the hook doesn’t cross over into savior-complex territory by having the NPCs’ inability to properly defend themselves revolve around their having a “less advanced” culture or worldview than that of the characters. Most of the time, a better option for that particular hook involves the people in trouble being able to take care of themselves, then having the characters’ presence solidify that capability, rather than standing in for it wholesale. Also a good idea is thinking about what things the locals are actually better at than the characters, making it clear that needing aid against exceptional threats isn’t a one-note sign of inferiority. Work toward having the characters and the NPCs as natural allies and equals, with each possessing assets and knowledge that allow them to create a stronger presence standing together than standing apart. CULTURAL INSPIRATION IN YOUR GAME Stories and lore from cultures not our own can be fascinating because of their newness. Our familiarity with the tales and literature of our own cultures can make those things feel too familiar, so that the tales, literature, art, and legends of other cultures feel like a breath of fresh air. But that becomes a problem when our experience of and exposure to other cultures doesn’t come from reliable and authentic sources. Seeking out reliable voices talking about cultures not your own is a great way to explore those cultures. Libraries, bookstores, and the Internet are full of histories, books of mythology and legend, and other sources of cultural inspiration written by people within those cultures. And there are an increasing number of fantasy RPG campaign settings and player supplements based on real-world cultures and created by designers, illustrators, and others with concrete connections to those cultures. As a bonus, many such authentic game works present great advice on how players who aren’t part of a particular real-world culture can approach using fantasy tropes built from that culture. But if you’re working on your own to make use of real-world inspiration, you can follow the basic advice those game works often lay down—be respectful of the cultures you want to explore in your games. Don’t portray their peoples or traditions as exotic. Avoid the harm inherent in othering and treating new cultures as less advanced or less civilized than your game’s dominant cultures. Establishing a baseline of respect grants you a better viewpoint into the process of translating real-world culture into fantasy, and lets you tell richer campaign stories as a result. HARDWIRED FOR EVIL Beyond baseline bioessentialism (as talked about in that sidebar), fantasy also engages in something we might call “theist-essentialism”—the idea that the traits of humanoids and other sapient creatures are instilled in them by their creator gods. Often, this feeds neutral stereotypes such as the dwarves’ love of stone and mountain, or the elves’ fascination with magic and nature. Other times, the effect is much less benign. With this trope on display, it’s not the case that orcs and bugbears and kobolds are biologically predisposed toward violence or trickery or evil. Rather, that’s just the way their violent, conniving, and evil gods made them. But whether named, renamed, or unnamed, this is effectively the same bioessentialist idea that an entire group of sapient people are compelled to evil. It defines whole cultures of sapient beings as having a single mode of thought, a single morality, and a single goal. And it drives the same wedge of flat, harmful narrative into the heart of any game.

124 RUNNING EASY MONSTERS Many GMs like to run a string of hard battles, one right after the other. For them, running easy monsters is a waste of time. It takes too long to set up an encounter that won’t last more than a round or two, and easy battles bore players. This section offers a few arguments against this point of view, and a number of recommendations to get the most fun out of running easy monsters. SHOWING A LIVING WORLD The monsters in a typical fantasy world don’t suddenly all become more challenging each time the party gains a new level. No doubt, the characters journey to new locations with deadlier foes as their adventures take them to places appropriate for their station in the world. But that world remains filled with countless monsters less powerful than the characters. Bandits are plentiful. Liches, not so much. As such, it doesn’t make sense that every group of hostile entities the party faces happens to be a perfectly balanced group of five to eight foes of the appropriate CR, designed to last exactly 3 rounds in an exciting fight. When 2nd-level characters go into a seedy tavern, it’s entirely plausible for them to find a bandit captain leading a bunch of drunken bandits at the bar. But it doesn’t make sense to find the same bar filled only with bandit captains when the characters come back at 8th level, unless there’s a bandit captain-convention in town. When the characters run into monsters weaker than they are, it reinforces the idea that they dwell in a large, living world—one that doesn’t shift its whole ecology and social structure just because the characters gained a level. SHOW OFF CHARACTER GROWTH Running easy encounters also lets the players see the growth of their characters. Players are likely to remember how hard an ogre was when the characters were 2nd level—but now they’re fighting eight of the brutes at 13th level and wiping the floor with them. Few things are more rewarding than casting fireball into a group of evil monsters and knowing none of them will survive, even if they make their saving throws. Fighting weak foes lets the players truly enjoy how powerful their characters have become. (And as the number of those weak foes grows, “Running Minions and Hordes,” page 54, has lots of advice for keeping combat moving.) CHOICES OTHER THAN COMBAT When a group of 7th-level characters are stopped by two overconfident CR 1/8 bandits, a lot of things can happen. Sure, the characters can easily dispatch the pair. But they could just as easily persuade them to step aside. The characters might interrogate them to find out who they’re working with. They might recognize the bandits as scouts and sneak around them to avoid alerting a larger band of brigands. How high-powered characters approach two bandits can tell you a lot about those characters. What motivates them? What do they do when facing clearly surmountable foes? How do they treat people weaker than they are? So instead of thinking of every situation in the game as a combat encounter, let these kinds of easy confrontations tie into all three pillars of the game, with sneaking, talking, or fighting driving exploration, roleplaying, and combat. COMBAT IN THEATER OF THE MIND The common argument that easy battles take too much time often comes from a requirement to set up battle maps with tokens or miniatures. Drawing maps in person or finding the right map for online play takes time, as does finding the right tokens or minis. Who wants to do that for a battle against two bandits? For quick, off-the-cuff battles against weaker foes, a generic battle map and some generic tokens work well. But running easy battles is also the perfect time to use “theater of the mind” play—running combat without maps or miniatures. In theater-of-the-mind combat, the GM describes the situation, the players describe what they want to do, and the GM adjudicates what happens as a result. (“Running Monsters in the Theater of the Mind” on page 47 talks about this process in detail.) In a clearly easy battle, players don’t need to worry about optimizing positioning to make the most of their combat features. Because it doesn’t really matter where the bandits are or who they’re next to if a single hit can take them out. EASY AND HARD BATTLES Though easy battles are fun, many easy battles can become boring—just as too many hard battles can come to feel frustrating and tiring. As such, you want to always switch things up between easy battles and hard battles as you run your adventures. By improvising encounters— choosing the number and types of monsters during play— you can easily craft easy, medium, and hard battles as the game unfolds. Don’t let the cycle of such battles become a pattern, though. You don’t want only easy battles always followed by hard battles, and so on. (“Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge” on page 67 and “The Lazy Encounter Benchmark” on page 70 both provide guidance for encounter building.)

DANNY PAVLOV 125 ON MORALE AND RUNNING AWAY Our games often feature situations in which one or more monsters would flee from the characters given the opportunity. At other times, it’s the characters facing an overwhelming challenge who would like to run away, or characters with the upper hand wanting to convince a group of bandits to throw down their swords and surrender. Novels and movies are full of these kinds of scenes, where the villains or the heroes get to flee the fight and return another day. Unfortunately, the rules of 5e don’t support these scenarios the way we might picture them in our minds. But by being aware of the factors that often prevent these scenarios from working, we can create a framework to handle them. MORALE The concept of morale comes from the military games that preceded roleplaying games. As a battle wore on, the chance increased that one side would break and run, and it was perfectly acceptable for dice to decide this. Early editions of Dungeons & Dragons implemented morale using a single die roll. Later editions used checks and tables, often tending toward overly complex solutions. Fifth edition D&D returned to a simpler approach to morale, but one that still rests on a single saving throw. Ultimately, both the simple and the complex die-roll approaches can feel more like a game and less like a story. Rolling to see whether foes surrender or run doesn’t necessarily fit the narrative of who those foes are and the purpose they play in the campaign. The players might also be having fun with an encounter, so that you don’t want the battle to be over just yet even if the dice say so. A morale check can often feel like a coin toss. Roll high, and enemies fight to the death. Roll low, and they surrender or flee. But what makes sense for the creatures and the situation? What would be the most fun for the game? These questions are ignored when morale is determined by simply rolling a die. MONSTERS FLEEING Sometimes it makes sense for a foe to flee combat. At other times, you might feel that the story should result in an enemy getting away. This is especially true of key villains, who might need to escape so they can show up in a later scene. Unfortunately for their enemies, though, the characters usually have multiple means to prevent fleeing. Spells can immobilize or slow. Magic or class features might allow a character to easily catch up to a fleeing monster. Once a foe is hindered or grappled, that buys enough time for the whole party to gang up on them, and that foe is defeated. If it happens every now and then, that’s fine. But all the time? Not cool. CHARACTERS FLEEING When the tide of battle turns against the characters, players often resist fleeing because doing so feels like defeat. By the time players finally agree to start running away, their characters are usually in bad shape. When it comes to characters fleeing, initiative is a key problem. One character might start to retreat, even as others stay behind to try to accomplish a goal such as retrieving a valuable item, or to buy time. This effectively splits the party, and anyone still in the encounter is now both injured and outnumbered. If one character drops, the characters who retreated might try to return to the encounter to save them—and suddenly you have a frustrating total-party-kill scenario on your hands. Even if all characters can leave an encounter area, in an environment such as a dungeon, it might be unclear how easily the characters can elude the monsters coming after them or reach a place of refuge. Initiative works against the characters once again, because if they can move and dash, so can the monsters. A FRAMEWORK FOR HANDLING MORALE The key problem with making checks for morale is that the check is often abstract, failing to represent the situation at hand in a tangible fashion tied to the story. Even with complex tables adjusting for various factors, the

126 dice make the result too unpredictable. But we can instead lean into the story as follows. UNDERSTAND THE MONSTERS Before the encounter begins, review monster lore and stat blocks as you consider the story of the encounter. What goals do the monsters have? What motivates them? What’s the role they play in the story? One foe might fear their boss villain overlord too much to surrender, while another might gladly surrender or flee. By understanding the foes, you’re prepared to react to the characters and the encounter. UNDERSTAND THE CHARACTERS During the encounter, listen to what the characters are saying and evaluate what they’re doing. Are they communicating with their enemies? Are they offering a truce or promising only death? Those enemies will react to the characters based on their motives and mannerisms. ASSESS THE PLAYERS Separate from how the characters might be feeling, assess whether the players want the battle to continue longer and end through combat. Are they looking forward to pushing their fun combat capabilities to the limit? Or do they have broader motivations such as learning the boss villain’s location or plans? Even if the monsters offer to surrender, you don’t want to force that option on the players if it isn’t welcome. PROVIDE CUES If the motivation of foes would lead to surrender, those foes can provide cues to indicate that. A boss villain might glance nervously at the exit, or a once-confident monster could look clearly overwhelmed. You can express such details outright, or have the characters attempt easy Wisdom (Insight) checks to note them. REACT AND ADJUST Over the next round or two, have the monsters react to what the characters do, playing off that to further facilitate a surrender. For example, a character might see how nervous the monsters are and demand that they stand down. The monsters might respond by asking for coin. The characters choose to intimidate, so you improvise an easy DC, or ask a player to roleplay the scenario and have the foes react to that. You also adjust as you continue to read the players. If they see enemies offering to surrender but prefer combat, so be it. Likewise, if the players express interest in negotiation, you can switch out of initiative and jump into a more narrative mode of play to let each side state their demands. Combat can resume if negotiations break down. Assessing what the participants want and allowing monsters and characters to provide each other with cues enables morale to become a tangible part of the narrative. This lets you move away from the on-off switch of a die roll and instead allow morale to become a full part of the story developed in concert with the players. A FRAMEWORK FOR RUNNING AWAY A few exceptions in the game prove the rule that sees the initiative system make it all but impossible to flee from combat. A monster designed specifically for escape might be able to remain hidden and do so. If characters are smart and flee before they’re badly wounded and close to dropping, they might run away. (“Exit Strategies” on page 91 talks about planning ahead for ways to bring combat to a close.) In general, though, the characters have too many ways to stop one or two fleeing creatures in between each of those creatures’ turns, and wounded characters flee too slowly to withstand damage from pursuing foes. To counter this, we need to step away from typical initiative for fight-to-flight scenarios, making use of the following framework instead. ASSESS TIMING Ideally, you want to monitor an encounter for the cues that tell you the characters are facing a potential totalparty-kill scenario, or that a foe needs to flee. You can encourage characters to flee when needed by describing the overwhelming power and confidence of their foes. Likewise, you can monitor the monsters’ hit points so you don’t wait too long to enact their escape. REDUCING FRUSTRATION Mike notes a few tricks that can be used to help boss foes flee in ways that can feel more realistic and less like deus ex machina: • The boss was a simulacrum forged by the “real” boss. • The boss has a lich-like vessel holding their soul, which resurrects them somewhere else. • After defeat, the boss is dug up and resurrected by faithful cultists. • When the boss is mortally wounded, powerful magic or a special feature lets them teleport back to a sanctum, turn into mist and drift back to their lair, and so forth. • The defeated boss was one of many clones. Then once a boss flees, you can have any of their servant creatures—summoned monsters, created undead, bound fiends, constructs, and so forth—quit the fight as well. Some might simply fall apart or magically unravel, while others are drawn back to their original dimensional realms when the magic binding them expires. It’s a great easy out for a GM, especially if the characters have exhausted their resources pushing the boss to the point of flight but still have a huge pile of underlings to deal with.

127 MAKE AN IMPENDING TPK CLEAR Players usually know when their characters are having an easy time with monsters. But they often fail to realize that the characters are facing a total party kill, doubting the risk of such a scenario until long after you as the GM see it coming. As such, you need to make an impending TPK as clear to the players as it would be to their characters. You can call out a looming TPK descriptively, clarifying as a character is attacked that their foes have the upper hand and sense imminent victory. If that doesn’t work, you might need to be even clearer, telling the players that their characters recognize how the foes they face are stronger than the party, and that continuing to stand against them might mean the characters’ end. DEFINE OPPORTUNITIES Assessing the situation lets you identify any plausible means of escape. The capabilities of the creatures fleeing, their positioning, and the terrain around them can all be factors. For example, strong foes could shove furniture between themselves and the characters, blocking pursuit. A spellcaster might use a spell to impede a chase, to obscure the area, to set fire to vegetation or furnishings, or to cause a column or other heavy object to topple over. Foes might put noncombatants in the encounter area into danger, forcing the characters to deal with that threat instead of pursuing. PAUSE INITIATIVE When you know that either the characters or their foes are ready to flee, pause normal initiative. Let the players know that to resolve the scene, you’ll employ side initiative— an option presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide where each side (monsters and characters) takes a turn collectively. On each side’s turn, every member of that side acts in whatever order the players (for the characters) or the GM (for foes) chooses. The side initiating the escape goes first, after which the pursuers act. You can also forego initiative entirely, simply narrating the scene as you would an exploration or roleplaying scene. COMMUNICATE THE OPPORTUNITY Players can often be encouraged to develop a plan around getting out of combat, which you can help with. Alternatively, you might propose plans based on what the characters observe. If a number of foes are all standing under a platform, suggest that the characters can cause the platform to topple to buy themselves time to flee. If the terrain doesn’t offer clear opportunities, encourage the players to think through their characters’ capability to create illusions, obscure their enemies’ senses, or create distractions. Throwing a sack of gold might stop ogre mercenaries, and throwing rations will typically cause a ravenous beast to pause long enough for the characters to get a safe distance away. DETERMINE SUCCESS OR FAILURE An escape plan might simply work. The defenders in a goblin enclave could believe a tall tale that the characters were sent by their boss to test their readiness. Good job! Mercenaries or brigands might accept gold or magic as payment to stop fighting. Other plans might require successful checks, parting attacks, or spells to succeed. A Strength (Athletics) check or an attack with a slashing weapon could snap a rope, causing drapes to collapse on a group of guards. Failure might mean that escape is delayed or comes at a cost. Escape plans implemented by foes can be handled the same way. A villain sets a tavern on fire, and the characters must decide whether to save innocent people or go after their nemesis. It takes all the characters to put out the fire, so it’s an all-or-nothing decision. Alternatively, a hobgoblin war boss might need to make ability checks to swing across a pit, then cut the rope to prevent the characters from following. MITIGATE OR HARNESS FRUSTRATION Players often hate it when villains escape, especially if that escape feels arbitrary or forced upon them. But the frustration level can be reduced when the players understand clearly how the foe escaped, and especially if the characters made the hard choice to allow that escape so as to deal with a different threat. Whenever possible, work to channel the players’ potential frustration toward the villain and not you—and understand that when the heroes next meet the villain, they will absolutely want revenge. OPTIONAL CHASE If doing so feels realistic and fun, you can use the chase rules found in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide to play out a chase as one group of combatants flees from another. But such a chase should feel rewarding, rather than simply dragging the characters back into a combat that the players are ready to end. DESCRIBE SUCCESS OR RESUME COMBAT Successfully running away can be described in loose terms. Fleeing characters get away from their enemies, and can choose a safe location they want to reach. A foe can slip away, even as you let the players know that the characters haven’t seen the last of that foe. Alternatively, if an attempt to flee fails, combat resumes with the original initiative order. At your discretion, a different attempt to flee can be made, if that would be fun and if a new plan can be employed. And remember that for both sides in a fight, surrender is always an option—and usually a far better option than dying.

128 ABOUT THE AUTHORS This book comes from the minds and the partnership of Teos Abadía, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, and Mike Shea. With the combined experience of nearly a century’s worth of writing, designing, and running D&D and other fantasy RPGs, we all have lots to say about running monsters. All three of us have designed monsters for decades, working with publishers such as Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, MCDM, Ghostfire Gaming, Pelgrane Press, Sasquatch Game Studio, and many more. We’ve spent years living and breathing monsters and other foes—and we’re thrilled to be able to share that passion with you. TEOS ABADÍA Teos Abadía is a Colombian-American freelance author and developer working with Wizards of the Coast, Penny Arcade, MCDM, Hasbro, and others. Teos was a primary author on the Acquisitions Incorporated D&D book and on the vast Dungeon of Doom and Caverns Deep adventures for Dwarven Forge. Board game work includes the recent HeroQuest game relaunch. Teos shares knowledge and advocates for a healthier RPG industry as cohost of the Mastering Dungeons podcast, on his blog at Alphastream.org, and on Success in RPGs—a YouTube series helping creators identify what success in the RPG industry is like … and the concrete steps we can take towards achieving it. SCOTT FITZGERALD GRAY Scott Fitzgerald Gray (9th-level layabout, vindictive good) is a writer of fantasy and speculative fiction, a fiction editor, a story editor, and an RPG editor and designer—all of which means he finally has the job he really wanted when he was sixteen. His work in gaming covers three editions of Dungeons & Dragons, including working as an editor on all three 5e core rulebooks, and he’s the designer of the CORE20 RPG. Scott shares his life in the Western Canadian hinterland with a schoolteacher named Colleen, two itinerant daughters, and a number of animal companions and spirit guides. More info on him and his work can be found by reading between the lines at insaneangel.com. MICHAEL E. SHEA Mike Shea is the writer for the website Sly Flourish and the author of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM’s Workbook, the Lazy DM’s Companion, Fantastic Adventures, Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot, and a number of other books. Mike has freelanced for a bunch of RPG companies, including Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, Pelgrane Press, and MCDM. He’s been playing RPGs since the mid ’80s, and writing for and about RPGs since 2008. Mike also happens to be the son of Robert J. Shea, author of the ’70s cult science fiction novel Illuminatus! He lives with his wife Michelle in Northern Virginia, USA.