Today, I want to talk about something I have recently discovered, acquired, and fallen in love with: The Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes by Toes Abadía, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, and Michael Shea.
This is a book intended for use with Dungeons & Dragons and other 5e games. It’s full of monster building toolkits, encounter toolkits, and a ton of design philosophy and discussion.
Now, let me say right off, I have no connection to this book. I know Teos professionally, I’ve barely interacted with Michael online (maybe one or two exchanges on Discord), and I’ve not interacted with Scott at all (apologies if I have and don’t remember). The authors don’t know I’m writing this, and I get nothing out of endorsing this book, except the pleasure of sharing something worthwhile with other folks who might enjoy it. Also, truth be told, I only backed the project initially because Teos was supportive of my last Kickstarter, and I felt I should return the favor. I didn’t pay much attention to what it was, and I sort of had the idea it was another compendium of monsters which I didn’t need but didn’t mind supporting. (You can always have more monsters, right?) Then I got the PDF, flipped through it, realized what I’d purchased, got intrigued, started reading, got really intrigued, then immediately ordered the hardcover (for $20 more than I’d have paid if I’d bundled them initially. Always get the hardcover, folks!)
And wow was this book worth it!
This is a tome I’m going to want to keep on my desk next to me when I’m designing. And, in fact, I’ve already made use of some of its advice in the upcoming Banner of the Bull 1st level adventure that I’m working on as part of Kobold Press’ Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter. Let me go ahead and show you the cover (art by Jack Kaiser). Next I’ll talk about the contents below the image!
So, what pricked up my ears about Forge of Foes? The first thing was a chart on page 6, “Monster Statistic by Challenge Rating.” The intent is for DMs at the table to be able to reference the chart and make a monster on the fly. The columns on the chart are CR, Equivalent Character Level, AC/DC, Hit Points, Proficiency Ability Bonus, Damage Per Round, Number of Attacks, Damage Per Attack, Example 5e Monsters.
So let’s say I want to create monster from whole cloth in minutes to use in a game in progress. The monster I’ve got in my mind is a big mushy froggy looking thing with bat wings and a corrosive mucous spit attack. Let’s call it a Malodorous Muck Monster. I’ve got four 3rd level characters and I want this to be a tough fight, so I’ll make it CR 4. Now looking across the column, I know its Armor Class is 14, as is the save DC for any effects its attack causes. It’s got 84 hit points. It gets +6 to attacks. It makes two attacks for 14 (3d8+1) damage. If it needs to make any skill checks for abilities it might have, then it does that at +6. We’ll declare that it has a bite attack (piercing) and a spit attack for dealing acid damage, and we’re good to go.
Just with that one page open next to me I can make anything I need to and be running it in seconds.
Now, of course, if you were making a monster for publication, you wouldn’t take that (3d8 +1) damage at face value. You’d roll up ability scores and work the damage based on their ability bonus, etc… and make sure it matches (which in this case it did), but the suggestion of 28 damage per round across two attacks is there as a guide. And when you make your monster, you’re going to find that it usually falls neatly inside the suggested CR as per the CR calculations in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
But back on my Malodorous Muck Monster…. Maybe I want my MMM to be a little bit more interesting. Well, the very next page has “Common Monster Type Templates,” and proceeds to list new powers and traits tied to monster types. I think the Muck Monster is a monstrosity, so the book suggests it have high Constitution, and then high Strength or Dexterity (lets go with Dex), skills in Athletics, Perception, or Stealth (let’s take Stealth, since it hides in the muck, maybe), and we’ll add a swim speed and a fly speed. Now they suggest two special features “Devour Ally (Bonus Action)” and “Lingering Wound (Reaction, Recharge 6). Devour Ally fits with what seems like a Muck Monster seems to me so we’ll go with that.
We could be done there. But page 15 has a chapter called “Monster Powers” that lets you add traits to further fine tune your monster. Under the section “Plant and Poison” they have two suggestions for monsters plants, reptiles, and other foes who might be poisonous or venomous. I like “Poisonous Demise,” a death burst feature. So let’s add that. The feature causes the creature to explore in a poisonous burst when it’s reduced to 0 hit points. Creatures within 30 feet have to make a DEX save or take damage, in this case 2 + CR, which is a neat shorthand Forge of Foes uses often for making challenge rating appropriate damage. Our creature is malodorous so I’ve tweaked it from a spray to a cloud, and changed Dex save to a Con save. I’ll call it “Fetid Demise”to hammer home the smell.
Now I want to make the monster more presentable/pubishable, not for use just in the moment at the table, and I want to know what the rollable damage that gives me an average of 4 is. And let’s say I hate math and have never been good at working out average damage from rolling 3d12 or 6d10 + 5 whatever.
Page 38 has an amazing chart that I wish was in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (maybe it is but I don’t think so). You can cross reference the number of dice rolled with the type of dice and get the average damage. It’s so so so helpful to me.
So we add it all up, and using DMG’s Challenge Rating calculator, I get a CR of 3.5. We’ll let that Devour Ally bonus action bump us to 4, since it lets the monster regain some hit points but not as many as regeneration would. And here he is, our Malodorous Muck Monster ready to go:
Pretty amazing, no? I’d probably create some very low CR “muck spawn” so it can squat in a swarm of its own offspring and pick them off with its bonus action to be really gross and alien. And there we go: one monster! In maybe 5 minutes!
And there’s a ton more in the book worth looking at, including a section on “Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge” that lets you pick the number of players and their average level, and tells you what a hard challenge would be against 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, or 12 monsters of the same CR, or 1 Boss + 2 monsters, 1 Boss + 3 monsters, etc… It is incredibly useful for building boss fights. And there’s lots more encounter advice, different ways to calculate the difficulty of same, etc…
The final section on “Monster Discussion and Philosophy” has some filler, but more gems than not. I particularly enjoyed the section on “Anticolonial Play,” which is so masterfully articulate that I hope I have it on hand the next time I need to explain why “evil races” is a bad idea and can’t find the appropriate words.
The whole book is just good. In fact, this is the first time in a long while that I’ve bought an RPG book, then sat down and read it start to finish. I’ll be using it as a reference quite a bit in future, and, trust me, so will you!
You can pre-order the hardcover for Forge of Foes here (and get the PDF right now). Obviously, I recommend it.
I realize that the Devour Ally bonus action is unclear. I thought the Muck Monster would regain 3 x the CR of the creature it ate. But I think it just regains 3x it's own CR, so 12 hit points for each ally it ate. If I make Muck Spawn I'll probably make the amount the Muck Monster regains from eating them equal to their hit points, so 12 seems about right. We'll see. I'm inspired by a horrific video I saw of a mother crab going to town on her newly hatched offspring. Brrrr...yuck!
Alt text for the stat block:
Malodorous Muck Monster
Large monstrosity, unaligned
Armor Class 14
Hit Points 85 (10d10 + 30)
Speed 30 ft., fly 60 ft., swim 30 ft.
STR
11 (+0)
DEX
18 (+4)
CON
17 (+3)
INT
8 (-1)
WIS
11 (+0)
CHA
7 (-2)
Skills Stealth +6
Senses passive Perception 10
Languages —
Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)
Fetid Demise. When the muck monster is reduced to 0 hit points, it releases a cloud of poisonous gas. Each creature within 30 feet of it must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or take 4 (1d8) poison damage.
Actions
Multiattack. The muck monster makes two attacks.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (3d8 + 4) piercing damage.
Mucous Spray. Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (3d8 + 4) acid damage.
Bonus Actions
Devour Ally (Bonus Action). This creature swallows an allied creature who is within 5 feet of this creature and is smaller. This creature regains CR × 3 hit points and the devoured ally is reduced to 0 hit points.