If you have run D&D games for any length of time, you have probably run across a player who knows a lot about the monsters their PCs encounter. I have a player who knows how many HP a gnoll has, what a zombie’s AC is, how much damage a goblin boss does, and the CON save DC required to avoid mummy rot. My player isn’t being obnoxious, he loves monsters and naturally remembers their stats, how they behave, and how intelligent they are. He’s also a budding DM, so I don’t discourage his knowledge of creatures or his desire to learn more.
It does, however, create a problem. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a game-breaking problem, a campaign destroying problem, or a group-splitting-up problem. On the field of problems this is nothing more than an inconvenience. But it IS a problem none-the-less and, as such, needs to be dealt with appropriately.
There are many different solutions to this problem and I want to just mention some of them and provide examples and examine pitfalls.
Option 1: Buy Other Bestiaries
Premise: Purchasing creature books to which the players do not have access is the easiest direction to go.
Discussion: Of course there are the two official 5e D&D Wizards of the Coast releases other than the Monster Manual (Volo’s Guide to Monsters & Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes), but there are also multiple options from third party publishers that deserve mention. Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts and Creature Codex both rank high in quality and ease of use. The excellent Monsters of the Guild compilation on the DMsGuild features top notch designers. Cawood Publishing’s Monsters of Feyland and Monsters of the Underworld are both great products with thoughtful monster design. There are a multitude of other options available on DriveThruRPG and the DMsGuild, some of higher quality than others, and some at higher cost than others. And that brings up the two main barriers to this solution: Cost & Selection.
- The Problem with Cost: I’m not saying these designers don’t deserve to be paid for their work – on the contrary, if you have the money, throw it at them, they are working hard to make our games better! However, if you already shelled out $$ for the Monster Manual, maybe you don’t want to shell out more $$ for a new book.
- The Selection Problem: Searching for ‘Monster’ or ‘Bestiary’ on the two most well-known platforms (DTRPG & DMsGuild) brings up pages and pages of products. With so many choices how do you know which Bestiary to choose? Which one will fit your needs? Which includes well-designed, easy to use monsters? Which has only niche monsters? Which products have been play-tested? Which follow the standard 5e D&D statblock layout? And a multitude of other questions can be asked. So many products don’t have any reviews and that makes it impossible to know which to choose. (Aside: If you do choose to purchase/download a product from these platforms, do the designers and the prospective customers a solid and write a review of the product!)
Conclusion: This is a viable way to solve the initial problem, but it takes some $$ and some patience to make a good decision in this realm.
Option 2: Change up the Stats or Abilities of a Known Creature
Premise: Changing creature stats and/or abilities so that they don’t match what the players might think is an inexpensive answer to ‘new’ monsters.
Discussion: This IS a good choice if you put some thought into what you are changing about the creature and why you are changing a particular factor. This requires a lot of thought and some research and there are several choices to make. Here are some simple options you have:
- Reskin the Creature: Search for a creature of the same CR value and substitute it’s abilities into the creature that you are using. This is the most basic form of reskinning and it can be a fruitful way to quickly and easily create “more” creatures from the existing creatures in the monster manual. Example: A gnoll is a CR 1/2 creature with no magical powers, a decent AC of 15, and 22 HP (mm pg 163). A jackalwere is also a CR 1/2 creature, but it has a low AC of 12 and 4 fewer HP (18) than the gnoll (mm pg 193). This AC / HP reduction is traded away to gain a magic-like ability that can put a creature to sleep. These two creatures have certain things in common – they both look like canine humanoids, they both have two melee attacks with the same to-hit and damage bonuses, and they are both chaotic evil. The jackalwere has pack tactics but the gnoll has a ranged attack. The jackalwere can shapeshift into a jackal or human or hybrid and the gnoll can move and make an extra bonus attack when it kills a creature. So these are pretty equal creatures but there is one glaring factor that will make a difference to the encounter: the jackalwere is immune to non-magical weapons that aren’t silvered. That is a game changer for a low level party. So if I was doing this reskin I would just ignore that additional ability since my goal was to make a different gnoll, not turn the gnoll into a jackalwere altogether.
- Add a special ability or magical item to an existing creature: Want to throw off your players but you don’t want to change up an entire set of creature stats? Give them a basic poisoned weapon similar to the poisoned dart of the deep gnome (mm pg 164). Have the creature wear an amulet of magic resistance that grants immunity to a specific type of elemental damage (preferably one the PCs use frequently). Add limited fire breath to a creature that doesn’t usually have that ability (see the hell hound on mm pg 182). There are two major caveats with these: 1) magic items will be taken from defeated creatures and used by the PCs, so be ready for that, and 2) be careful not to completely overpower a creature and throw-off your encounter balance (if you care about such things). Oh, and if a creature has a power that their type doesn’t usually have, it’s a good idea to give the players clues pointing to those abilities so that they can learn the info and then see it in action. That is a little trick that makes your world feel dynamic.
- Directly change the HP or AC of the creature: Perhaps I should have mentioned this first because it is probably the first step that most DMs make in changing a creature on their own. IF you are going to do this, you need to do a tiny bit of research. The Quick Monster Stats table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (pg 274) will give you a very fast but instructive glimpse of the ‘appropriate’ range of HP and AC for creatures at a given level. This table is instructive because it can inform your overall view of how creatures are built compared to other CR creatures. You should also peruse the Monster Manual and compare creatures of the same CR – this will give you and idea of the breadth of stats and abilities you are likely to find within the same CR category. The goal is an analysis similar to my comparison of the gnoll and jackalwere above, in which you walk away with an understanding of the trade-offs between abilities and HP/AC. A few things to keep in mind as you endeavor to make these adjustments… if you make a creature’s AC too high, the party will not be able to damage it and that is effectively an increase in HP. Adding immunities or resistances directly acts as an HP increase without technically increasing the number of HP in the creature’s stat block.
- Give the creature a movement ability: This is a quick and easy way to let the players know this creature might be different than they thought – give the creature a bonus reaction, an extra fast walking speed, a super-powered jumping ability, an ability like pack tactics, or charge. Who knew that goblin was going to charge like a minotaur?
- Give the creature a location/environment based ability: Are you in a specific type of biome? Give the creature a false appearance ability similar to the vine blight (mm pg 32) if you’re in the forest, or the galeb duhr (mm pg 139) if you’re in a rocky region. Or maybe it’s a stealth ability similar to the grimlock’s stone camouflage (mm pg 175). There are a plethora of other types of abilities that can make an encounter with a creature seem like more than what the players knew!
Conclusion: Fiddling with the stats and abilities of creatures in a book you already have is a fun and inexpensive way to change up your game, but beware the accidental overpowering change!
Option 3: Design Your Own Creatures
Premise: For a truly unique creature, it is best to simply create your own monster!
Discussion: Creating monsters for D&D is an art and a science. It takes practice, ideally includes a playtesting phase, and eats up a lot of time and energy. If you do not have time and energy in abundance, along with a big pile of ideas for new monsters, then I have to say this isn’t the choice for you. Designing your own creatures comes with all of the considerations and caveats I mentioned in option 2 (above) and multiplies them by 100. Despite this, I DO highly recommend endeavoring to make your very own bestiary entries – it will give you a respect and appreciation for designers you may not have already had. Alas, I do not have space in this article to discuss the finer points of creature creation from scratch.
Conclusion: Designing monsters is hard work and, actually, is well beyond the scope of what I set out to do in this article. The best way to start is to look at the monster manual and the monster creation rules in the DMG. Then, start taking notes when you run/play games – what works, what doesn’t work, what numbers seem off? These three articles over on SlyFlourish.com are great for getting your brain working on monster creation: Monster Design with Jeremy Crawford, The Lazy Approach to Stronger Encounters, and The Case for Static Monster Damage.
That’s all from me for now – I hope this was a helpful introduction to changing up the creatures at your table.
~DMSamuel
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You forgot the 4th option: this isn’t a problem, the player is rewarded for his dedication to the game.
You are assuming it’s not good for the player to know the statistics of a monster. Why is this bad? Shouldn’t his PC also know something about the monster too? We are talking about experienced adventurers here; the stats simply represent the in game capabilities of a creature that the PC should be familiar with to one degree or another.
How many players take the time to study the game? You’re lucky if you have a player this dedicated. His reward for commitment to the game is a small tactical advantage in combat. He shouldn’t be punished by you introducing new monsters he doesn’t know about. I’m not saying you should never introduce new monsters, but a player knowing all the stats shouldn’t be the reason you do so, it should be logical based on the game world
For the most part I don’t disagree with you and I hope my post doesn’t come off as punitive sounding as you seem to read it. However, you are also making assumptions about these players and their PCs.
It’s true that this isn’t really a major problem, which I mention in the first paragraph. And as I also stated early in the article, I encourage the players to learn things and keep learning, especially the one who is thinking about trying his hand at DMing. HOWEVER – in this case the PCs were very low level and had never encountered the creatures before. They didn’t try to do in-character research to find out about the monsters, nor did they even want to roll a knowledge check. They just started talking out of character to each other about how many HP these things must have and how low the AC of the beasts must be.
These players are young teens and I want them to have a ton of fun with the game… and by all accounts they are! BUT I would also like them to use in-character discussions + skill checks + narrated PC actions to try and find out the info they want to know. To me, that is a way of playing that I would like these players to at least try out before they try to tactically destroy every monster in the game using meta-knowledge their character could not possibly know.
And besides, these options don’t just solve the admittedly very minor problem I bring up, but they also solve the problem of the same old monsters seeming stale at the table.
It sounds to me like you should have a conversation with your players about the playstyle you expect/hope to see from them. Introducing new monsters won’t change their behavior, it’ll just make them want to find out those statistics for the new monsters.
Introducing new monsters is great as long as you do it for the right reasons. Adding variety and showing how some locations have different characteristics (ie monsters) are just some of the reasons. Yet introducing monsters to discourage ‘meta-gaming’ won’t really work because it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. If you want the players to do things differently, tell them so.
I did.
They are young teenagers, so telling them wasn’t enough. I am also modeling the behaviors that I like to see and I point it out when I do so.
Please stop implying that I did this for the “wrong” reasons. What I have done is a perfectly appropriate way to handle the issue. Perhaps at your table with your different preferred playstyle that would not be the case, but at mine it is.
Hi Sam; good to see you still writing!
Yeah, I lean toward option 2, with the specific idea of ‘reskinning’ existing monsters. Mostly, I just prefer not to make the specific abilities of monsters a core element/challenge of my game, except perhaps at very high levels and in very specific encounters.
More and more I’m thinking about the “Shadow of the Colossus” model of monsters: There should *only* be Boss Fights. Get rid of all or nearly all ‘random’ encounters. If there’s going to be a fight, it should be a for a very important reason against a very important adversary. Anything else can be seen as Filler.
Not trying to belabor the point, but I just saw a post on Facebook that is relevant to this topic.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2738539706225763&id=100002092806299
To summarize: if you trust your players it doesn’t matter if they know the stats of the monsters.
Hi Jeremy! That’s certainly one way to go – I’m not sure I have evolved my play style so much toward that model… I still love an occasional random encounter once in a while (though to be fair they are often not combat-focused).
I think the specific thing that is going on that prompted me to write this post is that the players are new to D&D and I am trying to keep a level of mystery for them and they are resisting it by learning all the monsters stats :P
Meanwhile in my other game the PCs are exploring a different world and I feel like it would be a bit of a let-down if all of the creatures were just simply right-out-of-the-book.
I guess a related topic to this is an idea I’ve had to increase the value of “lore”-type skills by having PCs who make exceptionally high rolls on them in combat get some sort of bonus to fight a specific type of monster (“These things are vulnerable to fire!”) or even a specific high-level enemy (“I know his weak spot!”).
YES!!! Sometimes, when I have gotten enough prep time to think about it, I include the DC for a knowledge check and then decide what sort of information is available about the creature at that DC… sort of like what it had in the 4e Monster Manual – it explicitly stated why information could be learned at certain DCs. I try to go one step further and provide a mechanical benefit if they have rolled very high – “you know that this creature has a weak spot where the shell meets the flesh, just under the left back leg, that knowledge give you a +1 to hit for the rest of combat!”
DM Sam….100% agree with you sir. Folk going into a fight …especially at low level …going.”Ok this is a xyz…we need this that and the other….its not got many hit points but high AC and its immune to poison….to me thats utter bs when they have never met such a thing before. Only if they say a ranger with knowledge of a specific foe…or they met these 45 times…or own the tome of xyz written by grizzled xyz hunter. Reading the MM and OOC book i hasten to add…means the player is gifting their character ooc (out of character) knowledge. What next…shall we allow them to read the adventure too?
Thanks so much for giving a range of viable options for working through this. I have one of those players, too (mine is a precocious pre-teen ) as well as an experienced adult DM playing at my table, and I think the game is better for everyone when the player’s knowledge about the monster is similar to the PC’s knowledge.
ps — I meant to say that the game AT MY TABLE and WITH MY PLAYERS is better when the knowledge of player & PC are similar. Imagine it is different for different groups.