The average of these two values determines the creature's actual challenge rating, so a creature of offensive challenge six and defensive challenge four would be challenge rating five, but its higher offensive challenge means it will be more deadly but easier to kill.ĭetermining a creature's offensive challenge rating begins with its damage per round. Conversely, a monster's defensive challenge rating governs its hit points, armor class, and resistances. Offensive challenge rating governs the monsters to hit bonus, its damage per round, and the difficulty class (DC) for any effects which require a saving throw. If a creature's challenge rating is above the party level, it will prove significantly difficult to defeat, and may require expenditure of all resources or even result in player death.Īlthough monsters are assigned one general challenge rating, they actually have two behind the scenes: an offensive challenge rating and a defensive challenge rating. A challenge rating of one indicates the monster should be relatively challenging for a party of four first level characters, meaning they will need to expend some resources in order to handle the beast, but should still come out on top. Challenge rating refers to the approximate strength of a monster, and how much of a challenge it will be for the players. The first step in creating a 5e homebrew monster for Dungeons and Dragons is to choose a target challenge rating. RELATED: Will Regis Appear in Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance? Thankfully, dungeon masters can learn from the hard work of others, so here is a summarized version of how custom monster creation works in Dungeons and Dragons 5e. Everything a dungeon master needs to create custom monsters is there, but without spending a lot of time reading into everything and even doing some extrapolating of current monsters, odds are the write up in the book will not make much sense. That's why the Dungeon Master's Guide includes rules for creating custom monsters.įor those unaware, custom monster creation rules can be found starting on page 273 of the Dungeon Master's Guide, but the way they are presented is somewhat confusing. While reskinning monsters, the act of using the stat block of one creature but describing and naming it as something else, is perfectly okay, there isn't always a perfect match. Dungeon masters often find themselves wishing there were more options or something more specifically tailored to their campaign, and generally the only way to solve this conundrum is to create something from scratch. Dungeons and Dragons 5e's Monster Manual is packed full of unique, diverse, and vicious monsters for dungeon masters to use against their players, ranging from dragons and giants to hungry treasure chests, but sometimes this range of options just isn't enough.

D&d 5e homebrew monsters