Since I redid my Players' Information packet for the game I ran the other day.
Now, I'm going through my "Bestiary and Treasury" booklet. I added in all the creatures from the blog (the Beast of the Week download over there on the right hand side of the blog) that weren't already in there. And since most of the book is just stuff from the BX/BE level of books, I pulled up my Rules Cyclopedia pdf and started adding in creatures from the Mentzer C and M books.
Not all of them, some are just not my style, or can be done simpler in other ways (like the Headsmen/Thug or Mystic, which are just NPCs really). And the "looks like a beholder but it's a trick" monsters. I don't use beholders enough to make it worth using a blast spore very often.
Anyway, since my D&D Mine caps out at 15th level for characters and 6th level for spells, some of the monsters designed for characters levels 15-36 are just a tad too powerful. Like Frank's undead from the Companion Set, the Haunts, Spirits, and Phantoms. Very cool, very flavorful. But I'm having to power them down in order to make them feasible opponents for the power level I'm going for here.
I'm actually enjoying this, finding ways to tweak the monsters so that the players won't need those 7th through 9th level spells, or need to be packing weapons of at least +3 potency. And editing down the descriptions a fair amount, since this is going to turn out to be over 100 pages of monsters, I think.
Now, do I want to add in the Large and Huge Dragons? Just the Large ones? That's the question I'm pondering at the moment...
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It's all inter-related: once you scale back the max power level, you have less need for "large and huge" monsters, and even less need for items over +3 (or even +2!) value.
ReplyDeleteMy own DDM project has spells up to 7 (for magicians) because I wanted one line of "epic" type spells (power words and gates and such).
Don't be afraid to go "leaner" on monsters and treasure...you can always add a "supplement" book later to fill out stuff. And you probably don't need to include unique or "one-off" type stuff (like, say, a Tarrasque) unless they're integral to the setting. Just saying.
: )