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KickStarter "Flee, Mortals!" A DnD Monster Book with 300+ Monsters by MCDM

Angelo85

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MCDM just launched it's newest Kickstarter. This time it's a Monster Book. The aim is to provide not only new monsters, but re-design existing ones and introduce "Action Oriented" Monsters. Essentially Boss Monsters with unique abilities and memorable mechanics.




/e: launched a couple hours ago and it's already funded! That was quick.

26 page Preview is downloadable here:
https://files.mcdmproductions.com/FleeMortals/FleeMortalsPreview.pdf

"Flee, Mortals!" - The MCDM Monster Book for 5e
What if the normal monsters you're already using were more fun to run and more fun to fight?

Story
Monsters for your 5th Edition game that are fun to run—and fun to fight! This is the MCDM Monster Book Kickstarter!

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A bunch of monsters! Over 300 new stat blocks! Check out the preview PDF here! We got basically three kinds of monsters in here:

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If a monster is big enough and bad enough to challenge an entire party on their own, or if it just makes sense for the Queen of the Goblins to be better than a normal Goblin Boss, we make a named, unique, Action-Oriented version of that monster.

This is something we originally developed for the Chain of Acheron. The Black Iron Pact was the first test of this design. It was a success, and we’ve learned a LOT since! Action-Oriented monsters get special Villain Actions that allow them to act when it’s not their turn, and they rely on spells much less.

If you want to check out a couple of Action-Oriented Monster prototypes, you can download the free preview right now and toss the Goblin Queen Bargnot or XORANNOX THE TYRACT, an Action-Oriented Overmind, into your game right now!

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We love all the classic monsters! Goblins, kobolds, orcs, giants, dragons... We just wish they were more fun to use. Here’s how we’re going to do it:


More Options
There’s only one goblin in the core rules. So if you decide your 1st-level party is going to explore a tomb with some goblins in (hem hem) you don’t have a lot of options except ctrl-c, ctrl-v.

This book has a LOT of options for all the classic monsters we all rely on. Goblin Assassins! Goblin Snipers! Goblin Spinecleavers! Goblin Cursespitters! I mean they’re still just goblins, they’re not like superheroes, but presenting you, the GM, with many options when it comes to a given enemy makes building encounters with them more fun because you can make each encounter unique. You could have twelve different Hobgoblin encounters and never use exactly the same combination of Hobgoblin types.


Not Just Bags of Hit Points
A lot (not all! But a lot) of the monsters in the core rules amount to just a bag of hit points, but in my experience that’s not much fun. It’s fun (for both the players and the GM) if the monsters can DO cool stuff!

So our monsters all have special abilities that make them fun to run, fun to fight, and also go a long way towards reinforcing the fantasy of the monster. Monsters shouldn’t just look cool, they should do cool stuff and that stuff should remind you of WHY this monster is the way it is.


Not A Big List Of Spells
The core rules rely on giving monsters spells to make them interesting, but it mostly makes them more complex. Our monsters sometimes use spells, but it’s a lot easier on the GM to give them cool abilities they can use in combat.

The kinds of abilities that make the GM cackle when you read them. “I can’t wait to use this!” is better than “I don’t remember how that spell works, lemme go look it up.”

This way the monster’s abilities are printed right there in the book and you don’t have to try and remember what the radius is for this spell, or have to go look it up in another book.

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But making random new monsters just to make new monsters does not (in my experience, having written an entire monster book for 3E) make better monsters. You end up with a lot of “looks cool, no idea when I’d ever use that.”

New monsters should have a reason for existing, so this book starts by imagining all the different places encounters tend to happen. You know, a swamp, the city, a graveyard, the sewers. We got fifteen different environments in here!

Then we create 3 or 4 new monsters for that environment! So if you’ve got an adventure in a Haunted Wood, we got some new Haunted Wood monsters for you—just grab ‘em and go!

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Look, we don't want to reinvent the wheel here. Any 5E GM should be able to use any monsters in here with a minimum of fuss. But there are a couple of new ideas in here, and some cleaning up of the standard language to make things more straightforward.


Minions!
Minions are a great way to let your characters feel heroic by fighting a sea of bad guys (a horde of zombies! A whole tribe of goblins!) without slowing the game down to a crawl. Because while a minion is almost as nasty as a regular monster, they die real fast.

This harkens all the way back to the 1970’s when fighters got one free attack, per level, per round against any enemies of 1HD or less. Even back then, the idea of letting PCs cut a swath through a sea of enemies was developing.

Our minion rules have been designed from the ground up to work with fifth edition, and have already gone through months of testing. They allow you, the GM, to throw a bunch of monsters against your players and challenge them without overwhelming them or grinding the game to a halt.

They let you design more interesting, epic, cinematic encounters and they help your players feel like heroes.


Companions!
Players love pets! So we created new rules for players to have a cool companion. We'll give monsters that makes sense as a “pet” a unique Companion stat block!

If you want to try this out, you can download the free preview and try out the Lightbender companion in your game tonight!


Retainers!
Retainers were introduced in our first book Strongholds & Followers. They’re a great way to reward a player for some good roleplaying. “The goblin agrees to help you… for now.” Here’s your little goblin buddy!

Retainers are like NPCs, but instead of managing an entire second character and second character sheet, retainers are much simpler. They have a handful of abilities they can use, simplified defenses and hit points, all designed to make them easy and fun to run.

Any monster intelligent enough to speak, and inclined to negotiate, is a candidate for a retainer and this book will have LOTS of them!

These rules have been slightly revised since S&F and may undergo more revision during development of the book. But, like everything else in here, you can download the free preview and let your players use the Goblin Sneak retainer tonight!

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There’s no way to just design all 300 monsters in this book simultaneously. So they’ll get developed in batches. How many monsters are in a batch? We dunno, but if you back the Kickstarter and your pledge includes the Monster Book PDF, we’ll send you each batch of monsters as soon as they’ve made it through editing and testing.

So you won’t have to wait until the entire book is done to use your new monsters! But this option is only for folks who back during the Kickstarter campaign at one of the 4 pledge levels we've created that include the Monster Book PDF.

It's also important to note: We put a lot of work into the visual design of these creatures. We take the art design as seriously as the game design and that takes time. Which means not every monster or stat block will get a piece of art. But even still, there'll be over 100 full color illustrations in this book!

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We got three stretch goals here: two serious, one that’s just… fun. :D

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If we hit $800k, we will add seven unique, rival adventuring parties, one at every odd level from 3rd to 15th, each with at five NPC heroes. They all get unique art and design and will probably be Action-Oriented so they can really challenge the heroes. The Black Iron Pact is one of them!

That’s 35 new unique characters to use as allies or enemies—or first one, then the other!

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If we hit $1M, every Action-Oriented monster (at least 20) in this book gets their own lair, complete with maps and encounters, and a unique treasure hoard! Kill a boss monster, get some dope LOOT!

This is actually quite a bit of extra content, so it may be this turns into its own separate book you get along with your new monster book.
 
Last edited:

MartinK

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Aug 14, 2020
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How long does it take to design a bigass spider with bunch of goblins with bows riding on top of it? Maybe 15 minutes if you want balanced encouncer for whatever reason.
 

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