5E Monster Designer

As part of the creation of Knight Vision Creative, I built a rough internal tool for developing Dungeons and Dragons 5E monsters. This quickly grew into a full fledged product and has been positively receieved after I decided to make it free and provide access to the public. 

Overview

As part of the development of the Summoner,  a 5E class supplement, I wanted an easy way to quickly compare power curves between different classes, monsters, and build a table for generic creatures to both benefit the new class as well as existing class in DND fifth edition. These needs merged into the tool, the 5E Monster Designer. Subscribe and make your own copy if you’re interested in playing around with it, looking through the formulas, etc.

Challenges

  • Boil the 8 pages of rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide down to an easily repeatable set of steps.
  • Develop a way to provide a semblence of intelligence by suggesting stat blocks, health, damage, etc. for users based on their desired CR.
  • Leave a method for users to overwrite the suggested stats to really get the look and feel of their character.
  • Build something that would be easy and fast to use.

Solutions

  • Developed a solution in Google Sheets for ease of use, portability, and eventually shareability.
  • Incorporate if statements into the stats to allow users to easily override the suggested values.
  • Provide a clear and inutitive interface to easily input the data.
  • Develop an output format similar to a stateblock if users wanted to directly import these into their materials.
  • Graphed the outputs of existing classes to ensure consistency and correct results.

Results

  • Easily build a monster with less than 5 minutes of orientation.
  • Individual monsters can be built in less than a minute.
  • Output provides a clear set of details for users to use immediately in currently running games, or copy into a document for future use.

To get your copy visit: https://www.knightvisioncreative.com/5e-monster-designer/

 

Monster CRs Included

Steps to Build a Monster