Level Up’s Monsters: Ecology

In another post, I talked about the updates we’re making to monster stat blocks. Today, I want to talk about the changes we’re making to the rest of the monster entry.

RPG bestiaries generally accompany a monster’s game statistics with an essay about the monster’s appearance, ecology, lore, and place in the world. We’re doing that too! I hope that most of our monster descriptions will include a twist, re-interpretation, or story seed that you haven’t seen before and that you’ll find useful. But our monster information isn’t limited to these (hopefully inspiring) essays.

Behavior Tables

When I prepare to run a game, I usually design several scenes and potential encounters ahead of time, but often my players don’t stick to the script I expect - which is just fine with me. Rather than trying to guide them back to one of my prepared scenes, I often find myself improvising. In these cases, when I flip to a monster entry, I want to be able to grab something gameable quickly, even if I have nothing prepared.

When designing an encounter - either off-the-cuff or as part as preparation beforehand -  the first question I need answered is simple: what is this monster doing?

Every monster entry will come with a randomizable list of behaviors, sometimes broken down by terrain type or by the number of monsters. Random tables are a great quick resource: you just roll a die and read one sentence, and you’ve got your scene. Tables can also get you out of a rut. I sometimes fall in the bad habit of having monsters be hostile by default. When you get stuck on one approach, a random table can remind you of other possibilities. Of course, every random table (like every other element of an RPG) is a suggestion, to be superseded by any better idea you have.

As an example of monster behavior, we’ll use the vampire, as we did in the previous article about the A5e stat block. For vampires, we’re including separate behavior tables for when they’re encountered alone or in groups, and one for when you track a vampire down in its lair.

Lone Behavior: roll d4

1. Calm, urbane, and friendly, and disguising its true nature; eager to help new friends.

2. Pale and furious with hunger; on the hunt.

3. Tries to stall potential victims with small talk until 1d4+1 vampire spawn arrive.

4. Roosting in bat form; will spy on travelers for future feeding opportunities.

Group Behavior: roll d4

1. A master and apprentice(s) of equal power, bickering; there is no trust between them.

2. Lovers enjoying (or planning) a sinister entertainment such as corrupting a holy knight.

3. Ambassadors from rival clans negotiating a peace treaty.

4. A vampire clan going to war.

Lair Behavior: roll d4

1. In its comfortable lair, drinking blood from a wine glass and staring meditatively into the fire.

2. Greeting you by name and inviting you to dinner: you and it have a common enemy.

3. Being extremely nice to a charmed innocent person.

4. Painting, singing about, or muttering about its vampire weakness.

Clues and Signs

I said above that “what are the monsters doing?” was the first question to answer when designing an encounter. That’s not quite true. An often-overlooked piece of monster design is “how can players gather information about this encounter beforehand?”

If there are vampires in the neighborhood, I like to drop clues ahead of time. Alert players may pick up on the clues and gain an advantage in the coming showdown. On the other hand, players may miss or misinterpret clues. That’s good fun too! Sinister details, even if not rightly understood, can build a sense of dread - and when secrets are revealed later, it’s fun for players to piece together the clues in retrospect.

Here are our tables for random clues of vampiric presence, broken down into wilderness and settled areas. As you can see, they draw from, and expand, the idea of legendary lair traits. They’re not just for legendary creatures though: every monster in the book has tables like this.

This ties in neatly with our exploration pillar. When the adventurers encounter a monster in the wilderness, they don’t have to round a corner and have it suddenly attack. They can at first spot the signs, whether they be claw marks in a tree or a dismembered corpse.

Wilderness and Underground Signs: roll d20 

1. Gusts of wind ruffle hair and extinguish naked flame.

2. The distant cry of a wolf or other beast.

3. 1-2 vampire spawn scuttling on the ground, wall, or ceiling. They will flee to their master.

4. A dead adventurer, such as a knight in plate armor, face pale. DC 16 investigation, medicine, or religion check: she has been drained of blood and soon she is likely to rise as a vampire spawn.

5. The ground here is covered with tendrils of mist (vampires in mist form are invisible here).

6. Plants here are thorny and seem to move by themselves to draw blood from unwary passers.

7. Illumination is subdued, reducing the range of light sources by 5 feet.

8. A stream or river runs red.

9. The vile energy suffusing the area causes wounds to fester and sucks at bleeding veins. When creatures spend Hit Dice to heal, any dice that roll the highest possible number are treated as if a 1 was rolled instead (a barbarian spending Hit Dice treats a 12 as a 1, and so on).

10-20. Roll twice more on this table

Settlement Signs: roll d8

1. Fearful faces watch you from windows.

2. People on the street seem afraid to talk to strangers. If pressed, they will admit that there have been strange disappearances.

3. Pale nobles walk empty streets, their laughter too loud, insulting anyone they happen to meet. These nobles have had their blood drained by their vampiric protector to some extent but are not yet spawn.

4. Rumors abound of haunted manors, ghost ships, and unexplainable disappearances.

5-8. Roll twice more on this table.

Combat Tactics

A monster’s stat block, especially that of a complex or legendary monster, can be overwhelming. Which of its abilities does a monster use first? When does it run away

We’re including a combat tactics section describing a monster’s usual battle strategy. It doubles as a morale section as well, since it describes the circumstances under which a monster will retreat.

Combat: A vampire often begins combat by trying to grab and bite its most poorly-armored opponent. Once a foe has been weakened with a bite attack, the vampire uses its Blood Charm on that target. It uses Momentary Transformation to avoid well-armored foes. Once reduced to one-third hit points, the vampire tries to escape in bat or mist form through well-prepared escape routes, returning to take its revenge another day.

Lore Checks

If a character makes an ability check to learn about a monster, what do they know? We’re including a lore table for each monster to provide guidance. 

Legends and Lore

With a History or Religion check, characters can learn the following (if made about a specific vampire, this check is made with advantage if the character has encountered this vampire before):

DC 10: Vampires are nocturnal undead who drink blood and are hunted by many religious orders.

DC 15: Most vampires are weak to sunlight, holy water, and radiant damage.

DC 20: You learn a specific vampire’s weaknesses and animal form. 

Bonus Tools

Every monster doesn’t need to have exactly the same monster entry design. We’re including lots of fun tools which are only used for a handful of monsters each, or which are specific to a single monster. For instance, it might be useful to have a list of devil names (“I command thee by thy name, Azgannath, begone!”) or special qualities that a hippogriff might offer as a steed (“Unbroken: allows one creature to ride it and attacks all others who make the attempt”).

Our take on vampires is that the Dracula-type vampire, allergic to sunlight and with a bat form, isn’t the only type. We have plenty of precedent for this, even outside of other RPGs. Every author of a vampire book seems to make up their own rules, going back to the vampire novels that predated Dracula. In the 1847 novel Varney the Vampire, vampires don’t fear sunlight, and in the 1872 novel Carmilla, the vampire turns into a cat instead of a bat. Inspired by this, here’s our vampire chart.

Vampire Quirks: roll d20

1. The vampire has giant pupils and disadvantage on attacks and skill checks while in bright light.

2. Instead of being weak to sunlight, the vampire has bat ears, winces at loud noises, and has vulnerability to thunder damage.

3. Instead of being weak to sunlight, the vampire surrounds itself with candles and torches, has luminescent sparkling skin, and is weak to total darkness.

4. Instead of being weak to sunlight, the vampire has frost-covered skin and has vulnerability to fire.

5-7. Instead of a bat, the vampire Shape Changes into (roll d6) 1 cat, 2 giant centipede, 3 jackal, 4 flying snake, 5 raven, 6 spider.

8-10. Instead of sunlight and running water, the vampire is weakened when it (roll d10) 1 touches gold, 2 smells garlic, 3 enters a building without express permission, 4 smells flowers, 5 hears a certain children’s rhyme, 6 touches dirt, 7 hears its own name or that of someone from its past, 8 sees extracted teeth, 9 sees a mirror, 10 (roll twice more). The vampire is obsessed with its weakness, frequently talking about it and incorporating its symbols into its lair. A character can make a DC 12 Insight check to learn this weakness.

11-20 No quirk

Tell us what you need!

Our goal is to make the most useful monster book ever, and for that we need your help.

Of the above monster-description and worldbuilding tools (behavior, clues, tactics, lore, and monster-specific charts) which would you find the most useful? Which would you not use at all? And finally, are there any other things you’d like in the monster description that we haven’t covered here?