Encounters have consequences. Every slain bandit has friends who want revenge, and every devil banished back to the Eleven Hells reports its failure to its Dark Lord. What happens when the PCs’ daring deeds come back to bite them? The following encounter chains are more than just random encounters. Each conflict flows organically into the […]
Out of the Frying Pan: Demons on the River Argent Read More »
“Weird, ear-bending harmonies on alien pipes.” Why am I not surprised that Azathoth’s pipers are fey? This monster hates you! Or rather, it loves to bring you pain. (We’re not ready to be a tribute yet!) The selang was designed for mana-blasted wastelands, deep, whispering groves, and stony deserts haunted by ghosts. Ghosts that hate you. And the
Preview of Tome of Beasts: Selang Read More »
Encounters have consequences. Every slain bandit has friends who want revenge, and every devil banished back to the Eleven Hells reports its failure to its Dark Lord. What happens when the PCs’ daring deeds come back to bite them? The following encounter chains are more than just random encounters. Each conflict flows organically into the
Out of the Frying Pan: The Streets of Zobeck Read More »
There’s a reason why kobold mine entrances are so small. I mean, who wants to get stepped on in their own mine? Is that an ogre? Or an elephant? Yup. Meet the loxoda. They trample, stomp, and maul, and they’re huge. And they come in herds. Huge trampling herds! This was designed by Ryan Shatford with art by Bryan Syme for the Tome
Preview of Tome of Beasts: Loxoda Read More »
Want to run a short scenario on the fly? Need to fill in a missing encounter in your current campaign? Want to roll initiative right now…?! The Book of Lairs and the Book of Lairs Map Pack have just released and are available in the Kobold store. This product brings you 24 monster lairs, each a little different and complete with a short adventure, including
Book of Lairs is Now Available Read More »
Do you know what it’s like to clean up “ice and rotting flesh” from the mines? And nothing ever really gets that smell out. I mean, it just gets in your nose, and you just keep smelling it everywhere you go. Bleccch! As far as guard dogs go, you really can’t beat massive elementals that fling
Preview of Tome of Beasts: Rime Worm Read More »
As we kobolds are fond of joking: “Dragon!!!” But seriously, mithral? Where’s the candy floss dragon? Like staying alive isn’t hard enough already. The mithral dragon spits metal shards. That’s how badass [and completely metal \m/] they are. This  shiny partykiller was originally designed by Mike McArtor and updated to 5E for the Tome of Beasts by Chris Harris with art
Preview of Tome of Beasts: Mithral Dragon Read More »
We kobolds have a saying: “When a giant’s in the mines, workday’s over.” The flab giant is not someone you want to stop and ask directions from. It only wants you for one out of a handful of possible reasons… and none of them are good. This walking mountain was originally designed by Ryan Costello, Jr. and updated to
Preview of Tome of Beasts: Flab Giant Read More »
This installment is about deconstructing dragons. The Monster Manual contains 20 chromatic dragons, 20 metallic dragons, 1 shadow dragon, and 1 undead dragon. The Tome of Monsters and the Southlands Bestiary introduce several more. With all those stat blocks spread over three books, you’d expect to find plenty of variety—and you’d be right. But even
Howling Tower: Monster Stats, Part 5 Read More »
This installment, you get a break from graphs and formulas—though not entirely. In honor of Thanksgiving, I had to include some pie charts. Instead of plotting trends, however, this time we count how often certain concepts occur throughout the Monster Manual, to help you get a handle on whether they’re common, uncommon, or rare. Before
Howling Tower: Monster Stats, Part 4 Read More »
In part 1 and part 2 of this series, we looked at ability scores and hit points. In this installment, we look at damage output for official fifth edition monsters. First, a note about how I calculated damage output (average damage per round, or DPR). This topic is covered in a good amount of detail
Howling Tower: Monster Stats, Part 3 Read More »
Come venture into dark and spooky areas with us as we approach one of the best times of the year: Halloween! We will share with you several weresheep over the next few days so that you may introduce them, in turn, to your adventuring group, who might end up a bit…sheepish if they fail to
Goref Tamerk, Weresheep of Famine Read More »
Come venture into dark and spooky areas with us as we approach one of the best times of the year: Halloween! We will share with you several weresheep over the next few days so that you may introduce them, in turn, to your adventuring group, who might end up a bit…sheepish if they fail to
Gromek Palebones, Weresheep of Death Read More »
Come venture into dark and spooky areas with us as we approach one of the best times of the year: Halloween! We will share with you several weresheep over the next few days so that you may introduce them, in turn, to your adventuring group, who might end up a bit…sheepish if they fail to
Lord Silas Nareshorn, Weresheep of Pestilence Read More »
We’ve been very pleased with the positive reaction to the Tome of Beasts previews, even—maybe even especially—when readers point out places where we’ve added numbers incorrectly or overlooked a modifier. In a few cases, however, readers have called out features as errors that we don’t consider errors at all. Instead, they’re cases where our philosophy
Monster Philosophy Read More »
In Part 1, we looked at ability scores and established a few useful rules for assigning them to monsters of your own design. In this part, we look at Hit Dice and hit points as they relate to challenge rating and extract a few lessons about monster defenses.
Howling Tower: Monster Stats, Part 2 Read More »
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