The Lazy DM's Forge of Foes: Tools and guides to build, customize, and run fantastic monsters in your 5e fantasy games

Built for the Lazy Dungeon Master, Forge of Foes is a 128-page hardcover book and PDF focused on helping you build, customize, and run monsters for your 5e fantasy roleplaying games. Like the material found in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM’s Workbook, and The Lazy DM’s Companion, Forge of Foes gives you the tools and guidance to help you easily run awesome monsters in your games.Within the Forge of Foes, we’ll build these monsters. Here in the forge, we’ll modify creatures, giving them new attacks and strange new abilities. We’ll harden their scales and sharpen their claws. We’ll create entirely new creatures from our endless collective imagination, then watch them crawl into the stories of high adventure we share with our friends.Each page of this 128-page book offers tips, guidance, instructions, and examples of ways to make your monsters and your creature-based combat encounters more dynamic — and to show you how to do more with monsters while keeping your game prep simple.Forge of Foes covers a wide variety of monster-focused material. You'll find discussions ranging from game mechanics to the philosophy of monster design, to the fine art of reskinning monsters, to the all-important relationship between monsters and story, to managing the complexities of challenge rating when building exciting encounters — all wonderfully illustrated by Jack Kaiser, Allie Briggs, Nikki Dawes, Víctor Manuel Leza Moreno, Matt Morrow, and Jackie Musto.Here’s a list of topics in this book:Monster ToolkitsBuilding a Quick MonsterBuilding Legendary MonstersBuilding Spellcasting MonstersBuilding and Running Boss MonstersCreating Lair ActionsDice Rolling OptionsGeneral-Use Stat BlocksMonster PowersMonster RolesMonster Type TemplatesMonsters by Adventure LocationMonster Tips and TricksLazy Tricks for Running MonstersBosses and MinionsEvolving MonstersThe Layers of Reskinning MonstersLightning-Rod MonstersModifying Monsters Before and During CombatMonster Abilities and Theater of the MindMonster CombinationsThe Relative Weakness of High-CR MonstersRunning Minions and HordesRunning Monsters for New Game MastersRunning Spellcasting MonstersUnderstanding the Action EconomyUsing NPC Stat BlocksBuilding EncountersAssessing Published EncountersBuilding Challenging High-Level EncountersBuilding Engaging EnvironmentsThe Combat Encounter ChecklistExit StrategiesThe Lazy Encounter BenchmarkMonster Discussion and PhilosophyBalancing Mechanics and StoryBuilding the Story to Fit the MonsterChoosing Monsters Based on the StoryDecolonizing Monster DesignDefining ChallengeThe History of ChallengeMonsters and the Tiers of PlayOn Encounters Per DayOn Morale and Running AwayReading the Monster Stat BlockRomancing MonstersRunning Easy MonstersUnderstanding 5e Monster DesignWhat is Challenge Rating?What Makes a Great Monster Great?Where Do the Best Monster Ideas Come From?Each of these topics is presented as a stand-alone piece that you can use straight away in your game, your prep, or your campaign building. But many topics also dovetail into others, creating an expansive continuum of creative ideas to help energize your 5e games. Read more