# D&D 5E Monsters & Obstacles (partial draft)



## overgeeked (Friday at 6:21 PM)

Just an experiment with all this OGL stuff going on. This isn't an OGL thread, so please let's not make this into one.

This is a draft of an OGL 5E product I am/was working on. Not sure about it going forward. But here it is anyway.

The explanation is missing as I was still working on that bit when the recent unpleasantness began.

The short version is: think 4E monster design brought forward to 5E. You have one "standard monster" per PC in your party. The charts list the numbers for "standard monsters" at the four levels of 5E difficulty: easy, medium, hard, and deadly. You decide on the difficulty and go. Either have as many "standard monsters" as you have PCs or "combine" the monsters into a solo monster the PCs face. Adding together the HP, attacks, clock, and XP. The numbers line up almost exactly with the official stuff.

Or replace a "standard monster" with a terrain feature, hazard, or trap using the numbers presented on the chart. Does it deal damage, use the listed damage. Can it be attacked directly, use the listed hit points. Does it force a save, use the listed save DC.

How many successful skill checks does it take to overcome the obstacle? That's what "clock" is for. Clock is taken from indie games like PbtA and BitD. It's the number of successes you need to overcome the obstacle.

To do area attacks and/or condition-inflicting attacks, divide the damage by 2. This is where solo monsters can shine. Combine all their attacks and make it AOE.

The math is largely based on Paul Hughes' excellent analysis over on Blog of Holding, though tweaked quite a bit.

Any questions? Feel free to ask.

The Product Identity and Open Gaming Content of _Monsters & Obstacles_ is as follows. Product Identity: Nothing. Open Gaming Content: Everything.

ETA: Please discard the PDF if it's 22-pages long. That’s an earlier, outdated and badly written draft. It should be 5-pages long, 4 of charts and 1 of the OGL.


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## dave2008 (Friday at 6:46 PM)

This looks great. I love the idea. I haven't gone through it in depth, but I think it is a great idea. You just need some art to really sell the project (maybe kickstarter for that). I'm away for the weekend, but when I get a chance I will review in more depth and get back to you.

Also, I say go for it, and gofund you legal fees if you need to (I'll pitch in). I really think that is the answer. Ignore the 1.1 and proceed as usual. I truly believe you would win.


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