You’re looking through the Monster Manual, and nothing seems to be fitting for the scene you want to do. You want giant carnivorous plants, and there simply isn’t any in the monster manual, or the other general books. Or, you do have a monster but you just KNOW your players will steamroll over these baddies the first moment they get. Perhaps your buddy knows the stats by heart, and you want to give his sorcerer a bit of a challenge. So, what’s a DM to do?  You might want to do homebrewing.

What is Homebrewing?

Homebrewing is essentially the modding of the Tabletop game world. It allows you as a DM to customize the rules, stats, and appearance of any aspect of the game, so you can be able to tell the story you want to tell.

So, how do you Homebrew?

Depending on what you want to do will determine how you go about it. The DM’s Guide gives the official rules on how  to do homebrewing, but here are my insights on how to do it.

Perhaps the easiest way to do homebrewing is to reskin. Reskinning just takes an existing ability, monster, or stat, and just uses your imagination to call it something else. Perhaps that ghost king actually has the stats of a lich instead to make it harder to fight. Same stats and abilities, just by another name. This can give you a considerable latitude to beef enemies up, or make something your own.

Another form of homebrewing is to actually to do it from scratch. This can be considerably trickier, especially considering balance and the mechanics of the game. If you have a high powered ability, perhaps balancing it with a drawback, such as a recharge time of once a day, or something even more interesting, such as a curse. It all depends on you, your players, and the story you want to tell.

As always, make sure that your players are cool with whatever changes you make to the game, and communicate with your players to help make the game even better for everyone.  There are many forums out there with people who love to playtest new content others make, as well as helping balance things for the new DM. Perhaps you may even find something new!

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