Probably not a popular opinion, but while I would love some tools and guidance for Homebrewing Species, Subclasses, Monsters, and what ever, I think that would be best served in a seperate book specifically marketed for advanced DMs and leave the 3 Core Books as a guide to learn the core game first.
Probably not a popular opinion, but while I would love some tools and guidance for Homebrewing Species, Subclasses, Monsters, and what ever, I think that would be best served in a seperate book specifically marketed for advanced DMs and leave the 3 Core Books as a guide to learn the core game first.
A "DM's Workshop" book with all that, including prebuilt examples, in-depth campaign and world building advice, optional rules, and that sort of thing wouldn't be a huge seller, but I think it'd move enough to be worth their while
A "DM's Workshop" book with all that, including prebuilt examples, in-depth campaign and world building advice, optional rules, and that sort of thing wouldn't be a huge seller, but I think it'd move enough to be worth their while
D&D 5e has generally shied away from detailed number-crunching, leaving that to third parties. I suspect the internal answer to how monster CR math works is "we have a spreadsheet that crunches numbers for us", and that conflicts with their desire to portray the system as friendly and math-light.
I think there's two competing sets of priorities here, that align in not giving us these rules.
On the one hand, with the amount of "homebrew" not contained in the Core Rules set, it feels like the developers want to provide separate Expanded Rules to handle how to homebrew as a whole, from new subclasses, feats and items all the way to new monsters and the complex set of rules they followed to make the MM set. Additionally, D&D Beyond doesn't properly support 2024 Homebrew, so providing precise information on making it would cause even more frustration from DMs who pick up a Core Rules set with instructions on how to.
On the other hand, Hasbro/WOTC doesn't want homebrew at all, because Homebrew is free and not something they can charge for. So they're happy to drag their heels and delay the D&D Beyond homebrew updates, focus on implementing new 3rd party content that they get a cut of, and generally focus on profit making aspects. After all, WOTC's D&D division is, at it's heart, a book publisher.
So both the good and bad reasons dovetail into "Not Yet", with one saying "But it'll be good when we get there" and the other saying "Are we sure we want to get there?".
That would be useful, to take the boring part that isn't part of creating the monster and automate it for you, yes.
Honestly, if you're designing custom monsters the main important thing to do is evaluate how dangerous they are against your PCs. This somewhat correlates with CR, but CR is a really blunt instrument, if you know the capabilities of the PCs and the encounter setup you can be a lot more accurate than CR will ever give you. As such, CR is mostly of academic interest if you aren't planning on publishing your monster.
coming back to the issue nearly 10 months later, and I think this is the best counterpoint to the notion that DMs *need* a set of rules. The more I look through things, the more think I lean into the camp of "make edits to an existing monster's statblock, don't make your own from scratch." At least, for the more casual DM who doesn't have a super in-depth/calculated understanding of the rules. take a monster whose CR is equal to the party's [average] level, and if the party tends to be stronger than you expect, increase the health/damage output of the monster. If your party isn't handling combat well, reduce its HP/damage output.
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Probably not a popular opinion, but while I would love some tools and guidance for Homebrewing Species, Subclasses, Monsters, and what ever, I think that would be best served in a seperate book specifically marketed for advanced DMs and leave the 3 Core Books as a guide to learn the core game first.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
A "DM's Workshop" book with all that, including prebuilt examples, in-depth campaign and world building advice, optional rules, and that sort of thing wouldn't be a huge seller, but I think it'd move enough to be worth their while
D&D 5e has generally shied away from detailed number-crunching, leaving that to third parties. I suspect the internal answer to how monster CR math works is "we have a spreadsheet that crunches numbers for us", and that conflicts with their desire to portray the system as friendly and math-light.
I think there's two competing sets of priorities here, that align in not giving us these rules.
On the one hand, with the amount of "homebrew" not contained in the Core Rules set, it feels like the developers want to provide separate Expanded Rules to handle how to homebrew as a whole, from new subclasses, feats and items all the way to new monsters and the complex set of rules they followed to make the MM set. Additionally, D&D Beyond doesn't properly support 2024 Homebrew, so providing precise information on making it would cause even more frustration from DMs who pick up a Core Rules set with instructions on how to.
On the other hand, Hasbro/WOTC doesn't want homebrew at all, because Homebrew is free and not something they can charge for. So they're happy to drag their heels and delay the D&D Beyond homebrew updates, focus on implementing new 3rd party content that they get a cut of, and generally focus on profit making aspects. After all, WOTC's D&D division is, at it's heart, a book publisher.
So both the good and bad reasons dovetail into "Not Yet", with one saying "But it'll be good when we get there" and the other saying "Are we sure we want to get there?".
coming back to the issue nearly 10 months later, and I think this is the best counterpoint to the notion that DMs *need* a set of rules. The more I look through things, the more think I lean into the camp of "make edits to an existing monster's statblock, don't make your own from scratch." At least, for the more casual DM who doesn't have a super in-depth/calculated understanding of the rules. take a monster whose CR is equal to the party's [average] level, and if the party tends to be stronger than you expect, increase the health/damage output of the monster. If your party isn't handling combat well, reduce its HP/damage output.