My players are in a situation where they are trapped in a magical ice chamber, every hour they remain there they take cold damage, but, every 45 minutes they will have to battle a monster (just to keep them on their feet ....haha), my question is, since I really don't have the time to sit and create monsters ,should I just use monsters from the MM as they are, or should I modify them before I throw them at the players?
Modify them how, and why? If it's just random monsters teleported into the trap room, then you can just use whatever you want. If you want to theme it a bit, then monsters that have the "Arctic" environment tag might be a good place to start. Only if there is a good reason for modifying the monsters should you want to flavor them differently, or modify things.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
There should be level-appropriate monsters in MM, so you can just throw those at players. Of course, if you can easily and quickly tone down more powerful monsters then feel free to use those too. If they stay in the chamber for a longer period of time, it would be ok to use a bunch of weaker monsters.
You can also take a stat block of a monster, but just describe it differently and make them deal cold damage instead of their normal damage. For example, a pack of dire wolves attacks them, but these wolves are actually animated ice sculptures resembling wolves.
My players are in a situation where they are trapped in a magical ice chamber, every hour they remain there they take cold damage, but, every 45 minutes they will have to battle a monster (just to keep them on their feet ....haha), my question is, since I really don't have the time to sit and create monsters ,should I just use monsters from the MM as they are, or should I modify them before I throw them at the players?
Modify them how, and why? If it's just random monsters teleported into the trap room, then you can just use whatever you want. If you want to theme it a bit, then monsters that have the "Arctic" environment tag might be a good place to start. Only if there is a good reason for modifying the monsters should you want to flavor them differently, or modify things.
There should be level-appropriate monsters in MM, so you can just throw those at players. Of course, if you can easily and quickly tone down more powerful monsters then feel free to use those too. If they stay in the chamber for a longer period of time, it would be ok to use a bunch of weaker monsters.
You can also take a stat block of a monster, but just describe it differently and make them deal cold damage instead of their normal damage. For example, a pack of dire wolves attacks them, but these wolves are actually animated ice sculptures resembling wolves.
I never thought of that, thanks, being as they are in a ice chamber, I should make the monsters for that enviroment.
Winter wolves, remorhaz, yetis, ice trolls, cryohydras, ice devils, frost giants, polar bears, etc.