
The name “huecuva” seems to come from the folk religion of the Mapuche people, where the creature is like a kind of demon spirit, but the creature as it’s developed in D&D bears very little resemblance to its origins. What’s the lore on this monster? Has it appeared in earlier editions of the game? Is it based on folklore? What abilities will players and other DMs expect it to have?.I wanted something in the CR 3–6 range, to challenge a group of 4th-level PCs. It can bolster undead against good clerics’ turning abilities, inflict wounds, fight well in melee, and cast debuffs. I want a huecuva that plays like an evil cleric.
What combat role does this monster play in the encounters you want it in? Is it more offensive, more defensive, or balanced? Is it a supporter, a leader, a soldier, a tank, a sneak? About how powerful do you want it to be?. Her role in the game is to be an antagonist to the PCs (recurring if she survives the encounter), who are investigating the activities of cultists devoted to Putrefax. The huecuva I want for my game is an apostate who betrayed the Lightbringer order of Pelor, and now worships a demi-god–like being from the Plane of Shadow known as Putrefax, the Prince of Corpses. What role will this monster serve in the story you’re telling with this encounter / dungeon / adventure / campaign?. Alternatively, as we’ll see, the huecuva can be a convert to the service of an evil deity, who is rewarded for their new devotion with eternal undeath and increased power. The huecuva, as a cursed apostate cleric, reinforces that this world has gods who are somewhat active, and don’t take kindly to those who abuse their gifts. What niche does this monster fill in the world?. These goals are both mechanical and story-driven: Referring back to your goals will help you fill out the different steps in the next stage, where you build the monster’s stats. These are what you want the final monster design to accomplish. It didn’t meet my design goals for the monster, as we’ll now discuss. But I wasn’t impressed with the homebrew I found. I did a search on D&D Beyond and the internet and found nothing official, and only one homebrew stat block. I wanted to use the huecuva, an undead fallen cleric, in my game. Unless, of course, what you can find doesn’t measure up. If something appropriate already exists, just be lazy and import it to your game. So do a basic search of the usual places-the Monster Manual, other sourcebooks you can access, the DM’s Guild, homebrew sites like D&D Beyond, etc. RPG print magazines-yes, they still exist!) and clogs up the search results in unedited publications (e.g.
Duplicate work is unwelcome in edited publications (e.g. This is important whether you’re making the monster for your home game or if you intend to publish. Stage 0: See if anyone has done the work for you. I’ll use my cursed huecuva as an example. Here’s a summary of the steps I follow when making monsters in 5e:Ġ.
Next week, I’m going to continue this discussion by talking about the higher-challenge huecuva that I also designed, and what that process taught me about NPCs with class levels and monster templates in 5e, as well as some things I had to un-learn from 3e, 3.5e/Pathfinder, and 4e. While some other bloggers have produced walkthroughs of their own, I haven’t found a process that was straightforwardly laid out step-by-step with an example, including page references to the DMG, and without rambling asides. Making homebrew monsters in 5e can seem pretty daunting, even with the helpful advice in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
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Throughout, I’m going to refer back to the updated version of the huecuva that I published on the DM’s Guild last month-so you may want to pop over there and download yourself a copy. In this post we’re going to go through my process for creating monsters in D&D 5e.