The Monstrous Bundle - Flee, Mortals! and Where Evil Lives
A packed module of content for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition!
In this module you will find
- More than 300 monsters ready to use!
- Environment scenes for random encounters!
- More than 20 adventures that can be incorporated into your game with no preparation!
- Ancestries for creating new monsters!
- A beautiful dynamic token ring!
- A plethora of monster lore in an easily digestible format!
- And much, much more!
Flee, Mortals!
This epic 5e monster module contains 339 unique actors plus new rules for action-oriented creatures, minions, companions, retainers, encounter-building, and more, all implemented seamlessly into Foundry Virtual Tabletop!
We have put special care into making every single monster easy to run. Every single monster has lore embedded onto their stat block, so you can know exactly how they work at a glance!
Action-Oriented Monsters
If a monster is big enough and bad enough to challenge an entire party on their own, or if it just makes sense for the Queen of the Goblins to be better than a normal Goblin Boss, we made a named, unique, Action-Oriented version of that monster. Action-Oriented monsters get special Villain Actions that allow them to act when it's not their turn, and they rely on spells much less.
Old Monsters Un-boring'd
We love all the classic monsters! Goblins, kobolds, orcs, giants, dragons... We just wish they were more fun to use. So this is what we did!
More Options
There's only one goblin in the core rules. So if you decide your 1st-level party is going to explore a tomb with some goblins in it. you don't have a lot of options.
This module has a LOT of options for all the classic monsters we all rely on. Goblin Assassins! Goblin Snipers! Goblin Spinecleavers! Goblin Cursespitters! Presenting you, the GM, with many options when it comes to a given enemy makes building encounters with them more fun because you can make each encounter unique. You could have twelve different Hobgoblin encounters and never use exactly the same combination of Hobgoblin types.
Not Just Bags of Hit Points
Most (not all! But most) of the monsters in the core rules amount to just a bag of hit points, and in our experience that's not much fun. It's much more exciting (for both the players and the GM) if the monsters can do cool stuff!
These monsters all have special abilities that make them fun to run, fun to fight, and also go a long way towards reinforcing the fantasy of the monster. Monsters shouldn't just look cool, they should do cool stuff and that stuff should remind you of WHY this monster is the way it is.
All features are drag-and-droppable onto any creature as well! Like the Sniper ability our Goblin Sniper has? Give it to a Bandit and now you've got a Bandit Sniper!
Not A Big List of Spells
The core rules rely on giving monsters spells to make them interesting, but it mostly makes them more needlessly complex. Our monsters sometimes use spells, but it's a lot easier on the GM to give them cool abilities they can use in combat.
The kinds of abilities that make the GM cackle when you read them. “I can't wait to use this!” is far better than “I don't remember how that spell works, lemme go look it up.”
All monster abilities are useable within their FVTT stat blocks, making it easier than ever to utilize them in combat and make your players squeal.
New Monsters for Classic Environments
Besides remaking tons of the classic 5E foes, we got new monsters in here too!
Our philosophy is that monsters should have a reason for existing, so this module starts by imagining all the different places encounters tend to happen. You know, a swamp, the city, a graveyard, the sewers. We got eight different environments here!
New Rules
Look, we don't want to reinvent the wheel here. Any 5E GM should be able to use any monsters in here with a minimum of fuss. But there are a couple of new ideas in here.
Minions!
Minions are a great way to let your characters feel heroic by fighting a sea of bad guys (a horde of zombies! A whole tribe of goblins!) without slowing the game down to a crawl. Because while a minion is almost as nasty as a regular monster, they die real fast.
Our minion rules have been designed from the ground up to work with fifth edition, and have gone through months of testing. They allow you, the GM, to throw a bunch of monsters against your players and challenge them without overwhelming them or grinding the game to a halt. Just pull them from the built-in compendium and overwhelm your players in an instant.
They let you design more interesting, epic, cinematic encounters and - most importantly - they help your players feel like heroes.
Companions!
Everybody love pets! So we created new rules for players to have a cool companion. We even gave monsters that makes sense as a “pet” a unique Companion stat block!
Retainers!
Retainers are a great way to reward a player for some good roleplaying. “The goblin agrees to help you… for now.” Here's your little goblin buddy!
Retainers are like NPCs, but instead of managing an entire second character and second character sheet, retainers are much simpler. They have a handful of abilities they can use, simplified defenses and hit points, all designed to make them easy and fun to run.
Any monster intelligent enough to speak, and inclined to negotiate, is a candidate for a retainer and this module has LOTS of them!
BUT WAIT! This module not only includes all of the above, but also features...
Where Evil Lives
Oops! All lairs.
The best dungeons have fun boss battles, exciting hazards, and, of course, awesome treasure. Where Evil Lives: The MCDM Book of Boss Battles has all that, plus everything you need to run a lair out of the book in a moment's notice. Use a dungeon when you have nothing else planned, or build an entire campaign that leads up to a climactic encounter in a lair! Jump into any one of the 22 packed adventures! There is at least one dungeon for each level of play from 2nd to 20th!
Each lair contains...
- fully walled and doored maps with relevant light sources already implemented.
- pre-placed monsters, traps, and notes for when things go awry.
- a unique, action-oriented boss with memorable, dynamic villain actions.
- a treasure hoard tailored to the dungeon's denizens that includes an original magic item plus other unique rewards, all ready to be dropped onto your player's inventories (if they earn them).
- detailed descriptions of traps, hazards, and NPCs.
