Introduction to Monster Crafting
Picture this. You have just defeated a dragon, you have stolen its hoard, and now you are left with a huge corpse that you’d hate to spoil. Sure, you could grill up some dragon steaks, but you can only eat so much before the meat goes bad. You, sadly, leave the corpse behind in its cave so that it can rot and stink up the cave, and maybe a few scavengers come and devour the rotting flesh.
But what if you could do something with the corpse? What if you could use all of the buffalo dragon?
Monster Crafting
This is not going to be a one-off post about monster crafting, but the start of how we’re going to build a monster crafting system. So first, we have to determine what exactly we want out of this system.
Encourage players to hunt down creatures and go on adventures.
There are systems out there where the players are expected to spend months of downtime crafting, and I don’t want that. I want adventurers to be adventurers and to be going on adventures.Keep the core rules to one or two pages.
Similar to our crafting rules in Tool Craft, where we keep each system down to a page, if that (not including Variant Rules).Flexible enough to work with most stat blocks with little GM fiat.
I don’t want to put a ton of work on the GM. They should look at the stat block and, with our rules, see what the players can do without having to make up stuff or come up with new things off the cuff.Use these rules to craft magic items, recipes, and work with other tools.
We’ve made a magic item crafting system, and have a whole book of crafting with tools, so I want this to work with those. Ideally, it works with both, but I am adamant that it works with Tool Craft and am less worried about it working with the magic item crafting system.Anyone can harvest the monster, but give weight to certain skills for certain components.
Survival skill is a great skill for harvesting claws and teeth, but I think Arcana should be used for harvesting quintessence (or whatever we call magical essence). You can still use Survival for harvesting everything, but either increase the DC, impose Disadvantage, or both.Grant higher quality resources, the tougher the monster (and unique resources for legendary monsters).
The adventurers shouldn’t be looking for a bunch of kobolds to destroy every time they want to craft something. They should be fighting increasingly more dangerous monsters to get what they need. Perhaps tie a magic item’s/recipes’ rarity with CR, i.e. a CR 4 Dragon can’t produce very rare items, but a CR 14 could.
So that’s what I want the system to accomplish when we finish it, but how do I envision it working? Here’s an example.
Monster Harvesting
A party of level 5 adventurers has just finished defeating a CR 8 Young Bronze Dragon. They know want to steal all of its hoard and figure out what they can do with its body.
The GM reviews the stat block and sees it has:
an immunity to Lightning, so the party can try and collect the dragon scales (to craft armor or a shield resistant to lightning)
a Rend ability, so the party can try and harvest claws and teeth (to help build magic weapons)
a Breath Weapon, so the party can try and harvest its breath weapon gland (need a way better name, and this can be refined into a magical quintessence to substitute potion, elixir, and magical brew components that deal with lightning)
a magical ability (in this case, its a breath weapon so they have to choose between this and the previous option; for other creatures it could be spellcasting), so the party could try and condense down the magic goo/quintessence into raw magic (for spellcasting replacements, such as diamonds for revivify or ‘magic goo’ in place of spending gold to craft items)
a lot of meat that a cook could use for their recipes to add an extra burst of magic to them (specifically, someone with Cooks’ Utensils may want to substitute the beef in a hamburger and want something a little extra for using magical meat)
As this is a normal dragon and doesn’t have Legendary Actions, none of its materials can be used to create legendary magic items or recipes. But, since it has a +3 Proficiency Bonus, it can be used to create Uncommon magic items or recipes.
Limited Harvesting
I think we could also use the Proficiency Bonus to limit how much players can scavenge from a creature. They can choose up to 3 things for this young dragon; had it been a wyrmling, they could get 2 things. I think this limit can provide an interesting choice for them. Do they go for the easier to harvest items (and do less with it) or for the harder checks (and do more with it). I think we’ll have to come up with a good reason in-game as to why they can’t harvest more, maybe quintessence or whatever is frail, and they have to be careful when harvesting, or something like that.
DC & Skill Checks
Now, for the DC and skills to use, that is going to be based on what the party is attempting to harvest. While Survival is always available and very useful for exterior things like teeth, claws, and hide, it isn’t so good for magic. Instead, the players would need someone with Arcana. They can still use Survival, but they will have Disadvantage, or some other penalty (maybe decrease their rate of success from masterwork -> moderate, or moderate -> minor — that is, if we do something like that).
Now, for the Difficulty Class, we can tie that into the creature’s level. Perhaps 10 + half the creature’s level (rounded down). That would make the DC for a young dragon 14… which seems low (to me, but only for certain parts of the dragon). If we do straight level + 10, then any creature over CR 10 is going to be near impossible to harvest anything.
Maybe we can have items to be harvested put into categories and trigger DCs based on category and creature level. So basic items, like claws and teeth are DC 14 for this young dragon. But for more advanced materials, like the breath weapon gland or just getting magic goo, would be DC 17 (10 plus half the creature’s level plus the creature’s Proficiency Bonus). Something to consider and decide on in the future (as well as how to categorize items so it makes sense).
Pershiable Items
Once the party has finished their gross task of collecting all the materials they need, we need to think about what these items look like. It’s tempting to throw a timer on these items so that the party can’t stockpile, but also… do teeth and claws really go bad?
Maybe you could argue that the magical essence in them fades, but I’m leaning towards no time limit. If the party finds a thousand-year-old dragon claw, it can still be used. Then again, part of our categorization could include whether the item is a perishable ingredient. Dragon meat doesn’t last forever, and a cook will need to use it very quickly.
Crafting
Once the party has their ingredients and is ready to craft, play should continue as usual. You’d rely on the rules in Tool Craft to make the items, and we would have some rules on if you’re using special ingredients, how they might impact whatever it is that the character is making. Like, obviously, a lightning breath weapon gland would not be useful in creating a potion of cold resistance, only lightning resistance, so there could be restrictions such as that.
This might be the part where GM fiat has to be involved; we can’t make a million rules for every single item. By the end of this, we will provide several monster examples with a breakdown of their parts that GMs can look at and get a feel for how to rule going forward.
The other thing we have to consider, when crafting, is how much of the materials are being used. It’s tempting to say a single dragon tooth equals a +1 dagger, but a dragon may have 50 to 60 teeth (that’s what a t-rex has), so that would be way too much. We can make it a roll of the die, since some may have been bad quality (cavities) or cracked during combat. Maybe this is an opportunity to tie how many teeth and claws the party gathers based off of how well they roll. So something like:
Masterwork: DC 17; 2d10 teeth; 3d6 claws
Moderate: DC 14; 1d10 teeth; 2d6 claws
Minor: DC 11; 1d4 teeth; 1d4 claws
And then, if they want to make a +1 dagger, they’ll need to refine the teeth down into a powder and use Smith’s Tools to turn 4 claws/teeth into a single +1 dagger. More things to think about in the future as to how that will all work.
Your Thoughts?
What about you? What are you looking for in a monster harvesting/crafting system? Do you prefer granularity over simplification? Are you looking for unique magic items with each monster, or just guidelines to help your table figure out how to use the dragon parts to build pre-existing magic items?
Let us know down below!
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