Monster Traits
Monster Actions
Monster Bonus Actions
Monster Reactions
Monster Roles Powers
Monster Type Templates Powers
A monster power is a discrete trait or action that can be quickly assigned to a monster to give them an extra edge in combat. As a GM, you can pick from the many monster power, adding powers that fit the type of creature and the story you’re trying to convey.

Adding new powers to existing monster stat blocks lets you improve upon creatures who feel too simple, or who might have become familiar to your players. A creature primarily focused on a single attack can be transformed into something far more evocative with a fiery weapon that burns its target, a pinning blow that restrains an enemy, or other exciting options.

Monster powers can also add features that a monster lacks, such as a ranged attack, a means of getting away from pesky heroes, or an aura to dissuade too many characters from surrounding a creature. Monster powers can let foes deal stronger damage, or can provide a more flexible means of dealing damage for an exciting encounter.

Monster powers function like any other trait or action a creature already has in their stat block, and are written up in much the same way as those existing traits and actions.

Monster powers sometimes make use of challenge rating to calculate attack bonuses, damage, saving throw DCs, or similar values. This requires some quick math, but allows powers to be used at almost any CR. The one small fix to keep in mind is that when using monsters below CR 1, any final result (such as a bonus to damage rolls) should have a minimum value of 1.

It’s recommended that you note the final value for any monster power incorporating CR in your session notes. For example, to give a mummy (CR 3) the Poisonous Demise trait that has a DC of 10 + 1/2 CR and deals 2 + CR poison damage, you would note: “Mummy (Poisonous Demise = DC 11, 5 poison damage).”

If you prefer, you can set the attack rolls, save DCs, or damage of monster powers according to Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating. In some cases, this can give a monster power’s math greater accuracy. For example, the aberrant power Erase Memory has a DC of 13 + 1/2 CR, or DC 18 for a CR 10 creature. Looking up CR 10 on the table provides a suggested DC of 17. Regardless of what approach you use, final values for powers are always something you should feel free to change to fit your play style and your group’s capabilities.

In most cases, you’ll add monster powers because you want a creature to be stronger than a typical creature of the same challenge rating, and you don’t want to rebalance the encounter. If you’re deliberately making an encounter a bit stronger, don’t worry about adjusting CR.

If you’re adding monster powers to make creatures more interesting but you don’t want the encounter to be harder, you’ll want to assess whether those powers significantly affect a creature’s CR. When a monster power offers an option a creature doesn’t have (for example, a ranged attack to a melee-focused foe) this generally won’t change challenge rating. But if a power grants a creature additional actions or no-action damage (for example, a damaging aura or a bonus-action attack), the increase in the creature’s overall damage can increase CR.

Increasing a creature’s CR by 1 is generally sufficient, or you can use the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table to assess whether extra damage or a boost to AC changes the expected challenge rating.

If you reward XP for defeating foes in your game, consider having a creature with one or more monster powers provide the XP of a monster with a challenge rating 1 higher than the baseline monster, to represent the lessons learned from fighting this interesting creature.

It’s generally recommended to choose one monster power for a normal creature you want to enhance. For creatures playing a particularly important role in the encounter, including boss and solo monsters, choose two or three powers.

In combat, most foes will last 2 to 5 rounds before being defeated. The foes who drop most quickly are often the weakest creatures in the encounter, but might also be those foes important enough to attract the characters’ immediate attention. Because of this, most monsters shouldn’t have more than three or four action options, including any added monster powers, unless the flexibility of many actions is needed.

Features and actions tell a story. If you have too many, the story becomes muddled. You want characters to react to a creature’s fiery aura as they enter it, but the players might not even remember that aura if it’s part of a list of several other things that happen. You want to pick a few elements and make them important to the encounter.

Likewise, the more features and actions your foes have, the harder they can be to run. Monster tactics are usually more effective if you focus on using a few capabilities well.

As a rule of thumb, an encounter is easier to manage when we assign a monster power to all creatures of the same name and type. In a fight with hobgoblin and goblin mercenaries, you might give one power to the hobgoblins to reinforce their role as leaders, even if you then reflavor how the power manifests in each individual. For example, describing the same ranged monster power differently can establish the story of how each hobgoblin sergeant excels with a different weapon. Assigning the power to all hobgoblins is easier to remember than if some hobgoblins have the power and others don’t.

An exception to this is when you want to make a single member of a group feel exceptional—for example, a trio of skeletons fighting the party, with one of them on fire. By choosing one creature to be different, you make it easy to make that creature memorable. Adding a different monster power to each of the skeletons would also be memorable, but harder to track.

It’s up to you to decide whether a monster power is magical (and thus can be shut down in an antimagic field, or dispelled with dispel magic if you treat it as a spell effect), or whether it is natural (representing physical capabilities or training). Thinking through the nature of the powers you add to creatures also helps you lean into the fiction when you use those powers.

Though all these monster powers can be used exactly as written, they’re meant to be starting points that you can alter to fit your particular needs. For example, Displace Enemies is a strong effect, allowing a creature to rearrange the battlefield as a bonus action each turn. But for some encounters, it might be appropriate to limit this power with a recharge so it comes up less frequently. A power such as Armor of Frost is a reaction by default, limiting it to being used once per round by a draconic creature. But if you decide that power would work well for an ice elemental, you can represent that creature’s icy nature by lowering the damage but making the power a trait that triggers every time the elemental is attacked. For an ice titan, you might keep the power as a reaction but increase the damage, to represent the titan’s elemental might.

It’s a great power to improvise, applying it to any foe when you want them to appear more dangerous and to surprise the characters. Some boss monsters might have multiple reactions, which also works well with this power.

Source: Lazy DM's Forge of Foes