Blue Monsters: Affixes brought to D&D

Tired of throwing out generic goblins, boring bugbears, and drab devils? Anyone who's played games such as Path of Exile, or the Diablo series should be familiar with the concept of "Uncommon" or "Champion" monsters. As a serious fan of the hack-and-slash genre of games, I've been especially intrigued in invoking certain elements of these games forward into my D&D projects. The article is named after the stereotypical blue color born by these monsters in the games that have inspired this project the most.


The goal of this article is specifically to make combat more dynamic, without increasing enemy health or damage numbers. The affixes exist mainly for DMs, and it is not necessarily recommended to refer to your monsters with their affixes to the players. Some form of introduction however may be in order as the benefits granted to monsters are explicitly magical, and some explanation of "Wild Magic surges" and "certain creatures being strangely affected by excess magic" may simultaneously warn, inform and intrigue your players of the rough idea.


Implementing Blue Monsters

These magic monsters nearly always come in packs. Depending on the monster, packs typically range from 2-11 unique individuals. Using the explanation of "localized Wild Magic surges," your monster pack size should be at least somewhat reminiscent of how the monsters would be grouped before their augmentation. You're a lot more likely to find a group of 6 Blue Gnolls, than you are to find a group of any more than 2 Blue Ettins. While most groups of Blue enemies are made up entirely composed of the same kind of enemy, it is not unheard of for solo Blue monsters to be attracted or drawn towards other creatures who bear the same magical affix as them, or for packs to be composed of creatures who are known to work closely together, bugbears and goblins for example.

Birds of a Feather

Each monster in a pack has the same Affix. It's not unlikely for multiple groups of Blue Monsters to gather together, but each creature in the individual packs shares their affix with the other members of their pack.

Blue Monster Affixes
Affix Effect Secondary Effect
Armoured The creature has resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. Bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage that the creature take from non magical weapons is reduced by 3.
Reflective Spell attacks have disadvantage against the creature. The creature has resistance to damage from spells.
Shielded The creature's max health is reduced by 50%. The creature gains a protective ward that shields it's health against damage; the ward has health equal to half of the creature's maximum health. Whenever the creature takes damage, the ward takes the damage instead. The ward has hit points equal to the creature's (new) max hit points. If damage reduces the ward to 0, the creature does not take the remaining damage. The ward recharges to full health at the end of a short rest. While the creature's ward is above 0 health, the creature gains a vulnerability to lightning damage, and poison damage ignores the ward and deals damage directly to the creature's health. If the creature reaches 0 hp while the ward is still active, they fall unconcious as normal.
Linked Every creature in the pack shares one health pool that is equal to each of their individual health pools combined. Resistances, Vulnerabilities and Immunities are only taken into account if the creature that is targeted by the damage has them, otherwise the health pool takes damage as normal. All of the creatures die simultaneously when their collective health pool reaches 0, and cannot otherwise die. You do not track their individual health pools except for the purpose of determining the total combined health pool.
Warping At the end of this creature's turn, it teleports to another square within 30 feet of it. If the creature is grappling another creature at the end of it's turn, the grappled target teleports with the Warping creature. The creature can cast the Misty Step spell at-will.
Hulking The creature has advantage on strength checks and saving throws. The creature grows by one size category.
Rapid Attacks of opportunity are made against this creature with disadvantage. This creature makes Dexterity Saving Throws with advantage. When the creature is subjected to a Dexterity Saving throw that allows it to only take half damage, it instead takes no damage on a success and half damage on a failure. The creature gains +30 to every movement speed it currently possesses. When it takes the dash action on it's turn, it is considered to be under the effect of the "Spider Climb" spell until the end of it's turn.
Use with Caution

The purpose of affixes such as Armoured or Reflective are to heavily encourage your players to think outside of the box.

  • Weapon users may find that a grappling strategy would prove more effective against Armoured Enemies while your mages take them down. If your party is low in magic users, frequent use of the armoured affix will prove more annoying, rather than thought provoking.
  • Reflected explicity only reduces the damage of spells, while not reducing the effectiveness of their utility. You should find your players opting to use spells such as Grease or Fog Cloud, or cantrips with added utility such as Frostbite or Ray of Frost.

It is especially recommended to have complex battle areas when using these two Affixes, or your players might feel like their "best" option is still to ineffectively beat against the enemy's resistances, this drags out your combat, and may result in a reduction of overall fun.


Habit Breaking

Blue Monsters, as a rule, is explicity to disrupt the ruts that your players may be settling into. When using this module, it is incredibly important to reward your players for out-of-the-box thinking. Improvised Actions and Utility spells tend to make a better story than "They attack, we attack." Blue Monsters are best implemented in areas that are rich in "improvisational potential." Add hazards, water pools, uneven ground, difficult terrain, places to climb, places to hide, stone statues, broken furniture, unbroken furniture, etc. A non-magical fighter gets an especially interesting story about "that one time he held an Armoured Monster in a fire pit until it died." rather than remembering "that one fight that took 10 turns because I had no other options than to attack into his resistance."

Keep in mind, you as the DM shouldn't constantly be fighting at peak damage efficiency either. If your players have the options to drop a chandelier on your enemies, your enemies should have the same opportunities. Pin your Wizard under a heavy bookshelf, shatter a window with your fighter's face, fight dirty, make it personal. Your goal is to make a compelling story, not to kill your players, so make it memorable.

Other Affixes

While I only listed 7 affixes, there is no reason that there can't be more, or less. This is merely the the groundwork for the system. If your party is exclusively martial classes, it makes logical sense to strike out Armoured from the list, because it will be nothing but a hassle. Linked creatures on the other hand are especially difficult if your party has no Area of Effect Damage. Pick your list wisely.

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Describe your enemies

The limited list of affixes is in place to make your players really pay attention to your enemy descriptions, which means for this to be a fair addition, you need to give your players hints. With this system, the players may be slightly thrown off by these new "features" jumping out at them, but after a few such encounters, they'll realize that the key to fighting these monsters lies in the way that you describe them. Your players will likely still "test" their abilities against these creatures, but you give them a chance to think twice about blowing their highest level spells on the first turn, for example. Below is a table that shows a few example descriptions.

Descriptions
Affix First Description In Combat Description
Armoured "Thick bony plates appear to have grown all over the creature's exposed skin" "The blunt impact of your mace seems to have little stopping power against the beast."
Reflective "The creature's exposed skin shimmers in the daylight." "The small mote of flame strikes the enemy, and harmless sparks seem to ricochet off of it. The area struck by the fire seems to remain immaculate."
Shielded "Every few seconds, a surge of crackling blue energy ripples over the surface of the creature's body." "The area you strike seems to shimmer as a weave of magical energy appears to cushion the blow."
Linked "Each of the creatures in the pack seems to bear a pattern of identical scars, bruises and burns." "As your spell lands against the flesh of the small humanoid, several beams of red magical energy leap from it towards it's allies, who each seem to wince in pain as the energy strikes them."
Warping "The creature seems to be ever-so slightly transparent, and every few seconds they seem to be briefly turning completely invisible for mere fractions of a second before reappearing." "Every few seconds, each creature in the pack disappears simultaneously before each reappearing in a different location. This tactic proves heavily distracting."
Hulking "The creature's frame is drastically larger than other creatures of it's kind. It's muscles bulge intimidatingly as it moves." "The creature's grasp is supernaturally strong, you feel your skin bruising underneath it's powerful fingers as they dig into your torso."
Rapid "The creature appears relatively normal at first glance, but the creature seems to react supernaturally fast to incoming stimuli." "The creature's feet tear across the surface of the floor at a break-neck speed. Without breaking stride, the creature dashes up the wall in a gravity defying stunt."