Every D&D Boss Monster Should Have a Mount

From the Witch King to Death Itself, every badass has a trusty steed.

In the most recent WorldSmith update, the devs dropped a whole bunch of new juicy DM tools, including a dungeon generator, familiar generator, and group generator but the one I want to bring your attention to is the unsung hero of the DnD 5e world: The Mount Generator.

Why should my 5e monsters use mounts?

There's a couple reasons. One, it's pretty darn cool. Pick about any monster in the Monster Manual and they're cooler riding a bigger monster.

Goblins? No! Goblins on spiders! Skeletons? On dragon turtles! Mind flayers? On dragons??

Okay so maybe we're getting carried away, but you get my point. It's an unexpected twist you can throw into your game that will be sure to your everyday game turn into an epic quest.

It also really messes with your players confidence in combat. Your standard DnD 5e creature on foot moves about 30-40 feet, which is about the same as most player characters. In grid based combat, this can start to get a bit gamey, with players figuring out which hexes to stand on to maximize AOE and all those other things that start to really chafe the morale of your beloved GM. But a mindflayer on a winged horse becomes a whole other situation. Suddenly their spells that have a range of 30 feet start to feel more like 90 feet when the horse they're riding can take a casual move action of fly speed 60...

Lastly, it's a great way to compound challenge ratings. I know we've all been in that situation where we're trying to even out the action economy between a party and the monsters, and legendary actions just won't cut it. So we start to toss in a bunch of little minions to run around the boss and just level the playing fields. It works, but it's a lot of effort for you as a GM to manage and it is a lot less cinematic. But with the right mount, a CR 3 boss can easily become a CR 12 boss and still have the impact and ease of fighting essentially one big model.

Oh which brings me to my other thing - Wizards of the Coast basically doesn't make mounted monsters, which, I dunno, you could see as a bummer OR you could see as the perfect opportunity to finally bust out your Warhammer Fantasy 4E models that have been collecting dust in the cabinet since the late 90's. Or for those of you who use a virtual tabletop, time to razzle dazzle your players with some fun mounted characters and adventurers that normally don't get playtime.

Is WorldSmith good at making monster mounts?

Let's find out! Hop on over to WorldSmith's Mount Generator and give it a spin. WorldSmith, by the way, is free to use for a week and you can make as many creations as you want in that week long window, so it's pretty low risk. Adventure awaits!

Do WorldSmith Mounts have challenge ratings?

Yep, they do! You can set it between 1 and 20 or higher I guess if you have a penchant for destruction. One of WorldSmith's strengths is getting Challenge Rating in 5e pretty bang on, so you can bring it to your game with confidence.

Like I mentioned earlier, setting the CR of your mount is a great way to increase the CR of the guy (or gal) riding on top without having to mess with them too much. For example, you might have the party meet a deadly wood elf in the first session when the players are level 3 - by the time they run into her again they are level 8. Problem easily solved if you stick her on a CR 5 forest dragon!

Do you have to care for WorldSmith mounts?

Well, yes! Or at least someone does!

One of the fun features of making a mount in WorldSmith is that it actually comes with care instructions! These might be skill checks or activities the mount has to do daily or specific food it has to be given. Cooler still, if you neglect the mounts care, it can have negative consequences, fight you back, run away, or all sorts of other unexpected results!

One thing I love about this is it makes it possible for players to tame mounts or even steal them from their foes. You as the GM can keep the secrets to the care instructions hidden behind the GM screen. You can ask for some Nature or Animal Handling checks (finally! Skills we normally never get to use in 5e!) to figure out the care instructions.

As with all WorldSmith creations, the stat blocks are 100% editable, so go ahead and make your care instruction as complex or deadly as you desire.

Do WorldSmith mounts have personalities?

Yes, that's something else you can assign them! Not only is this a helpful reminder for you as a GM to remember how to play them at the table, it gives the generator helpful direction as to what traits or skills the mount should have and how potentially difficult it may be to care for.

Do I need to fill in the custom note?

No, not necessarily. You can definitely just fill in the drop down menus and leave the custom note blank, and the ai generator will perform more reliably than a dwarf paladin on three cups of ale (which is to say, pretty darn accurate).

But the custom note is a great tool to use if you want to give the mount some special flavor. WorldSmith also has a cool feature where you can link in other monsters, chracters, or creations from your world and WorldSmith will take those stat blocks and use them to create the mount! So if you have already created a monster, you can just attach it in the custom note and it will be a super fast way to make the mount and start playing with it right away.

Let's make a mount together!

Okay dungeon masters, enough talk, time to start playing! Let's walk through a real generation situation that came up in one of my games.

There's a player in one of my campaigns who recently got a dragon egg! Normally in 5e you would just toss them a young dragon wyrmling and, I dunno, make it maybe a bit friendly? Make it eat him? Depends on the GM you are! But now thanks to WorldSmith I can make it as a dragon mount with specific care instructions.

I decided to test how good the ai toolbox would be, so just used the drop down menus to select challenge rating, monster type, and temperament, and this is what I got:

The shadow drake of dusk!

It's a muscular dragon whose scales shimmer like ink in low light, which is very cool. In addition to the standard stat block you would suspect it also has some great attacks, a claw attack, and a very cool shadow breath. One thing I didn't expect but I like is that it has a summoning method - a one-hour ritual that consumes 500 gold of powdered obsidian and two vials of midnight water.

The shadow drake also has a Bonding Ritual. The writer must spend a full night reciting the oath of shadows, and if the mount dies you can actually re-summon it! A fun ability I think my player will love and me as a GM will probably regret, but let's go for it.

Of course if I don't like any of this, I can just delete or add to it! Yes, WorldSmith stat sheets are 100% editable, because we all know that an ai game master will never be able to replace what a real life GM can create.

In addition to being fully customizable, WorldSmith sheets are modular so you can actually move the sections around on the stat sheet, which can be helpful for your own organization and ease of play.

Care wise the Shadow Drake has a monthly cost of 300 gold pieces to care for your dragon. It's fun because it puts a little pressure on the players to actually make sure they're looting and adventuring. Additionally if you take good care of it you get advantage on stealth checks, a +2 bonus to initiative and the rider's melee strikes are imbued with 1d6 necrotic damage. But if you don't take good care of it, flight speed is halved, it refuses commands and imposes disadvantage on wisdom saving throws! Naught naughty boy.

Can WorldSmith do normal mounts too?

So far we've been talking about magical and monstrous mounts, but one thing I wanted to test is how well WorldSmith makes like a standard horse. So let's give it a go:

We're going to set our horse at CR2, say it's a horse, and then just leave the rest blank!

Here's what we got: The Storm Step Charger. It's a thunder themed horse So it's got 45 hit points, 12 armor, requires 50 gold pieces if you want to summon it, and even has a bit of an AoE attack!

Then you have obviously your care information with some benefits if you take good care of it and some negative effects if you don't, same to the Shadow Drake.

In other words, WorldSmith definitely specializes in magical and powerful mounts, but if you went into the custom description and specified that it should not have any magic abilities, it would give you something more standard. What's cool about that is you could actually make a very powerful like CR10 warhorse or dog or something that is just super beefy and has powerful non-magical abilities.

How can I integrate mounts into my D&D game?

Now that you know how to use the WorldSmith tools, the sky is really the limit! Here are a few situations that come to mind:

• Enter your players into a race or joust: Rather than a combat based encounter, maybe they have to enter a mounted race, including obstacles, traps, even mounted combatants. They could be forced to choose a horse, and each horse will have secretive special abilities and care instructions which will give them different strengths and weaknesses in the race.

• Let your players stumble across more eggs or summoning scrolls in their loot: Rather than just standard treasure and magic items, throw in some potential mounts as loot! This could take the form of an egg or young creature in a cage, or could be a summing scroll for a mount that will require some specific components

• Make taming a dangerous mount key to a god or queen’s request: If they succeed, they can win their favor, the mount (and perhaps some juicy loot as well!) A unique test that requires wisdom, animal handling, and potentially a lot of hit points. it back up. You can re-edit it if you want to, so you could change whatever you want about it. And then you can share it with your players by generating a link.

• Appease your “pet loving” players by allowing them to turn monsters they defeat into mounts: What about giving some of your monsters ‘death saves’ so a monster can be defeated to the brink of death but then slowly revived and possible tamed? Or maybe you allow speak with animals or charm to turn an Owlbear into a tamable creature, so your druid can live out their dream of being a spell casting Owlbear backpack. Suddenly encounters become full of charm and challenge vs your standard hit points brawl.

I have no doubt you’ll use WorldSmith’s Mount Generator to horrifying effect. I know around the office we certainly have, and our D&D games will never be the same.