How To Make Balanced D&D Homebrew
Tired of modules? Here’s a fast guide to making your own balanced and game-accurate content.
Maybe you’ve run a few D&D modules and are ready to run your first campaign, or you are a new DM playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time - either way you need to learn how to make Homebrew.
Here’s a fast guide to creating homebrew versions of all the stuff you’ll need to create your own epic game of Dungeons and Dragons - and be celebrated by your players as an epic DM for months to come!
Making A Homebrew D&D World
Most awesome RPG’s start with a great world. If you’re a first time DM it can be hard to know where to start. Fortunately there’s not a lot you can mess up at this point, as your world is 100% up to you! Great games of Dungeons and Dragons have happened from the high seas to barren deserts, so the choice is up to you.
Making a Custom Map
A lot of times I start with a hand drawn map of a world before I even know the story. This is a great way to start if you enjoy doodling. Draw a map that looks fun to explore with terrain of your choice, place a few cities, spooky looking forests and swamps, a couple caves, and you’re already halfway to a great homebrew world!
If you’re not much for drawing, WorldSmith has a built in map generator that will generate a world map for you but leave the details vague enough for you to fill in what you like! It’s a great way to get the juices flowing.
Decide a Theme for your Game
Most great games of Dungeons and Dragons have a clear theme. For this I often look at books or movies I love. Maybe your heroes need to deliver a dangerous object to the one place it can be destroyed … or have been banished from a school of wizardry for misusing powerful magic. Sound familiar?
Picking a strong theme for the game will also help you make decisions down the road on the rest of your homebrew. Is this a classic fantasy game with epic sword fights and treasure chests of loot? Or more a horror fantasy game with vampires and ghosts? Maybe it’s a comedic game, where most of the potions and wands have a chance of backfiring … no matter what you choose for your homebrew world make sure it’s something you’re excited about and you think will match the expectations of your players.
If you’re new to DM’ing and this is your first game of D&D, don’t be afraid to pull almost whole cloth from a book or movie you love! I do it all the time, as do most of the wonderful DM’s I know who have been running games for years.
Don’t Get Carried Away
I’ve seen a lot of new DM’s think they have to make a whole custom world with every little detail. Not only do you not have to do this - it probably will be unhelpful! If you’re playing a campaign with level 10 characters or lower, they’re not likely to know how to teleport about yet, so just focus on a broad world map and where the game will start. You’ll have time between each session to build the world more, and nothing feels more frustrating than building out shops, magic items, and encounters that your party never finds (plus it will tempt you to railroad them into a part of the map they may not be interested in, so best to avoid that practice!)
If you want a good sampling of what is helpful to have in your custom homebrew world, check out WorldSmith’s world generator tool. It includes things like a world timeline, key events, religion, history, and a few other broad strokes that will help you when you want to save time during session prep.
Homebrew Monsters
Dungeons and Dragons is a game about killing monsters at the end of the day - so making a homebrew monster is probably one of the first things you’ll be excited about doing. The monster manual is fun, but can be limiting. Here’s a few guidelines to making your own custom monsters that are balanced for your party.
Pick a Monster Concept
Start off with an idea for your homebrew monster. Maybe it’s a cat with dragon wings or a centipede that can disguise itself as a human. Whatever it might be, imagine it clearly in your mind visually. It will help you to answer these questions later!
WorldSmith’s Monster Generator has a very slick system that will turn your ideas into balanced custom monsters for D&D very quickly and easily. If you’re using WorldSmith, just put your full idea for your monster into the ‘Custom Note’ section and it will generally give you something pretty close (more to come on this later).
Stabby, Tough, or Tricksy
When I make a homebrew monster, I generally try to give it a single strength: is it Stabby, Tough, or Tricksy?
Stabby monsters put out a lot of damage but generally have lower armor class or hit points, and few abilities. Lots of beasts fall into this category, like giant apes and dinosaurs and such.
Tough monsters, like dragons and iron golems, have an obnoxiously high armor class but generally fewer hit points than people assume and attacks that deal moderate damage every round.
Tricksy monsters are your mind flayers, sphinxes, gelatinous cubes and other monsters that tend to use spells or special abilities to achieve victory.
Of course there are some horrific D&D monsters that have all 3 (looking at you Lichs) but when I’m making a homebrew monster I tend to think about what it’s strength will be and focus on that.
Compare Challenge Ratings
Dungeons and Dragons uses a system called Challenge Rating to balance its monsters (you can read more about this in the Dungeon Masters Guide). In short, the total Challenge Rating of whatever you throw at your party should equal whatever their level is (for a party of between 3-5 players) as long as you’re hitting them with one or two encounters a session. For my personal taste I tend to think that Wizards of the Coast underplays it slightly, so if I have a level 5 party I will often put them up against a CR 7 monster because I like a nice tense challenge and the chance of TPK on the table in every encounter.
Pick a challenge rating and then peruse the Monster Manual to get a sense for the ballpark of hit points, armor class, and strength of attacks. Then pick your monster's focus and give it a little boost in that area, and a little weakness in one or two of the other areas.
Don’t forget to toss in some fun abilities like different types of senses, immunities, special abilities on death, or recharge abilities (or legendary actions if you’re making a tough monster!).
WorldSmith’s monster generator does a really slick job of this, and for the last year I’ve actually been using it to guide almost all of my homebrew monsters. I input my ideas for a monster and the CR, and it gives me a balanced stat sheet that is in the ballpark. From there I can edit and tweak things to make a totally custom monster that I’m happy with.
Custom Magic Items
Dungeons and Dragons wouldn’t be complete without a healthy dose of murder tools floating around. The good news about making custom magic items is you don’t need to worry about balance too much - unlike monsters your players won’t be fighting them, so if you want to give your level 1 character the most powerful homebrew magic item the world of Dungeons and Dragons has ever seen, go for it!
The Idea for the Magic Item
My best advice for making custom magic items is to just think what you want it to accomplish first. I tend to think about what the players would think is most fun and then give them something that will help them do just that! A box of TNT is only fun to players who love to blow things up.
Once you have your idea, try to make it a single use item with a clear purpose (check out the Dungeonmaster’s Guide for examples of other magic items) and then consider giving it charges or components needed so that they can’t just use it non-stop. I have found that it’s tempting to make magic items that are ‘super interesting’ and can do a million things. But much like a Swiss Army knife, it ends up being kind of bad at everything. Trust me on this one, the fun wears off quickly. Players forget all the weird stuff it does, or end up using the same item again and again in every situation, which gets boring and predictable. I would suggest instead coming up with items that do one surprising and novel thing, and then letting your players find how to use that to solve problems in their own ways! A goblet that summons carrots when you say a magic word may be just the thing to confuse the hill giant and make off with his loot.
Also feel no obligation to tell your players everything your item does! One advantage to using Homebrew is that your players can’t look up what your item does online or in a rulebook, so it can be fun to keep a secret cursed element or potentially a powerful ability on Nat 20’s locked away until a key moment in the game.
On WorldSmith you can actually request to make items cursed, which is a fun way to add in some spice to the magic item as it gives it a chance of backfiring or sometimes just makes it hard to stop using - a deliciously cruel trick.
Shops, NPC’s, Treasure, Encounters etc.
The amount of stuff you can homebrew in Dungeon and Dragons is technically infinite. I’ve even made custom combat systems to allow for massive scale battles, jousting, and in one interesting circumstance, a game of underground dungeon football.
I would suggest starting with your Map, some Monsters, and a few fun Magic Items. Rather than spending weeks and weeks making a whole custom D&D world that your players will never see, start somewhere small and see where the adventure takes you. Once you get comfortable with your players and the world you’re playing in, the Homebrew will start to write itself.
WorldSmith can also save you hours of time during session prep, as it’s great at filling in the nitty gritting things like Dex Saves, Flying Speed, Skills, Loot etc. I love to use WorldSmith to generate shops and treasure in particular, and it’s a gamechanger when you get caught on the back foot and need to homebrew some custom stuff right behind the DM screen mid session.
Final Thoughts
Good luck homebrewing, and to everyone learning to run your first campaign - it’s not as scary as you think it is! Dive in and enjoy the ride.
See you on the other side when your players burn down a city.
Trust me. They will.
