How to Homebrew D&D Monsters for Urban Fantasy Settings

Three examples on how to homebrew Dungeons and Dragons Monsters for Urban Fantasy Campaigns!

Urban Fantasy is one of the most fun, most interesting, and most familiar genres in all of Fantasy. This is true of urban fantasy films, literature, video games, and, of course, Dungeons and Dragons campaigns.

For a setting as exciting as urban fantasy, your campaign will need monsters that rise to the occasion, with abilities and designs to impress your players. However, the Monster Manual and other official sources like Volo's Guide To Monsters don't have much in the way of urban fantasy monsters.

Creating your own monsters can be intimidating in the beginning, but that's why we will walk through three examples of custom monsters perfect for an urban fantasy setting.

Homebrew Monsters

Make the City the Monster: The Graffitgeist

Urban fantasy shines when it blends the fictional with the real. Taking small details from real-life cities—graffiti, in this instance—and adding a little magic is a surefire recipe for a fun monster. To start this process, let's take the graffiti detail, and make it into a monster with a backstory. The concept is simple: living graffiti that flattens its victims onto city walls.

The Graffitgeist is a medium Elemental that manifests as a chaotic silhouette of spray paint and soot on vertical surfaces. Born out of a gang tag left in honor of a fallen member and imbued with their anger and emotion, the Graffitgeist took on a life of its own. Graffitgeist hungers for the fear of those who deface the city's walls and seeks to claim new canvases by erasing the living, flattening victims into its ever-growing gallery.

Now that we have a concept, let's give it some unique homebrew abilities!

• Two-Dimensional Form: A unique defensive trait where attacks relying on 3D forms (like grappling or shoving) automatically fail. It requires magical weapons or force damage to bypass its resistances.

• Surface Jump: This bonus action allows the creature to dissolve into pigment and instantly reappear on a different wall within 60 feet.

• Mural Press: This terrifying attack allows the Graffitgeist to suffocate a target by pulling them into the wall. If the target fails their strength save, they take bludgeoning damage as they are forced further into the structure.

With the abilities and concept together, all we need to do is put together the rest of the stat block. You can do this on your own, or use the WorldSmith monster generator to help balance the abilities and produce a full stat block.

The Ley-Line Leech

Since we've already looked at turning real-life details into monsters, and dropping in fantasy monsters into urban environments, we can finish these three urban monsters by blending the approaches.

Urban fantasy relies not only on fantasy creatures in common settings, or common details in fantasy settings, but the merging of both worlds in a way that is unique and believable. The Ley-Line Leech is a construct designed to do just that.

Ley-Line Leech is a large, tick-like construct roughly the size of a halfling. Its chitinous carapace is jet black, and its bulbous abdomen glows with a translucent blue light that pulses with stolen magic. Jagged, rusted metal mandibles clamp onto rune-etched conduits and streetlamps in the city’s underworks. When it feeds, the pulsing glow intensifies, and nearby magical lights wink out, plunging the area into darkness.

The Ley-Line Leech is a great monster to populate the world with. It is a lower CR (3) than the other two monsters and would make a great basic encounter enemy; a 15 armor class and 40 hit points also lend well for random encounters. Ley-Line Leeches use worldbuilding in their design; giving these monsters a tick-like appearance draws from real-life experiences, making them a construct that feeds off of magical energy gives the monsters the fantastical element, and giving them a backstory will tie in the themes and plot you want in your campaign.

For the Ley-Line Leech, we were able to fine-tune some clever abilities:

• Anti-Magic Aura: This passive ability causes spells of 2nd level or lower to fail automatically and turns magical items mundane within 30 feet, making these monsters great for countering casters.

• EMP Burst: Ideally used when players get too close, this discharges arcane electricity in a 20-foot radius, dealing lightning damage and suppressing magical items for one round. For martial classes relying on melee attacks, this can keep them at a distance.

• Mana Drain: As a Legendary Action, the Leech can target a creature and force a save to dispel a magical effect or buff currently on them. This could counter an inspiration or other spell that players have relied a little too much on.

For basic attacks, the Ley-Line Leech can do a bite attack dealing piercing damage and a constriction attack that causes targets to be grappled. Monsters like these can help fill a world with opportunities for your players to attack, or force your players to flee from them and rethink their strategies. Custom monsters can also create more interesting and fun sessions; in one session your players could work with allies to watch the Ley-Line Leeches, getting intelligence for future fights, or find themselves the unsuspecting targets of their horde.

Repurpose the Environment: The Refuse Drake

The Graffitgeist turns a real city detail into a fantasy monster, while the Ley-Line Leeches take a real-life creature and make them magical. Now we can do the reverse—put a fantastical monster into an urban environment.

One of the best ways to homebrew an urban fantasy monster is to take a classic monster concept—like a drake—and twist it to fit the reality of a city. In the wild, drakes might hoard gold in caves, but in an urban setting, they evolve to survive in the undercity dumps and sewers.

In this way, we get the concept behind the Refuse Drake, a creature that covers its body in a "scale-mail" made of rusted hubcaps, twisted rebar, and flickering neon signs. It gathers the refuse from the environment to make itself comfortable in a city. The Refuse Drake doesn't just do this for decor, though; the Refuse Drake is able to use its hoarding to its own benefit, raising its Armor Class.

The Refuse Drake slithers through the undercity dumps and buried sewers, its serpentine body sheathed in a haphazard scale-mail of rusted shields, broken pots, dented carriage wheels, and shattered armor plates. Its eyes gleam with feral cunning as it guards its sprawling hoard of lost and discarded items.

Your players may find this monster crawling the sewers under the headquarters of a large company, digging through landfills for more armor, or dragging off smaller monsters as prey. A savvy Dungeon Master will accompany their introduction with mystery and awe, guiding the players to investigate the Refuse Drake (maybe even to search its lair).

Concept down, now we can add some abilities!

• Scavenger's Armor: When the drake is hit by a melee attack, scraps of its junk-armor fly off, creating difficult terrain (caltrops) that damages enemies who step there.

• Acidic Sludge Breath: Instead of fire, this drake exhales a 30-foot cone of toxic sludge, attacking with both acid and poison damage. This is bound to hurt unwise adventurers who wander too close to the Drake's mouth.

• Sewage Splatter (Costs 1 Action): The Refuse Drake hurls a glob of acidic sludge at a creature it can see within 20 feet.

• Junk Feast: The Refuse Drake devours nearby scrap and debris to regain hit points, helping the drake stay on its feet during a combat encounter.

The Refuse Drake has an Armor Class of 17 and 120 hit points, making it a more challenging enemy to face than the other monsters we've designed. However, since it has more intimidating attacks, is harder to hit, and creates its own weapons, we will give it a vulnerability to force and thunder damage. These types of attacks will do double damage to the Refuse Drake, as its armor is patchwork, and getting hit with a powerful, thundering force will cause the armor to fall apart. This also gives our players a sense of realism to the monster, and helps a stat block come to life.

If your players manage to defeat this beast, the scrap it leaves behind might be valuable. You can use the WorldSmith treasure generator to determine what valuable tech or magical components were hidden in its junk armor.

Homebrew Monsters with WorldSmith's Monster Generator

Creating epic monsters with incredible melee attacks, legendary actions, unique weapons, and powerful spells can be difficult. Balancing hit points, armor class, flying speed, bonus actions, opportunity attacks, ability checks, and other basic stats can make this even more difficult, especially for a newer dungeon master.

You may have all the ideas for a perfect encounter, but you still need a better enemy for your players to hit. That's where WorldSmith can shine, creating monsters with full statblocks and descriptions from your homebrew content. The generator can worry about passive perception, spells, and other stats, while you focus on creating an incredible campaign with incredible foes for your players to combat.

Incorporating Homebrew Content In Your Campaign

The Element of the Unknown

One of the greatest advantages of introducing your own monsters into your urban fantasy setting is the restoration of mystery. Veteran Dungeons and Dragons players often have the Monster Manual memorized; they know exactly what a Troll’s weakness is, or how to avoid a Beholder’s gaze. When you introduce a Graffitgeist or a Refuse Drake, you strip your players of all the information they typically rely on. They can’t simply search the internet or their memories for a stat block that doesn’t exist yet.

This forces players to engage with the world through observation and experimentation. Use this to your advantage by slowly revealing the creature's nature. Don't start with a combat encounter; start with the aftermath of an attack. Let the players investigate the crushed, graffiti-covered armor of a victim, or the mysteriously drained power grid, before they ever see the monster itself. This build-up gives them a sense of dread and anticipation that standard encounters rarely achieve.

Building Tactical Synergies

While these monsters could be fought on their own, they shine brightest when paired with other enemies. Consider how your new creations interact with standard foes. For example, the Ley-Line Leech is a nuisance on its own, but it becomes deadly when paired with human street gangs or other mundane allies. While the gang members keep the party’s martial fighters busy with gunfire and grapple checks, the Leech can focus on suppressing the party's spellcasters.

Think about the economy of actions in every round. If your Graffitgeist uses its Mural Press ability, it removes a player from the immediate fight. This changes the balance of the encounter instantly, forcing the remaining party members to decide between freeing their friend or dealing damage. Mixing these unique mechanics with standard combat encounters forces players to adapt their strategies on the fly.

Pacing and Environmental Storytelling

In an urban fantasy campaign, the environment is your biggest tool. Homebrew monsters should feel like a symptom of the city itself. A frantic knock on the door in the middle of a long rest becomes much more terrifying if the players know that a creature made of living refuse might be waiting on the other side.

When running these encounters, be generous with descriptions but stingy with mechanics in the beginning. Describe the way the Refuse Drake’s armor rattles and sparks when hit. Let the players figure out that force damage is the key. If a player tries a standard attack and it bounces off harmlessly, describe the impact vividly so they understand why it failed.

By the time the final blow is struck, your players shouldn't just feel like they depleted a bag of hit points. They should feel like they learned something new about the dark, magical underbelly of your city. Whether they are hunting down a singular beast or holding off a horde, homebrew monsters ensure that no two sessions are ever quite the same.

Bringing the City to Life

Urban fantasy shines when the setting feels like a character itself. Whether you want your players fighting living art, trash dragons, or mana-eating ticks, creating your own monsters can enhance an urban fantasy campaign.

Don't be afraid to experiment with your own ideas! With tools like the WorldSmith encounter generator to help you balance the math, you can focus on the flavor that makes your campaign unique. You can watch your Go forth and make your city weird, dangerous, and unforgettable.

Not sure how to run an Urban Fantasy Game?

We get it! It can be intimidating, especially if you are new to tabletop roleplaying games or fantasy gaming in general, and that big bustling city map full of endless targets and potential data can get overwhelming. The first step we would recommend is hopping into a friendly game discord like WorldSmith's Discord, which is stuffed full of experienced GM's who have years of experience writing, imagining, and running games like these. They are always happy to answer questions, gives examples, and basically be your first draft sounding board.

In addition, WorldSmith's World Generator is a great place to lay out a framework for an Urban Fantasy Game, as it can provide you with loads of data points like a rich history, various conflicts in the city, and important figures you could turn into NPCs, foes, or allies.

Our best advice is to start running your own game together with friends! Despite potentially stumbling through a few bits, as long as you're open to feedback and willing to roll with the saving throws, as they say, you'll be surprised how much fun you'll have exploring a rich city setting together with your friends. Happy gaming!