Monster Selection Flowchart project: help welcome

[Unoriginal]

DMs sometime have troubles deciding which monster to use, be it when they plan in advance or when they have to improvise.

So, why not make it easier for them and provide a flowchart for monster selection, based on the monster's themes and capacities? For ex: A DM wants a sneaky opponent, so they go to the relevant start of the flowchart, and then go through the different parts of the flowchart ("humanoid monster? Y/N, etc) until reaching a suggestion.

It's an idea that's I had in mind for a while now, but given I've recently got a lot of free time I decided to take a shot at making it concrete.

What do you guys think? Criticism/comments/help are welcome.

[Beechgnome]

I like the idea of sorting by descriptive playstyle measures like sneaky or reckless or skirmishing.

But because of the sheer number of monsters and variables like creature type, environments and CR, I wonder if it may be better handled by a spreadsheet or database. So when you choose you sort by playstyle then Cr then creature type then environment and then you'd be able to scroll down and see the ambushing CR 1 humanoid forest dwellers (hello, bugbear!)

Of course you could have multiple results at each terminus grouped together and let the DM figure out if the environment or CR is appropriate.

If you did a flowchart, how big do you want it?

[Azgeroth]

sounds good!

the only thing i can see going slightly wrong is, what if you have no idea what you want, you just know X ;

the enviroment, another foe/creature, a certain trait, etc.

i think a questionnaire style system would work best, where there isn't a set process, as you might not have an answer for at least some of the questions leading to dead ends, instead you would get multiple results that best fit the criteria you lay out.

[Nidgit]

Sounds like a great idea, but one that's tricky to implement. There are SO many monsters even just in the MM that it would be hard to cover them all, and there are several starting questions that would probably be recycled at different points (CR, environment if it even matters, creature type, etc.) that it could easily turn into a mess.

Not sure of it's possible, but giving your user multiple starting points or filters might be a useful way to help narrow things down to a visually manageable item.

Good luck to figuring it out though!

[Tvtyrant]

DMs sometime have troubles deciding which monster to use, be it when they plan in advance or when they have to improvise.

So, why not make it easier for them and provide a flowchart for monster selection, based on the monster's themes and capacities? For ex: A DM wants a sneaky opponent, so they go to the relevant start of the flowchart, and then go through the different parts of the flowchart ("humanoid monster? Y/N, etc) until reaching a suggestion.

It's an idea that's I had in mind for a while now, but given I've recently got a lot of free time I decided to take a shot at making it concrete.

What do you guys think? Criticism/comments/help are welcome.

I think you would need to deal with CR somehow. Getting an Aboleth off "weird aquatic" for a level 1 party wouldn't be very helpful. Either a bunch of flowcharts need to be made for tiers or the first question is "How strong do you want your monster" and then branch identically from there.

[JoeJ]

Rather than a flowchart, this would probably be better done as a database that you can query with whatever parameters you think are appropriate to the situation.

[LordEntrails]

I agree a flowchart is too limiting. Though you don't have to go the database route either.

First you have to decide on attributes or categories. What is it you want to be able to select from? Then you can either rate each of those, or more likely have a list of 10 or 20 questions. Probably multiple choice, then use the answers from those questions to determine the traits you want in a creature. Like those "personality" tests. So you end up coming up with something like a "brute 80 Magic 20 Special 40" or whatever.

[Aaron Underhand]

It's not a database problem as such, the correct programming paradigm for this seems to be logic based. Something like prolog would be best suited.

A questionnaire style, without the need to answer all questions, or a coversational style can be supported.

[Laserlight]

So what questions would you want?
CR, damage type, damage immunity/ resist/vulnerability, condition immunity/resist/ vulnerability, movement mode (flight/swim/burrow/ phasing), INT>__, monster type, size, environment, ranged attacks..... ?

[Lombra]

I would make it a tag-based search, not a flowchart. Assign each monster any number of descriptive tags, with the option to add more personal ones, you then search by tag and are presented with a list of monsters with that specific tag.

Obvious tags should be each and every statistic and ability, envirorment, name, type, backstory keywords etc.

[Man_Over_Game]

I do something similar with my personality quiz (on a different thread).

Each choice (creature) has an array of attributes that are associated with each aspect you would want in a monster (Sneaky, big, magical, physical, etc), maybe something you'd scale off of 1-5. In terms of size, 1 would be super small, 5 would be Gargantuan or Huge, and 3 would represent a Medium creature. Have this work for every attribute (except CR) and every creature.

Then, you input your request, using 1-5 to scale how you want each aspect (maybe add an If(0) clause so that you can choose to omit that attribute for your calculations, to reflect that you dont' care what size or how sneaky they are). For each point off the creature is on an attribute, the bigger the "penalty" it gets is. The system then tallies up the penalties for each individual creature and the creatures with the lowest penalties are the ones it suggests.

For example, you have a Barbarian, an Ogre Magi and an Archbishop. You want to find something stupid that can take a beating.

The Archbishop is ranked on Stupid/Smart as a 5, Barbarian is ranked as a 1, and the Ogre Magi is a 2.

For Stupid/Smart, you request a 2, so the Barbarian gets 1 penalty, the Archbishop gets a 3 penalty, and the Ogre Magi has a 0 penalty.

For Tough/Squishy, you request a 1.

The Barbarian is ranked on Tough/Squishy as a 1, the Ogre Magi is a 1, and the Archbishop is a 5.

So the Barbarian would get a penalty of 0 (now at 1), the Ogre Magic would have a penalty of 0 (now at 0), and the Archbishop would gain a penalty of 4 (now at 9).

It would spit out the closest options, starting with the lowest, in this order:

Barbarian
Ogre Magi
Archbishop

For what you were looking for (something stupid that can take a beating).

It would take some work, it might take me a month to sift through every creature in the book to do it, but it wouldn't be that hard.

[Imbalance]

Ever since I read this topic the other day I've been trying to visualize it. What a pile of spaghetti it would be. I'll agree that a database approach with search filters is probably the most efficient way to go, but from a visual standpoint I think a huge poster crammed with a well-appointed matrix would be inspiring to utilize, if not baffling to behold.

Grain of salt: I'm still new to D&D, but here's how I picture it. The outside edge of the chart is where all of the paths terminate, so your monsters are here in groups according to type. At the center is your starting point (and this is where I would personally bow to seasoned DMs if my impressions are way off), the first thing to consider is CR, no? For purposes of streamlining, the first branches ought to be presented in challenge ranges: CR 1-5, 5-10, etc. I could even see repeating this question again before the end to better refine results. I think these paths might have to be color coded to follow through properly from this prime consideration.

In between would be queries about location (plane, environment, time of day?), then suggestions to follow based on characteristics of the foe. Perhaps one of the last choices would be between swarm, group, or single encounter, then next to the monster at the end is a quantity selection colored to match the CR path.

Just spitballing, but this is an idea that I think would look cool, at least, and has a lot of potential to be useful. Good luck.

[Kadesh]

Can't help but feel it's easier to provide a Keyword tagging system in it's stead, rather than flowchart.