Giving monsters goodies from the forge

[The Rouse]

Hi everyone,

I searched the forums and cannot find my answer.

Is there a way to edit the monsters so I can give them custom magic items from the forge and have them show up in the combat tracker?

Thanks for the help.

[kylania]

NPCs don't really have inventories, so you can't really do that. Even for PCs this doesn't really work properly either. Like if you add Frost Brand to a Battleaxe it won't automatically do the cold damage or add fire resist if you drag it onto a player.

For an NPC you can just add a new action either on their page or directly into their attack page with:
Frosty Battleaxe [M] [ATK: +5][DMG: 1d8+6 slashing + 1d6 cold]

[Zacchaeus]

Hi everyone,

I searched the forums and cannot find my answer.

Is there a way to edit the monsters so I can give them custom magic items from the forge and have them show up in the combat tracker?

Thanks for the help.

As kylania says NPCs don't have inventories so you can't drag/drop items into them. However they are easy enough to edit to include a new weapon. For example if you take say a Goblin Boss. His standard weapon is shown as follows:
Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) slashing damage.

If you wanted to give him a +1 scimitar instead then you would just need to add a 1 to his attack and damage and append ,magic to the damage type thus:
Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 3) slashing, magic damage.

If you wanted to give him a scimitar of frost it would be:
Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) slashing, magic damage plus 3 (1d6) cold damage.

[The Rouse]

So am I missing a step as the monsters I access through the monster manual are read only? I try to click on the padlock and it says "read only" and will not open.

12126

[Griogre]

You can't mod the monsters in the MM, instead drag and drop the one you want to modify into the campaign's NPC list - and then you can unlock and modify it. Drag the modified monster, onto the encounter list like normal.

[The Rouse]

AH, thank you Giogre and thanks to everyone else! That is the part I was missing on this.

I appreciate everyone's help!

[epithet]

If you wanted to give him a scimitar of frost it would be:
Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) slashing, magic damage plus 3 (1d6) cold damage.

Will multiple damage types (like slashing, magic) work? I was under the impression you would have to write it as follows to get the right action on the combat tracker:
Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) slashing damage plus 3 (1d6) cold damage. This is a magic weapon attack.

[Zacchaeus]

Will multiple damage types (like slashing, magic) work? I was under the impression you would have to write it as follows to get the right action on the combat tracker:
Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) slashing damage plus 3 (1d6) cold damage. This is a magic weapon attack.

The inestimable Moon Wizard included new code in v3.1.5 (current version) which more ably handles the wording for multiple damage types (for both PCs and NPCs). So the wording in my post will, indeed, now work.

To include multiple damage types separate them with a comma.