Random Monster Generator: Beta!

[Goober4473]

[Edit]: The system the Google image search used is no longer supported by Google, so that feature is unfortunately gone.

I'm back at this random monster generator again!

Some things that are awesome about it:
- Generates a whole Monster Manual worth of monsters. More, even. You could run a whole campaign, and probably more, by running this thing ONCE. Wow!
- NEW! Includes raceless NPCs like in the MM Appendix.
- NEW! Includes Legendary monsters and Lair actions.
- These monsters aren't just hacked together nonsense. They fit into themes, they prefer to cast appropriate spells, they can share species with other monsters, and they tend to have abilities appropriate to their climate, all while still being random enough to be interesting.
- Did I say SPELLS? I did. Monsters could have innate spells, or straight up spellcasting, chosen from among every PHB and Xanathar's Guide spell. All those spells are tagged, so monsters know which kinds they want to take. Does that ice fairy have mostly ENCHANTMENT and ILLUSION spells, with a few FROST spells thrown in? You bet your sweet ass it does!
- Monster can SUMMON other monsters that have ALREADY BEEN GENERATED.
- Monsters are usually KIND OF BALANCED. They might be off by a CR here and there, but most of them are usable WITHOUT ANY MANUAL MODIFICATION. Rad.
- Monsters are generated in sets, each with an intended PC level. For example, a high level set might have low-CR monsters, but those monsters will be simple and easy to use as minions, while a lower level set might have similar CR monsters that are more complex.
- All of this is FORMATTED NEATLY for your viewing pleasure, with stat blocks that resemble those found in the Monster Manual.

Also:
- Pokemon mode: Originally designed for my Pocket Summoner class, you can have this thing generate stats for a monster at every level, and it will even evolve. Perfect for companion monsters, summons, reoccurring enemies that get tougher each time, or anything else you can think to do with levelable monsters.

Still to come:
- MORE CONTENT. You might see some abilities repeat a lot, as I still have tons of content to add. If you have an ability you think would be cool to have in there, LET ME KNOW.
- MORE LEGENDARY STUFF. Legendary and Lair actions are still a new thing in the generator, so they're a bit limited.
- LAIR REGIONAL EFFECTS

Maybe to come:
- Weapon damage is not consistent with the PBH. It may never be.
- Save DCs for special abilities are not based on ability scores. They also may never be. Spells are, however.
- An encounter generator that uses output from the monster generator.

Examples:
You can take a look at some example output I just generated.
Example 1
Example 2

Known Bugs: The generator can stall sometimes and I'm not sure why. It doesn't happen very often, though, and you just need to restart it. There may be other rare cases where it crashes, but again, just restart it.

Feedback: Let me know what you think, if you encounter any errors, or have any suggestions.

Special Thanks: Special thanks still go to to Surf for their monster analysis posts a while back, which helped me get the math right.

About Me: I'm Chris "Goober" Ramsley, and I've been homebrewing since forever, and doing it at a professional level for a little while. You can find some of my stuff on the DMs Guild these days.

Downloading and Running:

You can get the current version of the generator HERE. Just unzip into a folder, and run main.exe. All it does is run main.lua though, so if you're not on a PC, you can use any Lua interpreter and just run main.lua.

You can change a lot of parameters in the Config.lua file. Just open it up in any text editor, and it includes instructions on what each parameter does.

When you run the program, it will generate an HTML file. It won't overwrite previous results.

[JNAProductions]

What. How. This is...

Oh my god, this is insane. You sir, are a genius!

[Ziegander]

Completely amazing albeit completely insane... the names and abilities are essentially random as are the creature types and resistances/immunities... I can see that it's trying to create themes, it's just that the themes are 100% nonsensical.

Still... outright ridiculous amount of work and output. Amazing effort here and I can't wait to see how this improves in the future. It's already a pretty fantastic tool.

[Goober4473]

Completely amazing albeit completely insane... the names and abilities are essentially random as are the creature types and resistances/immunities... I can see that it's trying to create themes, it's just that the themes are 100% nonsensical.

Typically what happens a lot is that it will have a keyword like Fire, from which it might purchase fire resistance/immunity and fire-based abilities, and it will favor fire spells and the Ignan dialect of Primordial, but from all those options, it might only take say, fire resistance, while the rest of its stuff comes from other keywords. Maybe it doesn't have spells, doesn't speak Primordial, and would rather have Sneak Attack from the Lurker keyword than buy a fire blast power. So that fire resistance looks like it's out of nowhere, even though it's still part of the monster's internal theme. What you end up with is something that like the shambling mound, which is a plant that absorbs electricity for some reason. You get to decide why that is, narratively speaking, which is part of what I love about random generation.

It tries to pick names from keywords that it's purchased the most from, but there still aren't a ton of names to choose from, and I still let it be pretty random. I'll be improving naming eventually.

What. How. This is...

Oh my god, this is insane. You sir, are a genius!

[Goober4473]

I've updated the main post with Beta version 2, which has updated name generation capabilities. The weirder names sometimes don't get any google results, but that's unavoidable.

[Goober4473]

And I have now posted Beta 3, which has even better naming, and an improved attack generation system that builds more varied, and consistent between monsters of the same species, attack routines, and combines all multiattack options into one action.

[JNAProductions]

The pictures are... Interesting.

[Ziegander]

Monsters are starting to get tighter though. I'm liking where this is going. Some of the abilities it comes up with are really interesting.

[JNAProductions]

Some abilities are hilarious. The Elemental Dune Runner, for instance, is apparently indistinguishable from normal fungus.

[DiBastet]

Some images are hilarious, but that's to expect from random generators. A great example, the Lake Pest

Lake Pest

Medium humanoid (lake pest), chaotic evil

But I love how it creates npcs. That's really really useful for my setting with low rate of monsters

[JNAProductions]

It's got great monsters, no doubt about that. The fluff can just a bit wonky sometimes. But for a random generator?

Goober4473, this is some damn fine work. Some exceptionally fine work. Some just plain old stupendous work!

[DorkyBobster]

Wha.. This is brilliant! Amazing job!

[JBPuffin]

This is a masterpiece. I know TPAM necro'd this, but I feel like it needed to be, so props to DorkyBobster .

Goat
Small beast, unaligned
------------------------------------------------
Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 77 (14d6 + 28)
Speed 25 ft., climb 25 ft.
------------------------------------------------
STR 16 (+3) DEX 14 (+2) CON 15 (+2)
INT 3 (-4) WIS 8 (-1) CHA 9 (-1)
------------------------------------------------
Saving Throws Dex +4
Skills Athletics +5
Senses blindsight 60 ft., passive Perception 9
Languages telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge 3 (700 XP)
------------------------------------------------

Actions
------------------------------------------------
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (4d6 + 3) piercing damage.

[King539]

*Applauds* Good job, good job. By the way, what would you recommend for a Lua interpreter?

[Potato_Priest]

This is very cool. My favorite monster so far is the Snow Covered Slitherdrip.

[Nifft]

This generator is fun.

BTW here's a sample Mac install:

brew install lua
cd ~/Downloads/MonsterGenerator_Beta02
/usr/local/bin/lua main.lua

You need to have Homebrew installed for "brew install ..." to work, so do that first if you haven't already.

[Mkewig]

Is this still available? The Dropbox link isn’t working.

[Davrix]

Man I know this thread just got necroed but I want to play with this builder. Anyone still got a working copy?

[Goober4473]

I've just posted the Beta 05 version of this thing up in the original post! Sorry it's been so long.

Besides tons of small tweaks and improvements to the general content, it also now makes legendary monsters!

[adonis53]

Thanks so much! I lost my file of it and was really hoping to get a working copy! An update is even better! 😁

[Kane0]

Woah. This is amazing!

[Unavenger]

I'm not wearing a hat, but if I were, it would be off to you. This is really, really cool, and while some of the creature names are a little weird and some of the ability names are a lot weird (the RNN is obsessed with potatoes, it seems), it's still amazing. Good job.