Monster Design: the Lingering Wills
Content Warning: This document will discuss themes of death, old age, mental illness, and dementia.
The lingering wills are the manifestation of the now deceased’s desperate desires, taking the form of a spectral undead. The concept for them started with a desire to make undead creatures that truly felt like the remnants of the people they once were, similar to how spirits are generally portrayed in a lot of culture and media. I was largely inspired by my experience being around people with dementia; it’s an illness that traps you within yourself, and reduces your psyche to its most basic and prominent components. It’s a horrifying reality; one that I saw taking form in a monster. A spirit who is lost and confused, only left with a burning desire. While DnD certainly is not lacking in representation for this type of undead, such as with ghosts, wights, and revenants, I felt as though there was more room to make a monster that properly represented this concept through more tailored flavor and mechanics. And thus, I began to work on what would become the lingering wills.
That being said, the lore of the lingering wills had a bit of a winding road to the final form that they ended up taking. They were originally intended to retain scattered bits of memories and personality from their past life, resulting in them acting as confused, concerned, and almost boiled down versions of what they once were, desperately trying to find closure for the things that they regretted in life and death. This would ideally lead to compelling, confusing, and heartbreaking encounters with these spirits, as the party would have to deal with a demented undead who behaves with a delusional fervor, and can only be brought to peace through attempts to investigate and ease the troubled soul.
However, a problem arose when our head fluff editor noted that this flavor for them felt like a more specific, pigeon-holed version of a ghost, an already existing monster in DnD. A chief goal of ours in Gelatinous Cubicles is to come up with homebrew that is balanced, fun, and unique in both flavor and mechanics. After all, why make a whole new monster and risk mechanical balancing issues when you could instead just adapt something that already works? So their lore changed to what they are now; instead of being demented and scattered versions of who they once were, they are spectral undead who have lost all aspects of who their past self, leaving them with only the will that spawned them. While they still retain some capacity to feel and think, they can no longer be considered questionably accurate reflections of who they once were. Instead they are creatures spawned with a purpose they follow with an overwhelming intensity, as well as a capacity to think and feel about what is happening around them. I like the direction the flavor took, as I feel as though the intent for encounters from the original version of the Lingering Wills mostly carried over. The creature is still confused and passionate, though now it must reconcile with the fact that it has been brought into the world seemingly so it can accomplish one thing, with no comprehension or context as to why it should be doing that.
When deciding which lingering wills to make, I thought of compelling regrets and desires for these spirits to have to act on, and for theoretical parties to have to try and resolve. Moreover, I knew I wanted to make a low CR creature and a medium to high CR creature, so I could provide creatures for a greater variety of parties. The traveler was decided on because I felt the flavor of a lost spirit desperately searching for the destination of its travels, only finding peace if someone can bring it there, was apt and flexible for storytelling and for low level parties to encounter. After all, the traveler is the remnant of some guy that got lost in the woods. Probably not too strong, right? The guardian was decided on because I felt as though the flavor of a spirit fervently defending something they cared for in life was also apt for story telling, and was suitable for a nice mid boss.
Mechanically, they started out quite different from how they are now. Funny how revision does that. The first thing I’d like to talk about in our design process were the decisions made for both of the lingering wills. Given that they’re both the same type of monster, being lingering wills, it was always a concern to make their stat blocks feel at least somewhat similar to each other. I had started building their stat blocks in an attempt to have them resemble ghosts in their resistances and immunities, though unlike ghosts they never had a flying speed. It was argued within our group that this inconsistency felt jarring, and that they should be changed to resemble another type of monster. This is in line with the homebrew design philosophy that consistency is key; if it’s worked in the past, as is the case with most existing monsters in DnD, it’ll work again. As such, if you are homebrewing a monster and can make them feel consistent with an existing monster/group of monsters, the homebrewed monster will ‘fit into’ the game better and will likely be more balanced. So they were redesigned to have their immunities, resistances, and movement resemble wights and similar corporeal undead.
They also did not originally have the features in their stat block that observant and tactical players can use to cripple them, such as the traveler’s ‘Restless’ feature. Our head of mechanic’s design argued that if the lingering wills were all similar to each other in their lore, they should share more similarities in their mechanics to reflect that. This was a compelling argument, as mechanics should generally reflect flavor to give the monster character in how they function within DnD, with the caveat that you don’t start needlessly bloating their stat block. It just makes the monster feel more fun! Besides, there are enough Attack simulators in DnD, it’s good for monsters to have some spice. So the stat blocks of the Lingering Wills were revised to have more in common with each other. The vulnerability across both Lingering Wills to psychic damage is representative of their fragile mental state, and serves as a niche but exploitable vulnerability. They also got proficiency in Charisma saves, representing their absolute stubbornness. Moreover, each type of Lingering Will got their own special weakness to represent their uniquely shattered psyche.
Transitioning to the design process of the traveler, their ‘Swipe’ is the only thing that was left unchanged. Which isn’t much of a shocker, it’s just a melee attack with appropriate attack and damage numbers for its CR. Same with their Hit Points and AC for the most part. Given that this is a low CR spectral undead, meaning that the party facing them likely does not have magic weapons to overcome their resistances, I didn’t want to make their AC or Hit Points too crazy. Otherwise they end up obnoxious in ways that aren’t intended or interesting. Beyond this, a lot else was changed through our homebrewing process.
Their ‘Wail’ action was originally called ‘Wailing Step’, which allowed the traveler to teleport to a point it could see within 30 feet of it before dealing 2d8 thunder damage to the creature’s around the point it teleported to. My intention with this ability was two-fold. I wanted the traveler to be able to jump scare an unsuspecting party and essentially thunderwave, which is pretty painful for a low level party. Additionally, I wanted the traveler’s wanderlust and franticness to be portrayed through its constant teleporting, as it still had a bonus action teleport originally. But a low CR creature that’s constantly teleporting out of view, surprisingly, ended up being incredibly annoying. So that was cut down to it being the AOE ‘Wail’, since a shriek of despair is still pretty lore appropriate, and gives the Traveler more options than Swipe.
Beyond that, the teleport was changed to be able to teleport a creature and damage them. This change both helped the traveler hurt a bit more in a fun and flavorful way doing what it already wanted to be doing, and creates interesting exchanges between the party and the monster. Not only is a constantly teleporting monster who displaces party members a potentially interesting low level fight, but now the PCs are really being made to experience the torment of the wanderer. It also used to have Flyby, but that was cut to help tidy up the stat block.
Then the biggest headache reared its head, being the ‘Restless’ feature. We had decided that the Wanderer being unable to physically move should be the trigger for it’s exploitable feature, as it is compelled to always move in its panicked journey. But settling on a debuff that didn’t outright turn off the already low CR creature was quite difficult. Being frightened of all creatures was what we decided on in the end, as it felt true to the lore and genuinely crippling for the Lingering Will while not being too dramatic. After all, unless the party is pulling some real shenanigans, the punishment for the traveler not being able to move is really just a turn wasted on Dashing or Dodging.
By comparison, the guardian had a much tamer development process. While its Hit Points and the damage on its greatsword attack were all tweaked to fall in line with its CR, other abilities, and general DnD monster standards, they were not changed too greatly. I wanted the guardian to be more tanky than damage-focused, representing its desire to protect rather than hurt. Frightful Presence is additionally an ability that it had from the start. I can’t really take credit for the mechanics on that one of course, I literally just ripped off the wording from dragons. Again, consistency is good! I liked the guardian having this ability because its primary motive isn’t really to kill the party, it’s to get them to go away and stop bothering its ward. The party running away in fear is a pretty good way to accomplish that. Then again, so is just killing them, so it has ways of accomplishing that too while protecting its Ward. Hence the existence of ‘Vengeful Ward’ and ‘Rush to Aid’, which both also existed in the guardian’s original stat block.
‘Vengeful Ward’ serves as a means of bumping up the guardian’s damage to appropriate levels while also punishing unwise players who don’t respect the guardian’s ward. This ideally deters the party from messing with the ward without a game plan. ‘Rush to Aid’ serves as a way for the guardian to actually protect the ward; after all, the guardian can be as scary and tanky as it wants, but it needs to actually be able to protect. Worth noting is ‘Rush to Aid’ originally halved the damage of the attack if it hit the guardian, but this felt like a bit too much, so it was cut.
‘Magic Resistance’ was added when we realized in playtesting that the guardian was a bit too easy to mess with. Legendary Resistances would have been a bit over the guardian’s weight class, but the former makes it so that the guardian is less likely to be obliterated by one higher level spell, in line with it being a tank. ‘Shattered Resolve’ was decided upon as its exploitable feature almost immediately upon deciding that it should have one. This thing is here to protect; it really doesn’t have much left to do if it messes that one up. So we decided that it should be destroyed in the event that its ward is destroyed; not before it has a chance to punish the likely reckless player who thought that was a good idea though. We also added the feature ‘Ward’, which both imposes mechanical limits on the guardian reflecting its fervor, and rewards creative players who can somehow separate the ward.
The lingering wills really went through quite a development cycle by the end of it all. I’m not even sure if I’ve covered everything in this article! But that just goes to show how tough it can be to make high quality, playtested, mechanically and flavorfully robust additions to DnD. I’m definitely grateful for the experience; I feel like I learned a lot! And I hope you learned something too by reading this! Now go out there and throw some sad spooky bois at some confused and unsympathetic murder hobos.
-Julie