Dev Diary #4: New Homepage, Basilisks, and Future Plans
Discover homebrewing tips, basilisk variants, updates to the Foe Foundry Monster Generator, and more!
Welcome to the fourth Dev Diary for Foe Foundry, our ever-growing toolkit for 5E GMs and monster-hungry TTRPG fans! It's summer here in the US and it's time for another update before the holidays next week.
New Homepage
The New Foe Foundry Homepage is live! You can use the new homepage to browse all the monsters, powers, and GM tips on the site. It ended up taking a lot longer than I had initially planned, but I'm very pleased with the results.
Four More Tips for Homebrewing Monsters
Four More Tips for Homebrewing Monsters continues the 5 Tips for Homebrewing Monsters series with some new homebrew monster tips for DMs:
- Choose CR first, then assign stats
- Choose powers that reinforce the fantasy
- Scale powers to CR
- Make the standard attack matter
Basilisks Added
The dreaded Basilisk was the winner of Patron Poll #4: Monstrosities. I added multiple variants of the basilisk's iconic petrification abilities so take your pick for your favorite. Of course there are encounter and adventure ideas included, as well as a spicy Basilisk Broodmother to feature in some nice adventure hooks about stealing basilisk eggs.
Guards, Warriors, and Berserkers are Next
The lovely Foe Foundry Patrons have voted on Patron Prioritization Poll #5 - Fighter NPCs and it's a three-way tie between Guards, Warriors, and Berserkers. I'll be adding all three over the course of the next week.
Prioritization Poll: Underworld NPCs
That means Patron Prioritization Poll #6 - Underworld NPCs is live for patrons who will choose between Assassins, Bandits, Spies, and Thugs. Vote now to help prioritize what comes next!
Alpha Plan Updates
Generator Updates
I’m hard at work on the Foe Foundry Monster Generator - a tool for TTRPG GMs to edit monsters by adding powers, removing powers, and smashing two creatures together.
I've finished migrating all monsters to the new generation framework, which means I'm ready to implement the intuitive card UI. That's coming up next!
Beta Plans
Once the generator is launched, I will move Foe Foundry from Alpha to Beta.
So far, I'm planning these enhancements during Beta (subject to change and feedback, of course). These features are designed to make homebrewing and managing monsters for your 5E games even easier:
- Search Improvements so you can easily find the monsters you need
- Markdown Export so you can drop any of the generated monsters into Notion, Obsidian, etc.
- PDF Export for folks who prefer a tried and true format
- Foe Foundry Accounts: a login and account system so you can save your monsters
- Encounter Building: automatically create challenge-appropriate and thematic encounters with a fun, swipeable UI
I can’t wait to see what you build with Foe Foundry — and I’d love your feedback as the project grows.
Thanks for reading, and have fun running games for your friends, family, and loved ones!
– Cordialgerm