#NotASponsorJustAnAwesomeProduct
Also, this is not a review. My review: buy it, use it.
This is just the first way I’ve used it.
My session last week had some time issues. Conflicting events led to a shorter than normal session. We also are beer and pretzel paced. Our Bruncheons & Dragons game twice a month is a bunch of friends hanging out, eating great food, rolling dice, and making up silly elf stories.
We also like a good fight.
So given our habits and time constraints, we had time for one good fight. Loot. Award XP. All I had time for was to resolve a Strong Start. Last session they found and secured a crashed spelljammer ship. A lanceship, for the curious. The engines and weapons system were functional, but structurally totaled. So as the party started to figure out how to sled the wreckage to a nearby river to float down to Dogtown. Of course, Bandits Attack!
Perfect time to take the advantage of the part of Forge of Foes I was most excited about: the Monster Toolkits. I didn’t want some basic bandits. Last session ended with Level up to Level 5, so i wanted to give them a chance to flex some new muscles.
Since I wanted a bandit gang fight, I checked the Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge table on page 67. Charts for parties of 4, 5, and 6 characters. By level encounter outlines for different encounter mixes. My five fifth level characters cross referenced to the 1 boss + 2 lieutenants + 8 minions gives me a CR 3 Boss, 2 CR 1/2 lieutenants, and 8 CR 1/4 minions. Just for fun, to make it deadly, I threw in a CR 2 creature as well.
For each creature, I was going to use the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table on page 6, but instead went with the General Use Combat Stat Blocks on page 13. An offering of seven base stat blocks of differing CRs. These stat blocks are vanilla. Everything you’d expect to see, but no special abilities. Luckily this book gives you a variety of special abilities you can staple on. They have a couple of different systems for this, abilities by creature type, by role, and thematic abilities. I chose to go ala carte from all these, but for these humanoids I chose to lean mostly on the roles.
My CR 4 Boss used the specialist stat block with the leader role. This role gave him two special abilities, Shout Orders, A recharge ability that allows six other creatures either move their speed or take an action. Heal Ally lets them shout to heal an ally 25% of the allies hit points. I flavored his basic attack line as doing lightning damage.
The CR 2 creature I added used the Brute stat block and I assigned the Defender role. The boss’ bodyguard. Boost the AC and HP, but nerf the attack a bit. Then I ended up choosing different abilities, Challenge Foe as a recharge, and Defender, which allows the Brute to intercept attacks on others.
The two CR 1/2 lieutenants I went with Ambush Soldiers for role/stat block. Nimble Reaction allows them to disengage as a reaction to melee attacks, and Duck and Cover that boosts their damage output.
For the eight Minions, I made them Skirmishers. They only got one ability, Knock Back. They push foes away 5 feet on a hit.
It was a fun fight! The minions and soldiers kept the battle lines from turning into back and forth slogs, with the defender pulling attacks away from the leader. The leader fueled the fire with Shouting Orders to move his allies around and letting them attack again.
This mix of creatures, stat blocks, and abilities gave each character to have a moment in the spotlight, whether that was going mano a mano with the defender, throwing crowd control at the minions, or sniping back and forth with the leader.
Putting together these four stat blocks probably took me a bit over an hour. It was also my first time doing it, and I spent some time setting up templates for myself in my google drive to make it easier for myself next time. It’s only going to get easier. There are a ton of abilities in the book to make up any kind of stat block you can need, using either the General Use Stat Blocks or the Monster Statistics by CR table to give you the baseline numbers and stapling on a couple of abilities. With practice, I should be able to pull together a unique and flavorful monster in just a couple minutes.
These abilities can also be easily put on any standard stat block, allowing you to make unique goblins, zombies, dragons, or owlbears by just adding an ability.
All that in just the first 26 pages of this 128 page book. I can honestly say with just this system, I could never have to buy a monster book again. I probably will, but I wont have to.
Jon Bupp 
I’m all about automating as much of my prep and session management as possible and would love to hear how you approached the above-mentioned templates you set up.
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For me that is copy/pasting the stat blocks and monster powers into a google drive document.
That way when I “forge” a monster, I can just copy powers from the big list onto the stat block and print them out. Will also allow me to add more powers to the list.
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