And there she is folks, the fourth and final member of The Evil Party. It’s been a good long while since Thief wanted to cut a bitch back in Prince Charming, but Succubus has finally stepped up to become our first monstrous Hero!

For those of you who have never slapped ranger levels onto a unicorn, I sympathize. It’s a great big rules headache to make that mess work! Monsters and PCs tend to be built along different lines, meaning that comparing power levels is often an apples to otyughs sort of situation.

Worse, even if you do manage to come up with rules that can make the conversion work on a mechanical level, scratching that “holy shit guys we’re playing dragons!” itch can be a problem. Take my recent dragon riders game. We used some pretty cool 3rd party rules, and they did a great job keeping our dragons and our riders on the same power level. I even thought it was a nice touch that you could choose to be a fear-focused dragon, or a breath weapon specialist, or just stick to being a big mean murder wyrm. Some of my players disagreed. I believe the phrase “we’re just a bunch of overgrown kobolds” came up. If you’re a monster, you want to feel like a monster! Overbalance too much and your risk losing out on half the fun.

And all that’s to say nothing of the worldbuilding difficulties. It’s hard enough getting good service at Ye Olde Inn when you’re an antipaladin. It’s practically impossible if you have the misfortune to be a nightmare murder horse.

So how about it guys? Have you ever played in a monstrous game? What about a mixed party of monsters and base races? How did it work out? Let’s hear it in the comments!

ARE YOU AN IMPATIENT GAMER? If so, you should check out the “Henchman” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. For just one buck a month, you can get each and every Handbook of Heroes comic a day earlier than the rest of your party members. That’s bragging rights right there!