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Customize a Monster

Take a goblin, raise its Stamina, give it a new ability, rename it — and it's yours. This is the homebrew loop, and it starts with one command.

New to the plugin? Start with Getting started.

Reference or copy? Pick on purpose

The plugin can put a compendium creature in your note two ways, and the difference matters:

Insert compendium reference Insert compendium block (snapshot)
What lands in your note a code — three short lines the creature's full text, editable
When the compendium updates your card updates too your copy stays as you left it
Can you edit it? no — it isn't in your note yes; that's the point
Use it for official content you just want to read homebrew, reskins, "the same but nastier"

Neither is better. Reference the monsters you're running as written; snapshot the ones you intend to change.

1. Take a copy

  1. Put your cursor where you want the creature, in Editing view.
  2. Open the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P) and run Insert Draw Steel: compendium block (snapshot).
  3. Search for the creature and press Enter.

The whole creature lands in your note as text you can edit:

A snapshot statblock in the editor

(Snapshots are offered for creatures, abilities and feature blocks — the things you'd actually homebrew from.)

2. Make it yours

Switch to Reading view to see it, back to Editing view to change it. The lines read exactly as they look: name: is the name, stamina: is the Stamina.

Some edits worth knowing:

  • Rename it — change name:.
  • Make it tougher — raise stamina:, or level: and ev: to match.
  • Change what it does — every ability lives under features:. Copy an existing one, change its name: and its tier lines.
  • Change its damage — the tier1: / tier2: / tier3: lines are just text; write whatever the ability does.

Two rules keep you out of trouble:

  • Indentation is meaningful. Lines that line up belong together. Copy an existing block and edit it rather than typing a new one from scratch, and you'll rarely go wrong.
  • If a card disappears, you have almost certainly mis-indented a line. Undo (Ctrl/Cmd + Z) back to the last version that rendered and redo the change more carefully.

Prefer not to edit text at all? Turn on Settings → Authoring → "Show edit button on rendered blocks" and every card gains a pencil that opens a form, with a live preview and a Save button that refuses to save something broken.

3. Keep it somewhere sensible

Your homebrew is an ordinary note — put it wherever you like, except inside the DS Compendium folder. That folder belongs to the sync: files the plugin manages are replaced with the official text when you next sync. Anywhere else in your vault is yours forever and is never touched.

(If you did edit a compendium file in place before 7.0.0, the migration keeps a backup — see Migrating from 5.x to 7.0.0.)

Building one from scratch

Same loop without the copy: type /ds in Editing view, pick Statblock, and edit the worked example it writes. The full field list — what every line means, which are required — is in Statblock Element.

For a single ability rather than a whole creature, /ds → Feature; see Feature Element.

See also